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.
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Posted in Infantry OCS, Troops, Viet Nam
Tagged 1LT Daniel Lynn Neiswender, 1LT Jacob Lee Kinser, CPL Rovert Chase, CPL Sherry Joe Hadley, CPT Reese Michael Patrick, Infantry Officer's Candidate School, Jr., Memorial Day 2010, OC 504-68, SP4 Jeffrey Sanders Tigner, SP4 Reese Currenti Elia
Fellow OC-504-68 candidate and graduate Russell Wheat of Canyon Lake was, and is, our resident funnyman. His last market report:
"…helium was up, feathers were down, paper was stationary, elevators rose, escalators continued their slow decline, Coca Cola fizzled, toilet paper reached a new bottom, diapers remained unchanged."
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Posted in Infantry OCS
Tagged Canyon Lake, Infantry OCS, OC 504-68, Russell Wheat
Not that we don’t remember and appreciate the dead of both older and more recent American wars and campaigns. We just tend to think of our own first.
Soldier, rest, thy warfare o’er,
Dream of fighting fields no more.
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.
–Sir Walter Scott
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Posted in Viet Nam
Tagged 1LT Daniel Lynn Neiswender, 1LT Jacob Lee Kinser, CPL Robert Chase, CPL Sherry Joe Hadley, CPT Reese Michael Patrick, Infantry Officer's Candidate School, Jr., Memorial Day 2009, OC 504-68, SP4 Jeffrey Sanders Tigner, SP4 Reese Currenti Elia, Viet Nam, Vietnam war
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
Tagged Chuck Buchana, Fort Benning, heart attack/stroke, OC 504-68, OCS
Getting a little worried here about an OC-504 buddy who lives in Poway, in north San Diego county, which started evacuating residents this morning as the wildfires worsened, whipped by 100 mph winds. Put out a message for him on the group email list, but haven’t heard back yet. He recently retired and has been fixing up his house for sale before moving to South Dakota.
UPDATE: Classmates say our buddy, retired San Diego assistant district attorney Bob Phillips, and his wife are out of town this week. Hope they don’t have to come home to destruction and loss.
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Posted in Infantry OCS
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
Tagged Fort Benning, OC 504-68, Rick Rescorla
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Commenter missed
As inconvenient as it apparently has been for some of my rare but appreciated readers who have not noticeably returned, the TypeKey comment security system has done wonders for my productivity. I no longer have to waste time deleting scores of comment spam which were steadily rising into the hundreds every day. I gave up on trackbacks last year for the same reason, though I wasn’t getting any trackbacks, anyhow. But Tom is one rare reader whose vanished comments I especially miss. A fellow OC-504er, who spent his time in Vietnam with the 1st Cav and now commands his local VFW, he was clever enough to track down my sister-in-law’s funeral Aug. 6 in Indiana and surprise us by showing up, an hour or so away from his own Ohio River town. Hope you can eventually figure out how to make the registery work, Tom. I’d like to have you back.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Infantry OCS, Obituaries, Viet Nam
Tagged comment spam, OC 504-68, TypeKey. 1st Cavalry Division