Cecil Green:  

I was born in Mineral Wells, TX, in 1943 while my father was stationed in Greenland during World War II. During my early years, my mother was a school teacher, and we moved to several places where she found jobs. In addition to Mineral Wells, we also lived in Granbury and Jacksboro, before moving to Lubbock in 1956. In Lubbock I went to Carroll Thompson and Smylie Wilson Junior High Schools before entering what was then Tom S. Lubbock High School in the fall of 1959, and graduating from there in May 1962. Sometime in the 8th grade I developed an interest in Journalism and writing. I was on the staff of the Westerner World school newspaper at lubbock High School during all three years there, and was fortunate to be the editor of the student newspaper during my senior year. Sometimes my senior year seemed like a dream -- I won a national news-writing award and received a free trip to New York City, courtesy of NBC-TV, to appear as a panel member with several other high school journalists on one of the networks youth-oriented programs. During thee year, the Westerner World also won a national award and I got a free trip to Chicago to pick up that award. After graduation from Lubbock High, i went to Texas Tech and received my bachelor's degree in Journalism there in January 1967. I was also the editor of the Toreador, the daily student newspaper at Texas Tech during my senior year in 1965-1966. (I also returned to Tech in 1972-1973 when I was an active-duty officer in the Army -- the Army sent me there for a year to get my Master's Degree in Mass Communication.) During my final semesters at Tech and after my graduation in 1967, I worked as a reporter on two newspaper -- the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and the San Antonio Express-News --gaining a lot of experience about newspaper operations and the work done by young reporters. However, that on-hands experience in the real world did not last long and I entered the Army as a second lieutenant in April 1967 and began what I call my life as a professional tumbleweed. I spent 20 years on active duty as an Army officer, retiring in 1987 as a Major. At that time, I looked hard at public relations jobs or news media jobs in the civilian world, but I had enough experience to recognize lackluster professional ethics in both of those civilian markets, and I knew I would never be happy in a job that did not require and promote strong ethical standards. Actually, I saw that problem clearly early in my Army career. During my first assignment as an officer, someone recognized that my journalism degree and my experiences with the news media made me a good candidate for the Army Public Affairs Program. After I was sent to the Department of Defense school for formal training in that specialty, It was in Vietnam that I saw the news media at work in the real world. In my schooling since the 8th grade, I was taught the standard platitudes that the news media was a responsible, self-governing profession that was based on principles of fairness, accuracy, balanced coverage, impartiality, being unbiased, honest, and responsible for living up to those ethical standards. Boy, was I ever wrong! I am sure that every journalism student for generations past had similar textbooks like the ones I used in junior high, high school, and college -- and I knew that they must have read all those chapters that outlined the ethics of the profession. But I soon learned that textbooks and the classroom do not always teach the reality of the real world. So, in the real world of Vietnam, I was a public affairs officer in the Americal Infantry division in the northern zone of the country, and my job was to escort visiting news media representatives to field locations where American soldiers were in close contact with a harsh enemy that was intent on conquering that poor country. However, the news media that I dealt with on a regular basis disappointed me. It was obvious that the reporters were not there to do a fair or accurate job of reporting. From my experiences and knowledge of the profession, I noticed that many reporters had their stories written before they arrived, and most of those stories were designed to feed the anti-war efforts back in the States, to embarrass the President and the federal agencies supporting the war, or to portray the American soldiers as either inept, or drug addicts, or as angry draftees who were ill-trained, ill-mannered, or as degenerates trying to find babies to kill. I was able to read the stories and view the television coverage that those so-called journalists fed to American readers and viewers back in the states, and was disgusted, not only with their politically-based stories that had no basis on fact, but also with their slanderous treatment of the American soldiers who actually acted in a professional manner against a tough enemy in a harsh environment. At some point, I formalized my thoughts that there needed to be a strong effort to stand up for the common soldier, to provide accurate information about their accomplishments, and attempt to counter the inaccuracies found in the news media. That was a job that I wanted, because it satisfied the higher ethical standards that I believe in, and that goal was always in my thoughts. So after Vietnam, I became a professional soldier with a mission. And as I faced retirement in 1987 and looked for another job, I realized that I wanted nothing more than continue providing accurate information about the Army and the accomplishments of our soldiers. So I started looking for a job as an Army civilian employee, and I found one, becoming an Army public affairs specialist, and serving another 19 years as a professional tumbleweed before I finally retired again in 2005 as a GS-12. -- During those 39+plus years that I spent with the Army, it seemed that I was always moving -- after all, that's the job of a tumbleweed. My travels began in 1967 and included the following stops: - 1967 : (1) Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind, for the Adjutant General Officer Basic Course, and (2) on to the small island of Okinawa for assignment with the 2nd Logistics Command - 1968 : Departed Okinawa in the summer, and (1) returned to Fort Benjamin Harrison for the Information Officer Basic Course at the Department of Defense Information School. From there, (2) I spent a few weeks at Fort Riley, Kan for a Vietnam orientation course, and then (3) off to Vietnam for an assignment as a Public Affairs Officer for the Americal Infantry Division in the northern part of the country in Chu Lai. I arrived at the division on Thanksgiving Day, and my first day was working on the details for the Bob Hope Christmas tour coming in December. You might have seen a picture of me at the performance -- I was the guy at the side of the stage taking photos. - 1969 : An infantry division in combat is a busy place, and the Americal was no different. I was usually in the field sometime every week, either escorting visiting news media, or writing stories and taking photographs for our division publications. I was involved in media coverage of a lot of events in the division, but the most notable was the so-called massacre at My Lai. That sad story happened sometime in early 1968, long before I got to Vietnam, but the story did not break until about 18 months after the incident, in the late summer of 1969.. We were swamped my members of the Saigon press corps who wanted to go to the site and I coordinated arrangements to use two large cargo helicopters to handle the load. Because it was so long after the occurrence, there was not much to see at My Lai itself, but the media had to say thkey had been there, and they kept coming until that side of the story was no longer interesting. And Vietnam was never a safe place. With all the time that I spent in the far reaches of our division area, the closest I came to that reality occurred in the area where we had our sleeping facilities in Chu Lai. During an early morning rocket attack, I was too close to some of the explosions and was hit by some of the debris, with only some cuts and abrasions to show for it. I was one of the lucky ones - I departed Vietnam in late November of 1969, heading back to Fort Benjamin Harrison where I was scheduled to be a student at the Adjutant General Advanced Officer Course beginning in early 1970. - 1970: (1) The advanced course at Fort Harrison lasted for six months , and upon graduation we received our new assignments. (2) Surprise - surprise. This time I stayed at Fort Harrison to be an instructor at the Defense Information School, where I had been a student before going to Vietnam. As an instructor, I taught classes on public affairs practices and how to handle events as a public affairs specialist, working with the news media and community groups. Students at the school were officers and enlisted personnel from all of the military services, including military personnel from foreign countries . - 1971 - While still an instructor at the school, I was selected to attend the Public Affairs Advanced Course, conducted at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The course was taught by professors from the Public Affairs Department at the University, and attendees received six graduate-level credit hours. Being a student on the university campus for the summer was not the usual Army experience. - 1972: I completed my assignment at the Defense Information School in the summer of 19p72, and my next assignment was a return to university life. I applied to the Army's advanced schooling program, and I was accepted to attend Texas Tech to get a master's degree in Public Relations/Mass Communications. - 1973 - 1975: As the summer ended in 1973, my time as a college student ended also and I prepared for a new assignment, this time with a master's degree in my pocket. My new assignment was at Fort ...Expand for more