Fort Bragg

When Jean and I returned on a Saturday from our honeymoon in Bermuda we stayed at my parent's house in Warwick RI. All our personal belongings were there to include the wedding gifts we received. Most of the wedding gifts were envelopes with money in them which we needed to help pay for our honeymoon, but we also received small appliances, towels, bedding and other items to start our home. We had to report into Fort Bragg NC on Monday. I was assigned to the 1st Brigade, 1st of the 504th Infantry battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division. The 1/504 was known by the Germans as the Devils in Baggy Pants from their service in WWII.

Jean and I had rented a small U-HAUL trailer and hooked it to a bumper hitch on the back of our 1964 Corvair. The size of the trailer almost overwhelmed the little car.

We loaded up the trailer and at 2:00 AM Sunday morning we set out for our great adventure. My parents got up to wave us off and as we backed out of the driveway that night my parents stood in the light of our headlights waving to us. We can only imagine what they were thinking as we went on our way.

It was truly an adventure for us. We drove south on Hwy 95 and by the time we reached Washington D.C. it was rush hour. We drove through the middle of the city and prayed that we would make it as we weaved through the heavy traffic with our little car and trailer. We have often reflected on that trip and wondered what people may have been thinking when they saw us. It was surely the Grace of God that got us through it and when we got out of the city, we found a small motel to spend the night in.

We arrived at Fort Bragg about mid-day Monday and I signed into the unit. At that time the 1st Brigade of the 82nd was deployed to the Dominican Republic to put down a Communist supported rebellion. There was a small rear detachment for the Brigade and each of the three battalions that were deployed. The commander for the rear detachment for the 1/504 was Captain Langston. When I signed in, he told me to go to the post housing office to get a place to live on base. He said when we had a place to live, I needed to come back to the unit and he would give me a large truck with a driver to go and pickup government furniture for our apartment. Our apartment was 288 Spear Drive, and it was one of four attached two-story apartments in a single building. There was absolutely no furniture in the apartment.

This is a picture of two of our friends, Lyle and Carol Pepin, with the apartment house we lived in behind them.

I asked Jean to change into her going away pink suit with the little white hat. I had hopes that it might positively influence whoever was going to assign the furniture to us.

We went back to the unit and we followed the truck to the furniture warehouse. The man in charge was an older sergeant who seemed to delight in having power over young 2nd Lieutenants in need of furniture. He explained he was only authorized to give me furniture commensurate with my rank. That meant I was only authorized one three-quarter bed and mattress. There was barely enough room for one, let alone a couple to sleep on it. Jean stood beside me looking adorable and she caught the old sergeant's eye.

Before agreeing to what I was being given, the sergeant struck out the number one on the paperwork and wrote two three quarter beds. I was very grateful. We also got a metal cot we could use as a couch in the living room, and a dining room table with a couple of chairs and a few odds and ends to include a bureau and mirror.

The junior enlisted man, who was the truck driver, helped me load it all into the truck, and helped me move it into the apartment.

And so, it began for Jean and me.

The following days and weeks were very hectic for me as I tried to come up to speed as a new Infantry Lieutenant. Jean did the food shopping and tried to make our apartment as comfortable as she could. We met our neighbors Tom and Ann Beuthien. He was a 1st, Lieutenant. They were nice people and we still exchange Christmas cards with them.

The old apartment buildings had a medicine cabinet in the bathroom which had a slot so you could drop your old razor blades down a chute in the wall. One day as I opened the medicine cabinet, I found myself looking through the slot directly at Ann who had also opened her cabinet. It was a bit startling for both of us.

Like all the new 2nd Lieutenants assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division that June, I was not yet qualified as a paratrooper. I did not have jump wings so all of us non-jump qualified officers were referred to as "legs" which was a derisive term. We had to wait to be sent to Fort Benning Georgia to infantry officers' basic course and to attend jump school. None of us could be deployed to the Dominican Republic to join the rest of the unit until we finished the basic course and we had attended jump school.

That summer was a bit of a blur with all that was happening to us. Jean and I were adjusting to each other and the totally alien military culture. I remember thinking that I had to come up to speed quickly just to keep up with the other lieutenants. Each day was a huge learning experience for me. The rear detachment commander Captain Langston kept me busy with tasks and seemed pleased with my performance. I also got to know the brigade rear detachment commander Major Grace, a Special Forces officer who had been to Vietnam.

It was not long before Jean became aware that she was pregnant which pleased us both but added a whole new dimension to our lives. At that time, Jean was the only wife among the new officers who was pregnant. Many of the wives made snide remarks about Jean being pregnant.

We decided to trade the little Mazda in on a new, maroon, two door Chevrolet Malibu. It had a black vinyl interior, and I put an 82nd ABN DIV decal in the back window. It had a good size trunk and we were delighted to have it.

In early August I was assigned to Fort Benning GA to attend the Infantry Officers Basic course followed by paratrooper school. The assignment was considered temporary duty (TDY) which meant Jean was not expected to go with me. However, Jean and I agreed that no matter where I was assigned, even if it was TDY, we would stay together. That held throughout our time in the military, and we never regretted that decision.

At Fort Benning, we had to find a place to live on the civilian economy. The town around Fort Benning was Columbus GA, and we found a small apartment just outside the front gate of the post, the Gateway Apartments.

When we arrived at Fort Benning there was a great deal of activity because an entire division had just been deployed to Vietnam. The division was a brand-new unit, the 1st Cavalry Division Airmobile. The unit had hundreds of helicopters and was being deployed as the first Army division to enter the Vietnam War.

Many of the families of the deploying soldiers were trying to move out of the base and there was a general sense of foreboding among them. None of us had any idea of what was going on in East Asia. Any thought of an imminent war was not something we were thinking about.

When we got settled into our little apartment, Jean decided to go the local hospital in Columbus GA to see if she could get part-time employment as a Registered Nurse. The hospital personnel director asked if she could start immediately as a full-time employee. She was shocked.

When the 1st Cavalry Division left Fort Benning to go to Vietnam, their families also left which meant a huge number of nurses, who were wives of soldiers, also left. It literally caused chaos in the hospital.

Jean was offered a job in a med-surgical unit and started working that same day. The pay was very low compared with what she had received working in Massachusetts but she decided to take the job anyway knowing they really needed her help. At that time, 1965, the southern states were in turmoil as the Federal mandates of integrating blacks in the workforce caused huge cultural strains on employers and employees. The hospital was in the middle of the transition and it was causing many problems for them.

At that time, the hospitals were all segregated with white and black wards. The forced integration caused huge cultural stress in the hospital. Because Jean was from the North, the staff assigned her to a mostly black ward thinking that she would be ok working with black patients, and she was.

Jean had many stories of some employees being very open about their prejudice against not only blacks but also anyone from the North. They acted like they were still fighting the Civil War or, as they called it, the War Between the States.

As an Infantry Officer in the Infantry Basic Course, my days and often nights were filled with intense training requirements. There was no social life for any of us and all the wives had to deal with basically being alone. Jean's pregnancy was causing her days of sickness and I would come home some days and find her sitting on the little front porch crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she would just say that she did not know.

After the eight-week Infantry Basic Course was completed and I graduated in September of 1965, we stayed at Fort Benning for me to attend a three-week paratrooper school.

Compared to the Infantry Officer Basic Course, paratrooper training was much easier for me and for Jean. I had a more regular schedule and I was home most nights. I was in excellent physical condition and I found the training to be challenging but also exciting. There was what seemed like endless running and countless pushups and sit-ups. The jump school cadre loved to harass the young officers and would call us out for any minor infraction of "the rules" which resulted in more pushups.

The first week was learning how to handle the parachute and make a parachute landing fall. We had to master jumping out of a 34-foot tower on a cable. The second week we moved to the 250-foot tower and floated down in a parachute. The third week we loaded on aircraft and made five "static line" jumps.

During the first week some of the wives, to include Jean, brought a picnic lunch for us which we all ate sitting under the towers. This did not go well with the cadre who broke up our little picnic and we got extra pushups for our breaking a "rule". . . . a rule that did not exist until we showed up with picnic baskets.

After completing jump training and receiving my paratrooper wings, Jean and I headed back to Rhode Island where Jean would move back in with her parents in Pawtucket while I would go back to Fort Bragg and then deploy to the Dominican Republic (DR) . I knew that now that I had met all the requirements to be deployed, I would be sent to the Dominican Republic to join my unit. The 82nd Airborne Division had deployed to the Dominican Republic in April of 1965. Initially there had been intense fighting but most of the heavy fighting was over by mid-summer.

When I arrived in the DR I was made an Infantry Platoon Leader and later became the Battalion Signal Officer. Our unit was housed in the military academy during the time I was there.

While I was in the DR, I had an incident where a group of rebels had gathered on an overpass that I had to go under in my jeep. I had a driver and my platoon sergeant was sitting in the back seat. The top was down and as we approached the bridge, we could see barbed wire blocking the road under the bridge. The rebels began throwing bricks and large cement blocks down on us. One of the blocks landed just behind me and at the foot of my platoon sergeant. I had a loaded M-16 rifle as did my platoon sergeant and we aimed them at the rebels. I knew if we fired at them and killed any of them, I would probably be court-martialed. That is what happened to the previous platoon sergeant who ended up being court-martialed after shooting a rebel with a shotgun loaded with bird shot.

Under the bridge on the right side there was a small hill but there was no barbed wire there. I told the driver to go through the gap up on the hill. Fortunately, we made it through without injury, but it was a wake up call for me that people wanted to kill me.

In November, I was informed that Captain Langston, the battalion rear detachment commander, was leaving the Army, and the Battalion Commander, LTC William "Bill" Bradley and his Executive Officer Major Wesley "Wes" Herrlein, had decided to send me back to Fort Bragg to become the battalion rear detachment commander. As a second lieutenant I was surprised to be selected but delighted to be able to go back to Bragg and to be with Jean. At that time, Jean was pregnant and expecting our first child in February of 1966.

When I got the news, I was able to call Jean from the DR and tell her I would be coming home to get her and that we would be going back to Ft. Bragg. When I called that night, Jean almost fell down the stairs trying to get to the phone and sprained her ankle. Thankfully it was not worse. While home on leave to pickup Jean, we were able to spend Thanksgiving with my sister Fran and her family.

After getting Jean we returned to Ft. Bragg and went back into our previous apartment at 288 Spear Drive.

Life at Ft. Bragg was very hectic for both of us. As the rear detachment commander, I had many tasks and duties every day involving dealing with soldiers with discipline problems, meeting aircraft at 4:00 am to secure equipment, providing support to soldiers' families living at Ft. Bragg and the surrounding area and dealing with the day-to-day responsibilities of the rear detachment.

Jean was in the last few months of her pregnancy and she was keeping our household running smoothly making sure all the shopping was done, preparing meals and paying our bills. We were both thankful to be together.

As the day for the baby's birth approached, Jean had her bag packed so we would be ready to take her to the hospital. Finally, I got the call that she was ready to go to the hospital and I rushed home to get her. I was very excited. Like a well-done plan, I grabbed the suitcase and loaded it in the car. I jumped in and started down the street when I realized Jean was not in the car. I turned around and she was still standing on the curb waiting for me.

John was born on February 25th at Womack Hospital and we were delighted parents. After a relatively short stay in the hospital, we brought John home.

Our lives were filled with the joy of having our new son and all the things that had to be done for his care. It all seems like a blur as we look back on those days.

Some dear friends of ours at Ft. Bragg, Mariann and Bill Kramer were proxy godparents for John and he was Christened in the Ft. Bragg church in March of 1966.

Because I was in a paratrooper unit, I had to maintain my proficiency jumping. That required me to regularly schedule myself to go to the airfield and load up on a C-130 Airforce aircraft to make jumps in one of the many drop zones (DZ) at Ft. Bragg. With all the other things I was doing, it was an additional stressor for me. I enjoyed jumping, but it took a lot of time out of my day. Sometimes the wives would drive out to the DZ to watch the soldiers jumping and sometimes it was their husband. One time Jean decided to join the wives and she took little Johnny all bundled up, with her. Some of the older wives enjoyed teasing the younger wives with stories of jumpers coming in with collapsed parachutes landing hard and being injured. This was not what Jean wanted to hear. Fortunately, on the two occasions Jean went out to the DZ, she did not witness tragedy and I always returned uninjured from jumping.

While we were at Ft. Bragg, Jean's parents Roland and Claire came to visit. It was a pleasant visit and Jean's mother was helpful to her with our new baby. One day Roland decided to go to the post exchange to purchase some items for our apartment. He filled a basket and went to the register to pay. He was surprised when the cashier asked to see his military ID. He did not have one so they would not let him make the purchases. He was very embarrassed as he told the story to us later.

In June of 1966 we were able to take leave for a week and went back to RI to visit family. Everyone was delighted to see us and our new baby John. While there, we visited the Poor Clare Monastery and showed Jean's sister Joan the new baby. Jean's Mom and Dad enjoyed time with their new grandson.

One of my duties was to assist new officers coming into the battalion to move their families into quarters on base before they would join the unit in the DR. One of those officers was LTC Day who was the replacement for LTC Bradley, our battalion commander. LTC Day was coming into the unit from a tour in the Pentagon. I remember LTC Day was very appreciative of the help I was able to give him. At some point, he asked me what my plans were in the military. I said I thought I would probably remain an Infantry Officer. He said that the future of the Army was Army aviation, and I should consider applying for flight school. I thanked him for his advice but I would have to think about that. Not much later, after talking it over with Jean, I decided to apply for flight school. It was a multiple step process that I had to weave into my schedule; and, at one point, after having my application returned to me because I made some minor error, I decided to throw the entire application in the trash and forget about going to flight school.

A couple of weeks later, my first sergeant, Sgt Alley, came into my office and said that I had a call from the Pentagon. I took the call and LTC Folda said he had my flight school application on his desk and wondered if I wanted to go to fixed wing flight training or to helicopter training. I was shocked. I looked over at Sgt Alley who had a big grin on his face. I said I did not have any preference and asked him what the Army needed. He said the Army needed helicopter pilots. I said OK and he said that orders would be coming to me within a week assigning me to flight school. When I got off the phone, Sgt Alley told me he pulled the application out of the trash, made the corrections, and resubmitted it. He said he thought it would be the best thing for me.

The orders did come within a week assigning me to Fort Wolters Texas to attend helicopter flight school in September. The 1st Brigade redeployed to Ft. Bragg in August. As my battalion rear detachment commander, I had to do all that was necessary to get the unit back into the unit buildings and insure all the equipment was accounted for. It was a challenging effort for me, but we were successful and I was cleared to depart Ft. Bragg for my next duty assignment in Texas.

When the Division returned to Ft. Bragg, they held a large parade.

Jean and I were able take a couple of weeks leave enroute, and we went back to visit family in New England. We were delighted to show off our new son John.

The next big adventure was about to start as we arrived in Mineral Wells Texas to attend basic helicopter training.