From: "marque french" marque@frontiernet.net@frontiernet.net
Subject: Memories of Ft. Devens
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 23:48:33 -0700

Hi, Bill:

I just stumbled on to your website about Ft. Devens. I was assigned there after a year plus at Ft. Ord and the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California. I arrived there sometime shortly after the 4th of July, 1970. I was earmarked for a 98C class at Revere Hall, but the casual company had something going with all the messhalls and other organizations around post and ignored our orders, putting us all on endless KP it seemed, until they absolutely had to send us up to the new barracks for school.

I remember a 1st Sgt. named "1st Sgt. Bess" at the casual company, Company C( 1st Sgt Bess drove to work in a big gold Oldsmobile every morning, and perpetually had a fat unlit stogey hanging out of his mouth), and I remember living in a two-story wooden barracks, with huge industrial size floor fans at both ends of the hall trying to stay cool at night in the suffocatingly hot and humid July and August climate (while in causal status).

Eventually, I got assigned to Company A in the new (brick) barracks, where my 1st Sgt. was a fellow named Ray Allen, a former S.O.D. type who had served, I believe, with project delta in RVN just prior to Devens. I recall coming downstairs each morning, looking at the bulletin board to see what the UOD was going to be and often finding a new photo of 1st Sgt. Allen boosting the XO through the window of the supply room - somebody had surreptitiously caught them breaking in and harrassed them endlessly by putting up those copies of photos anonymously for a long time afterward.

I remember guys named Thomas Pickles Thompson III, Woody Soubieh, Gordon Walker and a lot of faces to whom I can no longer put names. I graduated first in my class for 98C, got a certificate from the Lt. Col. (can't remember his name but it is on my certificate in storage somewhere) who was CO of USASATC&S at the time, got my choice of assignments (picked Vietnam) and got an advanced promotion. I don't think they would have done that had they known that I was responsible for a lot of "Chapel Police" formations in the morning - the guys who refused to march in formation to and from - between the barracks and Revere Hall and back. So we made up a chapel police detail and each morning took a rout-step shortcut to the chapel, pretended to be picking up cigarette butts and beat it to the school snack bar for coffee avoiding all that formation-marching every day. I remember the TC&S CSM at the time was Anthony Cincotta.

I became a squad leader not too long after I got there, shared a room with SP-5 Porch ("Pooch") and learned that if you hung a note on your door saying "FIGMO," you could lock the door from the inside during standby inspections and the XO and first sergeant never caught on that you really hadn't gotten your PCS orders (and were thus exempt from standby inspections). If you were a real daredevil, you could climb down the rain gutters a couple stories to the ground and go over to the snackbar until the inspection was over -'course you had to climb back up the gutter to get back in the room afterward, but enough 3.2 beer and that was easy too.

I used to hitchhike into Boston pretty regularly until Gordon Walker got stuck with a knife one night in the Common (after hours during the course of being robbed). I used to haunt the Combat Zone on weekends, and later the Buttercup Hill Club and the Mohawk Club as well. I often went into Leominster, Fitchburg and occasionally into Concord or Lexington, hiked the minuteman trail, canoed the Concord River, and left there in November, 1970, when the snow was starting to get serious. Next stop, the sunny Republic of Vietnam and the 265th ASA. Anyway, so much for memories. Just thought I'd add mine to your collection.

Marque French
Snowflake, Arizona
03-05-05