Michael H Crutcher:
CLASS OF 1963
Woodland High SchoolClass of 1963
Woodland, CA
University of CaliforniaClass of 1967
Davis, CA
Michael H's Story
Like Joe Pulliam, I was commissioned in the Army through the UC Davis ROTC program; also like Joe, I never intended the make the Army a career/profession. However, having had a 2-year ROTC scholarship, I owed the Army four years. So, I was commissioned in the Regular Army in late June and took off to Ft. Campbell, KY, and the 101st Airborne Division. I spent most of that summer with my unit (2nd Battalion/506th Airborne Infantry) on temporary duty at West Point, conducting some field training for some of the cadets at Camp Buckner.
However, through the kind efforts of one of my best professors (Dr. A.G.), I was admitted to graduate school, and the skillful lobbying of our Professor of Military Science (Colonel Orrin Tracy, an Anzio veteran), the Army decided let me go to graduate school for one year. I was notified in August 1967, while at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, that the Army would let me go to grad school for nine months--later extended to 12 months--to get my Masters Degree. So, I had a great trip back to California and spent the next 12 months studying like crazy, as I had switched from History as an undergraduate to Political Science as a graduate student.
After that year, it was off to basic officer training and then Ft. Riley, KS, where I served as a Reconnaissance Platoon Leader for nearly six months before heading to Vietnam in July 1969--on the very day the astronauts first landed on the moon [there was an irony to going to the jungle while they were going to the moon]. I spent 12 months in the 1st Battalion/5th Cavalry, then an Airmobile Infantry unit. Still considering the Army an "interruption" of life rather than a profession, I extended in Saigon to work in Saigon in an analytic assignment, as I had just switched from Infantry branch to Military Intelligence branch. I was all ready to extend for a second six-month tour in order to "gangplank" upon return to the States (or "The World" as we called ...Expand for more
it in Vietnam)--which meant to get "out of Vietnam and out of the Army" at the same time.
As the end of my 4-year obligation approached, I had interviewed with an "unnamed" agency and considered returning to UC Davis for my PhD in Political Science, because, when I took my "comps" for my M.A. degree, the Poli Sci Department said I did so well that I could return for my PhD. [BTW, I still have that letter, altho' I think the Statute of Limitations probably has run out on it!] Just as I concluded it was time to get out and "get back to living," the Army offered my a one-year course in Russian at Monterey, CA.
So, I took the bait, had a wonderful year at the Defense Language Institute, in Monterey, CA, where I was in Russian class for six hours a day and studied for another five or six hours--an easy schedule after Vietnam, although some of the other students who had come from assignments in the United States complained about the demanding schedule, I thought it was pretty cool to get paid to go to school. Monterey was fairly close (200 miles) to family, and it also is where I met the absolutely lovely young woman who would become my wife, ... and she is still just as absolutely lovely in my eyes after these nearly 38 years!
After language school, it was even more schooling, including two years of advanced Russian/Soviet Studies, with the big difference that the program was conducted in Russian--we even had to ask our questions in Russian when we had a question about the subject matter. We also had several trips into East Europe and the Soviet Union, one of the latter lasting 28 days, taking us from Leningrad to Lake Baikal and many points in between. So, after starting Russian language school in April 1971, I emerged from the Army schooling system in 1975 as a fully trained but inexperienced Soviet/Russian/East European Foreign Area Officer. The payback for the Army was about to begin, but that is another story.
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