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.

Purdue, as a land grant college, offered a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program for the Army, Navy, and the Air Force. At the time I was there, it was mandatory for men for the first two years. I was in Army ROTC; but don't recall why - probably because my Dad was in the Army. Because the program was required, the Army Corps of Cadets was very large, maybe 3,000. We had drill once a week on the huge armory floor and classes two other days a week in the armory's classrooms on subjects such as military history and leadership.

Some of the other college students I knew were "Gung-HO," a term for those really into this type activity. In the Army ROTC program, one could join extracurricular activities such as the Drill Team, the Scabbard and Blade Society, and perhaps be inducted into the Purdue Order of Military Merit.

I wasn't interested in these things, and actually liked ROTC, but I was a poor model of a cadet in that I would be late for class and end up spending the last weeks of each semester working off demerits. ROTC, an easy A, was often a B subject. Maybe I just acted out my indifference because I did not want to be called "Gung Ho."

I did well enough at summer camp at Fort Riley, Kansas. On the first day or so of camp all the cadets got their "Army haircut" that meant essentially getting your head sheared. When I got up in the chair I told the barber to leave some on top. He said that he had been told differently but I insisted and he did it my way. I got a close haircut but wasn't a skinhead like the rest of the cadets. I was in a good squad and we did a lot of things together. We visited the ROTC club on base to drink the 3.2 beer and took weekend trips to nearby schools looking for girls (though I was pretty serious about Bonnie at the time).

One of the ways cadets were moved around Fort Riley was in large trailers that we called cattle cars. They were large flatbeds with lumber sides that were about four feet high. The prescribed manner of loading the cattle cars was from the back, as climbing up the sides and over the walls was not the best in terms of safety. But the cadre were always yelling for the cadets to load the cattle cars quickly, and they weren't happy when their unit was last to load. So on the day I was in the Company Commander leadership position, I told my fellow cadets that I wanted the cattle car loaded fast, and that I didn't care how they did it. So when the companies were all lined up in morning formation, we got the command: FALL OUT AND FALL IN ON THE TRUCKS, I could have said something like, PLATOON LEADERS, FALL OUT YOUR MEN TO THE TRUCKS, and we would exchange salutes and they would have proceeded as we normally did. But this day I just turned around and hollered GO and everyone broke into a dead run for the trucks. Sure enough, our company went nuts, swarming up the sides of our cattle car from every direction. Oh, yes, I got yelled at by the cadre, as expected. But I did manage to respectfully mention that we were first loaded. Yep, I broke the rules, but Army guys sometimes like it when the rules are broken.

One of the field exercises was a land navigation class. Each group of four or five cadets gets a map and a compass, and some directions to a stake in the ground somewhere in the training area. You shoot azimuths and do pacing to hopefully get to the right points. Each cadet was responsible for a leg of the course, and I had the last leg. As usual, it was boiling hot. We came up to the last leg and we could see the finish area, with water trailers and shade. However, the last leg, if someone took it straight, was down a very, very steep ravine and back up the other side. Or you could walk perhaps a quarter of a mile and walk around the ravine. I said that we'd walk around, so we finished early and didn't kill ourselves climbing into and out of that ravine. So while my teammates drank water in the shade I shot a back azimuth to where we came from and did some praying and found out later that we hit our mark. Sometimes the best way to success is not hey diddle diddle, right up the middle.

I ended up with a pretty good rating our of Summer Camp, but my ROTC academics were so low that I also held the lowest possible rank allowed for one's school grade. For example, all seniors in the program were cadet officers, and my cadet officer rank was Second Lieutenant - the lowest possible. But maybe the cadre saw something in me, as during my senior year with the program I trained the juniors; a task one would think given to those who would be a good model for students entering the Advanced part of ROTC.

I had gone to Purdue for my undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering. At the time, with the US being more and more engaged in Vietnam, and with Purdue being a land grant college, ROTC was mandatory for all male students for the first two years of the program. So the Army ROTC Brigade was huge, and the formations/drills on the Armory floor were likewise packed with students. The program consisted of classes two or three times and one drill each week. The class subjects were on military history and leadership; the Armory time focussed on drill and ceremonies - marching. At the time it wasn't "cool" to be "into" ROTC and I reacted immaturely. I didn't pay attention to my Military Science Studies and to attending all the class lectures. As a "reward" I ended up working off demerits at the end of each semester.