The ‘Recondo Creed’, was a huge sign posted outside of our barracks, E-5-1, at Ft. Bragg, NC, United States Army Training Center, home of the 82nd Airborne. Both of our Drill Sergeants were ‘back home’, from two previous tours of duty in Vietnam. They were both ‘Airborne Rangers-Recondo’, and were there to train us Basic Trainees on how to kill and survive in Vietnam. That was their 8-week mission for us.

It was July of 1968, and Ft. Bragg was hot because it was all sand and pine trees. We were told from Day 1, for the next 8 weeks, we would never walk, except for marching. Anywhere you went, anything you did, you did it in double-time. The other rule was, for the next 8 weeks, unless you were training, you were “restricted to your barracks area”! Any free-time you might have, you were NOT to leave the barracks area. We would sneak to the beer hall for 3.2 beers.

Well, everybody remembers Basic Training for the Vietnam era and it was tough. Some of the cadence songs I still relish, GI Beans and GI Gravy, GI wish I joined the Navy, Your mother was home when you left, you left, you left-right-left, and C-130 going down the strip, Airborne Daddy gonna take a little trip.....

Everything was tough for us 18-year-old kids, fresh out of high school, but after 8-weeks of intense combat survival/infantry training, we were ‘transformed’ into lean, mean, fighting and killing machines, ready to take-on ‘Charley’, the yellow man in ‘Nam.

My proudest moment was on Graduation Day, when my DI’s walked up to me, looked me straight in the eye and said, “I would be proud to serve next to you in Vietnam.”! That made it all worthwhile.