Playing it by Ear - My Unplanned Military Career

In East Texas in 1962 there weren't too many economic opportunities for black high school graduates who couldn't afford college; at least, none that interested me. Knowing that I was only two or three years away from being drafted anyway, I decided to enlist. That way I could chose my training and assignment, things I might not be able to do if I waited for the draft, and I'd earn GI Bill credits during my three year enlistment. As you can probably tell from the foregoing statements, I had no intention of making the military a career.

I enlisted in the U.S. Army in July 1962, and after basic training was sent from Louisiana to New Jersey to train as a Morse code operator, and then went from there to a unit in Germany where I did just about everything but operate a radio. After two years of playing basketball, coaching baseball, and working in the post library, I was informed by my battalion operations officer; a close friend of my older brother who was a major in the army at the time; that my test scores were high enough to qualify me for Officer Candidate School (OCS), and he and my brother had decided that I would apply. Actually, they had submitted the application on my behalf. I went through the assessment procedure, sure that my smart mouth would keep me out, but was shocked a month later when my first sergeant told me to pack a bag because I was being reassigned to Fort Sill, Oklahoma to be trained to become a second lieutenant in the field artillery.

Six months of OCS training and commissioning, training as a reconnaissance and survey officer, airborne school, and I found myself back in Germany, where again, I did everything but what I'd been trained to do. After a year, I was assigned to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia as the executive officer of an infantry OCS company, pumping out infantry platoon leaders to fill the growing demand of the Vietnam War. I got tired of that after six months, so I applied for Special Forces training; passed the test and was shipped off to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where I spent the next two years learning all the facets of unconventional warfare, psychological operations, civil affairs, jungle survival, and a smattering of the Vietnamese language.

In the summer of 1968, I arrived in Vietnam and spent a year in a strategic recon outfit. By then, the army realized that I was an artillery captain who knew absolutely nothing about artillery, so they moved me into military intelligence. I came back to the U.S. for training and did a sort tour as an operations officer with the old US Army Intelligence Command that was headquartered in Baltimore. I did that for about a year and then went off for more intelligence training, a year at college to get my undergraduate degree, and then back to Vietnam where for a year I ran intelligence collection operations for the Military Assistance Command (MACV).

My second tour ended concurrent with the cease fire, and in 1973, I was sent to Seoul, Korea to command the 24^th Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Detachment, one of the last Vietnam-era PSYOP units to serve on active duty. When that unit was finally inactivated, I served for a couple of years as a logistics installation commander. In 1977, I found myself back at Fort Bragg, where I worked as an intelligence officer until senior officers discovered that I could write, draw, and took a fairly decent photograph. I was then drafted to serve as the assistant public affairs officer of the 18^th Airborne Corps, a job I held until I was sent back to Korea in 1979 to be the unconventional warfare plans officer for the recently established Combined Forces Command. In that job I got a chance to work closely with the South Korean Special Forces units who were responsible for protection of the country from North Korean infiltration.

After that final two-year tour in Korea, I decided to hang it up and retire - nineteen years had sneaked up on me without my even being aware. So much for not planning to make a career of it, eh? I came back to the U.S. to finish my last year, serving as the senior Slavic language training advisor at the Defense Language School in Monterrey, California. That was my least stressful tour, sort of a cross between a vice principal in a ritzy private school and a warden in a minimum security installation. I retired from that job in 1982, moving immediately to the State Department's Foreign Service.

I did manage not only to get that undergraduate degree, but an M.S. as well, mostly during night school at posts all over the world. I also learned to be flexible, persistent, and to never take anything - myself most of all - too seriously. I had some days that were frightening, but never a day that was boring. I've often asked myself if there's anything I'd do differently - and the answer keeps coming up - you've got to be kidding; I was paid to enjoy myself. I wouldn't change a thing.