For several years of the '60's and the '70's, I wore blue, Converse low-top tennis shoes, as you can see. White socks and white jeans then, too. In this and the earlier picture, you can also see that I grew a cheesy moustache. I never could grow a decent one, and I later realized that a moustache made me look older. And who wants that when you are older?
We hiked out into the field to spend the night one time in tents. I believe that was when we marched over 11 miles with full pack. But when I later became interested in the U.S. Civil War and read that Stonewall Jackson's Confederate unit sometimes marched over 25 miles a day, I guess what we did wasn't nearly that interesting--but the full backpack, shelter half, two full canteens, and the M-14 rifle did made for a heavy load. The Conferate units tended to travel light. And many of them were often in want to decent uniforms and shoes, let alone new boots.
Another time when we spent a couple of nights living in tents in the field, we were flown out there by helicopter, which was a rush. We were in CH-46's one time, and a CH-54 another time. I would have flown in CH-46's another time; but when we got to the airfield, they pulled out those of us who were intending to leave OCS and made us march back to the barracks and spend our day there while the others flew down to Camp Lajeune in North Carolina. We were not allowed to sleep until they returned, which was very late that night.
We learned combat tactics and maneuvers in the field during one extended stay. The night movement course required us to walk and clamber through a course filled with booby traps and trip wires. If you accidentally tripped a wire, a flare would go off and everyone had to stand perfectly still until it went out. One of the nights that we were out there, I finished my course and went to sleep in my tent, which I shared with Candidate Wright. Wright was from North Carolina and talked like Gomer Pyle. Gunny Williams used to yell, when we were marching in formation, "Wright, you march like you got a corn cob up your ass." Even though Wright was a college grad, he often seemed no smarter than Gomer Pyle, or perhaps just as smart but without Gomer's common sense. That night when I was fast asleep, he crawled into our tent, shinned his flashlight directly in my face and naively asked, "Are you asleep?"
"I was until you did that," I groaned.
We also learned how to maneuver a unit of men in combat situations. An enlisted man with a rifle and blanks would be hiding somewhere in one of the several individual courses in the wilderness, waiting for us. We would all be lined up, rifles ready to fire as we moved abreast through the course, with one of us in charge of the three squads. As soon as we came under fire, we had to fall to the ground and return fire, try to figure out where the sniper fire was coming from, and neutralize our adversary.
My turn came after we'd done this three or four times. We were moving down a slope when we came under fire from directly behind. We dropped to the ground and turned around, easily seeing the guy with the rifle behind a tree. I used Dennis Zito as the leader of one of my squads and sent him on a single envelopment, using the terrain to cover his squad's counterattack. The rest of us laid down a base of fire until they outflanked our attacker. Unfortunately, Dennis and his team went silent after they disappeared from view. I called out, "Dennis, why have you stopped firing?" "We ran out of ammo," he yelled back. Gunny Williams, who was the evaluator on my problem, said, "That happens."
I then had the guys around me slowly advance up the hill when we again heard fire from Dennis Zito's position. "I thought you said you ran out of ammo?" I yelled back up the hill. Dennis called back, "We found some more." "Then continue your attack," I responded while the squads around me continued to fire.
Dennis later apologized for the screw up, but I didn't have any problem with that. I had done well enough. The following day, we did this again for a guy whose foot was in a cast and who had to lead us from a road as he limped along. We actually knew what to do but he was befuddled, not having participated the day before. He was soundly criticized for the fact that we knew what we were supposed to do and made him look better even though he really didn't know what he was doing.
The afternoon before, one incident made me appalled at the waste of resources. At the end of the day, we had a few brand new, but now empty, ammo boxes. The sergeant in charge of that last problem of the day told us that rather than carry those new ammo boxes back to camp, we were to just bury them in the ground. I wondered then how many perfectly good ammo boxes were buried over the years in the Northern Virginia countryside.
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