Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story

PART I

THE SHAPING OF A SOLDIER

CHAPTER 1

The Rio Grande Valley

My soul is anchored in a poverty-stricken town on the desolate banks of the Rio Grande River—an international boundary that separates a superpower from a country still struggling to make its way out of the Third World. Less than a hundred miles down the road are the Texas cities of McAllen, Harlingen, and Brownsville. But just on the other side of the river, some 1,200 meters to the south, is Mexico. The flowing water, itself, provides an oasis of life in the dusty, desert landscape—nourishing the plants, animals, and people gathered along its meandering path.

Rio Grande City, where I was born in 1951, is one of the oldest settlements in South Texas. It flourished around Fort Ringgold, a military outpost established in 1848 in the wake of the United States–Mexico War. Occupied by Confederate forces during the Civil War, and the federal cavalry afterward, Fort Ringgold was eventually closed, but was reactivated for brief periods of service during World War I and World War II. Despite the continuing presence of the U.S. military, Rio Grande City had a checkered history marked by ethnic hatred and racial intolerance.

I grew up in a Hispanic community among people who possessed little of material value. My own family was among the worst off in the neighborhood. But our poverty was balanced by a tight-knit network of extended relatives steeped in faith, tradition, and the strong values of honesty, integrity, and respect. The adults in our family were Rectos—Spanish for those whose very frames stand erect with honor and pride.

My father Domingo Sanchez was the son of a baker who had emigrated to Rio Grande City from Camargo, Mexico (directly across the river), at the turn of the century. His first marriage produced two sons, Ramon and Domingo Jr. (Mingo). During World War II, Dad was exempt from military service because of his critical skill job as a welder who built airplanes at Laredo Air Force Base. After the war ended, he returned to Rio Grande City because, as he said, Laredo was too far away from home. It was there where in 1948 he met and married my mother, Maria Elena Sauceda, who was seventeen years his junior.

Mom also had deep Mexican roots. Her family emigrated to Rio Grande City around the turn of the century. Her grandfather was a Yacqui Indian, native to northern Mexico, who wore all whites, a sash, and sandals, and carried a machete with him wherever he went. He and his wife went off to fight in the Mexican Revolution and never returned. It’s believed they were killed in battle. Their young son, Carlos Sauceda, was raised in Rio Grande City by his maternal grandparents. Eventually, he married Elena Morales, who gave birth to my mother in 1927.

Soon after they married, my parents’ family began to grow. Roberto was born in 1949, then me in 1951, then Leonel three years later. After that, Magdelena de los Angeles, David Jesus, and Diana Margot came along spaced evenly about eighteen months to two years apart. We lived among the dingy, dusty houses that decorated the bedraggled Roosevelt Street. Right across the street from us was the Benito Gonzalez family. They had more than a dozen kids and were migrant workers. Because their family needed money, the Gonzalez kids left school around the age of twelve or thirteen and went to work full-time.

The first house we lived in was an old military barracks that my dad bought dirt-cheap from one of the former World War II camps. I remember them hauling it onto our property and setting it up on concrete blocks. It was only one room, fifteen feet wide by twenty-five feet long, without doors, windows, a bathroom, plumbing, or electricity. We never owned a television. For heat in the winter, my parents would gather mesquite branches from the woods and build a fire. They would place the burning embers into an old aluminum tub and bring it into the house for us to gather around. There was an outhouse on the back part of the lot and, in the far corner, we had a little wooden shack that we used for bathing. The water line on the property stretched from the front to the backyard. It was nothing more than a pipe sticking out of the ground with a faucet on it. So we filled a pail there, hauled it to the shack for bathing or into the house for cooking.

We lived in that one-room house for four or five years, until my father saved up enough money to build a small brick house on the same lot. It had only a tiny living room (about eight by ten feet) and two small bedrooms, but the brick exterior made a big difference in holding the warmth in on cold winter nights. As our family grew, Roberto and I slept in one bedroom in our own bunk beds—and the living room became a third bedroom. On a bunk bed there, my younger brothers Leo and David slept together in the top bunk, and my sisters Maggie and Diana slept in the bottom one. When that house was built, all the necessary water pipes were run in, but my father couldn’t afford to buy sinks, bathtubs, or toilets, so we continued to use the outhouse and the shack in the backyard.

Because my dad earned very little as a welder, we were on welfare during most of my youth. I remember standing with my mother in the welfare lines every Thursday waiting to receive allocations of pork, beef pieces, applesauce, cheese, flour, and rice, the bulk of which was gone in a day or two. Then we were back to our normal staples of beans and rice.

While beef was a rarity and a treat, the biggest treat of all was goat, or cabrito. Every once in a while, my father would buy one and I’d help him slaughter it in the backyard. We’d prepare it in a variety of ways, such as barbecued or stewed. Sometimes we’d wrap the goat in a sack and place it on top of mesquite embers in a hole in the ground. Eight or ten hours later, we’d have the best food in the world. At Christmas time, there were usually no presents under our tree. Actually, most of the time, we didn’t even have a tree. Dad welded some stars out of metal and we placed them on the windows or over the carport. And that’s how we usually prepared for the holidays.

School itself was very important to the poor people of the Rio Grande Valley—especially to my mother who, from my earliest memory, placed tremendous emphasis on getting a good education. In grade school, 99 percent of the kids spoke Spanish as a first language. Back then, there was no requirement for us to speak English in the classroom, so everybody fell back on their natural inclinations, including the teachers. They’d try to teach us English, but just as soon as we walked out of class, we reverted back to our native language.

As I think back on my early days in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, I am struck by the influence of the military way of life that constantly surrounded me. Our first house came off an old military post. I went to school at Fort Ringgold, which had been purchased from the government by the school district and turned into a learning campus. My classrooms were in Army buildings. And the fort’s history was ever present—the Mexican War, the U.S. cavalry, the Civil War, and two world wars. And then there was the constant influence of my older half brothers, Mingo and Ramon, both of whom served in uniform.

By the time I was five years old, Mingo had left the house and enlisted in the Army. After his initial tour, he joined the U.S. Air Force. Whenever he had a scheduled leave, he sent word that he would arrive on a certain day and the first thing he was going to do was inspect us. So my older brother, Robert, and I would scramble to get ready. We’d get haircuts, bathe, polish our shoes, and make sure our clothes were clean. And when Mingo walked in the house, he’d say, Okay, line up, men. Robert and I then got in formation and stood at attention while Mingo walked up and down looking carefully at our hair, our hands, our clothes, and especially our shoes. Good. Good. You look good, men, he might say. Or, Private Sanchez, there’s a smudge on your left shoe. Have that taken care of the next time I see you. Yes, sir. I will, sir.

My other big brother, Ramon, had served a short stint on active duty in the Army and then came home to Rio Grande City and was a member of the Reserves for twenty-five years. One weekend each month, I would see him in his uniform when he reported to the Reserve Center near Fort Ringgold for his regular meetings. And once a year, his unit would deploy to Fort Hood, north of Austin, for mandatory training. Even though they were going only four hours away, all the families would gather for the departure ceremony. The reservists, dressed in uniform and carrying duffel bags, would line up in formation. A few appropriate remarks would be made by the commanding officer and then, as the buses were boarded and pulled away, people cheered, held up small flags, and waved goodbye. And when they came home two weeks later, we would greet them all with the same emotion and fanfare.

I was imbued with this very real love of country early on. It wasn’t just Ramon, Mingo, and their commitment to military service. My uncles, Leonel and Carlos Sauceda, had served during World War II, and I would often play with some of the war trophies that my grandmother kept for them. My father was also very proud that he had been designated an essential civilian working for the Air Force during World War II. My dad was a loving, giving father, not prone to straying from his roots. But he also had a problem with alcohol. Whenever Dad had extra money, he’d buy a bottle of mezcal, drink it down, and throw the bottles out in front of the house. As far back as I can remember, he carried a flask in his back pocket everywhere he went. Every day, Robert and I would go downtown with him to visit a couple of bootleggers. Sometimes he’d stay in the car and send us down an alley and into the backyard of a house where we’d tap on the window and give the bootlegger a quarter, who’d then fill up Dad’s flask. He also liked to gamble. On weekends, we’d go with him and Tio [Uncle] Raul to la jugada, a local gambling spot on the northwestern outskirts of town, close to the cemetery. It was just a little corral with a tarp cover where the men would shoot craps and drink. Robert and I usually stood to the side and watched, hoping they’d win, because that meant we’d get a few pennies from the winnings.

My father’s drinking and gambling problems eventually took a toll on our family. My parents grew angry with each other and trouble in the house created a stressful environment that lasted for years. My way of coping was to leave early in the morning and not come back until late at night. I just had to take care of myself and keep busy. My father finally moved out of the house when I was about ten. Even though my parents’ divorce was a very traumatic event in my life, I still got to see Dad every day, because he went to live with his older brother, Raul, in their childhood home.

Tio Raul ran a little laundry and tailor shop in the middle of town. The building itself wasn’t much more than a wooden shack that looked like it was about to fall apart. He recruited me to work for him before I entered the first grade. Customers dropped off clothing in the mornings and Tio Raul would clean, press, and do his tailoring during the day. I brought him his breakfast early in the mornings, and then as soon as school let out, I’d go right back and get to work. I’d empty out the washer, get rid of the water, and sweep out the front of the shop. And then I would be his delivery boy—walking all around town to take the cleaned and tailored clothes back to his customers.

My Tio Raul was a very kind and gentle man. He never married, and spent much of his spare time drinking and gambling with my father. But he almost never missed a day of work. And all through my childhood, he encouraged me to work hard, stay in school, and follow my dreams. He was very much a second father to me.

Over the years, I picked up a couple of other jobs, but they were always secondary, because Tio Raul never let me slack off from my duties for him. Among my other jobs: stocking shelves and sweeping out the local drugstore for fifty cents a week, and selling newspapers for a nickel a piece and keeping one penny for myself. When I wasn’t working, I roamed around town with my buddies, David Saenz, and Jose de Jesus (Chuy) Trevino. Chuy’s dad was a mechanic and David’s dad owned an electronics store down the street from my uncle’s tailor shop. I remember very distinctly walking by that shop, looking in the window, and seeing a television set for the first time. Chuy and I would often hang out at David’s house, because that’s where we got to watch TV. The three of us were almost inseparable. To scrounge up some money, we wandered through town collecting soda and long-neck beer bottles and then sold them back to the bars for a few pennies. Our playground was the plaza, the alleyways and town streets, the railroad, the woods, and the arroyos.

As I grew older, I became attuned to the culture and values of my Hispanic community. Our deep faith in God pervaded everything we did, whether it was in church, in school, or in plain everyday conversation. For instance, the appropriate response to "Hasta mañana [Until tomorrow], was always, Si Dios quiere [If God wills]." We owed everything to God and we would be okay if He wished us to be. Si Dios quiere.

The people of the Rio Grande Valley also believed in curses that were tied to the Indian beliefs of northern Mexico. The belief was that children had to have the curse removed by chasing away its evil spirits. I very clearly remember my mother taking us to faith healers, or curanderas, for the curarte de susto (curing of your fears) ceremony. I was led into a room with lighted candles all around and pictures of saints adorning the walls, and then lay down on a table. The curanderas would do some chants, lay hands on me, and pass a broom over me several times to sweep away the evil spirits. And when I came out of that little room, I felt great. I had been healed. And my mother was greatly relieved. I can remember going through these ceremonies up to the age of twelve or thirteen. Mom put all of us through one every six months or so, whether we had been cursed or not.

Among the values imbued in the Hispanic community and my family, in particular, three stand out. The first was hard work. Not only was I never allowed to slack off, it was drummed into me that if I worked hard, I could achieve anything I wanted in life. Of course, from grade school on, I was self-sustaining to a large degree. I continued to work for Tio Raul until he died of cancer when I was a senior in high school.

The second value involved the handshake. My father and uncle imbued this in me at a very young age. If you say you’re going to do something, don’t back away from it, they told me. You better make sure you know what you’re committing to, because once you shake hands, by God, that’s it. Your word is your bond.

The third value was simply to tell the truth no matter what. I was taught to live by this principle. Lying never, ever went unpunished in our house. You better tell the truth, my mom would say, because if you don’t, and I find out later, you’ll get an extra whipping. I remember one time when my parents found out that I’d been in a rock fight. When I got home, they confronted me right away. Okay, did you do it? they asked. We’ll let you off lighter if you tell the truth. I knew I was going to get my butt whipped. I just had to figure out how to get the least number of whacks. So I told the truth. Mom and Dad never spared the whip.

Interestingly enough, the same woman who took us to the curanderas to sweep away evil spirits was also very practical about school work. (And she led by example, because after the divorce, she made a determined effort to obtain her high school equivalency degree.) When I was thirteen, my brother and I came home one day during the summer and announced that we weren’t going to school when it started up again in the fall. When she asked us why, we pointed out that the Gonzalez kids were migrant workers and they were not only gone in the springtime, but they dropped out of school as they got older. Why can they get out of school and not us? we asked.

My mom paused for a moment and then said, Okay, you can go pick cotton. Then she went right out and arranged for a truck to come by the next morning at five thirty and take us out about thirty miles to La Gloria, a local ranch, to pick cotton with about thirty other workers. So there I was out in this field with a huge sack on my back getting paid fifty cents for every hundred pounds I picked. Well, I couldn’t pick a hundred pounds of cotton in a week. So not only could I not make any money, I was breaking my back and working harder than I ever had in my life. To top it all off, when I got home in the evenings, I still had to go to my uncle’s tailor shop, clean up, and make all his deliveries around town.

After about two or three weeks working in the fields, Robert and I told Mom we wanted to go back to school. Okay, she said, you boys can go back to school when it starts up again. But you’re going to have to keep picking cotton until the summer ends. My mother was an incredibly smart woman.

In the end, all six of her children went to college and earned at least a bachelor’s degree. Robert became an RN and director of the operating room technician program at Texas State Technical College; Leo grew up to be a teacher and a coach; Maggie, a high school principal; David, a power systems technician for a power and light company; Diana, a pharmacist. And after college, I started my career in the U.S. Army.

ON MARCH 5, 1966, Private First Class (PFC) Joel Rodriguez, age twenty-two, was killed in the jungles of Vietnam. He had been a popular student and football player at Rio Grande City High School and, after graduation, had joined the Marine Corps. It seemed as though the entire town went into a state of suspended animation to honor and bury its fallen Marine. People moved slowly through the tiny Rodriguez home day and night—passing the flag-draped coffin, pausing to pay respects to his parents and discussing his sacrifice and how he had died.

On the day of the funeral, as the casket was being brought out the front door, I was standing among the townspeople. We all walked behind the hearse, six blocks from his home to the Catholic church, and then another mile to the cemetery. I will never forget the splendid-looking Marines in full dress uniform, the twenty-one-gun salute, the playing of taps, and the folding of the flag. While the sadness and grief was heart-wrenching, the display of honor and affection paid to PFC Rodriguez affected me deeply. I was only fifteen years old, but I knew that this was right, that this was a noble cause, and that the military was a worthy profession. At that moment, I became convinced that service to my country was a calling I had to answer. I was going to be a soldier.

Less than a year later, the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps) came to Rio Grande City, and David Saenz and I immediately signed up. We were committed and proud to wear our uniforms in high school. During those formative years, the military became an integral source of hope for me. I joined the color guard, raised the flag each morning at school and football games, and marched, trained, and attended classes in teamwork, citizenship, and leadership. Special emphasis was placed on learning about Hispanic heritage in the military, particularly in 1968 when Congress dedicated a special week for the celebration of Hispanic contributions to the United States. I was also proud to learn that, in our nation’s history, there were a total of thirty-eight Hispanic Medal of Honor recipients.

During these years, I began to observe and think deeply about things I had never noticed before. Racial prejudice, for one, was something that I never really worried about. After all, I was pretty isolated in a 99 percent Hispanic community. But when we went to the bigger cities of McAllen, Harlingen, and Brownsville, I started to wonder why my family was not allowed in some restaurants, theaters, and other public places. I speculated that this might be part of the reason that my father never strayed very far from Rio Grande City. The issue also came to a head in the late 1960s when the United Farm Workers showed up in our town and started organizing. Their demonstrations resulted in some severe and very disturbing confrontations with law enforcement authorities, which I’ll never forget.

I also began to think about the intricate relationship and linkage my family had with Mexico. Most people in the United States viewed the Rio Grande as an international boundary. But to us, it was just a river. The concepts of separated and sovereign nations never entered our minds as we crossed back and forth on the river’s primitive pontoon ferry. We regularly visited the small towns of Camargo and San Pedro (now Miguel Aleman) to shop and to receive medical and dental care, all of which were much less expensive in Mexico than in the United States. More important, though, we had relatives on the other side of the river. My sister-in-law, Ramon’s wife, Tina, for instance, had grown up in Camargo, and when her father died, the entire family crossed over to attend the funeral. I remember very distinctly going to his wake in the little shack where she had grown up. In a plain wooden casket, the body rested on blocks of ice that were melting and draining into a big bucket below. It was the only way they could preserve the body for two days so they’d be able to have the wake and say the rosary.

As I got older, I realized that my relatives in Mexico were dirt-poor peasants living a Third World–type of existence. They were even poorer than we were, and they had little if any hope for a better life, because the Mexican government didn’t care about them. But on our side of that river, the United States offered promise. The government provided food, some medical care, and vehicles to give us a hand up the ladder. Most important, we had hope for a better future.

I gradually realized that I did not want the life offered by Rio Grande City. The depth of my family’s poverty weighed heavily on me. The cardboard I had to place in my shoes was embarrassing. I didn’t have nice clothes to wear to social engagements. I couldn’t participate in extracurricular activities, because I had to work. And I became dejected when I was selected to attend the Presidential Classroom for Young Americans in Washington, D.C., because I knew I would not be able to afford the clothing to wear at the event. My Tio Raul, however, came to the rescue. He bought me a new pair of shoes and fashioned an outfit for me (slacks, a jacket, some shirts, and a tie) from clothes that had been abandoned in his shop. In the end, I went to Washington, D.C.—and I will always remember and love my Tio Raul for his kindness.

During my sophomore year, a senior in our school was awarded a four-year ROTC scholarship—and I saw my own future open up. I decided to go straight to my guidance counselor and ask for help to apply for a scholarship. Mrs. Solis, my dream is to be an officer in the Army, I said excitedly. I would like to find out how to apply for West Point and an ROTC scholarship.

But Mrs. Solis was not at all encouraging. Ricardo, why do you want to go to West Point? You’ll never be able to go there, because you are just a poor Mexican, she said. Besides, you don’t speak English well enough. Don’t waste your time. What you should do is become a welder like your father.

I was stunned. It was clear to me that Mrs. Solis felt that the only kids who should go to college were Anglos and those from wealthy families. I knew it would do no good to plead with her to help me, so I simply said, Okay, thank you, ma’am. But I was not going to stop there. I went immediately to the library and started doing some research. And the next day, I spoke to my two JROTC instructors, Major Marshall and Sergeant Grigsby, who then went out of their way to help me work toward getting a nomination to the U.S. Military Academy and applying for ROTC scholarships. Some of my teachers helped me write letters to our Texas senators and congressmen—and my father drove me all the way to Laredo and San Antonio so I could complete my physicals and aptitude tests.

In the end, despite a very high cumulative SAT result, my English score was not good enough to get me into West Point (I wound up a fourth alternate there, and a first alternate to the U.S. Naval Academy). The good news, however, was that I was awarded four-year ROTC scholarships by both the Army and the Air Force. In the spring of 1969, in order to decide between the two services, I went to Austin to visit the University of Texas, which was the nearest college that offered both Army and Air Force programs on campus. At that time, my heart was set on joining the Air Force. I wanted to fly like my big brother Mingo, and the good news was that I had qualified for a scholarship with a pilot track.

One building at UT Austin housed both the Air Force and Army ROTC programs, and when I arrived I went straight to the Air Force office, but was largely ignored. As soon as I walked through the Army’s door, however, I was warmly greeted by Colonel (COL) Lawson Magruder. He spent quite a bit of time with me, and saw to it that I was given a guided tour of the Army’s facilities at UT Austin. We went to the classrooms, the drill field, the shooting range, and even to the supply rooms. Where the Air Force ignored me, the Army made me feel valued. COL Magruder’s willingness to spend a few minutes with a young person made all the difference in the world. And when I walked out of the ROTC building that afternoon, I had made my decision. I was going to be a soldier.

In June 1969, I graduated from Rio Grande City High School and went to the University of Texas on a full scholarship. My best friend, David Saenz (who had also received an Army ROTC scholarship), chose to attend Texas A&I University in Kingsville. Like many kids who leave home for the first time, I experienced some loneliness. I also felt out of place, because most of the students in my freshman class were Anglos. I was completely unprepared for the vastly different culture there, the massive size of the university, and the intense Vietnam War protests. For the first time in my life, I felt like a minority, and it was quite disconcerting.

I was able to make some good friends in ROTC, but there were also some significant problems with the program. A large part of the corps of cadets, for instance, were graduate students trying to avoid the draft. So their moral reasons for serving were not always the best. But the worst problem, by far, was the simple fact that we were in uniform on a major university campus during the worst antiwar demonstrations in the history of the United States. Every Tuesday and Thursday, when we were required to wear our uniforms, my buddies and I were harassed nearly everywhere we went—in our dorms, in our classrooms, on the quads. The worst moment for me, personally, came when the corps held its annual in-ranks inspection by the Inspector General. As we marched onto Freshman Field, the road was lined with thousands of antiwar protesters carrying signs and bullhorns. They yelled and just harassed the hell out of us. Then they followed us onto the field as we formed ranks. Our ROTC instructors had done a good job of counseling us to maintain discipline and to never lash out at the demonstrators. However, it was tough to keep my composure when one protester rushed up to me as I stood at attention, spit in my face, and called me a baby killer.

I went home for Thanksgiving during that first semester a disenchanted and unhappy young man. On my way back to Austin, however, I made the fortunate decision to stop in Kingsville to visit my buddy David at Texas A&I. He and I talked at length about the differences between the ROTC program on his small campus versus mine at UT. I really want to embrace the military training, I told David, but it’s almost impossible in such a volatile environment.

We don’t have any of those problems down here, he replied. Why don’t you think about transferring? Our campus is a lot smaller and nobody ever harasses the cadets. There’s also a big Hispanic population here and you’d feel more at home. Heck, we could even room together.

By the end of my freshman year at UT, I knew it was time to make a change. So in the summer of 1970, I transferred to Texas A&I in Kingsville. I was now back in a familiar, calmer environment, and lots of my old friends were around. I was much happier, and rapidly integrated myself into the Texas A&I ROTC program. Everything I did focused on becoming an Army officer. I was also fortunate to have joined the Kings Rifles, a drill team of twelve to sixteen cadets that was perennially one of the best in the nation. We not only won numerous competitions (including a national championship); we also built a brotherhood that would last a lifetime.

The move to Kingsville, Texas, also changed my life in a way that I never expected. Maria Elena Garza was taking classes when I arrived on campus that summer and she lived in an apartment nearby. We had met during my Thanksgiving Day visit and we began to date almost immediately. Our relationship grew over the course of our college years and by the time we were seniors, I realized that she offered me the opportunity for true love and lasting happiness. Before I could propose, however, both of us had to fulfill some commitments. Maria Elena had promised her father that she would not get married for at least a year after college. She had also promised to get a teaching job and live with her grandmother in Escobares, Texas, a small community in the Valley. So after receiving her degree in education and obtaining a teaching certificate, she moved back to Hebbronville. I had to attend ROTC Summer Camp (boot camp for ROTC cadets), which I had postponed due to an injury during my first parachute jump at airborne school the previous summer. I had to successfully complete summer camp before I could receive my commission as a second lieutenant. So after graduating from Texas A&I with a double major in mathematics and history, I took off for Fort Riley, Kansas. After completing ROTC Summer Camp there, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

I had already been notified that my initial assignment was going to be in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. That was a big surprise to me, because I had been told by the ROTC instructors that only West Pointers got to go to the 82nd Airborne. But I wrote down the 82nd Airborne as my first choice anyway and, in the end, I got lucky.

I was also lucky to be blessed in love. In August, while attending the Armor Officer Basic Course at Fort Knox, I called Maria Elena and proposed over the phone, and she immediately said yes. But she couldn’t leave right away, because she had made a teaching commitment through the end of the year to Roma, Texas. She was also concerned about the promise she’d made to her father and the fact that she was going to have to leave the Rio Grande Valley. No one in her family had ever left Texas before, so it would be hard. In the end, though, her family supported her decision, her father gave us his blessing, and we were married on December 22, 1973. It was a simple, traditional Hispanic wedding ceremony in Hebbronville, Texas. After a honeymoon in Corpus Christi, Maria Elena and I were ready to begin our thirty-three-year journey in the service of our country.

My bride knew that I viewed this career as a calling, a sort of destiny. But there was a deeper, more profound calling that she and I shared—one that involved our faith and commitment to God. For me personally, the foundation of that commitment resulted, in part, from circumstances surrounding the death of my beloved Tio Raul back when I was still a senior in high school.

He had been suffering from diabetes and cancer for a while, but after he took a turn for the worse in April 1969, the doctors sent him for treatment in Galveston. After three or four weeks, my father received a call saying that Tio Raul was suffering from terminal cancer, and that we should come pick him up. Besides, they said, he’s desperate to return home. Dad immediately pulled me out of school and, along with my older brother Ramon, we made the long drive to Galveston.

As soon as we walked into his room, Tio Raul greeted us in an urgent tone of voice. I’m glad you’re here, he said. I want to go home. Right now!

Well, it’s going to take a little while to process you out, said my father.

No, no, no. I want to leave right now! Let’s go!

So while Dad took care of the paperwork, Ramon and I helped Tio Raul out to the car. We put him in the backseat on the driver’s side so he could stretch out a little bit. And when Dad finished, he got into the backseat passenger side to comfort his brother during the ride home. Ramon did the driving and I sat next to him up front.

About two hours out of Galveston, my father turned to Tio Raul and said, Go ahead and try to get some sleep. We’ll be home soon. It seemed as though he was drifting in and out of sleep when, all of a sudden, Tio Raul pointed out the window in the direction of this wide-open field with a grove of trees at the far end, and said, Mira, mira, hay esta Mama y Poncho. Ya vienen a llevar me. [Look! Look! There are Mom and Poncho. They’re coming to get me!] Poncho was his older brother who had died in 1938 at a young age, and my grandmother had died in 1957 when I was six.

No, brother, replied my father. Settle down and rest. Everything will be okay.

"No, no! Mira!" said Tio Raul. Hay arriba de los arboles. Mira la luz! Hay viene Mama y Poncho para llevar me con ellos. Ya estoy listo. [Right over the trees. Look at the light! Mom and Poncho are coming for me. I am ready to go.]

I was looking into the backseat right at my uncle. I couldn’t see anything above the trees in the field, but within a few seconds of speaking those last few words, Tio Raul reached out toward the field—and then closed his eyes and died.

The impact of that event changed my life forever.

CHAPTER 2

Early Army Years

In mid-October 1973, I reported for duty to the armor battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Nobody seemed to notice me, however, because all hell was breaking loose. Equipment was moving back and forth; soldiers were scurrying around; tanks were being fueled, loaded up with combat gear, and moved to Pope Air Force Base to await aircraft and orders to deploy. As a brand-new second lieutenant, I literally had no idea what was going on. We were put on alert this morning, Lieutenant, a sergeant told me. We’re preparing to go to war.

It turned out that I had walked smack dab into the Army’s deployment preparations for the Yom Kippur War. About ten days earlier, on the Jewish holiday, Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise attack on Israel through the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Because fighting continued through the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the war came to be known as the Ramadan War by Arabs. Early on, Israel was caught completely off guard and had suffered serious losses. But the Nixon administration responded by launching a massive airlift (fifty-six combat aircraft, 815 sorties, and 28,000 tons of supplies and weapons), which quickly turned the tide of the conflict. When Israeli forces gained control of the Suez Canal, and advanced within forty-two miles of Cairo and forty miles of Damascus, the Soviet Union threatened direct military intervention.

It was at this point that U.S. forces were placed on alert. There was a very real possibility that elements of my division would be going to war. After all, the 82nd Airborne was America’s Guard of Honor, and the strategic reserve that could be deployed with eighteen hours notice to any contingency spot in the world. It was the Army’s historic division from World War II, and filled with exceptionally dedicated young Americans.

After about a week of preparations and waiting, we were given the order to stand down. Fighting in the Middle East officially ended when the UN Security Council imposed a cease-fire and averted an escalation of the conflict into a possible global war. As it stood, 15,000 Egyptians, 3,500 Syrians, and 2,700 Israelis had already lost their lives. America’s intervention, it turned out, had prevented the complete destruction of Israel.

During the alert, I tried to go with the flow and help out wherever I could. After things settled down, I was called in by the battalion commander and given my first assignment. Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Albert Sidney Britt was a West Pointer—a tall man, very smart, with a good reputation in the division. Rather than assigning you to a platoon in a tank company right now, he said, we’re going to assign you to be my headquarters tank section leader. You’ll be in charge of two tanks and have general headquarters duties as we prepare for our gunnery deployment. You will be assigned as a platoon leader later.

Not realizing that he was testing me, I simply said, Yes, sir. That’s fine with me.

As I began my duties, I found conditions to be so bad in the Army that officers on night duty had to carry .45-caliber pistols to protect themselves from their own men. One platoon leader, I remember, was given a blanket party by his platoon. His soldiers wrapped him in a blanket, beat him up, put him in a wall locker, and threw him down the stairs. In another incident at Fort Stewart, the mortar platoon took their jeeps and went off on a drunken rampage after partying at the NCO (noncommissioned officers’) club. They led the military police on quite a vehicle chase, and put up a big fight before eventually giving up. We had discipline problems, leadership problems, racial problems, alcohol problems, and drug addiction problems. It was common for us to hold surprise health and welfare inspections in the barracks and find all kinds of illegal drugs. It was all very disturbing for a young, idealistic officer like me.

I eventually came to realize that I was seeing what we would later refer to as the broken Army in the wake of Vietnam. By this time, we had stopped reinforcing our troops in Southeast Asia, which is why I had not been deployed. But the long-term effect of that campaign proved absolutely catastrophic for the military. What caused it? For starters, civilian leaders in the White House micromanaged many aspects of the Vietnam War. They did not allow the U.S. armed forces to utilize the full extent of its resources to achieve victory. Instead, the military was forced to fight incremental battles that led to a never-ending conflict. And the Army itself descended into a dark cloud almost totally focused on Southeast Asia. That, in turn, resulted in it being overextended in virtually every area that one could imagine.

Back then, the tremendous demand for personnel could only be met by a full-scale draft. At least 400,000 to 500,000 soldiers were needed to fight the war in Vietnam. So eligibility requirements (physical, educational, and conduct) were dropped way down to reach the recruitment numbers necessary to sustain the Army. Kids were forced to join the Army for two years, and many of them just didn’t want to be there. The never-ending individual rotation of troops into the war zone also created a major problem. Soldiers would come out of Vietnam, and then immediately receive orders to go back again. The psychological impact on them and their families was often devastating.

As the war continued, the Army also had to walk away from its commitments to the broader capabilities of the institution. Training, professional development, maintenance and supply operations, garrison operations, and most key functions of a peacetime army all began to suffer. Rather than deploying as cohesive battalion or brigade units, soldiers were sent off individually or in small units, making unit integrity and efficiency on the battlefield difficult to achieve. New potential leaders were rushed through Officer Candidate School in three months, creating what came to be known as 90-Day Wonders. But worst of all, thousands of soldiers were sent into battle unprepared and improperly trained for the guerrilla warfighting conditions they would encounter in the jungles of Vietnam.

There was very low morale in the Army, and it was exacerbated by the fact that most of the American public did not support America’s involvement in Southeast Asia. It would take more than a decade of determined, dedicated, and valiant efforts by some of the Army’s best leaders to fix the organization and return it to the elite fighting force it formerly had been. In the meantime, though, I was just a young second lieutenant trying to navigate my way through the establishment and learn how to become an effective leader.

IMMEDIATELY UPON THE BATTALION’S return after a successful Fort Stewart gunnery deployment, I went home on leave. When I got back from my wedding, Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Britt assigned me to Bravo Company as a platoon leader. Almost immediately, the platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant (SSG) Pugh, pulled me aside for a heart-to-heart. Lieutenant Sanchez, you have to understand how this works, he said. Whenever we’re in the field or in combat, you’re in charge. But in garrison, when we’re training, it’s my responsibility to run things along with the other NCOs.

At that moment, I recalled that my brother Mingo had advised me to listen to my sergeants, because they were older and more experienced. So I acquiesced. Okay, Sergeant, I replied. Go ahead and take the lead.

Thank you, sir, he replied. Don’t worry about a thing.

Within a week, I deployed my platoon on a training exercise at Fort Bragg. We were about fifteen to twenty kilometers into a daylong tactical road march when all of a sudden, two of our four tanks stopped dead in their tracks. What’s going on? I asked SSG Pugh.

Oh, we’ve got engine problems with the tanks, sir.

Well, no kidding, I replied. What kind of problems?

After several minutes of watching our guys try to restart the engines, I asked them to check the fuel gauges. The two tank commanders (also both sergeants) then went up to SSG Pugh and whispered something to him. Finally, he came over to me and reported. Uh, sir, we’re out of gas.

Okay, Sergeant Pugh, I said. Get out the five gallon cans and send those two tank commanders back to get fuel.

But, sir, that’s a long way, he protested.

It was their responsibility to make sure we were all fueled up and prepared to deploy. Send them.

Yes, sir.