Greetings from the President

What did I do to earn this honor?

I was within two quarters of graduating from college when I got an invitation to come and live with my Uncle Sam.  I wanted to finish college, so I joined the Army on the 120-day delay program.  The Army recognized right away that I was highly educated and knew it all, so they offered me a 4-year hitch in the ASA as a non-combatant.   The recruiter also informed me that there were not any ASA troops in Vietnam.   I could not let an opportunity like this pass me by so I joined the Army.  

509^th Radio Research Company, RVN

I soon found out that I was not quite as smart as I thought.  After going to school in Ft Devens for a year, it was time to receive my orders to be stationed overseas.  You can imagine my surprise when my first set of orders was for the Republic of Vietnam.  I quickly informed the Army that they had made two mistakes.  First, I was a non-combatant and could not be sent to Vietnam.  Second, didn’t they know that there was not any ASA in Vietnam?  I wish you could have heard the laughter.  The Sergeant asked me, “Warren, do you know what non-combatant means?  It means that when YOU go to a war zone, YOU don’t get a weapon.”   You can imagine that we both got a laugh out of that.  Next, he explained to me that I was correct that there are no ASA troops in RVN, which is why you are being reassigned to the 509^th Radio Research Company.  Yes, we shared another good laugh at that one.

As luck would have it, my orders were changed several times and I ended up at Kagnew Station in Asmara, Ethiopia, but that is another story.

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