encore
Helmet Duty
An Army XO is forced to think on his feet and make do with the only resources available to him after he loans his helmet to the company commander.
I
n Korea in late February 1953, I
was a rifl e platoon leader and acting company XO. My unit, A Company,
32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Divi- sion, had executed a nighttime relief from the Porkchop Hill sector and taken up a blocking position to the east, reinforcing a battalion facing the enemy on T-Bone Hill. Once we had gotten a few hundred meters behind the line, we were in tents — a wel- come change from our bunker existence of the previous two months. Company Commander Lt. Jack Conn came up to me and informed me he had to attend a briefi ng right away at the com- mand post of the unit we were supporting. He had lost his helmet during the night and needed to borrow mine, so I gave him my helmet. As soon as he left, one of our sentries
came running into the tent saying he had spotted our battalion commander head- ing toward our area. Among the many rules Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Sey- mour Goldberg enforced ruthlessly was no one would be without a helmet when in the open. I looked around and saw a helmet on
a fi eld table. Instead of its intended use, however, this helmet had been used as a candle stand for some time; there was a stub of a candle on top, and candle wax of varying colors had dripped all over it. With my own helmet on the company commander’s head and the battalion com- mander soon to arrive, I had no choice but to wear this repurposed helmet. I drew my
8 8 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R MAY 2 0 1 0
trench knife, scraped off the most obvious of the candle residue, plopped the helmet on my head, and went out to report to the battalion commander.
Lieutenant Colonel Goldberg did not look directly at me at fi rst. But as the conversation turned to relatively minor issues, his vision slowly focused on the helmet covering my head. His mouth fell open, and a look of incredulity crossed his face. All conversation stopped. “Vieler, get that helmet off!” he or-
dered. “Yes, sir!” I replied. Then, in his typical one-way form of conversation, we discussed other matters.
MO
— Eric H. Vieler, Ph.D., is a retired Army
colonel. He resides in San Francisco. For submis- sion information, see page 18.
ILLUSTRATION: ELWOOD SMITH
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