ROTC Summer Camp, Fort Sill, 1970

[Griff Murphey]

Some might question whether this story will be of interest to many people or whether it even qualifies as a "service life" story but I hope it will jog some others' memories and bring forth a few smiles.
After 3 years of high school and 3 years' college ROTC I had signed my advanced contract, meaning I had promised to go in the Army as an officer if I was offered a commission, or would go in as enlisted if I dropped out. The main reason was that I saw myself as perhaps a young Gregory Peck on Porkchop Hill. Secondarily, I had a draft lottery number of 24.
My college, Trinity University in San Antonio, had a 400 man corps due to being a land grant college, requiring two years' ROTC for all males. There were no women cadets, except one free spirit who took one year of ROTC on a lark, wearing the professor of military science's wife's WW2 WAC uniform (since the Army provided no female uniforms at that time for ROTC). As far as I could tell there was no major effort to get us physically ready for camp, but we were taken to Camp Bullis and fired Trainfire where I shot Expert with the M-14. There was also a big "Field Problem" which was really an orchestrated series of sham battles. The most interesting part was that two of my Fraternity Brothers in Pershing Rifles rented a Cessna 172 and were "air support" for our counterguerilla group. As the 172 came over to "bomb" with flour bombs you could hear the stall warning screaming about 100 feet overhead!
Fort Sill had the ROTC camp, Camp Eagle, at the far west of the post just off Cache Road. There were two Brigades in separate camps. Cadet issue was like I imagine regular basic training issue is. We were quartered in squad tents on gravel; each man had a cot and a plywood foot locker. At the end of the company street was a thunderbox style latrine. Wash stands had faucets at each station, and cut-outs for your steel-pot M-1 helmet to use as a sink. You always wore that helmet, almost never the baseball cap.
Reville was 0430 each morning. The first morning everybody showed up in spit-shined boots, starched fatigue pants; and we were led in fairly (moderately) challenging calisthenics; let's say 20 pushups, 20 squat thrusts, etc.. We then double-timed, as a platoon, around the brigade area which was about a mile run. This routine was always led by a cadet, not a cadre officer or NCO. After about the first five days, the cadet platoon leader of the day, as we rounded the corner where trees masked us from the company area, ordered "ROUTE STEP...HARCH!" and we "walked the track" so to speak, until we were in sight of the company area, whence double-time would resume.
We all had M-14s which appeared new, with the brown fiberglass stocks. Beautiful rifles! When it came time to shoot for record on Trainfire, I got every target from 200-350M. The close ones were so shot-up they would not fall. I only made sharpshooter, but it was like the #2 score in the platoon. Mitch, one of our cadets, contrived to blow his M-14 up by loading a 7.62 blank with powder scrounged out of other blanks, so that it was full of powder right up to the end of the case/fake bullet tip, inserting a twig "...to hold the powder in..." and topped off this pipe bomb with a BFA. In spite of my stern warnings, he proceeded to fire his rifle on night raid patrol. At the rally point, he was holding the three main groups of the rifle. Later, in the daylight, it was apparent the lower third of the bolt face and an inch back had been blown apart. The action was of course frozen. The BFA and magazine disappeared in the darkness.... and he was somewhat shrapneled on his left forearm. Nobody ratted on him and I heard they condemned a whole lot of blank ammo over that.
We generally had our rifles wherever we went and they would be stacked in formation while we went into bleachers, etc. Subjects were widely ranging over all of the necessary military skills from tactics, artillery, land navigation, casualty care, and so-on. Weapons we fired were the M-14, M-16 M1911, M-79, M72 LAW, 81 mm Mortar, 105mm Howitzer in direct and indirect fire, 106mm recoilless rifle, .50 spotting rifle, 90mm recoilless rifle, M-26 hand frag, and the .50 Browning MG and M-73 Coax gun on the M-48 tank. Couple of funny stories, Cadet Moses from Prairie View A&M was firing his .45. With each shot the bullets began striking the ground ever closer to Cadet Moses. When one dug up the dirt five feet in front of him, an Army NCO came up and asked, "CUH-DE-YUT! ARE YOU EVEN AIMIN' AT THET TAR-GEYUT!??" I was the worst grenade thrower in the outfit, so the TAC officer thought he should put an NCO in my grenade pit with me. He was an SFC, obviously well briefed about my short throws "like a girl," and was obviously real nervous about me throwing the grenade but I wasn't scared and I felt like I did OK. AFTER it went off I wanted to see where it had gone off so I raised my head to see, which of course you were not supposed to do. I can promise you that SFC may have taken about 6" off my height when he compressed me back into that pit.
The only thing I fired that scared me was that 90. The backblast and front blast is intense and you are right down there with it.
We also did land navigation, fire direction centers, and the gas tent, but this was before CBR suits, thankfully. I did good on the gas tent; it surprised me there are always people who panic and get get snot dripping asphyxiated.
It was hot as hades. They gave us salt tablets, but water could be problematic. We were issued two canteens. "Water discipline" was no longer spoken of, but was in fact enforced. Two guys in the squad had extra two quart canteens; one was the Vietnam issue bladder one, and one was an aluminum one with "indian blanket" motif. This water we called the "squad reserve" and anybody that got in trouble could get some of that if they had too. Water was usually out of water buffalo trailers or in Lister bags and it was full of chlorine; I guess they poured jugs of Clorox in it, and it usually burned going down. Sometimes the mess cooks made iced tea or Kool-aid with the chorix-water. MMMmmmm. Kool aid that BURNED going down!
We sweated so much we had encrustations of dried, white salt on our green fatigues. Everyday.
We had a great mess sergeant, an old black master sergeant. His mess truck was an old WW2 style with the oval cut outs instead of doors and the short, curved hood. One night at 3AM wnen we were tactical, out in the field,I was awakened by these bright lights in my eyes and he almost drove over me with that truck.
Delta Company was next door. Delta was hard ass and had a Ranger Tac Officer. Delta was always getting pssed at us for pssing in the drainage trenches at night rather than taking the 200m walk to the latrine. One night matters came to a head and both sides unfolded e-tools and we almost had the massacre of Camp Eagle. The TAC officers managed to quiet it down.
If you were not sleeping out in the field you could enjoy the beer tent. A 3.2% Coors tallboy was like 75 cents. The Prairie View A&M boys dominated the Juke box and to this day hearing Band of Gold or any of the Supremes tunes of the day takes me right back. One time I got waylaid by the hard-ass Ranger TAC of Delta Company. He proceeded to give me an army version of Gunny Ermy's dressing down of Gomer Pyle in FMJ, although my offense was being chubby and drinking beer, not eating jelly doughnuts. When it got dark, about 9:00, they ran movies. The movies ran until 1 A.M. With a 4:30 revellie, I could not stay up past about 10, but some did.
One guy, Moscowitz, fell asleep riding in a deuce and a half and as his head lolled back his helmet fell off and out of the truck. The very next deuce-and-a-half hit it and dinked it in about 1/3 of the way in. He got in more trouble than the guy who blew up the M-14, and was forced to wear the thing for a week.
Our winner of the "Outstanding Cadet" award was an ex-Marine with a chest full of Vietnam ribbons, two jump badges, and a 28" waist.
The culmination of our field training was being helicoptered-in to the Vietnam Village, "Ton Hoa." I rode a pod under a CH-54 Skycrane. We were given typical Vietnam kill-the-VC-but-don't-hurt-the-villagers-or-popular-forces orders. I was holding my M-14 on one conical-hatted black pajama guy. He spun around with a M-16 on full auto and "cut me in half" - with blanks. After THAT and after the classes on toe-poppers, punji stakes, Malayan gates, and what today we call IED's, I sort of lost the last images I had of myself as a glorious Infantry platoon officer and dental school started looking a lot "more better" to me.
By the way the enlisted troops that ran most of the courses were Spec 4's and buck sergeants just back from Vietnam. One of them spotted the one M-14 in our squad with a selector when we were running squad tactics. His eyes got as big as saucers and a big grin came over his face. He grabbed that M-14 and the cadet's magazines, handed the cadet his clipboard, and joined in the "assault" just to rip off the rounds on full auto!
Although it was not basic training, nor advanced infantry training, it was an experience comparable to enlisted life; an experience I will never forget. When I was a Navy dental officer with the Marines 5 and a half years later, unexpectedly involved in the Vietnam evacuation, most of the hospital corpsmen thought I was ex-enlisted. I took that as a great compliment and I credit my Army ROTC time - and in particular - Fort Sill - for that!

[superjake]

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[Michaelp]

Sounds like you got some good out of that.

I was in a ROTC program before the lottery, but lost my deferment due to partying and had to enlist to beat the draft.
No regrets.

[m1ashooter]

Great story. My ROTC Summer Camp was at Vandenburg AFB, we slept in real buildings and usually boarded a bus to go anywhere.

[Michael Tompkins]

What a great story! I really enjoyed reading it. Mike

[semowasp]

The 1970 ROTC Ft. Sill experience is in stark contrast to that at Ft. Riley. We were expecting something similar based on the comments of those who had summered there in the Woodstock Year of '69. In fact I had my barber shave my head before reporting rather than let an Army hack take shears to it.

So, there we were on the first day, seated in a large field when the commanding general took the stage and notified us that his theory was that as we were soon to be officers, he intended to treat us as such. The first example, no short haircuts required. The rest of the 6 weeks passed similarly. We slept mostly in barracks with running water. On those few nights in the field, mobile showers were provided.

We had access to the old cavalry officer's club every night. Nearly destroyed it the first week-end when no leave was forthcoming. Was in Kansas City every weekend thereafter.

The guard was not mounted until 7pm. Those desiring a night on the town in Manhattan, KS, went to the POV lot before then, got their cars and left. Returning about 1am we parked on the officer quarter's streets, and returned the cars to the lot at 6pm the next evening when we had duty. Those with it the night before repeated the above in their turn.

All-in-all a very confusing 6 weeks, for which we had received little preparation. The fact we were not needed after graduation in 1971 may indicate that our general had some foreknowledge.

One point of interest. We had to sign our contracts the first day of class 1970, before the lottery in December. See the bit on "Betting on the lottery" at https://sites.google.com/site/westmi...emoriesformen/

I had to lobby hard to get 2 years of active duty. Strangely, I was back in Summer Camp in 1972, that time as part of the cadre. My primary duty was herding a bunch of student newspaper editors from eastern schools through two weeks of the process. Someone in Washington thought it might improve the public image on campus. Don't know about that, but it did improve cadet morale as the female dress was a T-shirt and jeans - nothing else. It rained all summer.

[Griff Murphey]

Wow that really was different. They treated us like privates. Cadre was tough, too. The only slack we got cut was the PT was a lot lighter than it could have been. A cadet could go to the Ft. Sill officers' club but it was about 15 miles away and nobody brought jackets and ties. Most of us just drank 3.2 beer in tallboys at the beer tent.

My memory could be faulty but I think the lottery came before I signed my contract. My senior year of college when it came time to sign to accept my commission. As I had been accepted to dental school, I asked, can I decline it? "No problem... We will order you to ACDU as a private in the Army Reserve..."

So I am in dental school, my 4 striper captain uncle asked me if I had considered the Navy...I said I thought I would LOVE the Navy but was an Army 2Lt... He said "Oh I can get you into the Navy,"

Fast forward to April, 1975, I am on the foc'sle of USS DUBUQUE LPD-8 with all of the BAS 1-4 corpsmen, heading to RVN; getting Vietnamese lessons from a USMC Gunny... Boy, I am thinking, "If i had stayed in the Army, I could be in Germany drinking beer with Frauleins..." Felt pretty dumb.... In retrospect, tho; glad I had the experience....

[Lee T.]

Funny how things I hadn't thought about for many years come flooding back to memory - I did my 6th Army summer camp at Ft. Lewis, WA in 1968. My school, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, was one of about 50 from all over the west, even as far as Ohio, organized into 2 brigades. Trinity (Texas) was one of them on the list, maybe they changed to Ft. Sill later on. Some of the guys had finished the 4 year academic program, apparently had previously deferred summer camp, and were commissioned the same day camp was finished. 8 weeks of what we called Basic Training for Gentlemen. HA!
In '68 of course the war was different than '70, TET ramped things up and there were thousands of BCT's and ACT's all over the base. You could tell the ACT's because they carried M16's - we had M14s as there weren't enough 16s produced yet for all traing. You could tell the ACT's were about to ship out because that's when they got them. Ft. Lewis was huge, we were housed in platoon bays of bunkbeds in 3 story concrete barracks. Most everywhere we went for daily training, except for our 3-day FTX, we were hauled in what we called 'cattle trucks'.......40 ft. enclosed trailers, no windows, just a rear ramp, with 4 long benches fore-and-aft. They were pulled by duce and 1/2's, and if the wind was wrong, the trailers filled up with diesel fumes. I think they used the trailers because typically is rains a lot up there, but during our time there it was pretty dry.

Once the daily routines settled in we got to know the pull-up bar outside the mess hall and Schlitz beer at the outdoor PX real well. On FTX's we got to know the 3 ft. high red ant hills that are everywhere in WA forests even better. Gotta say though, Washington forests are beautiful. A late-camp weekend pass spent in Olympia/Tumwater at the brewery wasn't bad either.
A couple things stick in my mind....on the day we had the "VC Village" leadership training (pretty close to what Griff described) about 100 educator visitors were in bleachers watching us - a big deal for the Army because they wanted to show the various school administrators the worth of getting college credit for the camp. So my platoon gets chosen for the leading unit into the village, and it was my day for being Platoon Leader. Guess I did OK, got some compliments from the Brigade CO afterwards, but like Griff, I was 'shot' and out of action after 20 minutes. The cadre playing the bad guys were just back from their tours in RVN, and really into making showing us college boys the facts of life. Another time they put on a platoon sized night live fire display to show effective fields of fire. OMG they burned up a LOT of tracer ammo that night!
All in all, a worthwhile experience, not quite on the level of combat infantry training, but a good exposure to most of it. Thanks for reminding me of it!

[edpm3]

Thanks for dredging some of those memories up. Actually it was a pretty satisfying experience. Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, PA in 1971. Very similar to your Ft Sill experience when it came to weapons, but it sounds like our PT was a lot harder and we only got one weekend pass at the three-week mark.

Although we were still using M14s back at school, we were issued M16A1s at camp. I was pleased to find how easy it was to hit targets with it. I also liked the lighter weight of the basic load, although I rarely got to enjoy it, since when not rotated into a squad or platoon leader position, I usually carried the M60.

When in garrison we stayed in two-story World War II barracks and there was plenty of beer at the various canteens (I think there was one in each of the four brigade areas). Spent a lot of time marching to the field, although we did sometimes get the cattle cars—stake-sided semi trailers with wooden benches running the length of the trailers. Air assault training was a thrill as we rode to the attack in Hueys driven by cowboy warrant officers just back from SEA who tried their level best to scare the piss out of us. Really enjoyed the Recondo training, especially rappelling, rope-bridge building, and my personal favorite, the slide for life. That felt great on a hot day. I also enjoyed the survival training, although I wasn't that crazy about the instructor (Ranger or Special Forces) who insisted on passing a rather large but non-venomous snake through the bleachers.

I seem to recall that all of our lane graders were 82nd Airborne enlisted and NCOs who delighted in tormenting the college boys. Can't say as I blame them. When it came to handling the various weapons systems, they knew their stuff.

[semowasp]

It's hard to rectify the differences in approach between camps that summer following Kent State. As a ROTC cadet from a very small backwater school with no ROTC budget, compared to the others we met there we were wholly unprepared. See "The rockets red glare, ..." at

https://sites.google.com/site/westmi...emoriesformen/ for some vignettes.

It is true that at the time I was dating the daughter of the commanding officer at Richards-Gebauer Air Force Base in KC, who I had escorted at the ROTC Ball. But, I can not believe he intervened on her behalf.

Whoever there is to thank, the fondest camp memories of most cadets that year will be of those who made it possible for them to spend weekends soliciting at the newly opened TWA stewardess school - the fabled Breech Academy - in Kansas City.

As for recollections of actual camp activity, I recall being pulled out of the gas tent line for bleeding, sun-burned lips. I also vividly remember a platoon or company maneuver through a field of the country's strategic hemp reserve for which Ft. Riley served as host. Everything but canteens was flying as college cadets picked their way through the 6 foot high growth, the objective forgotten. Not being a partaker, I've no idea whether it was worth loosing the contents of one's first aid pouch.