It was a slow process but it’s finally done. The entire typewritten notebook is now available in an eBook format here.
‘The art of influencing and directing men in such a way as to obtain their willing obedience, confidence, and cooperation to accomplish the mission.‘
With seven months in country, I got an unexpected Huey ride!
I was sitting on the ground, leaning back on my rucksack, resting on a break from humping in the jungles of the Central Highlands when the platoon sergeant sent word back the line to send me up to the point. OH shit! The last thing I wanted to do was walk point. But I soon found out that is not what he called me for. He told me that I was going back to the Tuy Hoa airbase on the resupply chopper to go to school. For some unknown reason, the company C.O. picked me to attend a small unit leadership course.
My understanding was the Battalion was having trouble replacing NCO’s who were rotating out of the country. So, the Battalion C.O. decided to train his own NCO’s from within the ranks. How or why they picked me, I have no idea. But it beat humping up and down the mountains!
My faded memory tells me that the course lasted one or maybe two weeks. Eight hours a day, everyday. It turns out I did pretty good. My test scores placed me 2nd in the class of 10 grunts. I missed first place by just two points.
Don’t ask me why I saved my notebook for more than 50 years. Who knows… But here is a rough scan of the notebook. As you can imagine, after 50 years, it’s kind of faded… like my memory. Keep in mind though, after all, it did go through a war! But I did the best I could with the scans and photo enhancements. If anyone has an interest in any of this, for historical or nostalgic reasons, I’ll try to spend some time and get a better scan of the pages. Just let me know. In the meantime, I’ve undertaken the process of gradually typing each page for clarity.
It was a slow process but it’s finally done. The entire typewritten notebook is now available in the eBook format here.
(Please forgive this 19 year old mere high school graduate’s terrible handwriting, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Ha! It’s not much better now!)
Perhaps it was a mistake on my part, but when the time came, I declined to appear before the promotion board. As I stated in my book Rucksack Grunt: “The Army’s goals were incompatible with the goals that I had in mind for myself. And those goals never changed from day one, for either side. I do have to give them credit for persistence though.” Apparently, their goal was to keep me in and promote me up through the ranks. My goal was to survive the tour of duty and go home!
It was a slow process but it’s finally done. The entire typewritten notebook is now available in an eBook format here.
RUCKSACK GRUNT - A Vietnam Veteran's Memoir 