Tag Archives: Fort Benning

The Benning School for Boys

Posted on June 3, 2010 | Comments Off on 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.

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Posted in Infantry OCS, Viet Nam

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The Pinky Dinky man

Posted on April 30, 2009 | Comments Off on The Pinky Dinky man

This snap of an ice-cream-and-soda-pop merchant selling to Israeli troops-in-training reminded me of the Pinky Dinky trucks at Fort Benning in 1968. The sergeants would tell us if we finished the next whatever-it-was in fine form, we’d have a Pinky Dinky break. Otherwise…

We usually got one, as they wanted a break, too. I tried Googling the P-D phenom for more, but no luck. OCS classmate Tom Ringwald recalls the Pinky Dinky man as being one of several such available then. "I know that they still operate down there," he said. I figured they did. Why stop a good thing?

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Posted in Infantry OCS

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Best wishes, Chuck

Posted on November 16, 2008 | Comments Off on Best wishes, Chuck

The Veterans Day pix below caught my eye last night, reminding me that I’d fallen down on the job, so to speak, and failed to post anything about it back on the date of the event. The pix did that to me because of an email I’d gotten a few hours earlier from the wife of an old Army friend, Chuck Buchana, saying he is recovering from a serious heart attack and a stroke that has left him struggling to fully regain his sight. Chuck was the Signal Corps Vietnam veteran behind our OCS class’s reorganization in 2001 and subsequent first reunion at Fort Benning in 2003. There’ve been two more reunions since then and another is scheduled next summer. So we need you well, Chuck, to make it to the gathering. What would we do without the guy who started it all?

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Posted in Infantry OCS, Viet Nam

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Stand and never yield

Posted on September 11, 2007 | Comments Off on Stand and never yield

When about thirty members of my OCS class returned to Fort Benning in 2003, for the first time since our graduation in 1968, there was an OCS Association ceremony in the new OCS complex dedicating a newly-planted tree to former Army colonel and Vietnam veteran Rick Rescorla. He had died saving 2,700 people at the World Trade Center on 9/11. The speaker, a friend of his, broke down in the middle of his talk. Then he wiped away his tears and continued. Today there’s a statue of Rescorla at Fort Benning, and a campaign to get him a posthumous Medal of Freedom. Story and petition here. Profile of Rescorla (and picture of the statue at the bottom) here.

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Posted in The War

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Reunion “chairs”

Posted on June 18, 2007 | Comments Off on Reunion “chairs”

I’m not going to make my OCS class reunion this year. It’s in Washington, D.C., which will benefit all the guys who live in the vicinity, but is just too far for me to go for a weekend. I made the first one, in ’03 at Fort Benning, and the ’05 one in San Antonio, and with luck I’ll still be around for the ’09 one, hopefully somewhere closer. D.C. has turned out to be so expensive the class has had to ask for contributions above the fees paid by attendees, to help pay for everything. So they came up with a creative idea: offered to name chairs in the hospitality suite for a price. Started off with $100 each for Infantry and Special Forces, then offered the others at $50. I sent a check for an Armor chair, my combat arms branch, although I was infantry in Vietnam. Others have since come in for the wives, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Signal Corps, Military Intelligence, and the 25th Infantry Division. It’s working.

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Posted in Infantry OCS

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Our war dead

Posted on May 28, 2007 | Comments Off on Our war dead
These are the men of 60th Company, Infantry Officer’s Candidate School, at Fort Benning, Georgia, a class dubbed 504-68, who were killed in Vietnam, and whom we 110 graduates (all but one of whom also served in Vietnam) remember on Memorial Day: 
 
One graduate:   1LT Jacob Lee Kinser
 
Two tactical officers: CPT Reese Michael Patrick
                              1LT Daniel Lynn Neiswender
 
Two drop-outs: CPL Sherry Joe Hadley    
                      SP4 Reese Currenti Elia, Jr.
 
UPDATE:  Two more drop-outs, inadvertently left out, but since confirmed:
 
                       CPL Robert Chase
                       SP4 Jeffrey Sanders Tigner

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Posted in Infantry OCS, Troops, Viet Nam

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Those Walter Reed roaches

Posted on March 3, 2007 | Comments Off on Those Walter Reed roaches

Milblogger Jack Army notes that the dirty, rundown Walter Reed facilities of current scandal fame are not unusual, but replicated pretty widely across the whole Army, stateside and overseas.

"Hey, I’m all for our injured and recovering troops getting topnotch quarters and state-of-the-art care, but to relieve anybody over the conditions is just ridiculous. It’s unfair. Those leaders deserve better."

Even Fort Benning could use some fixup and fresh paint. When my OCS class reunioned there in 2003, we were delighted to find that our old barracks was home to the Rangers, but saddened that the building was such a wreck. Putting money into salaries and gear makes sense, but the physical plant is suffering. As Jack says, if anybody should be relieved, it should be Congress.  

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Posted in Troops

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