my own. In high school, a bunch of my friends and I would always go out on Thanksgiving Day, rain or shine, for our annual quail hunt (for safety purposes, there were never more than four in a single hunting party). We'd be out all day, without stopping to cat. And then our mothers would put out the big turkey meal in the evening.
It was a great place to be young. We found adventure in everything we did. If it wasn't there already, we made it that way. We went out and found things to do that gave us enjoyment, and learned to see the good and the purpose in whatever we were doing — even the heavy, manual farm labor. This meant it was pretty hard to be bored and frustrated.
I always enjoyed what I was doing and took a lot of satisfaction from it. And this has stayed with me. I live and farm there still. Something just clicked in me, I guess. I left just after college, and spent most of my life away. But I had to go home and make whatever contribution I could for what my community had given me in my younger days.
Looking back on those days, I feel very fortunate to have been reared in a home where discipline, love, respect, and adherence to principles were the standards by which we were raised.
The most powerful influence on me, without a doubt, was my father. He was tough — hard as the concrete he used to work — but fair, and expected every person to pull his own weight. He was a man of high principles, and required us kids to conform to them. Yet he was not rigid. He cared deeply for everyone in his family, and wanted us all to be (in the words of the old Army ad line) 'all we could be.' He would have made a good first sergeant.
It's worth mentioning some of his principles that have stayed with me and that I have tried to apply in my own life:
• Always respect other people, unless they give you reason not to.
• Don't run with sheep-killing dogs, unless you are willing to suffer the consequences of being caught up with them.
• Anything that is worth doing is worth doing right. Nothing good ever comes without hard work.
• Don't ever accept less of yourself than you are capable of.
• You've got to set the example for anybody who works for you. Don't expect them to do anything you wouldn't do first. (For us kids, he expected us to do more work than any man he could hire.)
• Look beyond the end of your nose, and work toward what you want to become.
My father had few illusions. He never wanted us to follow in his foot-steps and bend our backs to a lifetime of brutally tough construction and endless farm work. He understood what education would give us (though he himself only got through eighth grade). The older we grew, the harder he and my mother pressed us to get the best education we could. 'You don't want to do what I'm doing for the rest of your life,' he kept telling us. 'Your back won't hold out forever, and you will never be able to give your children what they need to prepare them to support their families.' I will never forget his charge when he and my mom dropped me off at college (it was my first time there; I'd never visited the place before I was accepted). He said: 'Boy, get an education, or don't come back.'
His advice bore fruit. All but one of the children ended up with college degrees, and most went on for advanced degrees.[6]
There was another big education motivator in those days. Before the war, college was not in the cards for most young men from Appalachian Tennessee. But the postwar period saw GI Bill — trained doctors, lawyers, and other professionals bringing their expertise back to our Eastern Tennessee communities, and this brought us all long-term benefits. Those who didn't seek college were still able to take advantage of the technical skills and training opportunities they had gained in the army and other armed services to become skilled tradespeople — electricians, mechanics, plumbers, and the like.
It was amazing to see how all this skill and expertise began to grow our community. And it wasn't hard to apply these lessons to ourselves. So my objective was to go directly into college after high school. I applied to two or three, and all of them accepted me.
In those days, we didn't have high school counselors to steer us, and in any case, I didn't know much except agriculture. At the same time I was strongly aware of the obligation to serve my country after college (and felt it would be better to go in as a commissioned officer). For those reasons I elected to go to Tennessee Polytechnic Institute, called Tennessee Tech, which was the only one of the three colleges I applied to that offered both a degree in agriculture and an ROTC program. Tennessee Tech was in Cookeville, Tennessee, cighty-two miles north of Nashville.
Though Tech offered only Army ROTC, that was not a problem for me, since I never considered another service. I guess it was partly because of the influence of the boys I saw going off to the Army and fighting the war, and partly because I grew up outdoors in the country with lots of friends. The Army offered a continuation of that life. And truth was, I didn't know that much about the other services.
On my graduation day, June 30, 1958, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. This was a reserve commission; I was offered a regular army commission two years later. Though my mom and two of my brothers attended the graduation and commissioning ceremonies, there was no time for celebration, because I had to report for active duty the same day. I set out within the hour for Fort Benning (near Columbus, in southwestern Georgia), and drove without stopping, so I could report in beforc midnight without being AWOL.
Fort Benning is a vast military base, primarily infantry — and called 'The Home of the Infantry.' Housed there are the Infantry School, the Airborne School, the Ranger School, the basic and the advanced officer courses, as well as officer candidate school. Many combat brigades were stationed at Benning, as was the 10th Mountain Division, which had just returned from Germany. I was initially assigned there as an assistant platoon leader.
My first duties were as 'pit' officer (running the targets up and down) for a known-distance rifle range, and officer in charge of a 106mm recoilless rifle range. And at least two afternoons a week the officers taught general education subjects to the NCOs to help them get their high school GEDs.
I loved the Army from day one — even though my jobs then weren't especially challenging, and I hardly had much responsibility. I liked everything about it: the people, the structured environment, the training, the responsibility, and the opportunity for growth by using my own talents, capabilities, and initiative.
After approximately six months, I took the Basic Officers Course, followed by Jump School and Ranger School. All were completed within eighteen months.
The Basic Course took up where the ROTC program left off. We mastered more advanced skills and developed technical competence in leadership, weapons, and tactical subjects that qualified us to lead an infantry platoon in combat operations. For example, we studied map reading in much greater detail than we had in ROTC; we learned how to effectively employ every weapon that was organic to a platoon; we learned patrolling and tactics at the platoon level, integration of fires, and how infantry should function with armor.
My other big learning experience in those early days at Fort Benning was meeting Sue, who became my wife.
Understand that just as Fort Benning is called the Home of the Infantry, Columbus is known as the mother- in-law of the infantry, because so many Columbus girls marry the new second lieutenants that come into town. It certainly turned out that way for me.
When I drove into Fort Benning on that Friday night after 1 graduated from college, it was 10:00 P.M. I signed in at Division Headquarters, was assigned a BOQ room, and was instructed to return by 9:00 A.M. Monday.
I had no idea what to do for the rest of the weekend, and I had never been to Fort Benning.
The next morning, as I was looking for a place to eat, I ran into First Lieutenant Jim Smith, who was also living in the BOQ and who knew a good place to go for breakfast — if I had a set of wheels (he had wrecked his car). What we could do, he said, was go eat breakfast, and then in the afternoon drive over to the officers' club, where his girlfriend and one of her friends were waiting for him, and we could all go out together.
That sounded pretty good to me. So we did that. The friend turned out to be Sue.
Jim Smith's girlfriend, Ann Scott, met us at the Officers' Club swimming pool. After I was introduced, Ann pointed to her friend, Sue, who was in the swimming pool, and called out to her to come over. After the introductions, the next order of business was the evening's activities. 'Wouldn't you all like to go to dinner with us tonight?' Jim asked Suc and me.
In view of Sue's good looks and her bright and pleasant personality, I certainly welcomed the opportunity, but I knew that his motivation was my means of transportation. I think Sue might have been a little leery, but we were both caught in a bind with the two of them standing there looking so plaintively at us. Suc and I sort of
