In 1969 the Army decided to change it's promotion management. Control had been held at Brigade and sometimes at Battalion level for promotions up to E6. The change meant that promotions to E5 and E6 would be managed at Department of the Army level...you would now be competing Armywide for your stripes. Failing to come up with an equitable method for converting standing lists from battalions to DA, the decision was made to clear all existing promotion lists before the new method came into effect. In the 181st Trans in Mannheim, there were about a dozen E5s on the list...we were all promoted on the same day...a blanket promotion. As we stood in the office of our Battalion Commander, LTC Larry "Fireball" Floro, the Sergeant Major went up and down the line handing us our stripes and orders while the Commander railed at us about how we didn't deserve this promotion...we didn't earn it...it was a disgrace that the Army would stoop to this...they should have bumped us all off the list and made us start all over again...and finally that he would be watching closely to find any excuse to take those stripes right back. Yeah, there's nothing like the support of the chain of command to make your special day all that more special. Heck...I got the stripe...I didn't much care about Floro's opinions, anyway.
Now, the Sergeant Major and I were not buddies. My problems with him started the first day I was in the 181st and he never let up from that point. He asked me to stay in his office until all the other new E6s left, then he told me he had a special plan for me. I was going to go the NCO Academy at Bad Toelz...not because I was such a neat guy, but because he knew I would flunk out and then he would get that rocker back.
If you are a more recent member of the Army and when I say NCO Academy your mind pictures PLDC or BNOC...nope! From my earliest memories of sergeants sitting around talking, I heard stories about Bad Toelz...the Grand Daddy of all NCO Academies. Before the professional development programs of this modern Army, getting a slot at the Academy was a cherished plum. You had to request it, go before a selection board, get on the Order of Merit List, and wait forever for an opening. The stories about Bad Toelz were legendary...and only the very best graduated...and if you did graduate...well...you got to brag like nobodies bidness.
I didn't want to go. I never wanted to go. But shortly after my promotion, just two months, I had orders to attend the 7th United States Army NCO Academy. I was given a packing list, orders, and told where to catch the bus. Most units would arrange a vehicle to get their guys there...but noooo...SGM Ratfink was not doing any little thing to make this any easier. I packed up, hauled my duffel bags, foot locker, all my field gear, my M14, kissed my pregnant wife...rubbed Golfie's ears...humped it all down to the American Express Parking Lot and caught the bus. All the way down to beautiful Bavaria I mumbled to myself...I was gonna get off the bus and screw something up on purpose, get right back on the bus and give that skinny, hateful, rat-looking, whiskey smelling, cigar chomping, Chrysler driving, smart ass Sergeant Major those stripes right back...I was doing fine as a buck sergeant...He wouldn't be the Sergeant Major forever...lots of guys got busted and got it back...and lots of other feeling-sorry- for myself thoughts streamed through my aching head.
The bus entered an old SS barracks on the edge of town, pulled up to the main building and here we were. The bus had made a lot of stops on the way and was almost full, probably 25 or 30 NCOs on the bus. The door opened, a sharp looking E7 stepped onto the bus and in a normal speaking voice, began to give us instructions on what we had to do next. He talked for a good 10 minutes. Slowly, people on the bus began to pay attention, some started making notes and when he was done, he said that he would not repeat any part of those instructions and we were responsible for carrying them out to the letter. Our first lesson...pay attention. Everyone worked on remembering everything he said and we put together most of it...of course, we got some of it wrong and got wrote up for, "Failure to Follow Instructions"...FFI. I remember standing in line in the basement waiting to turn in everything I couldn't keep in the room...the floors were painted battleship gray and they were the shiniest floor I had ever seen up to that point...someone in the line commented on that and asked, "I wonder how they keep them so nice..." As the answer slowly soaked in, we started laughing. It was during this inprocessing that my attitude changed. This was a pretty good bunch of guys. They had gone through all the crap to get here that I would never do. I had the free ticket and was determined to throw it away. I began to think that if I could hang in and graduate...well wouldn't that be a hoot, to bring my certificate up to the Sergeant Major's office. I started to get mad about his opinion of me...assuming that I would flunk out. Somewhere before dinner I had made up my mind. I was gonna get that paper.
The next six weeks were the most fantastically intense learning experience I had ever had. The stories we had heard about the school were not even close to describing what we went through. The Academy was big on following instructions. Any minor infraction of rules or orders earned you an FFI slip with anywhere from 1 to 20 demerits. You could be flunked out on demerits. The academy was big on standards, too. Everything had a standard and lots of FFIs were written up for failure to meet standards. The best illustration of standards was the Corcoran jump boots in the glass case in the lobby of the main building. They were flawless...looked like onyx...the shine was deep and rich and even with no swirls. A sign in the case said that this was the standard. If your boots look this good, you are up to standard, if not, you were not up to standard, if your boots look better than these...you will shine these.
Every waking minute was crammed with effort of some sort or another. Displays had to be laid out perfectly, measured with a ruler. An errant broom straw left behind and spotted by a tac NCO would earn you an FFI for and "unauthorized log on floor"...I left an apple behind after lunch and returned to my room after class to find two FFIs under the apple. 3 demerits for fruit not properly displayed...and 3 demerits for "fuit not up to standards" (there was a bite out of my apple)...keeping the bunks tight enough to meet the standard was hard, many of the students would use safety pins to keep it tight and spent the whole course sleeping on the floor...hairspray on the blankets to keep dust motes from rising when the tac whacked you bunk with his swagger stick...and there was the "Autobahn". The hallway floor was black. It was spit shined...yes I did say spit shined...daily. Stripped weekly and started all over again. No one walked on the autobahn...we moved up and down the hall walking on the one tile width that was not black. No one wore boots anywhere except on the stairs...every fixture in the latrines were polished daily...uniforms had to be pressed...hair cuts every three days or so...plus every day was filled with classroom or field exercise instruction. 40 hours of instructor training...40 hours of map reading/navigation...40 hours of leadership...40 hours of tactics...and lots of shorter courses. We went to bed at midnight most nights...up at 4:00 am.
I did well in most of the important areas. Leadership was a snap because the Chief had taught me all of that stuff from the time I was little. Tactics came easy for some reason...having been in Vietnam made me a cautious and suspicious young man and that is a large part of tactical operations. I didn't know it before I got there, but I really loved maps and map work...did good there, too. What really surprised me was how much I enjoyed instructor training. I was a dismal failure as an instructor the few times I had been called upon to teach a class on something. But the ITT course at the academy was great...did well there, too. In fact, I came away an honor graduate with the "Douglas MacArthur Award for Distinguished Leadership". I walked out of there a lot smarter than I walked in...and I had bragging rights...I did it. We started with 150 students. 91 graduated. I was ranked 9th overall.
All the way back to Mannheim I thought about how I would approach the sergeant major. I felt that I really should thank him for sending me...it was a life changing experience...but I still hated him so I reallly didn't want to give him the satisfaction. But I was gonna keep my rocker!
I reported in to my First Sergeant and showed him my paper work, proving I had graduated. He laughed but would not explain why. He suggested I go over to battalion and show my paper to the sergeant major. When I walked into SGM Ratfink's office, he was packiing up his personal stuff and clearing out his office. I innocently asked where he was going. The look he gave me would have killed lesser men...it turns out that while I was gone, the commander and the sergeant major had had a few unfortunate episodes and they had both been relieved of their positions. That's Army talk for they got FIRED. My first sergeant knew what I would walk into and thought it would be a nice little "rub it in", since he didn't care much for Ratfink, either.
The placque hangs on my "I-Love-Me" wall in the den still. Despite my misgivings at first, it was one of my best achievements.