Let Me Tell You About the Army: SOF Publisher, Robert K. Brown

Let Me Tell You About the Army

Excerpt from I am Soldier of Fortune by Robert K. Brown with Vann Spencer

A SNAKE OIL SALESMAN

I was casually shopping the Army and Navy recruiters as well as the Marines. An Army recruiter, his name long forgotten, who undoubtedly was a snake oil salesman in past, present and future lives, got his bullshit hooks into me big time. He got my X on the dotted line to become a “Special Agent” in the Counter-Intelligence Corps. Yeah, I know. Time for the tired old ha, ha for those vets who know all about how counter-intelligence is conducted in the Army. Rather than going for two years as a draftee and kissing off my perception that I would have say in what I did, I bought hook, line and sinker the pitch that the Snake Oil Salesman gave me, that if I would sign up for a three-year enlistment I would become a counter-intelligence agent. I fantasized of platinum blonds and Cadillac convertibles. Keep in mind, this was long before James Bond’s fast exotic foxes and even faster Aston Martins.

I entered the Army in October 1954, and shipped out to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas before it was upgraded to Fort Chaffee. Although it was the same old stuff that millions of recruits have gone through since the begin- ning of the army, I took to it like the proverbial duck to water. I lived for range time where I became intimate with the WWII and Korea workhorse M-1 Garand. I got my first formal marksmanship training and I loved it. I spent a lot of time outside . . . running, marching . . . gladly inhaling meals in two minutes, a habit that has long endured, and being thrown in with a bunch of disparate types who had been uprooted from everywhere from ghettos to the Kentucky hills. It was an eye-opening experience for a young punk college boy . . . an experience sorely missed by many of the pill-popping, therapy-seeking, ear-piercing Y generation and other bizarre generations of punks since the discontinuance of the draft.

I FIGHT TO AVOID BECOMING A REMINGTON RAIDER

After eight weeks, I was shipped to what was then the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Holabird, Maryland, where I found myself thrown in with a “casual company” of recently graduated basic trainees, all college graduates waiting for a Special Agent course to begin. After a couple of weeks, forty-some of us arbitrarily were designated to take the “Clerk Analyst” course—hardly special agents. Morale went right into the shitter as all my new classmates and I realized that we had truly been scammed by the Army in a practice that would repeat itself far too often. We had specifically signed up for a James Bond gig but instead we were to end up as nothing more than administrative clerks with a security clearance. Disillusionment heightened throughout the eight-week course.

The courses were torment . . . administrative this and administrative that. According to the rules of the game, if you failed three courses, you appeared before a board, which was pretty much a formality, and you were kicked out of the course. Those ejected would invariably end up as com- pany clerks somewhere. Early on, although we could all type, one learned that you never, I say never, especially back in those days, let your First Ser- geant know you could type, or you would sure as hell end up behind a typewriter and become a Remington Raider.

Continuing a tradition I had perfected at the University, I not only failed three, I failed four courses . . . and along with seven other dissidents appeared before a board consisting of a captain, a lieutenant and a couple of senior NCO’s. All of the other seven came up with some type of BS excuse as to why they had failed, the most enterprising of which was made by a recruit claiming he was participating in opera rehearsals. I went in, mind you very respectfully, and on being called to account, explained that “with all due respect, I attribute my poor performance to the fact that I had been promised one thing [exerting great restraint in not going off on the Snake Oil Salesman the army had pimped out] and forced into an- other—that I had purposely passed up getting an Air Force ROTC com- mission because I didn’t want to be a paper pusher.” I can only assume this honesty must have shocked the board into allowing me to be the only one of the eight of us that was allowed to complete the course.

That was all well and good, but as far as I was concerned I was still in the shits. Death to paperwork. (Though if I’d paid more attention to “pa- perwork” while running SOF, I’d be a millionaire many times over, but that is another story.)

ON TO THE FORT BENNING SCHOOL OF MASOCHISTS

Though I gutted it through the remainder of the course and graduated, I desperately sought an out, any out. The only option I could find was to apply for Officer’s Candidate School. I was sure that nothing could be worse than clerking. I was soon to be rudely awakened from that thought. Two other classmates and I applied, but I was the only one accepted. The only explanation I could come up with was that my fate was decided in the course of the oral interview with the student company commander, a cap- tain. “Private Brown, if you had a recalcitrant NCO, how would you deal with him?” he asked. “Well, sir, I’d take him out behind the barracks and whop on him good,” I replied.

I had no doubt that I could pound sense into anyone since I was still playing the part of an amateur boxer, although I was cockier than I was skilled. I’d managed to lose my first fight in the Golden Gloves in Lansing, Michigan when I got slammed with a right cross that dropped me to the canvas in 1:32 of the first round.

Now, you would think that would have sent a message to most normal people. But normal or not I was definitely a stubborn SOB. I went on to be a finalist two years in a row in the intramural fights at CU. I finally got the message after a young Mexican fighter knocked me down four times in a row in the YMCA in Milwaukee. Still, I ended up with a 5-5 record, which is better than a jab in the eye with a sharp stick, but not much.

Back to the Captain, who roared at my response, “Now, Private Brown, you can’t do that. Ho, ho, ho. No, you must utilize leadership skills to deal with problems like that. Ho, ho, ho.” He ho-ho-hoed for a while and then dismissed me. A few days later, I got accepted for OCS at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Not so fondly referred to by officer candidates as the Ft. Benning School for Boys, it would have more accurately been described as the Ft. Benning School for Masochists.

After completing the Analyst course (no honors there) while waiting for a slot to open up in an OCS class, I spent two months as a file clerk in the Personnel Section where one of my many suspicions about the Army machine was confirmed. A glitch in the Army personnel system resulted in an incredible travesty.

One Pfc Berkowitz was in charge of assigning personnel to overseas assignments. One would think that the individual who had this responsi- bility would make an effort to assign a trooper to a country where his lan- guage capabilities would be of use. But noooo! Old Pfc Berkowtz, whether As I had made friends in the Holabird personnel section, when I came. other than that, there was little excitement. I had quickly become bored with paperwork even as a Special Agent, and I opted for an early re- lease to return to graduate school at the University of Colorado. I learned enough to know, though, that the Army was not for me as it became ap- parent that if one stays in for 20 years………………

Then in  1967  Vietnam was calling me.   Next week’s episode.    

https://www.sofmag.com/product-category/sof-books-dvds/

 

Part II next week.