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Show J ME D.JOHN 0 25 B R2 09 to get involved with too as well as work with this unit in tactic and training and th n accompanied them on their missions also. JCW: Given that Vietnam was your first 'real world,' if you will, your first combat experience, I'm curious to look at your career as a whole and I'm wondering if there's any lessons that you learned while in Vietnam that you think helped you throughout the rest of your career. JDJ: The lessons you learn. Again, I was twenty-one years old, turned twenty-two over there, a second lieutenant and while there was promoted to first lieutenant. I think the lessons you learn that carry over is, I had a particular lesson in the fact that as a small four-person American team confronted the fact that we were living and working, surviving, rank kind of went out the window and we were all in it together. We all humped the radio, we all carried the grenade launcher, we all manned the machine gun positions during attacks at night, we all took turns cooking, we all took turns going out and burning in slit trenches, where we used to go to the bathroom, and dig a new one. We had to work together to survive. I think the lesson that that taught me so much at that time, that carried over in my career, is here I am twenty-one, twenty-two year old lieutenant and I had E-7 sergeants and a E-8 sergeant, been in the army for twenty years, and for me to tell them what to do was almost a little bit ludicrous. Although I made the decision, their advice and guidance was so important. I grew up knowing in my career that people that run the army, in my case, were the NCOs. Without that strong NCO corps and strong support of those non commission officers, a commissioned officer was no good whatsoever. That carried through throughout my career, all the way through, up until general and beyond, that good NCOs, 7 |
