Remembering a life of honor

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By MARTIN DYCKMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 2, 2000

TALLAHASSEE -- Old soldiers never die, they just fade away . . . So went the old soldiers' song that Douglas MacArthur wrote into his farewell address to Congress.

I thought of it when I heard that Ray Armstrong, my old first sergeant, was no more.

He had faded away, but no old soldier deserved to die like that.

It was Alzheimer's, and it took him five cruel years to fade away. A "very trying" five years, said a daughter. "It was so devastating . . ."

By the end, only one old buddy was still in touch with the family. When he died at 83, a year ago Monday, the only obituary was one meager paragraph in the Tampa Tribune. His graveside service, at the Florida Veterans Cemetery near Bushnell, was private. Months later I opened an anonymously mailed envelope and a photograph of his gravestone informed me that he had died.

"He lived with honor," says the inscription.

Indeed he had.

William Raymond Armstrong, who made master sergeant in World War II, was the first sergeant of the St. Petersburg-based 231st Transportation Company, a reserve unit, from 1951 to 1970.

He took the 231st to Vietnam, where they ran supply boats on the Mekong River, and did not lose a man. They came under fire but didn't qualify for even a single Purple Heart.

That was remarkable. His greatest accomplishment, he once said, was "bringing all my boys home unharmed."

Dissatisfied with how exposed his machine gunners were, the first sergeant had scrounged -- "hell, stole," says one of the veterans -- tons of sheet metal from a supply depot. His men fashioned them into armor for the gun tubs. The contraptions must have resembled Civil War ironclads, but they worked.

I had left the unit, my military obligation fulfilled, after the 10 months and 19 days -- sure, we counted -- we spent on active duty at Fort Eustis, Va., during the Berlin crisis of 1961-1962. Though I did my share of squawking about being called up, I now think fondly of the experience and am glad for it. I was honored to be invited, along with everyone else who had ever been in the 231st, to his surprise retirement party.

I have never met a man who was fairer, more unflappable, or worked harder at a job and did it any better. Ray Armstrong was the glue that made a cohesive, effective, prideful unit out of disgruntled reservists. When they came back from Vietnam they had nicknamed their unit "Granddad's Gators," for him.

But the year in Vietnam had affected him in ways he did not share with the troops.

"He was a changed man," says a daughter, Alice Daugherty of Seffner. "That had more of an effect on him than any of the World War II activities or any of the other callups. That was a horrific time, and he felt so bad for those young guys who were thrust over there not knowing why they were in such a violent atmosphere. He was so much more subdued than he was before."

Now that he's gone, it can be told how a good first sergeant once saved his boys from the earned wrath of their company commander.

On our last full day at Fort Eustis, some men missed a mandatory formation. The commander was not pleased and sent for them one by one. As the company clerk, I was in the middle, trying to keep things from getting worse, and the First Sergeant had disappeared. But somehow I got through to the bugouts that they should simply swallow hard, say "No excuse, sir," and take the bawling out. It worked.

"Where were you?," I asked the First Sergeant over dinner that night. "It was rough back there."

"I got out so he couldn't court-martial those guys," he said. "He doesn't know how to do it."

"But I know how to court-martial people," I said.

"Yeah," said the First Sergeant, "I know you know. But he doesn't know you know." It got worse early the next morning. Two of our "fillers" -- men who'd been drawn from other places to fill out our understrength unit -- had disappeared before the final formation. They really were AWOL, and the CO was serious about reporting them. It would have meant transferring them to one of the post's Regular Army units, none of which wanted the problem, and I could see four days' worth of morning reports, which I had laboriously prepared in advance, going into the trash.

After a while, Sgt. Armstrong walked up to my desk and asked where the company rosters were.

"In my car," I said.

"The typewriter? The supplies?"

"In my car."

I began to see what he was driving at.

"First Sergeant," I said, "You couldn't write a buck slip without me."

"Then get in your car," he said, "and get the hell out of here."

No one ever obeyed a direct order with more alacrity. The AWOLs were gone and forgotten, and the morning reports were safe.

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