Ain’t It
Great to be CAV?
Ken Howser
Company A, 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry
1969-1970
It is great when your year is planned out in advance. Get set in 2005 when you learn the 59th reunion was to be in Louisville, KY. The first two weeks in January formalize your vacation plans at work. Yes, all “primetime” leave has to be set in January for fear of losing that cherry week. Take a “burst of three” for the first time in ages.
That done one needs to call the reunion hotel to book the prime days and CAV rate. Include all the follow up calls to fine-tune the dates and other aspects. Don’t forget a last call the week prior and find the hotel shorted you out of one night.
Hit the heights when your wife agrees to go with you and see what it really is you have been raving about for years. A month to go and you find out your 11 year old grandson will also be available for your entourage. A week to go and you call that last buddy you have been working on for years. He is going also! The first soul that you are aware of ever attending from the old wartime line company and platoon.
Spend the first week of that vacation three in the PA Pocono’s in 12 inches of rain. Avoid the evacuations and the worse flooding since hurricane Agnes (the Gold Standard of hurricanes on the East Coast). Find out DC is flooded also.
Spend the second week at home taking care of the homework. Schedule those visits to the doctor and the dentist. Have the dentist tell you to schedule a root canal at your leisure.
Two days before you are to leave in the CAV squad car get the dreaded zero dark hundred phone call from security to meet your mother-in-law at the hospital emergency room. Spend a day and a half to learn they have scheduled surgery for a pacemaker on Monday at 1630. (You are to leave early Sunday AM)
Thank all powers it is your wife’s mother and not yours. If it were yours, you would have to stay home. As it is your wife’s mother, she falls on the grenade and stays home. It sucks that your partner has to miss the reunion but that still leaves the trip with the grandson and the chance to meet with the old war buddy.
Begin the trip on Sunday with high expectations. Stop at every chance to enhance the experience with the grandson; visit rest areas and play soccer, explore visitor centers, etc., don’t drive through – eat in. Find the root canal problem flaring to painful life.
At the first rest area in KY get back in the APC (auto personnel CAV) to find the driver’s seat belt latching mechanism has bought the farm. That just has to be fixed! Every time thereafter create laughter as you attempt to latch the unlatch-able. Drive with the unlatched belt over your left arm so you don’t get a ticket for being sans seatbelt.
Drive in one day what you thought would take two days. Encamp 30 minutes away from Louisville at 1700 because the host hotel is booked solid for Sunday night. Note to self: the grandson wants to stay only at motels with a pool. Further note to self after first night in the field: choose only motels with indoor pools, as these stand the chance of being warm enough to actually enter.
Enter host city early to find fine repair center for CAV-mobile. Explain to conscientious personnel problem with vehicle. Listen to them tell you what they ‘think’ is wrong with vehicle. Gloat to self and grandson when they admit to being wrong and you that were correct.
Take grandson and self to visit Louisville Slugger factory and museum. Have a blast and as you leave, pose grandson in front of giant bat. Have weirdoes say they will take your picture with your ‘son’. Think, “Yeah, right! And keep my camera?” Discover upon looking that these are really nice Gentlemen in CAV Stetsons. They take your pictures. You wonder, “Are all CAV persons really nice, or are all really nice persons CAV?”
After breaking the ice with CAV people notice them everywhere. Take grandson down to see the Ohio River. Take pictures, see barges, take more pictures, take grandson to the Science Center, and take even more pictures. The day is winding down so head to the host hotel to register.
Establish a perimeter in the parking lot. Take note and point out to grandson the variations of CAV - vehicles, bumper stickers, license plates, magnets, etc. Enter the building and gloat in CAV – persons, shirts, hats, eras.
This is just the start: look, hear, and enjoy. Watch everyone. Listen to everyone. No one is a stranger to anyone or an outsider in any conversation. These are not civilians. It is expected that you will speak to any and everyone; regardless as to whether you know or knew them. It is expected that you are a participant in every conversation. It is considered impolite if you do not at the very least listen in, and if you have something worthwhile to offer, to offer it. If someone sometime (aged 5 to 500) does not walk up and start talking to you, you are giving off bad vibes.
You start to talk to people in the elevators. You ask general or specific directions to places or functions. “Nice hat”, “nice shirt”, “where did you get that”, “where are you from?” You say hi or howdy to everyone in CAV regalia. “Hey bud, I never saw a tattoo like that!” Speak in the restaurants, the gift shop, and the pool; dare I say, the can?
I had conversations in the elevators, restaurants, pool, and while sitting in the lobby. Also on the tours, the buses, the dinners. My favorite method of attack is to choose a vacant table at a scheduled meal and let it fill up around you. You are guaranteed to make and converse with new friends. I met and talked with the old guns I have seen in the “Saber” and at other reunions, and new people I had not seen before. I also find during and for a time after these reunions that I am more forth coming and out going, more verbose, with everyone I meet.
I met “The Greek” and his wife, a man and wife from WV from the area my wife grew up in, the ‘stars’ at both the banquet and regimental lunches. So many people at their first reunion; so many people who decided at the last moment to attend, who announced to all and sundry the great time they were having and that they could not comprehend they had missed out on so much for so long - if only they had known. No matter how much we tell them, they finally have to realize it for themselves. I feel like saying to them, “You may think you left the CAV, but eventually you will find that the CAV never left you.” In a very real sense, in the depths of my being, I am of the belief that in a deep psychological level that it is not they who need us, but we as individuals that truly, and I do mean truly, need them. I always liken belonging to any veterans group as the finding of a pair of gloves you used years in the past and lost. When you find them and put them on, you are in awe of how easily and smoothly they fit. It is if they had never left your possession or hands.
The division and regimental associations don’t go to the trouble and expense of holding these reunions for their own benefit or glory or to make money; they do it for us - the members, the nonmembers, and the hopefully to-be members. I never had the leisure to learn of the Division Association. It was never brought up before I DEROS’ed the Republic of Viet Nam. At a veterans reunion in Waynesboro, PA, a fellow CAV-ite purchased a 1st Cavalry belt buckle. Inside was a recruitment flyer for the division association. First thing he or I ever knew of the association. Thanks to Barry Williamson of belt buckle and recruitment fame I joined the association and subscribed to the “Saber”. The first time I found a reunion close to the East Coast I jumped on that puppy like a big dog! And, the first regimental lunch I attended, I joined that association also.
Whenever I see our division color guard, the horse detachment, with their sabers, I am forever reminded of my classic Western film, the John Ford-John Wayne epic, “The Searchers”. As you recall Ward Bond’s character is constantly telling the young lieutenant, “Be careful with that knife, Boy!” Sorry, that is what I always recall. I know also they get tired of hearing how young they look, but my golly, they do look young. It is hard to believe we were each and every one that young once. As I say, I like kids, I used to go to school with them.
My favorite times at the reunions are the general membership meetings, the regimental lunches, the banquet dinner and the state of the division update, the postings and retirements of the colors, but most importantly the memorial service with the long roll muster. Taps and the pipes playing “Amazing Grace” are guaranteed to make me cry. And it is good to cry for these causes.
On the long schlep home toward LZ Grant, the grandson and I made camp and setup our nightly defensive perimeter in West Virginia. I instructed him to shower in the evening and I would shower in the morning to save time in the morning breaking of camp. He does not do early mornings well, thereby giving the name to the candy bar “Slo-Poke”. He goes into the bathroom, closes the door, I hear the shower running, and screams of, “Ow, ow, ow!” He comes out later wet, glistening, hair disheveled, dries out, and we proceed to bed.
Early next morning I go into the bathroom, shave, brush my teeth, and sans clothing start to get into the shower. But: I notice the only bar of soap (supplied with the room) is unopened on the sink counter! OK, I guess he used the shampoo to wash his bod. Problem: the only bottle of shampoo (supplied with the room) is also unopened on the sink counter!
Being the all-believing and noble grandfather, also the father surrogate for the journey, I yell out, “Tyler, I thought you took a shower last night?” “I did Poppa!” “Then what did you shower with?”
“I took a water shower.”
Recalling the past night, I knew he had. I had just experienced a “grandfather moment’- a ‘water shower’ was a new discovery for me!
A few highlights of ‘my’ reunion:
An hour and a half in the hotel pool everyday with my grandson, the other children, their parents, and the CAV.
My grandson in the CAV shop asking if I would buy him a First Cavalry pin with the Vietnam slash - I did.
My buddy going through the CAV gift shop and never buying a thing. So I ‘awarded’ him the first 1st Cavalry pin w/Vietnam slash I bought years ago from the gift shop.
My buddy and I sitting at dinner and ordering the local nut brown beer. The waitress telling us we might want to try something else, as everyone that had ordered that beer tonight had not liked it. We had had it previously and had liked it, so we assured her that was indeed what we wanted. We should have insisted she check the ID’s of those people, as they had no business being served alcohol!
Sitting in the lobby with my grandson awaiting my era buddy for the banquet. An anonymous head appears over the balcony and asks, “Are they wearing their hats to the banquet?” I assured him that indeed, some were.
Again sitting in the lobby and a gentleman was describing how he had craved a Stetson for himself. He was describing in detail how one was measured for this headgear. No matter how he wanted one, he could not make himself rationalize spending that amount of money on himself. The Christmas past he had been at his son-in-law’s house to celebrate Christmas. All presents were pasted out and opened when his son-in-law said, “Pap, there is a box over behind the tree for you.” He retrieved the box, opened it, and found his Stetson. He said he lost it then and there, overcome with emotion that someone would care so much for him.
On my way home the auto-copter and ourselves were sucking fumes so we refueled at a Krystal. Of course the GS and I were wearing our CAV gear. The waitress behind the counter stated, “My nephew is a Sergeant-Major in the First Cav.” We discussed the deployment of the division the day after his birthday and her concerns for his safety. I left her with the best wishes for his welfare and of all the troopers from us ‘old guys’.
Upon my return home my top-kick and I were renting a storage room at our local unit and I mentioned in the flow of conversation that I was wearing yellow and black as my favorite colors (CAV Colors) and the gentleman said, “My son is a Staff Sergeant in the CAV.” It does pay to wear CAV and to mention CAV!
What was the highlight of the reunion for me besides my old company war buddy? My grandson saying as I woke him up to go home, “I don’t want to go home.” Then he topped even that when later in the car he said, “Poppa, can I go to Jacksonville (2008 reunion) with you?”
Yes, it is Great to be CAV!