DagWood Dispatches Online ~Vol.1 No.1 ~ April 2006 ~ Issue No.2
Sp4 Richard Hill and his Company Commander in Vietnam, Capt. Sam Matthews
Sister of a 1968 fallen Soldier never gave up
By Sam Matthews
Arlington, Va. (April 10, 2006) — At 1145 today I just missed a call on my cell phone from "Private Number". A couple of minutes later, my office phone rang. I answered it. It was the "Private Number"....
Four years ago, I was surfing the www.thelivingwall.org Website. It lists all the individuals on the Vietnam Memorial Wall, and gives each of them a dedicated page where readers can post pictures and messages. For some reason, I navigated to SP4 Richard Hill’s page. Hill was one of my radio operators, and was killed in April of 1968, a month after I turned over the battalion recon platoon to take command of Alfa Company, 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry. In the messages section of his page was a note from Hill’s sister wanting to make contact with anyone who knew him in Vietnam. I not only knew him, I had a picture of Hill and me. I e-mailed it to her but received an “undeliverable” message back. It was an invalid address, and she left no other information — name, phone, street, city — by which to contact her. I closed this page of the book.
…Fast Forward. The weekend of April 8th, I was the fourth in a chain of e-mails via Dan McFee (B/2-16) and Ron Saxon (D/2-16) originating from Hill’s sister, who once more was asking about anyone who knew him. So again I e-mailed her the photo, along with some words and my cell and office phone numbers. I let her know I could talk with her.
She called me on April 10th. Linda Helm, Richard Hill’s sister. She talked for 45 minutes. Not only was she overwhelmed that this was the first time in 38 years she had heard from someone who knew her brother, but she now had the picture of him taken a few months before he was killed. It was a hard call for both of us. Before we hung up, I also put her in touch with my other radio operator who was with Hill before and after my time, and might have been present during the firefight in which Hill was killed.
I learned that the Hill family was originally from Wyoming, where in 1967 indoor plumbing was still a few years off. They moved to Utah shortly before brother Rick entered the Army. Rick is buried in Springville, Utah along with his dad. The mother lost not only her first but also second husband and has moved back to Wyoming. The sister lives in the Lake Tahoe area of California. She’s a construction worker and her husband is a big rig truck driver. They both have Harleys they ride on the weekends.
Ms Helms said that when she received my e-mail, it caused her to be late to a birthday party partly because of emotion, but also because she just had to tell her mom. Linda said that when she spoke with her 78-year-old mom, she felt a calm in her for the first time in years. As a result of my e-mail and photo, her mom has begun closure and they both have decided to visit the Wall in October. I told her once she had travel plans solidified, to send me an e-mail and I would meet them somewhere in the DC area where I am currently working for Military Professional Resources Incorporated on the Army Installation Management Agency contract.
Correction: In the March issue of the Web Site DD there was an error regarding the deployment of the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry. “After reading the March 2006 edition of the Dogwood Dispatch- would like to address the article on how the 1/16th became "Iron Ranger". The article states that the 1/16th came to RVN in 1967. That is in error. The 1/16th was deployed to RVN from Ft Riley in September 1965. The first location of the battalion was Ben Cat on Hill 29. In January of 1966 the unit moved to Lai Khe and took over a sector of the perimeter with the 2/2 Inf on our left flank and either the 1/18 or 2/28 on our right flank. (age causes some cloudiness). I deployed with the 1/16th. We had fillers join the unit during June and July of '65 and did some training at Fort Riley prior to traveling to Oakland Army Terminal for shipment to Cape St. Jaques, RVN. The trip lasted 22 days on a troop ship. Comment: I knew better but I typed the wrong date. Thanks for the correction
Military Assistance Contacts – We have added a new list of military assistance email addresses and information to our Web Site and hope that all veterans will find this useful.
DISTINGUSIHED MEMBER OF THE REGIMENT – This year’s DMOR Investiture Ceremony will be held at Fort Riley, Kansas during the period July 31 – August 4th. Additionally, on August 1st the 1st Division will be re-flagged officially returning the 1st Infantry Division to Fort Riley. We expect over 50 members of the Regiment and former DMOR to attend these important events. There will be a Military Ball on Thursday night to end the week of activities. If anyone plans on attending please let me know so your name can be added to the list of guests. gkgpag@msn.com This year’s inductees are:
Larry Grandolfo D/2/16 VN SGM Ret Stephen Rabourn, HHC /1/16
William Powell A/2/17 VN LTC Ret Anthony Turner Cdr 1/16 CW
CSM Ret William Ryan 1/3/16 WWII Col Ret Skip Baker Cdr 5/16 DS
Honorary Members of the Regiment are:
Mrs. Gertrude Orton – Wife of Henry Orton Decd Co L WWII
Mrs. Maria C Lipinski – Wife of James Lipinski Decd Regt Hq. WWII
I suggest that if you plan to attend these two ceremonies in August that you call the Marriott Courtyard Hotel as soon as possible and reserve one of the rooms that are reserved for the 16th Infantry Regiment before they are all gone. We have only about 6 or 7 left. The tel: number for reservation is; 785-210-1500.
LOOKING FOR – Can anyone help? My name is Ron Mayville I was with the 5th /60th Bandido Charlie 67/68; I have been in contact with Mike Renshaw who lives near me in Syracuse, N.Y. I have a great friend Dan Bowen from my home town Brushton, New York 12916. I knew he was with the 1st Infantry Division, but have just learned he was with the 1st / 16th Bravo Company June/July 67/68; DAN is handicapped for the past 25 years with ‘MS’. Dan told me that he doesn’t remember much and I told him that there was some one who is looking for him. MIKE RENSHAW sent me a group picture of BANDIDO CHARLIE COMPANY with the names of the people under the group. If any one remembers Dan, they could write to Dan Bowen, Brushton, New York, 12916 or email me or write; Ron Mayville, Sweet Road, Jamesville, New York 13078. Phone: 315-682-7138.
SPECIAL FORT BENNING DMOR CEREMONY – In April our Association
President, Dennis Moorhead and Vice President Bob Humphries along with one
of our past DMOR’s went from Atlanta, Georgia to Fort Benning to present
DMOR Plaques to former 1st Battalion Command Sergeant Major Joe
Leggette and his wife Harriett. CSN Leggette and his wife departed Fort
Riley last year before the DMOR Investiture Ceremony. Congratulation to both
on their induction as DMOR and HMOR and thanks for their support of our
great Regiment and Association.
REMINDER – The email address portion of our Web Site is only available to dues paying members. If you are not currently up to date on you dues, please do so. Also only dues paying members are on the mailing list for the new twenty-one page printed edition of the Dagwood Dispatches that is mailed to our members three times a year. The May issue is ready for mailing the last week in April. If anyone as any articles, pictures or suggestions for the printed edition of the DD contact; Ron Mackendanz at bandidomack@willmar.com. If you have something for the Web edition please contact; Jerry Griffin at gkgpag@msn.com
ELECTIONS - There will be Board Elections during the General membership Meeting held at this year’s reunion in Phoenix. Running for President of the Association is CSM Ret. Bill Ryan and Ltc. Ret. Tony Turner. There are two vacancies for Vice President and John Copeland and Mick Daley is running to fill those two positions. If anyone else wants to run for any of these positions please contact me, or Ron Saxton, our Assn Secretary. These elections are important to the continued growth of our Association. We need elected Board Members willing to put forth the time and effort it takes to continue our success. During the past couple of years the weight of the Association has been the burden of one or two individuals who do all the work. This needs to change or we will see a continued decline in overall membership.
DONATIONS - All donations to the Soldiers Iraq Fund or general donations go to Ken Alderson our Treasurer. If you care to assist in helping us take two active duty soldiers to the 16th Infantry Regiment’s Museum in Fleville, France in October 2007 please send those donations to Jerry Griffin. If you have any questions please email Jerry at gkgpag@msn.com. We really hope that we can raise the money necessary to do this. We estimate that it will cost a total of about $3500.
ALERT - Veterans Affairs Services (UNCLASSIFIED) CSM's, the SMA asked that I forward this information on to each of you for dissemination to your Soldiers. We have been advised by the VA of an organization calling itself Veterans Affairs Services (VSA). This organization is gathering personal information on veterans under a VA services website. This organization is not affiliated with the VA in any way and in reality is a private company based in California. It describes itself as a nonprofit veteran's service organization but they are actually affiliated with the Military Financial Planning association. They may be gaining access to military personnel through their close resemblance to the VA name and seal. VA's legal counsel has requested we inform our installations, particularly mobilization sites of this group and their lack of affiliation or endorsement by VA to provide any services. In addition, if you have any examples of VAS acts such as VAS employees assisting veterans in the preparation and presentation of claims for benefits, please pass these on to Michael.Daugherty2@va.gov, (202) 273-8636. Mr. Daugherty is a Staff Attorney with the Department of Veterans Affairs here in Washington D.C. I am attaching an info paper describing the company and their websites. Please pass this along to your Commands.
v/r
SGM John Heinrichs
1ST INFANTRY DIVISION PREPARES VHECILES FOR RETURN TO FORT RILEY
Photo #1 - INSPECTS: PFC Stephen Guthrie, a cavalry scout from C Troop,
1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, inspects a 1st Infantry
Division vehicle at the Harvey Barracks Intermediate Staging Area in
Kitzingen April 19. The 1st ID vehicles are scheduled to be rail
loaded April 21-22 and moved to Rotterdam, Holland, in route to Fort Riley,
Kan. (Photo by SPC Joe Alger, 1st Infantry Division Public
Affairs)
Photo #2 - CHECKS: PVT Jarid Dennis, a cavalry scout from C Troop, 1st
Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, inspects a vehicle from HHC, 1st
Infantry Division for leaks during an Intermediate Staging Area inspection
at Harvey Barracks April 19. More than 130 pieces of equipment from the
Division headquarters will be inspected and shipped to Fort Riley, Kan.
(Photo by SPC Joe Alger, 1st Infantry Division Public Affairs)
An Army At War Getting Overhaul
By Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
FORT RILEY, KAN. - On a bumpy patch of grass blurred by the predawn darkness, Lt. Col. Patrick Frank is building America's new Army one leg lift at a time.
At first glace, this daybreak workout for the 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment looks not at all unusual - full of sweat, stomach crunches, and cries of "hooah!"
But there, exercising with the infantrymen of the 1-28, is a company of cooks and mechanics. The fact that they are even present, puffing alongside 1-28, is part of the most comprehensive overhaul of the force since the end of World War II.
When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaks of creating a faster and more flexible Army, this is where it begins. The idea is to emphasize smaller units like the 1-28, pushing materiel and manpower - like these cooks and mechanics - further down the Army's organizational chain.
By giving these smaller units more resources, the Army is making them more self-sufficient - and that gives Pentagon leaders more options. In the past, the smallest unit the Army could send to any global hot spot was a division of nearly 20,000 troops. By pushing its resources downward, now the Army can mobilize individual brigade combat teams as small as 3,500 troops.
It is a fundamental change brought about by a new security environment. During the cold war, the threat was a massive war against the Soviets, so it made sense to organize the Army into a few massive pieces. Today, however, America is faced more and more with smaller conflicts, and the Pentagon is convinced that this requires smaller pieces that can be moved around the globe more easily.
Yet the changes are already echoing beyond the arcane matter of military organization into soldiers' everyday lives.
Not only will infantrymen train more frequently with soldiers they would rarely have seen in the old system - as was on display in the predawn workout. But as members of the Army's newly created brigade combat teams, they all will also spend three years at one post - training together, living together, and eventually going to war together.
"The benefit is that we ... will be conducting all these day-to-day operations together," says Colonel Frank. "So when we transition to Iraq, we'll be better at it."
In the peripatetic Army of the past, where soldiers moved from post to post like human hot potatoes, three years in one place - with one unit - were unthinkable. For soldiers with families, in particular, the new three-year rotation promises some semblance of normalcy.
"If you've got a family, everybody gets to grow together," says Capt. Jermaine Hampton of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the same brigade combat team as the 1-28.
Yet for many of the officers, three years together offer something else perhaps just as significant: the opportunity to build a true team.
That's what's happening at machine-gun Range 7. On a day when wind whips the Kansas dust sideways and nearby aluminum bleachers cook like silver-topped stoves in the sun, Capt. Gregory Escobar strides among his soldiers. These are recruits only a year out of basic training, and Captain Escobar is building them up, lesson by lesson.
To one, he suggests moving a pile of shell casings aside. To another, he offers advice on why the tracers are whizzing high over the target.
In the old Army, these soldiers would probably have moved to another unit by the time they deployed in a year. Now, Escobar will almost certainly take most of them to war in the 2-16.
"Before, you were not able to figure out, 'Hey my boss likes to do things this way,' " says Escobar.”Now, you will know exactly how each guy will react in any given situation" because you know them and train with them.
Moreover, it creates greater accountability in training. "You are going to fight the team you build," says Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, commanding officer of the 2-16.
The buzzword for the change is "modularity," and it is based on the idea that each new brigade combat team is an independent "module" that can be plugged into any situation. "Our brigade combat team can go fight for any headquarters in the Department of Defense," says Colonel Kauzlarich.
For instance, the 4th brigade combat team, 1st Infantry Division here contains:
*The 1-28 and 2-16 infantry battalions.
*A cavalry reconnaissance squadron.
*An artillery battalion.
*The 610th Brigade Support Battalion.
*A special-troops battalion with a military-police platoon, a signal company for communications, an engineer company, and a military intelligence company.
For Col. Rob Weaver, commanding officer of the 610th Support Battalion, this convergence at the brigade level is nothing less than a revolution. He deployed to Iraq in a unit that had not yet gone through modularization.
That meant he had to go to the division to get the troops and equipment he needed.
"I didn't have the mechanics, but I was still responsible for getting the stuff fixed," he says. "Now, I have all the equipment and soldiers, and I don't have to reach back [to division] to ask for it."
"In Iraq, we had three mechanics in an infantry battalion," he notes. "Now, each battalion has ... 50 soldiers to do maintenance."
Yet modularity does have its critics. Even in peacetime, the process of reorganizing the entire Army would be monumental, considering that it involves recasting the training, deployment, and rotation of every soldier. That the Pentagon is attempting to do it amid two wars is unprecedented.
In many ways, the process is independent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the frequent debate over the size of the Army has more to do with the total number of soldiers than with modularity - that is, how they are organized.
Yet within that debate, both the Pentagon and critics point to modularity to support their positions.
The Pentagon notes that a primary reason behind modularity is to free up more troops to fight. By reshuffling personnel and reorganizing the force, the Army hopes to increase the number of its brigades from 33 to 42 by 2010.
That gives the Army more deployable units to help spread the load of repeated deployments. "We needed a force that was able to do a whole lot more than what they were in the past," says Lt. Col. Gregg Skibicki, a modularity expert at the Pentagon.
Critics, however, cite a report by the Institute for Defense Analyses, which contends that modularity actually reduces the number of troops on the ground. By including engineers and military police (MP) and reconnaissance troops in a brigade, they suggest, the Army is reducing the number of infantrymen in a brigade who can patrol an area - a vital function in combating an insurgency.
The Pentagon counters that many types of soldiers can patrol an area, so there will be no drop-off in force within a brigade. "Our MPs are actually holding checkpoints out there," says Colonel Skibicki.
Undertaking this transformation during wartime, however, has had consequences. When the Iraq war began, many Army brigades were going through modularization and were not ready to deploy. The National Guard had to pick up the slack.
In early 2005, 10 National Guard brigades were in Iraq. As more Army brigade combat teams have come on line, the reliance on the National Guard has fallen. Currently, only two National Guard brigades are in Iraq.
Whether the modularization program can continue at its current pace is uncertain, analysts say. The estimated cost of the program has nearly doubled from $28 billion to $52.5 billion in the past two years, according to the Government Accountability Office. And some analysts disagree with the assertion that the Army can increase from 33 to 42 brigades without an increase in manpower and materiel.
"There is some indication that they might not have the people and the equipment to do it," says Andrew Feickert of the Congressional Research Service.
Among the commanders at Fort Riley, there is certainly an understanding of the difficulty of the task, but also a hunger to make it work. Says Kauzlarich: "We are building an airplane while in flight - and while we are in the fight."
DMOR DONATIONS – If you haven’t sent in you DMOR donation it is not too late. Please send them to Jerry Griffin. We still have a significant number of DMORs who have not yet responded.