I say "cowboy" because this guy had a ten gallon hat perched atop his big head and he wore a western-style shirt, a belt with a giant buckle, western boots and jeans. The big cowboy said, "Mah name is Colonel Riggs. Ah am tha fohman of this heah ranch. Ah does tha hahrin' and Ah does tha fahrin'. Now tell me boys, just how many of you young bucks want to be heros? Raise your hands!" I literally sat on both of my hands, but a few dummies raised theirs. The cowboy told the sergeant with him, "Sarge, round up tha boys that have their hands up." Then our foreman said, "We don’t need heros in this here ranch. We need soldiers who are willing to do a tough, dirty job and maybe get no thanks for it," and with that he strolled off without another word. We had passed our first "test." I was about to become a cowboy, or maybe special forces. I wasn’t really sure which at that point. I just knew that either one had to beat being in the airborne divisions, especially the 82d Almost Airborne. We were all assigned to a "Provisional" Training Company that was attached to or maybe a part of the 7^th Special Forces Group, I do not know which.  To tell the truth, I couldn't recall us being a part of the 7th until a buddy reminded me of it.  I could only remember being in Training Company.  This training company would later be expanded into the Special Forces Training Group.

I was a single, 23-year-old, "Buck" Sergeant [three stripes] with a little over six years of service. At that time, a Special Forces Operational Detachment A [SFOD A] consisted of ten enlisted men and two officers. At that time, the average enlisted man on an SF A Detachment was a married, 30-year-old, Staff Sergeant, E-6 [three stripes plus one rocker beneath] with ten years of military service. At that time, the typical soldier in the regular army units was a single, 18-year-old, Private First Class [one stripe] with about a year of military service. There’s a big difference between these two descriptions and that difference is what had a lot to do with making SF the outfit that it was. The official term SF field teams was "Special Forces Operational Detachments," but almost everyone referred to the SF detachments as "Teams" with the most famous being, the SFOD A, better known as the "A Team."

Every member of an SF Team was expected to be a soldier, a leader, a technician, and an instructor. You had to be able to teach others what you knew and also show them how to get the job done in the field. I quickly learned, if you can not or will not share your knowledge and experience with someone else, you can not call yourself a leader.

At that time, the only formal SF mission I was aware of was conducting guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines in the event of a declared war, but unbeknownst to me at the time, their mission was about to be greatly expanded. JFK [President John F. Kennedy] had big plans for SF and that was why he wanted SF expanded.

In response to Kennedy's request for volunteers, men were volunteering for SF duty by the tens of thousands. They came from everywhere. We had quite a few who were discharged from the other branches of the American military services as well as foreign military units so they could enlist in the army as an SF volunteer.  The Special Air Service [SAS] for example. One Canadian SF volunteer that I met when I first entered SF had fought the communist for six years with the SAS in Malaysia. Quite a few SF volunteers were ex-marines, but most of the volunteers came from the regular army units and were already airborne qualified. Most of the volunteers were E-4s [corporal] and above, but they also began accepting many privates straight out of jump school and even recruits fresh out of basic training who were on their first three-year hitch in the army and who had not even completed parachute training yet. The Method of Instruction training in the SF Basic Course was the reason most of the first-hitch trainees to flunk than anything else.  At least that was the way it was for the men I knew.  Stage fright and inexperience got the best of them. Quitters of which there were very few, were not harassed or made examples of to the remaining students as quitters were during jump school. They just disappeared.  Men that were dropped because they failed tests in their assigned special forces military occupational skill were transferred, usually back to their former unit, or given another chance in a different MOS depending on the situation.

SF was in total chaos during the summer of 1961. During that time, that tiny outfit received more troops at Fort Bragg to train than they already had in all of SF worldwide. Soldiers who were not involved can only guess at the amount of confusion this caused. It was so bad many men quit in disgust and returned to their former units or even retired. One retiree that was interviewed by a reporter was quoted as saying "Organize guerrillas behind enemy lines? Hell, they can’t even get organized behind their own damn lines." It was bad. The "Ghost" is an example of just how bad it was. Here’s the ghost story as told to me many years later by Robert "Bru" Taylor:

"You never heard about 'the Ghost?' It was great. I only met him once but he was a legend. He got assigned to B company [SF Training Group] sometime in late 67 or early 68 but was never assigned to an MOS training class. So he faithfully hung out waiting. Then after a while he got bored and took a week off and just traveled. Then later he began taking the whole month off and just showed up for paydays - he signed the pay voucher and went home. He did this for over a year. He kept his uniforms in different guys rooms so all of his gear was always in B Co. (necessary to prove that you INTEND to return to your unit so that you are not a deserter). A lot of guys helped him out because it was like payback.

"Well the Dork [nickname for the Company Commander] pulled a really bad one. I can't remember now what the exact deal was, but the Ghost decided that the Captain had to go. So he goes down to HQ and raises hell about being in B Co for over a year and never getting a training slot, he is getting close to ETS now and how the CO of B Co just doesn't care. Well Center calls the Captain and asks him if he has so and so in his company. Captain says no. Center says funny he is here, got orders assigning him to you and pay slips etc. End result, Captain gets sent somewhere else (non SF)....Don't know if the Ghost EVER got through training or not, but he sure had the mental aptitude (guess the tests were right after all)."

I personally knew one SF volunteer who was in Training Company for about two or three months with no pay while we were going through training. There was no record that they had ever received his finance records from his former unit. His former unit swore that they had sent his records. He finally quit and returned to his former unit. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, if his former unit found his finance records pretty quick after he returned. In other words, his old outfit had probably "lost" his finance records on purpose just to encourage him to return to them. That was just one sample of the chaos. There were many more guys in the same situation. Some of them borrowed money from buddies they knew in SF Training and stuck it out.

In 1961, the formal SF training was only conducted at Fort Bragg and it consisted of MOS training, 3-week cross-training courses in another MOS, SF branch training, and, for those who were not already paratroopers, Jump School. There was no set sequence in which you received this training. [This seemed foolish to me. I felt everyone should complete jump school first. After all, why waste time and money training someone that did not pass jump school? It just did not make any sense to do it the other way around.  And everyone had to pass the swimming test so that should have been the very first requirement even before graduating jump school.  The swim test didn't cost the taxpayers a dime.] The job training and cross-training were conducted in Operations & Intelligence, Intermediate Speed Radio Operator, Medical Specialist, Engineering/Demolitions, and Weapons.

During in-processing, we were all interviewed by some guy in personnel who actually studied our aptitude scores on the army entrance examinations and tried to select the best primary job for us based on that. This definitely was not the normal army procedure and nearly sent me into a state of shock. I seriously doubted if anyone had ever even looked at those scores before. Hell, I didn’t even know what those scores meant until then. Anyway, They said that I had a high morse code aptitude score so I was assigned to become a radio operator.

At least that’s the way it worked unless you were adept at social skills. By social skills, I mean you are a bullshit artist, a brown-noser or you were on a friendly basis with one of the cadre from some previous duty assignment or social event. I could name a couple of sergeants who became SF qualified by their "social" skills, but I won’t. Some of the old timers might be surprised if they knew their names.

The medic course was the toughest because it was very demanding and very long. Counting Basic SF Training, becoming an SF medic took a total of twelve months.

The following is input from an SF medic:

"When a medic got back from his internship, (basic course - Ft. Bragg; advanced - Ft. Sam; internship - many places; back to Bragg) he had a few weeks before Dog Lab started. In those weeks we went around to all the dog pounds around Fayetteville collecting up the strays. Only a few guys were assigned to the de-barking detail. I was one of them. Basically, just three or four of us de-barked all the dogs. It only took a few minutes. It was impossible to screw up; stick the probe down their throats, zap it, voila - de-barked.

What Dog Lab was, was a surgery course. The trainees worked in four man teams -
one was the surgeon, one the scrub nurse, one the anesthetist and one the circulator. When your dog was up you were the surgeon and then you rotated. It was good training. After the first surgery - a debridemont of a gunshot wound - you brought your dog out of the anesthesia and controlled any infections. After about two weeks, a second cycle began. Again, the same four man teams performed an amputation of a front leg and the dog was then put down. Nobody's dog survived. There were stories but they were only stories. Nobody's dog survived. (Mine was named November) Anyway, it was good training. One of my classmates got the Legion of Merit for performing a boot-top amputation on a woman when the weather was bad and they were stuck with her for two weeks. That's what was great about SF - good training (as good as you want to make it)."

 The Dog Lab no longer exists.  SF now uses goats and it is known as the "Goat Lab."

This program developed excellent medics who saved a lot of lives while working under very harsh conditions. In a combat situation, I’ll take an SF-Qualified Medic  over the average physician anytime. SF medics are soldiers first. They don’t hit the panic button in combat situations and, if necessary, they will not hesitate to pick up their weapon and defend themselves and their patients. The proficiency of SF medics gave rise to a new MOS - .Physician’s Assistant [PA]— and most of the first PA Warrant Officers in the army were former SF enlisted medics.

Operations & Intelligence Specialist, which only senior-ranking sergeants attended, had a drop out rate of 85%-95% also. That was followed in difficulty by Radio, and then weapons and demolitions. However, some demolitions classes had very high drop out rates for some reason. One instructor said it was the mathematical formulas, some people just can not learn them.

The O&I course was also known as the "Team Sergeant Course." Only Staff Sergeants and above could attend it because the graduates would be either team sergeants or the assistant team sergeant. SF training was 99% academic. [Jump School is not considered SF training, that is airborne training.]

I was assigned to a three-week Weapons Cross-Training Course first. Cross Training Courses familiarized you with another team member’s job so you could assist them if necessary and they lasted three weeks. The Weapons Cross Training Course covered modern and out of date foreign and American weapons. Exactly how many weapons they covered I do not remember, but it was a very large number, especially for such a short time. They really crammed the data into our brains. Each student also was assigned a weapon and required to give his fellow students a class on that weapon.

We also got to test fire many of the small arms. Mostly we fired the ones for which ammunition was readily available. The simplest weapon was the Finnish Sumi sub and the most complicated was the Maxim Machine Gun from World War I. If they had asked me to disassemble that damn Maxim on my own, I would have requested a sack lunch and a canteen of water because I knew that I would be there all damn day. There were a couple of weapons that no one was anxious to fire again— the burp guns and a Chinese anti-tank/sniper rifle. The burp guns, because the ejection port was on top of the receiver and the blast blew right into your face and ears and the rifle because it was a .51 caliber, single-shot, bolt action on bipods that kicked like a damn mule. Before he fired the rifle, one student asked the instructor what the sustained rate of fire was for that "thing" and the instructor replied, "It depends on how fast you can crawl back up to it after you pull the trigger." He wasn’t kidding. I did not see a single student fire that rifle twice—once was a-plenty.

The final exam was a Lulu. It consisted of two parts, outside and inside. The outside part was arranged in a "round-robin" style with about ten stations in a large circle. All but two stations consisted of two weapons on a folding field table and one instructor/grader. The other two stations consisted of one mortar each. One mortar was a 60mm and the other an 81mm. You had two minutes to complete the requirements at each station so thinking back, I strongly suspect that there were 30 stations and the time required for each student to complete all of the outside tests would have been approximately one hour. But that is just a guess.  At the tables you field-stripped each weapon and gave the instructor a detailed description [model number, year made, country, caliber, rate of fire, how it operated, how it was fed, how it was cooled, etc.] of that weapon as you did so. At the mortar stations you had to level the bubbles and aim the mortar using whatever setting you were given. [Of course the grader had really messed the mortar up before each student arrived.]

We were broken down into more than one group and each group started at a different table. They started me on the table that contained the A-6, .30 caliber Light Machine gun, [my "old buddy" from my 11^th Airborne days], and the German MG-42. The A-6 is a toughie, unless you were armed with it for two years as I was, but the MG-42 was a piece of cake even for a novice. It was one of the very best light machine guns in the world from 1940 to 1960 when we developed our M-60 which is almost a duplicate of the MG-42, except most SF weapons men still prefer the MG-42. The German MG-42 the British Johnson Light Machine Gun had set the standard for light machine guns.

The inside part was a two minute "walk-through" and it was a real doozy. It was on the first floor in an empty squad bay of a barracks building. A row of tables were placed  along one wall. A rope was stretched down the center of the barracks between the center posts. On top of the tables lay disassembled weapons whose parts were just randomly "piled" there one atop the other in ten separate piles. You were required to stay on the far side of that rope. You had to walk in one door directly to and out of the opposite door non-stop.  Between entering and exiting while still walking, give the instructor a detailed description of each one of those weapons. The only points that I dropped in the entire test was on a communist copy of our old BAR. I couldn’t tell from the middle of the aisle which commie country had made it.  That was my only demerit for that test and I graduated number one. Staff Sergeant Robert W. Kaszer graduated number two.  That didn't surprise me, Bob is a genius.

We Barracks Rats also played a game that we called "musical barracks." We seemed to be assigned to a different barracks every week or two. Each time we moved to a different barracks, we left our wall lockers and metal bunks in our previous barracks for its new occupants. Meanwhile, we always moved to an empty barracks and had to unpack and assemble new wall lockers, draw and set up new metal folding cots, and also make that barracks ship-shape [clean it top to bottom]. It appeared to me that our class was being used to prepare barracks for the new SF units that were being formed, but I discovered later that our platoon wasn’t the only one being treated like that. SF was still billeted in the old World War II type barracks while the Eighty-second was billeted in modern-style barracks. Even with all of this confusion, SF was heaven to me after more than six years in the damned rifle and weapons platoons in the airborne infantry rifle companies. No damn way was I going to quit. They might kick me out, but I wasn’t about to quit and willingly go back to those damn chicken shit airborne divisions.

Somewhere during our training, we were informed that we were not to allow ourselves to be photographed in uniform while in training or after we completed training. The 10^th SF Group’s old yearbooks have many photographs "blacked out." Those guys were DPs [displaced persons]. They had escaped from a soviet-dominated country and joined our army then volunteered for SF. They hoped that they would be sent back to help free their fellow countrymen who were still behind the Iron Curtain.  They never got their wish.

Physically, SF training wasn’t anything spectacular. It was nothing like Pre-Jump School, Jump School or, from what I had heard, Ranger School. When I started training, I was overweight and I made out okay. In fact when I started the training, I weighed the most that I had ever weighed. I had just returned from Germany and had fully enjoyed the local food and beer while there. I did make an extra effort to whittle my weight down during SF training because I suspected what was coming afterwards. While still in training, I voluntarily worked my way down from about 230 lbs to 205 lbs, which is where I feel best anyway. Mostly I just stopped eating bread, butter, and potatoes and only drank booze on Saturday nights. The army feeds soldiers lots of bread, butter, and potatoes.

There was no chicken shit in SF back then.  Even when we were still in training and not yet SF-qualified, there was no chicken shit. The students could carry on conversations with the instructors. Discussions were welcomed in classes as long as the topic was related to the subject of the class. [This was also a weakness because as I said earlier, a few of the students curried the cadre’s favor.]

The difference between conventional units, especially chicken shit airborne units, and SF was like night and day. SF treated each other as equals and they assumed that each member was a professional. If you wanted to remain in SF, you did your job to the best of your ability. Regardless of what was required to qualify for SF.  I had already decided that I would not fail.

Like all army training, SF training started before daylight. Why all army training starts when it is still so dark the birds are walking around with flashlights looking for worms is still a mystery to me, but it does. Our Training Company’s Field First Sergeant was Sergeant First Class Lionel "Choo-Choo" Pinn. Some of the old-timers had nick-named Pinn, "Choo-Choo" and it stuck because it was a perfect match.

Pinn was one of the "characters" in SF. He was an American Indian, I used to know which tribe but forgot, and he was about 35 years old. He had a beer gut, spindly legs, knobby knees, and a big, stinky cigar that seemed to be permanently attached to his ugly mouth. If you ever saw Pinn, you also saw that stinky cigar. You might see his smoke signals before you saw him. Pinn would take roll call every morning while balancing atop a concrete coal bin. Some mornings it appeared that Pinn wasn’t sober enough to be up on that damn coal bin, but he was up there anyway and at such times his attempts to stay perched up there were very entertaining.

Our first class was always PT, which enlisted personnel referred to as "Physical Torture." During PT, we would go through the normal army "Daily Dozen" exercises and then go on a run. Drunk, hung-over or sober, Pinn would always lead us on the run. He would bunch us up on the Mess Hall Street or Motor Pool Street where the run would begin. The conventional army command for running a troop formation is, "Double Time, March!" and then everyone runs in formation and in step. Pinn’s command was always a very simple, "Follow my ass!" and then he took off at a lope leaving a trail of cigar smoke for us to follow as best we could.

In Army PT, you normally jog. I guess Pinn couldn't spell jog so he ran. Hell, he flat hauled-ass. How his bird legs could haul his gut that fast while he puffed on that stinky cigar, I could not figure out. It was just unbelievable. By the time the guys in front reached a corner Choo-Choo would be turning the next corner or already around it and out of sight. [Later, I learned that Pinn had been a marathon runner when he was younger.  That did not surprise me one bit.]

One morning when Choo-Choo was forming us up to run, George Groom whispered, "Val, let’s keep up with that damn Pinn today. I’m tired of following his ass every morning." Of all mornings to ask me to keep up with Pinn, that was not the best one. I was still half crocked from closing the NCO Club’s Annex One the previous night.

When we both stayed up with Pinn that whole run, I was probably the most surprised person on Fort Bragg. When he took off in a dash, we kept right on his ass. Usually everyone fell behind right at the beginning of the run because Pinn sprinted for about the first quarter of a mile. I suspect Pinn was feeling poorly that morning. Normally, we were doing good to just keep him in sight on the long stretches.

[Later, I heard that an ex-Navy SEAL in a subsequent class caught up with Choo-choo after his initial sprint and stayed right beside him on every run. This upset Pinn so much that one day Pinn kept right on running and ran for the rest of that morning. So did the student. They passed by the Main Post NCO Club at lunch time so Pinn turned in for his daily lunch of beers and burgers with his student still at his side.

Pinn later served in Laos at the same time that I did, but he was on temporary duty from the 7^th Group and he was in southern Laos while I was in northern Laos. As I recall, Pinn loved to play pot-limit poker with the Air America pilots. Pinn lived to retire and lived somewhere in Alabama until he died in the late 1990s.]

After PT, if you were assigned to a class, you went to class, and if you were not yet assigned to a class, you were put on some kind of detail. Very few privileges came with rank in SF because the average rank on an A Team was Staff Sergeant.

For some strange reason, the Post Commander insisted on giving special forces units post details based on the number of personnel SF had assigned to them as if SF consisted of mostly privates instead of mostly sergeants and officers. You don't think the general might have been doing his small part to try to drive sergeants out of SF and back to the divisions do you?  Naaah, never happen GI.  As a result, SF sergeants, staff sergeants, sergeant first classes could be seen hanging off the ass-end of post garbage trucks, trimming lawns with mess kit knives, mowing lawns, unloading shoulders of beef at the commissary, walking private-of-the-guard, chauffeuring low ranking enlisted men from other units all over the place, and pulling all kinds of other shit-details. This alone caused many less-motivated sergeants to transfer back to their former unit.

SF was very high on something they called "team integrity." SF wanted soldiers who were strong individualists, but who also were very team-oriented and who would be loyal to each other and their unit. SF’s "all for one and one for all spirit" saved their butts many, many times.

[The "old timers" told me that SF really pushed team integrity in its early years. They even assigned details by teams. If the commissary asked for an eight man detail from special forces, they would receive a 12-man A Team complete with officers. SF did as many things as possible as a team.]

The SF Group decided which team would go on each mission, but usually the Team Sergeant selected the members of his team. They trained as a team, they deployed as a team, and they returned as a team. That’s another reason SF teams performed so well under adverse conditions.

Next, I was assigned to a three week medical cross training course. After about a week, I was pulled out of that class and twelve of us were sent to Fort Gordon to the Intermediate Speed Radio Operator Course. Conventional army Intermediate Speed Radio Operators operated at a maximum speed of 15 words per minute [WPM] because they copied the message with a pencil and transmitted messages using a manual key. High Speed Radio Operators operated at much higher speeds because they used a typewriter-like machine called a "mill" to copy morse code instead of a pencil and they transmitted with a "bug" [an automatic key] instead of a manual key. It wasn't unusal for a high speed radio operator to work at 45-50 WPM.  The basic course was a 12 week regular army course and you were required to pass a speed of 15 WPM in order to graduate.

Regardless of my allegedly high aptitude score, mastering morse code at that speed was a pain in the ass for me. When we returned to Fort Bragg, we would be required to attend the SF Radio Course and there we would have to pass 18 WPM. Staff Sergeant John Lied was already a High Speed Radio Operator but he was being refreshed on copying the code with a pencil instead of using the mill. He passed 30 WPM using a pencil before we left there. He could copy 25 WPM and circle each character as he wrote it down. There were times when I wanted to pinch his head off. He made it look so damn easy.  [John retired and now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.]

The other SF radio operator students in that class were:

Robert W. Kaszer: Bob went to OCS where he set an academic record and then he later attended the University of South Florida where he also set another academic record. Bob retired and lives in Kansas.

Ronald Chellman: Ron also went to OCS, served mostly in SF, retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, and bought a farm just a few miles Northeast of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Staff Sergeant George Groom: George and his Team Sergeant, Master Sergeant Francis Quinn, became the first two SF soldiers captured in Vietnam and they were both later released. Their two buddies that were with them, Specialist Gabriel and Sergeant Marchand, were among the first SF soldiers killed in Vietnam.  That happened in April 1962. George made two more trips to Vietnam even though regulations precluded the Army from "assigning" him an ex-POW back to that war zone, but he lived to retire and lived in his home state of Kentucky until 1998 when he retired from from his civilian job working for the Army and moved to Florida.  Shortly thereafter, George moved again to Missouri.

Specialist Fourth Class Albert G. Belisle: Al was one of the students that had not yet completed jump school. Al retired and lives in Florida.

 Private First Class Mike Dirocco: Mike was a demolitions man and just taking commo for cross training. Mike also retired and now owns an excellent Italian restaurant in Brevard, North Carolina, and

Sergeant Alfred E. Barnett, Specialist Fourth Class Rodney A. Guilmette, Private First Class James W. Beck, Specialist Fourth Class Larry D. Wolfe, and Private First Class Gerald S. Oliver. [Over the years, I lost track of the these men, but I’m almost positive that Barnett and Wolfe were career soldiers.]

We increased our morse code speed by starting with 5 wpm, then eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, and finally, 15 WPM. At 12 wpm, I hit a mental block and I stayed at that speed for six class days. Each class day included six hours of code. The instructor tried every trick he knew to get me off that speed, but they didn’t work. He put me on a slower speed and with me circling each letter and then a faster speed with me just copying what I could, but when I switched back to 12 wpm there was no improvement.

After the sixth day of being stuck on 12 WPM, I went out with a red-headed gal and got pie-eyed, knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk. When I finally got back to camp it was after reveille, I was still drunk. [The motel clerk was supposed to wake us, but he didn’t.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.] Bob Kaszer covered for me at reveille and marched the troops to class. During the first ten minute break, I staggered up and joined the class.

As soon as the instructor turned on the training tape to my favorite tune, "twelve words per minute," my right hand started printing every single letter as if it had a mind of its own. I just sat there and watched that stranger’s hand write down the code and I was totally amazed by it all. Believe it or not, I wasn’t even paying any attention to the damn code that was blasting away in my headsets. That booze did what I couldn’t do because I had been concentrating too hard on learning that code. The booze neutralized my brain. That’s what you have to do to copy fast morse code, you have to neutralize your brain and let the signal go straight from your ears to your fingers. What my hand was doing amazed me.  I reached over and punched my buddies who were near me with my left hand and pointed at that stupid right hand mine as it flew across the paper copying code. They cracked up. The instructor took that message to grade and put me on the next higher speed, same thing. Then he put me on the next higher speed and the same thing happened. My right hand passed the final three speeds in that one hour session without any help on my part and that was a good thing. After the hangover hit me, I couldn’t bear to have that noisy headset on my sore head for the rest of that day. That was the ninth week of radio school.

About a week later on a Saturday one of the married SF students asked me to go to town with him for some bar-hopping. My married buddy shall be referred to as "Abe." Abe had a second-hand car and provided transportation. After a few drinks, Abe got horny, I mean really horny. Maybe that’s the real reason he wanted to go to town in the first place, I do not know. Anyway, Abe took his car to a used car dealer and sold it in spite of my protests and even though he didn’t have the title with him. How they handled that, I do not know. Then Abe insisted on treating both of us to a whore at a local hotel on a main street in downtown Augusta, Georgia. Abe, it wasn’t worth losing your transportation.

Our favorite hangouts around Fort Gordon were a commercial swimming hole whose name I have long since forgotten [actually it was a lake with rafts, diving boards and slides], the Shamrock night club on the Fort Gordon/Augusta highway, the Amvets on the same highway, and the Red Pig Inn. The swimming hole was a couple of miles off the left hand side of the highway to Augusta and the Red Pig Inn was out in the woods off the right hand side of that highway.

Abe was out on his own one night and encountered a young WAC who had just been assigned to Fort Gordon that same day. Their evening of fun ended sometime in the wee hours of the morning on a table in a local picnic area on post where they were arrested by patrolling MPs for "fornicating in a public area" [on one of the picnic tables]. George Groom was the ranking man in the barracks at the time and had to go pick Abe up at the Fort Gordon MP Station.

After we got our code speed up, we practiced communicating with one another in the class room using code. They had a way of connecting our telegraph keys and headsets so that they could separate us students into small groups and each group could communicate by code with one another. They called this "reduced distance nets." Bob Kaszer decided that in order for us to have any fun working our reduced distance net we would have to use "secret" call signs because the instructor monitored our classroom radio nets to make sure we were using proper radio procedure. So we adopted nick names based on the Uncle Remus Tales, for example; Kaszer was "Brer Fox" or BFX; Chellman was "Brer Rabbit" or BRT; I was "Brer Bear" or BBR; Groom was "Brer Possum" or BPM; John Lied was "Brer Mole" or BME; and so on. That’s all that I can remember. Anyway, we sent clandestine messages during our radio net training and it almost drove our young instructor crazy. That kid was yelling, "Who are BFX and BBR?" and "Who sent Mo fuck a damn bear?" After we graduated from that course, I lost my "Brer Bear" nickname because I lost so much weight while we were at Fort Gordon.

During one weekend while we were still at Fort Gordon, members of the Eighty-second Almost Airborne made a demonstration parachute jump on Fort Gordon on our unit’s parade field. As usual with the Eighty-second, something went wrong. The winds blew one jumper onto the Chapel Steeple and kept another trooper up in the air. He must have been a very small guy because he kept going up and up and up and floating farther and farther away until he was just a speck in the sky headed towards Augusta. Later, I read where they had to get a chopper to hover over him and blow him down out of that wind stream before he reached the ocean. Our parachutes then did not have the canopy releases that they now have. In all my years of jumping, I never had that problem. Normally, if I jumped last from the plane, I would beat almost everyone else to the ground, especially when I weighed 230 pounds. [Maybe that’s why I’m not as tall as I remember being].

When we returned to Fort Bragg, we were put into the very next SF Communications Course where we increased our code speed to 18 wpm and learned about SF radio net procedure, SF cryptographic procedures, and the radio equipment that SF field teams used. After we completed SF Communications training, we went to the Basic SF Qualifications Course. In that course, you learned guerrilla tactics, SF terminology, SF missions, SF organization and techniques, clandestine operations, MOI [Methods of Instruction], DZ Operations, LZ Operations, etc. Only about a week of that course was spent in the field and that was out at Camp MacKall, which is just west of Fort Bragg. Our training at Camp MacKall couldn’t have been too rough because I can’t even remember what we did while we were there. All I remember was how little was at Camp Mackall in the garrison area, as I recall we slept in squad tents and tarpaper shacks, and walked through the woods night and day carrying a heavy rucksack and taking turns being the patrol leader. Like I said, SF training was mostly academic, if you were a jump qualified infantryman, you were physically fit enough for SF duty.

The toughest part of the Basic SF Course for me was MOI. Sergeant First Class Ted "Snake" Allen was our MOI instructor. He was nicknamed Snake because he collected snakes. MOI teaches you how to be an instructor in a formal classroom setting. [Many years later, I learned that Sergeant Allen had just joined special forces and had just completed the O&I Course and Branch Training with the bunch of special forces recruits that began training a month before I did.]

If I had not already been forced to attend the 8^th Infantry Division NCO Academy’s leadership course while I was last stationed in Germany, I probably would not have passed the MOI part of that course and that was an automatic ticket back to your former unit.  Because I knew that it included MOI training, I had really resisted going to that NCO School [Non-commissioned Officer’s Academy]. Stage fright had me by the short hairs.

When they had made me get up at NCO School to speak, I perspired so much my feet made a "squishing" sound every time I took a step. They made me speak for five minutes on matches. That’s right, matches like you use to light fires and cigarettes. There were only about 25 other students for an audience in that class. There were 350 students for an audience in the Basic SF Course. Man, for a beginner that is a lot of eyeballs. After I successfully completed NCO School and returned to my regular unit, my Company Commander forced me to give classes regularly and without notice, like morning PT and short lectures on military courtesy for example. At the time, I really hated that son of a bitch.

Eventually, after a great deal of cursing, sweating, and quivering, I was very surprised one day to discover that I actually enjoyed being an instructor. In fact, instructing became the most rewarding part of being a soldier for me. Later, I served as a Communications School Instructor, Basic Combat Training Drill Sergeant, Jump School Instructor [twice], Jumpmaster Instructor [twice], Long Range Recon Patrol Instructor, Improvised Demolitions Instructor, and also at company level, a general subjects instructor.

Several of the SF students simply could not handle 700 eyeballs watching their every move. My heart went out to them, because I knew exactly how they felt. When it comes to stage fright, there was never a bigger coward than me. The only reason that I had gone to the 8^th Infantry NCO Academy was because my Company Commander finally told me, "Sergeant, either you go to the NCO Academy or you will spend six months in the stockade and then get a dishonorable discharge and you better damn-well pass the course too." That’s the truth.

Some of the younger students just threw down their lesson plan and ran for it. Some froze like statues and had to be led off the stage like a zombie. Most of the drop-outs were the young guys, because, like me, many of the sergeants had been through this torture before. I still suffered from stage fright, especially in a situation like that, but I had learned ways to overcome it. It was difficult to tell how frightened I really was. Some of my techniques violated some of the MOI procedure that MOI students were taught, but they worked!  Also, I discovered that some of those techniques could be applied to any kind of fear.

No one in the military trained MOI students on how to control stage fright, because they didn’t care about the student and they taught strictly by the book. The student’s fate was left entirely in the student’s hands and take it from me, those hands were pretty damn sweaty. NCO School also did not teach a student the duties of a First Sergeant either and that definitely should be added to their curriculum. The next level of army education for their sergeants is the Sergeant Major’s Academy at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. First Sergeant duties and responsibilities are in between those two courses and it just got lost.

Today, I am a big supporter of MOI training. Nationwide surveys have shown time and time again that stage fright or fear of public speaking is the most common fear of all. They showed that the average person fears public speaking more than they fear death. The only difference is that I believe in training the student how to handle the fear. Those SF students who flunked MOI were just like me when I was first "forced" onto a stage, except they didn’t have to be threatened to get up there, they volunteered to try it. They had me beat right there. I would have rather made a 100 parachute jumps without a reserve chute in one day instead of getting up on that stage.

Courage is a highly prized character trait anywhere you go in this world, except for communist controlled countries, unless it is directed against non-communists.  If I am an expert on anything, it has to be "fear" because I don't think anyone suffered from stage fright more than I had.

Courage is not limited to males much less tall, strong, white, handsome males. All you have to do is look closely at the soldiers who have been awarded the Medal of Honor [MOH], if you think otherwise.

Quite a few times I cursed the Company Commander that had forced me to go through NCO School and to give all of those impromptu classes. I can’t even remember his name now, but I owe that officer an apology because that experience, as painful as it was to me at the time, eventually helped make me a much, much better person.