Category Archives: Infantry OCS

Or, the dramatic solution

“All we need to do is develop a booth that you can step into that will
not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have
hidden on or in your body.  The explosion will be contained within the
sealed booth.

“This would be a win-win for everyone.  There would be none of this
crap about racial profiling and the device would eliminate long and
expensive trials.

“This is so simple that it’s brilliant. I can see it now:  you’re in
the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion.  Shortly
thereafter an announcement comes over the PA system, ‘Attention,
standby passengers! We now have a seat available on flight number…'”

Via OCS classmate Marshall Sapperstein.

Yay Us Day

My four years of Army service in the late 60s, including a year in Vietnam. My late father’s flying in World War II and his Air Force career thereafter, and Mr. Boy’s late maternal grandfather who flew in Vietnam in a Navy career.

My nephew’s current service as a pilot-rated Navy officer. A Mississippi cousin-by-marriage who recently left the Army. My late great uncle from Dallas whose Navy unit landed on Omaha Beach on the first day, and his nephew who was there on the second day with the Army.

Another late great uncle from Mississippi who drove Army ammunition trucks in World War I, and a cousin who served in the Spanish-American war, though his unit never left its training camp in Houston.

Before that there was family who fought for the Confederacy, in the Mexican War, the Texas Revolution, the War of 1812, and in the American Revolution: Thomas Farrar, a lieutenant colonel in the South Carolina “line” of the Continental Army, and Claudius Pegues, Jr., a captain in the South Carolina militia, who died young from a combat wound.

Veterans all.

UPDATE:  Mr. B.’s 5th grade teacher had a nice idea today for homework: let the kids practice their writing skills by writing thank-you letters to veterans. He’s not sure where they will be sent. He’ll find that out tomorrow.

The Benning School for Boys

Seems like only yesterday…

Actually it was at noon on June 3, 1968, which is roughly 15,147 yesterdays. The magic day and time I graduated from the Benning School for Boys.

Sounds like a reform school for “troubled” youth. In a way, it was. Considering that it was a one-way track that led straight to the infantry in Viet Nam.

UPDATE:  Whoa. The school is on Facebook. Who knew? Even the 101st ABD claims it. Apparently the name was first given in World War II and applied to all combat training at Benning, not just OCS. News to me.

Our war dead

These are the men of 60th Company, OC 504-68, who were killed in Vietnam. We graduates of that 1968 class of Infantry Officers Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, commemorate them each Memorial Day weekend.

One graduate:  1LT Jacob Lee Kinser.

Two Tactical Officers:  CPT Reese Michael Patrick and 1LT Daniel Lynn Neiswender.

Four drop-outs:  CPL Sherry Joe Hadley, SP4 Reese Currenti Elia Jr., CPL Robert Chase, and SP4 Jeffrey Sanders Tigner.

Arizona law matches federal one

Bob Phillips, an OC-504 comrade who served as a San Diego assistant district attorney for many years says the allegedly-racist Arizona anti-illegal immigration law isn’t new:

“…at least as I understand it, doesn’t change the existing law at all, except maybe to encourage Arizona cops to be more proactive in doing what the Border Patrol is too understaffed to do effectively by themselves.

“When I was a cop way back in the 70’s, we used to stop and arrest illegal aliens all the time. A state cop (under the case law) is empowered to enforce federal statutes so long as it was Congress’s intent that they do so when the statute was enacted. There is case law that says that Congress intended local cops to enforce the federal illegal entry and illegal presence statutes. So we did so until it became politically incorrect to do so.

“So San Diego PD, and many other agencies, by policy, quit enforcing the federal statutes. Arizona did no more than eliminate the issue (if there ever was one) by making it a violation of state law as well to be in the country illegally. Being a victim of the illegal alien invasion myself at times, I’m all for it.”

Me, too, tired as I am of seeing my taxes rise to pay for the consequences of the invasion that our feckless politicians and president wish to ignore.

Black Hills house almost ready

HouseFebII

OCS classmate Bob Phillips is finally almost ready to move into his own private retirement home in South Dakota after years of prosecuting in San Diego. “After we’re in,” he says, “it can blizzard all it wants.” Funny, but it doesn’t look as snowy there as in Dallas or, for that matter, in Georgia.

When veterans turn petty

Well, I’m now being censored at my OCS alumni group email list by the Brooklyn member who took over management of the Yahoo site after the original, Illinois, organizer had a stroke and heart attack.

Whenever I try to reply to a certain California party with whom I have “had words” in the past, my reply is flagged, held and deleted. It will not see the light of day, the Brooklyn member informs me, and adds that he really does not care what I think. Confine it to the blog, our president-for-life  grandly informs me with a wave of his imperial paw. So, here it is.