Happy Fathers' Day

When I joined the National Guard I was looking to fly helicopters.  I enlisted and became a helicopter mechanic (MOS 67N Huey Crew Chief), but after I enlisted and before I started ROTC the Army tightened the requirements for helicopter pilots so that they needed 20/20 vision to start flight school.  I needed glasses.

I quickly looked around for another military career path and decided on Signal.  I won't get into that decision now.  Dad was Signal Officer qualified, but he was also Infantry qualified, Chemical qualified, Medical Services qualified and MP qualified.  At the time of my decision I think he was with the MP Battalion.

I decided on Signal and started drilling with the Signal Battalion as a Cadet.  A few months after that I went to one AT (annual training, or summer camp) with them and was stuck in an officer position with almost no training whatsoever.  Needless to say, it was very stressful.

At the time my Dad had just come back to the Signal Battalion as the Executive Officer (XO).  One day when I was almost at my wit's end Dad happened to stop by.  He told me a funny story about the Battalion Commander.  It cheered me to think that the Old Man had troubles too, and it cheered me just to know that here was a guy I could disappoint and fail, but he would still love me.  That was enough.  He didn't actually cheer me up with a pep talk or anything like that.  He told me the story, told me he loved me and left.

Two years later I was a commissioned Second Lieutenant and a Platoon Leader in the Signal Battalion.  Dad was the commander and I was attending Signal Officer Basic Course in Fort Gordon, GA.  We were having a class on Officer Evaluation Reports (OERs) and discussing conflicts of interest.

For OERs you have a Rater, an Intermediate Rater and a Senior Rater.  The Rater is self-evident.  The Intermediate Rater just makes sure the paperwork is filled out correctly.  The Senior Rater is your commander's commander and is very important to your rating.

I asked the instructor, "What if your Senior Rater is your father?"

He never answered me.  He just slowly turned and said, "You're in the Guard, aren't you?"

Dad had it covered already.  He had the XO be my Senior Rater.  I know that could have been questionable, but she was a real hard@ss and those were some of my toughest evaluations.

Happy Fathers' Day.

NCO to Officer

My oldest is now in college and she has two medium term goals, to get her degree and to graduate as a United States Marine Corps Officer.

This prompted me to tell her how Papa became a US Army Officer.  This is definitely a story that may need additional support from others for authenticity.

After Papa was in the USMC and married for a while, they determined that the two do not mix (at least for Papa and Boushette).  Papa got out of the Marines and joined the Marine Corps Reserve.

A few years and three sons later Papa was an E7 (Gunnery Sergeant) and competed for NCO of the Year.  He won in fact and was awarded NCO of the Year for the entire USMC Reserve.  At about the same time he was applying to attend OCS (Officer Candidate School) with the Marines.

This is where the story gets fuzzy for me.  Either they forwarded the wrong paperwork and some numbskull who was also named William La Fleur was rejected (I can't believe any William La Fleur would be anything less than stellar, but that's just me) and/or his paperwork was delayed because it was the same paperwork that got forwarded for the NCO of the Year Award.

Either way, in the end he was 34 years old before the package went to the board.  At that time (I don't know about now) the USMC had a cutoff of 33 to attend OCS.  He was too old.

He was already a Sergeant in the Chicago Police Department and some of his friends there suggested that he try the Illinois Army National Guard because the Army cutoff age was 35.

He transferred to the Army and ultimately retired as a BG (Brigadier General).  The moral of the story is, keep your goal in sight and keep your legs pumping, never give up there is always a way.

Pope's Visit

I just got back from a trip to Boston.  While there I spotted a plaque that said the first mass ever celebrated by a Pope in the New World was on 1 Oct 79 when Pope John Paul II visited.  That reminded me of the La Fleur family's involvement with that trip.

The Holy Father arrived at O'Hare on Thursday night and drove from there downtown to Cardinal Cody's residence.  My grade school band had a space along Milwaukee Avenue.  One of the music teachers owned a store there and staked out the space for us.  When the Pope sped by in his limo we played "Sto Lat."

That reminds me of a joke.  The Pope was riding along in his limo and at one stop he approached the driver.

"It's been years since I've been allowed to drive, but in my youth I used to be quite a good driver.  Would you mind if I drove for a while?"

Of course the diver agreed and he slid into the back while His Eminence got behind the wheel and adjusted the mirrors.

A few miles down the road a police officer stopped the vehicle for speeding.  When he pulled them over and got the driver's identification he was so astonished that he went back to his patrol car and radioed back to headquarters, "You will never guess who I just pulled over driving this limo!"

"Who, is it somebody important, somebody famous, a rock star, movie star, the President?"

"Well, I don't know how is in the back but he must be REALLY important; the Pope is his driver."

Back to Dad's story.

The next morning, 5 October 1979, Dad had been activated by the National Guard for the Papal Mass at Grant Park.  He was in a hospital unit and they wanted them on site to provide medical support if needed.

Dad and some other Guardsmen who were also police officers were sitting around in their tent on Sunday morning discussing what it would have been like for the police if Jesus Christ came back today and gave the Sermon on the Mount.

At some point someone said that the mass was supposed to have started and they wondered if it was running late.  They had had the flaps of the tent down and hadn't seen or heard anyone.

They opened the flaps of the tent and found more than 200,000 people had filed into the park as if it were a church.  They hadn't heard a pin drop.  It was the largest mass ever held in Chicago and the only Papal Mass and Dad was there.

Camp Shelby, MS

I got this great story from Mike McCormick last week. It isn't the type of story I had thought about when I was thinking of stories for this blog. I don't mean it doesn't fit; it certainly does and is a terrific story. What I mean is it isn't a story that came to mind for me when I was trying to think of stories. This story is more about Papa than a story he would have told, although he had plenty of stories from this trip. The other thing is that this trip had so many stories that are mine that I often forget that there were Papa stories from that time.

Mike asked me to add some details and dates as appropriate. I'll add what I can at the end. Before we start though, the name of the training site is Camp Shelby (famous from the Neil Simon play / Mathew Brodrick film Biloxi Blues). I'm going to have to do some more research on the dates, but I'm pretty sure it was 1991.

"The year of our NG summer camp in Mississippi, Papa was the CO of the signal battalion which was participating in a large Army radio network training operation that stretched from our site in Mississippi all the way over to Florida. My team of about 5 enlisted rank soldiers and myself (NCO) were actually on the remote site which was the very western end of the entire radio network. We had been camped back out in the woods on our own for a week or so while each separate element of the radio net worked to get their equipment up and running so they could each plug in the network and achieve the mission. Our stuff was working fine so after setting up our 75’ antenna, camouflaging the tents and trucks, and tuning in the radios, all we mostly just had to make sure the generators had fuel and nobody got bitten by any snakes.

Since we were in such a remote location, there was little chance of any brass showing up, we had a fair amount of unsupervised freedom, which myself and the guys in my team really enjoyed. Naps were plentiful, shorts and gym shoes in lieu of full uniforms, card games, and touch football ruled the day. A couple of times a day chow was brought out to us, and the fuel truck would make a delivery every few days. Bill, you remember you stopped by a few times, I think mostly just to get a break from the stress of the main company encampment.

We were fortunate to have assigned to us a pickup truck, which we used to take turns running down to the barracks for showers or to head into the nearby town for supplies. We had set up a Coleman gas camping stove and had a small refrigerator running off of the electricity from the generators. So we were turning down our noses at the “food” brought cold and soggy to us from the mess tent and mostly eating cereal and sandwiches and cooking on the stove. We also laid in a nice supply of cold pop, mostly RC which as you know was Papas favorite at the time.

Late one night near the end of the camp, Papa and his driver come down to our site from the road. As this was a unexpected visit from the Colonel, the guys with me panicked a bit. They only knew him as the hard charging boss of the battalion, and were worried that we were in some kind of trouble as we were not really following strict Army regulations and it was a very rare occurrence for the top man to show up unannounced. However, I took one look at him and could see that he was pretty much bushed out, as it had been a long and hard camp, and he had been pushing hard to get the battalion up to speed and complete the mission. This coupled with the late night, the excessive Mississippi heat and humidity, along with a butt load of mud (more on that later) and he was worn out.

I’ll never forget the big smile he cracked when I offered him an ice cold RC and then made up a thick salami sandwich on fresh French bread for him. He stayed with us for few hours, telling Army and Police stories and marveling that we had it so good on our little remote site way back in the woods. He had stopped by because he had wanted to talk over the radio net from our site at one far end all the way to the other end in Florida. I can’t recall if that happened that night, but I do know for sure that but after he took his leave of us, the guys in my team couldn’t stop talking for the rest of the camp about what a great guy he was and how much they enjoyed having that personal time with him.

I still marvel at the way he had turned their anxious concern for the reason for his visit and their trepidation of dealing face-to-face with the Colonel into such a positive and well meaning encounter for them. His innate leadership and natural ability to relate fairly and evenly to one and all, and his ability to inspire and provide confidence to them, caused all of them to regard him highly and to have complete loyalty and faith in his command for the rest of their time in the battalion. And all of this when he was completely worn out and tired, but never out of patience.

-Mike

p.s. This was the summer camp with the unbelievable mud, when trucks and jeeps were getting stuck all the time. The wrecker never got a break pulling them free from the muck. One day in the Charlie Company area Papa and his driver were in his SUV sitting on top of a large hill (really a small cliff) that dominated the site. He instructed his driver to head down to the lower main area of the company site and instead of backing around and coming down the gravel road she just plunged the SUV over the edge of the hill (cliff) and they bounced and banged all the way down. He was terrified that the SUV was going to roll over and they’d be crushed or at least busted up and trapped. They made it ok, those old Army SUV’s were pretty tough. The guys standing at the bottom of the hill that he wanted to speak with couldn’t imagine what was so important that the Colonel would drop in on them like that."

I have more stories, the Blue Mud, the Ride Home from Shelby with the Most Expensive Driver in the Army, My Bordello Office, and the Battalion Formation God Canceled. I will share those another time.

What I can add to Mike's story is that I was at the main site and my job, as a brand new Second Lieutenant, was to supervise the engineering of the signal "shots." Our equipment was Korean War vintage and the signal they used was very narrow so that the antennas had to be pointed directly at each other to get the signal. All the signals shooting from and to our company were coordinated by my office. By office I mean the big aluminum box on the back of a 2.5 ton truck.

The time of the story I got on my radio and called Mike's site to see how things were going and much to my surprise, the Old Man (in more ways than one) was on the horn! He said he was going to sit there all night until the shot got in to Florida. That was just about the time I was supposed to hand over the controls to my NCO so I could get some sleep, but I suppose you can guess that I didn't. The shot never did get in, but there was a certain amount of extra emphasis that night.

Not to nit pick, but Papa was a Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) at the time, not yet a full Colonel (COL).

BTW, the SUVs referenced were Chevy Blazers stripped of any comforts, given diesel engines and painted matte green. There is a little more to that cliff story that I will tell in a future post, but I will end this post with one more detail: I was the guy at the bottom end of that hill.