(Revised and updated for Veteran’s Day, 2022)
“Old soldiers never die, they just fade way”-
-Gen. Douglas MacArthur addressing a joint session of Congress upon his retirement.
(Author’s note: I wrote this story originally in 2016, and my memorable little encounter with the person featured in it seemed an already distant memory. Six years later, it seems even more distant, except in one important respect. The memories of the examples of leadership stay with you throughout your life; they shape your own behavior and actions as you try to emulate those qualities you came to admire in the superiors of your youth. God bless you General Mabry and Colonel Tkaczyk, and Lt. Col John Coruthers….I learned leadership from you.)
Fort McCoy sits in southwestern Wisconsin, roughly some forty miles east of La Crosse and the Mississippi River and nestled between the small towns of Tomah and Sparta. Today, and for the last dozen or so years, it has been the jumping off point for thousands of young soldiers on their way to Iraq or Afghanistan, although this activity has been greatly reduced. (After the U.S. quit Afghanistan, some 12,000 Afghans briefly lived there until moved to other locations.) Units would receive “acclimation” training prior to being inserted into the Mideast. When it was time to go, the presence of nearby Volk Field made it ideal for quickly deploying whole units without a big city airport scene, crying spouses, screaming children, and the press that would go with it.
It wasn’t always this way. For many years it was only Camp McCoy and the site of Annual Training, the two-week active duty obligation for National Guard units from around the Midwest. Many a vacationer can recall, and none too fondly, getting caught behind endless military convoys on their way to or from McCoy. “Summer Camp” as it was called by some, could be two weeks of fairly tiring training to keep a military unit in reasonable shape, or it could be a two-week beer blast, for the less motivated or well-led units. My unit, the 129th Infantry was squarely in the former category, thanks in no small measure to the dedication and “hands on” leadership of our commander, Lt. Col. Bernie Tkaczyk (pronounced Ta-check). He was a Korean War combat vet and he brought passion to his posting. Officers and noncoms (sergeants) who didn’t like to work or provide leadership tended to find other places to billet than under Bernie. (Col. Bernie Tkaczyk passed in 2018 and rests in the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois, ironically in the same area we trained for years).
In July, 1979 I found myself in a remote corner of this post, with about 60 soldiers and noncoms reporting to me, as well as a virtual wooden wall of some 600 high explosive 81 mm rounds and about 300 illumination rounds to be disposed of in a short period of time. You disposed of them by dropping them, one at a time, down the barrel of an 81mm mortar gun tube and firing them at targets about 3,000 meters downrange, mostly old tank hulls, and, on occasion, the unlucky lost cow. (Note: No animals were harmed in the writing of this story).
That quantity of rounds might not sound too impressive, but when you factor in that each fire mission consumed only about 12 rounds and took about an hour (much less in real world firing, but we were training soldiers here and it took time), well, you can do the math. The illumination rounds were for lighting up targets for other weapons (tanks, recoilless rifles) at night, lest we get too rested in our labors.
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I got there via a curious route, as do many who enter the military life. In 1971 I was entering my last semester at DePaul University, was engaged to the love of my life, had been accepted for student teaching, and was poised to begin adult life. We couldn’t wait for school to end and our lives to really begin.
There was, however, the little matter of the military draft and the specter of Vietnam, which hung over most young men’s heads like a cloud. By 1971, it was obvious to everyone that we were losing, or at least not willing to win anymore. Very few people wanted to go to Vietnam in 1971. (Author’s note: Looking back over the years, it is tragic to witness how many minds and bodies that war claimed, some many years after their return)
Up until then, the deal was simple: go to college and get a student deferment, which meant you couldn’t be drafted until after you graduated and, hey, it might be over by then. Don’t go to college and you would likely be drafted within a year of high school. But that year, in an effort to level the playing field, the government ended the student deferment and instituted a lottery. I drew number 161, not immediate draft bait, but not safe either. I decided I would join the Air Force, probably having heard too many of my mother’s stories of her first husband and my brother’s father, Lt. Gilbert J. Finn, a B-29 bombardier killed over Japan near the war’s end.
After a series of written tests, eye tests, physical tests, and tests of my patience, I was informed that I would be accepted into the navigator program for B-52 bombers. I was told, and subsequently told Maureen, that our first four years of marriage were going to be in the military. She didn’t return my engagement ring, so that became the plan. When it came time to sign on the dotted line, the contract read six years, not four. I informed the officer of the obvious error, and he informed me that the government was going to invest a lot of money in my training so that I could guide a big airplane full of bombs to the right place and drop them on people we didn’t like, and that I should sign the contract. The meeting did not end well.
So, I found an Army Reserve unit on the Southeast side, did my basic and advanced training in scenic Fort Polk, Louisiana, and returned home. About a year later, my commander asked me if I wanted to become an officer, as a few slots had opened up in the Illinois Guard OCS program. I guess I was flattered to be asked, but that soon wore off as I discovered what a rigorous program it was. We started with about 90 candidates and graduated less than 50. I was one.
The one-year OCS Program, as rigorous as it was, was also the most exciting military experience I had encountered. Helicopters, radios, weapons that went boom, C-rations and all that. It was the infantry, and I was young. After a year back in the reserve unit, I applied for a transfer to the Guard, and was assigned to “ A” company of the 129th, in Elgin, Illinois. The Major who assigned me told me I was to be a mortar platoon leader. I told him I had never even seen a mortar and he looked at me as one might look upon an addled child. He suggested I get up to speed.
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It was a hot, humid summer day, and my crews were hard at it, sending fire mission after fire mission volleying out into the impact zone. Far behind us, larger guns were firing their ordnance into the same zone, and you could hear the big shells whooshing overhead on their way deeper into the “impact area”. It took a little getting used to.
It was about noon and getting hotter still. I told my platoon sergeant to pass the word on the sound powered phones to stand down and secure the guns, find some shade, and get some lunch. The troops didn’t need to be told twice.
A few minutes later the sound of a jeep engine could be heard coming our way. “”Visitor,” I thought, “maybe brass”. Within a short time, the jeep rounded a turn, and we could see it was a solitary soldier at the wheel, fatigues, soft cap, and no helmet, or field gear, or weapon. I knew it couldn’t be anyone important, so I returned to some form I had been filling out.
The jeep pulled up a few yards from me and the driver got out. He has an old man, short, very spare in build, wire glasses, and he smiled as he saw me. He had the two stars of a Major General on his collar.
Now there is one immutable law of the military….generals do not travel without a small circus in their wake. In that circus will be vehicles, aides, and an attractive female solider as a personal assistant and a few “strap hangers”, probably your own staff officers tagging along to mitigate what you, as an idiot lieutenant, might say or do to embarrass the unit.
His nametag read “Mabry” and he extended his hand but pulled it back momentarily to return my salute that I launched as, half in shock, I took in his rank. My platoon sergeant, having learned long ago that nothing good happens around generals, began to slink around the side of the field tent we were using to run operations. “You in charge, Lieutenant”? the General asked in a southern drawl. I told him I was, and asked him if there was anything I could help him with. I wondered if he was lost.
“Tell me what you’re doing here today”, he said in a sincere way, not like the cross-examination fashion to which I had become accustomed from previous visits by various ranking officers. I explained that this was a three-day live fire exercise.
He told me that he had been a solider since the beginning of World War II, had served a lot of years, and that he planned to retire from the service in few weeks. He wanted to spend his last few days around soldiers, and he asked me if I would mind if he talked to my soldiers by himself. Inasmuch as young lieutenants don’t disappoint Major Generals, I pointed out the line of gun crews, now consuming their C-rations and sweltering in the heat. He walked toward the first crew who, predictably, jumped to their feet as they saw the stars. He waved them off and told them to sit back down and joined them. I could see he was asking questions and appeared to be actually listening. Rare quality in a General. After a few such visits to the crews, he accepted a C-ration can from one of the men, took out his G.I. issue P38 can opener (soldiers usually wore their little can opener around their necks with their dogtags) and enjoyed some warm Del Monte peaches. You could see the men becoming impressed with his easy style. Ever more amazing.
He came back to his jeep, shook my hand, and complimented me on doing a good job and for having such fine troops under my command. He got in, smiled a sort of sad smile, put the jeep in gear and drove off into the dust. I wished him well, and cranked off my best OCS salute.
About forty minutes later the circus did appear, this time in the form of three jeeps carrying my battalion commander and most of the senior staff officers. They pulled up, jumped out and began grilling me about the General’s visit. It would seem that the good General had side-stepped convention and not made them aware of his presence. Had he done so, he couldn’t manage to do these sorts of informal visits.
Mostly, they wanted to know if I had said or done anything wrong, non-military, or just plain dumb. I told them it was mostly a non-event, although I was still impressed that he travelled alone. They informed me that he was not just anyone, but a recipient of the Medal of Honor. He never mentioned that to me or anyone else, I would later learn, during our visit.
Now in civilian life, he would be a hero maybe on the Memorial Day or the Fourth of July parade, but in the army, living Medal of Honor winners are big medicine. You get to be a certified hero 24/7. More incredible, they told me that he won it as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Hurtgen Forest during World War II. High ranking officers are mostly not in the thick of any kind of fight, so this guy must have been something very rare indeed. Al Gore had not invented the Internet in 1979, so I had to wait until I got home to look him up. You can find him easily today on Wikipedia. His full name was George Lafayette Mabry, Jr and he hailed from Sumter, South Carolina. Read his citation for The Medal and you’ll be impressed. Among other feats cited, he cleared an enemy minefield by walking through it and marking the mines. No, thank you. This was not someone you would want to piss off. (He passed in 1990 and is buried at Holy Cross Episcopal Church cemetery in Stateburg, South Carolina.)
I think back on that unusual day from time to time, on what McCoy was then, and what it is now. I think about the melancholy General Mabry closing out his long career, and just wishing to be with young soldiers once again in his twilight. And of all the young men and now women, the children of 9/11 who passed through McCoy on their way to their wars, and on their way to dangers most of us can’t even imagine. For guys like me, McCoy was a two-week exercise that kept it real, but then you went back home. For the General, it was a long goodbye after so many years of service. For those kids on their way to the Mideast, it was the first step on a journey into the unknown.
Here’s to all those who went willingly or unwillingly to their war, a war either just or unjust, but they went. Patriots, all. And a few heroes thrown in as well.