Also that summer, Marilyn and I took a long weekend trip back to Utica. Mark and Lauren were getting married, and we needed to attend. With 13 kids, there was always somebody getting married, or confirmed, or something. On my first trip through it got to the point where we had made a joke about it. I didn't wear a suit at work, so I needed just one dark charcoal suit; we were good for one wedding, one burial, one confirmation, and one baptism a year, at least.
Captain Harris arranged for another second lieutenant to join our happy band, along with our other two second lieutenants, Fletcher and Kuzinski. My replacement as second lieutenant truly tested my yearning for command. There's a story that Napoleon was considering promoting an officer to a general's rank. The other generals were all telling him how brave the officer was, how smart he was, how good he was, and so forth. Finally, Napoleon simply said, 'Yes, yes, I understand all that. But tell me, is he lucky?' Second Lieutenant Louis Westerfield was not lucky.
'Lucky Lou', as he came to be called, showed up about two weeks later than originally promised. This was explained by the cast on his right foot and the crutches he was hobbling around on. The cast was the result of dropping a 155mm shell on his foot during the last week of training at Fort Sill. Since a 155 shell weighs over 90 pounds, he broke his foot. Okay, shit happens, and I've done some stupid stuff myself. I introduced him to the battery and showed him his desk, my old desk.
Two weeks after his foot was healed, Lucky broke his left pinky finger when he closed a car door on it. I had to give him credit, since he didn't let that slow him down. The following month he sprained his left ankle during a jump. Six weeks later he dislocated a shoulder. After that he cracked a rib. Then he sprained his right ankle. Lucky spent more time in the hospital than he did in the battery!
After a year of this, in the summer of 1980 Lucky's military career came to a spectacular finish. Just as he jumped, a sudden pocket of turbulence hit the Chinook and tangled his main chute. Lucky managed to cut away from his main chute and deploy his reserve and save his life, but he landed at a much higher than optimum speed. He basically shattered every bone in his left leg, from his thigh bone down to all five toes, and everything in between. He was like an orthopedic surgeon's wet dream! Lucky was medicalled out of the Army.
And so went 1979 and 1980, mostly. The cycle turned, as did the seasons, and the battery improved from the slump it had been in when I first reported in. Captain Harris happily dumped more and more responsibility on me, and as they say, 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!' We deployed to other bases for training occasionally, but otherwise we stayed stateside and didn't invade anybody other than Orangeland.
Also, when possible, Marilyn and I visited her family at Christmas and in the summer, for various weddings and such. Sometimes I would simply send her up, if her school schedule allowed but mine didn't. We were able to see our friends on occasion. Harlan and Tusker couldn't visit, but we did make a quick trip up for a long weekend and dragged them over to the shore for a few days in Ocean City. Likewise, in '79 we went down to Fort Hood and stayed with Harlan and Anna Lee, and the following year they returned the favor.
That proved to be a big event in 1980. Somehow, Harlan convinced his superiors that it was necessary for his professional development to learn about the Airborne. This isn't all that big a deal. I would say that the majority of officers, even armored and artillery officers, end up going through jump school. It's one of those items on the things-to-do checklist. What stood out was that afterwards, he was to do a 30 day TDY at Bragg to learn about airborne operations. When Marilyn learned about this, she got on the phone with Anna Lee and worked out the details. Harlan would stay with us, bank his meals and incidentals allowance, and Anna Lee would come out and stay when she could. Neither Harlan nor I were given any say in this, so I wasn't allowed to take him out to the strip clubs like I threatened.
Chapter 54: Plans and Changes
Lieutenants don't run batteries, just like lieutenants don't run companies. Captains do those things. Or at least in peacetime, they do. Things change rapidly when the bullets start flying. If you survive, you can get promoted quickly. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British officer corps had a ghastly toast when drinking, 'Here's to bloody wars and sickly seasons!', since combat and disease were the two guaranteed methods for openings in the chain of command above you! During World War II you had very young and junior officers running things, with second lieutenants running companies and captains running battalions. If you had talent, and didn't fuck up or get killed, you could move up the ladder. The rank would catch up eventually. In fact, our brigade commander had graduated from West Point in 1964 on the eve of the big buildup in Vietnam, and had been promoted to first lieutenant after a year, captain after one more year, and to major after just two years as a captain.
War is planned by old guys and executed by young guys. It's one of the ugly truths about the military.
In peacetime, things moved a lot slower. After the war was over, a lot of those quickie captains ended up waiting up to eight years to make up their time in grade. I had been a first lieutenant for about a couple of years by now. Realistically I wouldn't expect to be promoted to captain for at least another year. It was probable that I would end my four year commitment as a first lieutenant executive officer of an artillery battery.
Things didn't quite work out that way. In 1979, shortly after I became the exec, Captain Harris transferred to Fort Rucker for flight training! I have no idea where he had gotten the desire to fly choppers. In my heart of hearts I hoped he would be happier there than he had been at Bragg. Maybe he'd do better there. By Halloween we had a new commanding officer, Captain Waslow. We continued to improve in our rankings, but Captain Waslow resigned his commission in January 1980 and left the service to find a job in the private sector. His replacement, Captain Ozawa, had a lot of promise, but ended up in a very nasty divorce and left us in April.
Not only was the battery going through a lot of upheaval with the quick changes, but I was getting a lot of unrated time, since neither Captain Waslow nor Captain Ozawa were around long enough to qualify as my rater. You needed at least 60 days working for a new boss for him to rate you, and neither ended up doing the paperwork. Since I rated the other lieutenants and the battery commanders were the senior raters, it was only me that was affected.
I think at that point the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Buller, simply decided to leave well enough alone. Bravo Battery had become, by any measure, the best battery in the division. We had fewer problems in our drops and landings, set up faster, fired faster, and were more accurate. We had a higher reenlistment rate and fewer problems with the civilian cops. We even had a lower incidence of social disease. This was not to say that the other two batteries were fuckups, far from it. We were simply the best battalion in the DivArty, and we were the best battery in the battalion. Buller simply left me in charge, as an exec without a commander, and gave me another second lieutenant to fill in. Buller would rate me.