As a child, one of my ambitions, and there were many, was to be a career military officer. I was encouraged in that particular ambition by my father who had served on the Mexican Border in 1915, and then as an artillery officer with the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe in World War I. I received a principle appointment to Annapolis and a first alternate appointment to West Point, but when I flunked the physical for Annapolis, I elected to remain as a student at Arizona State and pursue an ROTC commission, which allowed me to get married. The ROTC program was enjoyable, and I succeeded to the extent of graduating as a "Distinguished Military Graduate" with a commission in the US Army Signal Corps.
After working for Shell for a year, I was called to active duty at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for the Basic Signal Officer's Course in August, 1957. Upon completing that ten week course, I was assigned to the 526th Signal Company (RR UHF) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Fort Huachuca was the new Army Signal Proving Ground. As a platoon leader, I participated with the 526th in Exercise Tumble Weed, and then was reassigned to Fort Monmouth to the Microwave Radio Relay Officers course, another ten weeks in New Jersey. When that was completed, however, I was reassigned to the 505th Signal Group Headquarters System Control Division, and for the rest of my career on active duty functioned as a Wire Communications officer rather than as a Microwave Radio Relay Officer.
The 505th Group's assignment was to develop the doctrine for communication in a field army on an nuclear battle field. The army was being reorganized to Battle Groups rather than Divisions and Regiments, and the whole concept was to deploy an area communication system rather than a traditional hierarchical one. I learned a lot about communications in the process of contributing to the development of this concept, and participated in Exercise Rocky Shoals, a joint Army/Navy/Marine Corps exercise. Rocky Shoals was conducted at Camp Roberts, California, and extended over the Hunter Liggett Military Reservation to the California coast at San Simeon, with the main exercise road crossing the coastal mountains at the Hearst Castle. Spectacular surroundings, but while working 12 hours a day, seven days each week for six weeks in a row, we did not have a great deal of time for sight seeing. My great triumph as a wire communications officer was to design a telephone line that stretched along Coast Highway for 40 miles and across the mountains into the military reservation. Every mile along the route there was an orange stake with two wires hanging down on which the Exercise Controllers could connect a telephone and call in to the Exercise Headquarters. It was rated by the controllers as the best telephone system they had ever used in such an exercise.
After two years on active duty, in August, 1959 I returned to the active reserve, and was assigned to the 163rd Signal Battalion, 63rd Infantry Division, US Army Reserve, headquartered in Bell, California. My first assignment was in the Division Signal Officer's office, a position similar to the 505th Group Systems Control Activity. I attended one summer encampment (again at the Camp Roberts/HLMR Complex) in the role of Division Wire Officer. My experience on active duty was valuable in that I was able to help the Division Signal Officer publish a new Standing Signal Instructions (SSI) and Signal Operating Instructions (SOI) f or the division.
A few days into the second summer encampment of the Division, I was asked to assume command of Company A, 163rd Signal Battalion, the Command Operations Company. I served in that capacity for three years, and was promoted to Captain. In spite of outstanding performance on the part of everyone assigned to Company A, and the satisfaction of knowing that our unit had done an outstanding job, it was a disillusioning experience. The Division Commanding General expected to operate the division at all times in an active duty mode, so Company A was required to man a telephone switchboard at the Division Headquarters every weekend of the year when we were not at Camp. For summer encampments, Company A arrived in the advanced party, installed a full scale field communications system, operated the system, wire, radio, message centers, everything as it would be in combat, and then remained at Camp Roberts to tear it all down when everyone else left to go back to Los Angeles.
The rest of the year, discipline and records management were dual nightmares. I was saved only by a lot of hours spent at the armory by the company First Sergeant, John Rueles, and myself, working through all the administration that would have been required of a full time company. Rueles was the best NCO that I worked with in my service in many units, but it was more than the two of us or anyone else could reasonably handle, and it was clear that in spite of this effort the unit was nowhere near "ready for combat." Not least of the problems involved was the fact that the equipment we were operating was, for the most part, World War II or Korean War vintage, a decade or more out of date compared to the equipment we had all trained with on active duty.
I finally concluded that at that time the reserve program was ineffective and wasteful of national resources. So after three years, I requested reassignment to an officers school that met one day per month at Fort MacArthur. After a year in that assignment I had more than fulfilled my eight year obligation that came with the ROTC commission, so on January 6, 1966, nearly ten years after I was commissioned, I resigned and was discharged from the army. I learned a lot about leadership and people during the 14 years, from a freshman ROTC cadet through three plus years as a company commander, and don't regret the time and effort. But, I do wish that the experience had left me with a warmer feeling for what had started out as a young boy's dream of a career.
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Comments or suggestions are welcome: Tom Williams, trw@rice.edu