George Kalergis
I wasn’t what you’d call a typical career Army officer. I started as a drafted enlisted soldier, then fought my way through Officer Candidate School. OCS was the hardest thing I had done up to that point, and the fact that I wasn’t a spit-and-polish kind of soldier made it harder. But I did like leadership. And I liked the clean purpose of field artillery: Shoot. Move. Communicate. Put accurate fire where it matters, when it matters, for soldiers who are pinned down and running out of time.
Six months after commissioning, in January 1967, I was on my way to Vietnam having fired only three training artillery missions from a camp stool at Fort Sill. My fourth would be in combat. I was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry as an aerial forward observer, with the additional duty of right-side M-60 door gunner on a Huey gunship. I’d never been on a Huey and hadn’t even seen an M-60 up close, much less fired one, and now I’m hanging out the door with it.
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