These are some personal notes that describe some of my memories and opinions of the organizations that I served with in an Army career that spanned nearly 30 years. If you find this site by accident through a search engine you are welcome to contact me and share your thoughts. Thanks. My e-mail address is BradenClan@ gmail.com.

The 339th ("Honor and Achievement") was my first troop assignment. I served as a platoon leader in Company C, then briefly as the company operations officer, and later as an assistant S-3 in the battalion headquarters. Bonnie and I lived in government quarters, something we would do for nearly 30 years. The battalion had two kinds of soldiers, those about to go to Vietnam, and those just returning and about to depart military service. Bonnie spent her time with other wives from the battalion, going to the laundromat and shopping. I was learning how to be a platoon leader. Thankfully my first Platoon Sergeant, Sgt. 1st Class Charles E. Oliver, was simply outstanding, and he taught me alot. He kept me on a pedestal and provided numerous hints on how I was supposed to act. Later he won the Sturgis Award as the most outstanding engineer NCO in the Army - I sure know why.

I got to the platoon as it was finishing up some projects in the military recreation area at the base: pavillions and the such. Productive works that the soldiers seemed to enjoy.

Also got my first taste of personnel problems that come with any large organization, including the Army. Bledsoe was married to a lady with a wooden leg. They had continual money and marital problems. Money: mismanaged to the point where he didn't have the funds to buy heating oil for the one room "home" they lived in. Marital: he beat her with her wooden leg. Singleton was a soldier with bad character. He was caught (by me) when we were looking for the person who stole another soldier's boots. He should have been court martialed and dishonorably discharged, but he received company punishment and likely went on to become someone else's problem.

Once a group of us lieutenants decided to go to the club after work. I started to call Bonnie to tell her where I was but my buddies yelled at me and said that wasn't necessary. It turned out that one of my buddy's wives had made a big purchase - a pot roast - and had it cooking for dinner. By the time he got home the roast was the size and texture of a baseball, and she threw it at him. Oh, yes, we all called from then on.

While in Company C I served part time as the Operations Officer. Two soldiers assisted me in scheduling company training, and monitoring company construction projects. Their desktops always seemed to be full of work, to the point of being messy. I told them to get their work done each day so they'd have a clean desktop to come in to each morning. They soon had clean desktops and I was feeling proud of my obvious leadership. Then one day I looked in one of their desk drawers. Everything that had been on top of their desk had been unceremoniously stuffed into the desk drawers. So much for my management skills.

Near Christmas our battalion got the mission to do some work in the artillery impact area, as in improving drainage. So we had everyone out there working and I came upon a Christmas tree. Hey, it was in the Impact Area so no big deal to take it, right? Well I had the tree cut down and we smuggled it out of the area in the back of a truck, and soon it adorned the living room in our quarters. For years later when we were paying "exhorbitant" prices for Christmas trees Bonnie and I talked about the great looking free tree we got at Fort Lewis. Then one day, we pulled out an album and found a picture of that tree. It was the most lopsided Charley Brown tree ever, but I guess it worked for us at the time.

My duties with the 339th were limited to about eight months, so that I could spend my second year in the Army in Vietnam.