My Summer of ’63
Do you remember how, when we were in elementary school, every September the teacher would have all of the students tell the class what they did last summer? I want to do something like that now, 43 years later.
It was the summer of 1963. I was really looking forward to summer camp. No, it was not that kind of camp! I was going to Army ROTC summer camp for six weeks between my junior and senior years of college. The powers that be had designated me a “Distinguished Military Student,” tops in my class, a candidate for a Regular Army commission. It would be a piece of cake for me, a walkover. After all, had I not completed 3 years of Junior ROTC in high school, and another three years of Senior ROTC at the University of Georgia? Had I not been on the rifle team and the drill team? Had I not read five different biographies of General George S. “Blood and Guts” Patton”? It would be a piece of cake!
Then I arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the US Army Infantry School, the Ranger School, and the Parachute Training Center. Our barracks were located in an area known as “Harmony Church.” What a misnomer that was. There was absolutely no harmony, and the experience was unlike any church I had ever attended. It was absolutely the most miserable experience of my life up to that point.
Across the way were the barracks of the Army’s newly organized 11th Air Assault Division. Eventually the Army would re-designate them as the 1st Air Cavalry Division and would sent them to Vietnam. They would become the heroes of the Ia Drang Valley, the first major American combat action there. Eventually they would be immortalized in the book, We Were Soldiers Once, And Young, and in the movie of the same name, starring Mel Gibson. And many of those soldiers would not make it back.
By contrast, nothing I did that summer should ever be immortalized. The only way I finally came to terms with the bad memories has been to recognize the humor in it all. Our barracks was home to a platoon of 50 ROTC Cadets from various colleges. My bunkmate was a really nice guy from Auburn University, named Bill Sexauer (whom we promptly nicknamed “Sexy”). His dad was a Colonel in the Dental Corps. I still remember with pride the day the Company First Sergeant came to our barracks and shouted, “Do you guys have a Sexauer in here?” And Bill shouted back, “No way, Sarge, they don’t even give us a coffee break!” I guess Bill’s dad taught him that one.
Each platoon had a Regular Army Captain assigned as “Tactical Officer.” His job was to evaluate our performance and our potential as military leaders. He also set an example for how we were supposed to conduct ourselves as future officers and gentlemen. No matter how rough the going—walking through mud, and sweating profusely in the process—he was always there with us. But he never let us see him sweat, even when he did the same things we did in the very same near-100-degree temperatures. His shoes were always spit-shined to perfection, even after he had just walked with us three miles through a muddy swamp. I was never able to figure out how he did it. I never saw him with a shoe brush in hand. And he expected us to look just as sharp as he looked—a physical impossibility for me.
One of our first training exercises was the map-reading and navigation course. After several hours of instruction our platoon was loaded up into huge tractor trailer trucks—we called them “cattle trucks”—and we were driven out into the middle of nowhere on the military reservation. Each cadet was dropped off at a different location, with only a map and a compass, and was given instructions to navigate to a specific location on the map. However, they did not tell us where on the map we were! We had two hours to move to our designated destination. If we failed, we were to go to the nearest road we could find, and wait for the “cattle truck” to find us and take us back to the barracks. I, of course, was one of those who got himself lost.
Then there was “physical training,” or “PT.” Every day, rain or shine, we would “fall in” into company formation at 6:00 AM, with boots all polished and uniforms crisply pressed, and run at “double-time” two miles to the PT practice field, where we would promptly muddy those uniforms and boots by crawling under barbed wire and doing all sorts of calisthenics. I think I recall something about trying to reach down and touch my toes with both feet off of the ground—but my memory is not as good as it used to be. My wife tells me it never was.
My time to shine was supposed to be on the rifle range. I had been a member of the rifle team in both high school and college ROTC, so it did not seem all that important for me to listen carefully to some boring instructor telling us over the PA system just how to squeeze the trigger on an M-1 rifle, while we lay in the prone firing position. We were using the “coach and pupil” method, in which one cadet cocks the rifle and pretends to load it while the other cadet practices aiming and squeezing the trigger ever so slowly. But I wasn’t listening to the PA. I just kept practicing my aiming and my trigger-squeezing. And somehow I failed to hear the guy on the PA announce, “Your coach will now load one round of live ammunition into your rifle. Do not squeeze the trigger until you receive the proper command.”
I just kept on aiming and squeezing, when I suddenly felt a kick like a mule hitting my right shoulder, and I heard the very loud crack of my M-1, and then I heard the PA for the first time as the instructor shouted to us: “Cease firing! Who fired that rifle?” Then I looked around to see my Tactical Officer standing behind me. He asked me, “Mister Watts,” (they always addressed us cadets politely as “Mister”) “did you fire that rifle?” And I sheepishly mumbled back to him something like, “Sir, I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little M-1!” There went my next three-day pass. And I was assigned to report bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 4 AM the next morning to the mess hall for Kitchen Police (KP) duties, which lasted until about 8 PM that evening.
Each day a different cadet would be assigned as Platoon Leader for the day. This would be our special day to exhibit for the Tactical Officer all of our leadership skills. The day finally came for me. I shined my boots and my brass belt buckle to perfection the night before, and laid out my best looking fatigue uniform. The next morning I was up promptly at 5:30 AM to inspect my troops. I lined them up in platoon formation for PT, and we double-timed to the training area. But they all seemed to pick up the pace, and soon they were going so fast that, before I knew it, they were far ahead of me, and I was the last one to arrive. My Tac Officer was not amused.
After breakfast we fell out again, and this time we were taking our rifles with us. I unlocked our rifle racks, distributed, and inspected every man’s rifle. Then we began boarding our “cattle trucks.” I counted as each man boarded to make sure no one was left behind. About that time, as the trucks were starting their engines, I happened to notice something very important—my own rifle was missing! I had left it locked in the barracks! So I had to run fifty yards to the orderly room, where I had left the barracks key, then back again to unlock the barracks, then unlock the rifle rack, get my own rifle, lock the rifle rack and the barracks again, and then run back to the orderly room with the keys, and then run back again to our “cattle truck.”
Of course the truck was in the process of pulling away by this time. So I threw my rifle into the back of the truck. I have no idea who caught it. And the guys pulled me into the back of the moving truck. All this time my Tactical Officer observed my every action, and just said, “Mister Watts, somebody ought to make a movie of you!” That M-1 rifle had now became my nemesis.
When we got to our training area the platoon was broken up into five-man patrols to engage in small unit leadership training. The stated scenario was that our patrol would travel along a path through a thick patch of woods trying to find and “capture” an escaped “enemy” prisoner. Some young Regular Army Private was given the job of playing the “prisoner.” To make the exercise realistic, the instructor gave us each a clip of blank ammunition for our M-1’s. He warned us not to aim and fire our rifles at any person within ten yards of us, as even blank rounds can cause serious injuries, or even death, within that range, if they hit a vital organ.
As Platoon Leader, I took charge of the first patrol. We traveled into the woods about three hundred yards, when one of my men spotted the “prisoner” about fifty yards off to the right. We chased him, rifles at the ready, and fired at him, shouting for him to halt and surrender. Surprisingly, the “prisoner,” did not run far, but soon turned to face us with his hands in the air to signal that he was surrendering. My leadership skills had prevailed.
So we had met our goal. We had only to return to our “headquarters” with our “prisoner.” Unfortunately there was a catch in all of this. It seems that the point of the exercise, as yet undisclosed to us, was not to see how well I led my men in capturing the prisoner. The point was to see how well we would react when our prisoner tried to escape! And after about five minutes of walking back to headquarters the prisoner did make an escape attempt.
As he bolted away my reaction was automatic. I simply picked up my trusty M-1 rifle, aimed it, and fired it at the young Private. The contents of my blank cartridge hit him in the left hip while he was only about five yards from me. He fell flat on his face, screaming in pain. Now it was just about this particular moment that I began to remember our instructor’s warning about firing blanks at close range! Fortunately, the young Private soon received first aid, and no permanent damage had been inflicted, although he was no doubt sore for several days. As for me, when I saw the young man lying on the ground I was sure I had killed him. The sight nearly gave me a heart attack on the spot.
Soon after that incident my Tactical Officer called me in for my personal evaluation. I will never forget his words to me. He said, “Mr. Watts, when you arrived here you were designated a Distinguished Military Student. Tell me, just how do they select people for that honor at the University of Georgia? Do they just put your names on a dartboard and then the one that gets hit is chosen?”
The long and the short of it is that less than a year later, on June 6, 1964, I received my commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Adjutant General’s Corps of the United States Army. I served two years active duty and then four and a half more years in the North Carolina Army National Guard as a military personnel officer. At the end of 1970 I was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain. But nothing in my later military experiences was ever as bad as ROTC Summer Camp at Harmony Church. When I compare it with my later experiences as a military officer, I can only echo the man who once said, “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. And believe me, rich is better!”
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