My father was a triple threat vet and a tanker to boot.  I went in the Army right after my father turned down his promotion to E-9 and retired.  I knew my Dad had loved the Army, why did he leave it?  The "Rock" answered that question for me, but also gave me the opportunity to experience the family the Army once was, the Army my father had loved.  My father's Army had company parties and shared holidays together.  On Fridays, the unit NCOs met together at the NCO club with the CSM and 1SGs and held NCO Call.  Sundays saw the families going to NCO clubs for the best buffet a man could get for a few dollars.  My father's Army took care of the soldier, not by lip service, but by deed.  Every unit had a company fund to help guys that needed it and there was no need for AER (Army Emergency Relief) or it's repayment by an allotment form. Officers had Cup and Flower Funds for their needs and were allowed to be officers.  The Army made a serious mistake taking away company funds for they took a valuable tool for helping the soldier.  Soldiers didn't have to beg for help or justify their need, old sergeants knew and helped their men.  We didn't need the Red Cross for anything other than blood drives and messages, damn sure didn't need the AER and NCOs weren't drawing welfare checks nor were the junior EM.  Viet Nam and VOLAR changed that and caused a mass exodus of professional soldiers from the military.  The Army exacerbated the problem by reclassifying so many NCOs into combat arms without the proper training they needed and deserved.  I know why they needed to fill the slots, but green tabs needed good training to be good combat leaders.  Morale was at an all-time low and drug use was rampant.  Discipline was non- existent and the cadre of leaders was suffering a deep malaise.  The army had begun a practice of trading politics for professionalism and our readiness was suffering for it.  The problem was systemic and Army-wide.  The Army was losing it's heart as each of its career NCOs left.  The end of the draft and Viet Nam left the military with a smaller pool to recruit from and our new soldiers did not reflect the demographics of the nation. I read military histories and this period is usually glossed over, but our Army was really suffering.  Suffice to say that the Army was trying to adapt to an all volunteer force and wasn't doing a good job in the beginning.  Yesterday, I read a CMH study  from the historical analysis series entitled "Developing the Armored Force: Experiences and Visions - An interview with MG Robert J Sunnell, Retired by Major Steve E. Dietrich and Major Bruce R. Pirnie.    Steve Dietrich is a former Alpha Pickle, HHC Pickle Commander and is forever a Congoleese.  MG Sunnell is also a Men of War veteran.  I think the following quote from the article sums up what we were experiencing:  

"General Sunell: Well, there's a very distinct difference between officers' business and noncommissioned officers' business. There was a time in our Army where, in my opinion, we closed so many barn doors after the horses and cattle were out that we started having lieutenants certifying to the number of spoons in a mess hall. We just sort of took the role of the noncommissioned officer [NCO] away. We're returning to where the NCO is doing the kind of business that he should be doing. But there was a time when I think we were really remiss.

Major Pirnie: Did the British NCO retain his authority?

General Sunell: He really attained his authority. I can remember when we were getting ready for a big inspection, their equivalent of our command maintenance inspection. We laid out the program for what we wanted done during the day. I went down during the middle of the day and started checking on what was being done, but I was very politely told that on the schedule I was to inspect at 1600 and that they would appreciate it if the officer would take care of officer's business, such as preparing lessons, and let the NCOs get ready for the inspection. They further mentioned that if I was dissatisfied with what they were doing, I should tell them during the inspection.

That's a little different relationship. As you know, that was a time when every lieutenant spent his entire day in the motor pool, and [I think] that's wrong. ."  

The Rock was the home of the largest combat brigade in Europe, but it was a cold and unfriendly place characterized by a malaise that had been slowly eating at the NCOs and men of the Pickles.  Soldiers were forbidden to cross the parade field at night due to drug and race problems of the late sixties and early seventies.  My good friend, SP4 Herbert Dodd, warned me to get off post and not be a "barracks rat" or my life would be like a living hell.  Herbie knew what he was talking about, he had seen it. The fellows stuck in the barracks were almost prisoners on the 'Rock".  The standing joke was the Rock was named after Alcatraz and nobody ever escaped.  Our Lts worked with us in the motor pool and our senior NCOs hid in the barracks drinking Vodka and cursing what the Army had become.  Junior NCOs were left to their own devices to develop their own skills and our junior enlisted paid the price for our lack of knowledge and motivation.

Not everything or everybody succumbed to the environment.  In the midst of the maelstrom, a light was beginning to shine.  Our platoon leaders and a handful of our NCOs knew something had to be done.  The new Army calls it "Core Values" (thank God they dropped that ridiculous Army of One" - the Army is a team not a pack of individuals serving their own needs.  The sum is greater than the parts).  We had a giant tanker named Joe "Cobb" Sockwell, the best 88 operator in the Army,that wanted to be Airborne so bad that it was driving him crazy.  Airborne was Joe's dream.  Joe wanted to be a "real" soldier in a "real" unit.  He applied for Airborne School and was rejected because of his size and MOS.  Back then, airborne wasn't too fond of tankers.  The 81st and 101st had forgotten what tankers had done for them throughout WWII.  Joe was so upset when he found out that he hadn't been accepted, I had to think of something to cheer him up.  The old joke about only two things fall from the sky wasn't going to be the medicine this soldier needed.  A moment of desperation lead to an inspiration. Joe was the fulcrum to move us to action, to fix what was broken. 

I won't debate the legality of what we did, but I can tell you we looked at ourselves as a hands-on Armor Association and decided that the benefits far outweighed the risk of military retaliation.  For safety sake, we made commissioned officers honorary members, so that they could not be penalized for active participation in a non-Army sponsored association of active duty soldiers or fraternization with the enlisted.  On retirement, officers are upgraded to full membership and are given voting rights. I really don't think Congoleese would have looked good on their OERs.  I had just read a book about French Commandos in the Congo, so I told Sockwell that there was a special operations unit that might want a man of his caliber.  A unit that was so secret and elite that the Army would never acknowledge it's existence, but was known to utilize it's special members when the impossible had to become possible.  That night, at the mini-tank range on the Rock, the 13th Congoleese was born.  We chose Congoleese because it was the first thing to pop into mind and 13 to document the original 13 members.  I typed up bogus Corps de Congoleese General Orders and Regulations. The next weekend, the "colonels and generals" initiated Joe into the Corps and we keep adding members.  Eventually, Joe got over wanting to join a "Band of Bothers" and realized he had found a "Family of Fighters".  The Corps membership had grown into a great fraternal organization of combat soldiers and support personnel and began to spread to other units.  We began to accept German Congoleese recruits as well.   Eventually, we began a family that worked to build German-American relationships as well as combat skills.  Our friends in Niederkleen said it succinctly when they said (I paraphrase) "John, there was other soldiers that came to the Rock after the Congoleese, but none of them were like the Congoleese and our relations with the Rock faded away."  At our website, you will notice that our friends in Niederkleen celebrate our Reunions with a simultaneous celebration and we have been offered free room and board for every Congoleese family if we will come back for a Reunion.  We are planning our own "REFORGER" to accomplish that necessary mission.  The complete irony is that today's Army is the Army we all wanted to be in and that the Army reflagged our regiment and made it an Airborne Cavalry unit which is why the Congoleese were born and the source of the Congoleese motto "Air Mobile, Lightning Fast and Armor Tough".  You can never under-estimate military intelligence!

We sang "I Want To Be An A Deuce Tanker" as our running song for PT as a replacement for the Airborne Ranger Running Cadence and we loved our morning runs through the surrounding villages.  We were elite tankers and we knew it!  Our company's gunnery skills went up because originally we required members to earn a distinguished tank crew patches for membership, but soon realized to get the mechanics on board we had to drop that requirement.  1979 and 1980, Alpha tankers took top gun in USAREUR.  Remember, only a handful of us had ever been formally trained on the vehicle.  We were reclassified MPs, Recruiters, a couple of grunts and M48/M60A1 trained tankers.  Our CSM was pulled from 2/36 Inf and I don't think he really liked tanks or tankers.  There was a lot of resentment between the different branches from top down.  Each branch spent it's time fighting with the other instead of developing the teamwork we needed to survive and thrive on the battlefield. The CSM had been brought in to fix discipline problems we were experiencing within the Battalion.  Needless to say, we never had the interaction with our most senior NCO that we should have. 

The Alpha Pickles and Congoleese started a tradition that eventually led those 4/8 Cav descendants of ours to win the CAT.  Where some of the mechanics might not have cared about doing their job for the military, the same guy would damn near kill himself to keep a fellow Congoleese tank on the Green list.    I honestly believe that if 7th Army would have allowed  M60A2s to compete instead of M60A1s, we would have got that CAT trophy in the late 70s.  The Army had already pulled the plug on the A2, so they could push for the MBT 70 which never became a reality.    M60A2s got a bad rap due to poor training of crews, most A2 tank commanders were never trained on the vehicle and a serious lack of maintenance support.  I picked up my W1 identifier enroute to USAREUR.  I was trained on M60A1s and was amazed when I got to a 'Starship" unit.  Most of the TCs had never been trained on the vehicle and mainly only our privates knew anything about the tank.  Finally, we got SGT Price and SGT Sutton from Fort Knox who helped teach our boys and TCs (including me) how to tank on M60A2s. Our Master Gunners were a joke more concerned with the future of their careers than developing the critical combat skills our crews needed.   We got Alpha's tankers motivated , trained and they performed.  I served in other units including another A2 unit (1/67 Armor) and I swear the Pickles soldiered harder than any other unit I experienced.  Truthfully, we were not garrison soldiers, we were Men of War.  We do a shooting competition at our reunions just because we like to see things explode. Because we had 152 mm main gun tubes, we always welcomed nightfire so we could send a half gallon of Hallers down range with our first shot (105s can only send a fifth down range).  What a beautiful ball of flame!  To quote MG Sunell again "All the tankers like to smell cordite"  At first, our COs were shocked by our antics, but our gunnery scores let them see that what we were doing was building espirit de corps and fostering healthy competition between the platoons and the companies of 3/33 Armor.