________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
lot of months and then make a knee-jerk reaction. You're probably wrong. You might be
happy both places. Why is it that you think that you've been wrong all this time? Better think
about this one." So, he went infantry.
Q:
Everyone realizes that that's an important decision. Well, maybe not everyone, but lots of
cadets realize they're making an important decision when they make this branch decision and
try to give it some careful thought.
A:
Well, you always hope so. I know I did. I thought everybody was doing it the same way.
When you're acting as the tactical officer, you begin to wonder about some folks. As much
as you're working on it because some of the questions you get asked--"Well, would I be
more likely to get Fort Carson if I go air defense or armor?"--make you begin to wonder if
they're really motivated by the right kinds of things.
So, I say it's probably a mixed bag out there as to what's driving them, what's motivating
them. It is a big decision, and although you can change things down the line a couple of
years--and a lot of folks do--nevertheless, it's nice if you get it right the first time, which I
fortunately did.
Q:
Well, I've seen a lot of interviews with officers who went to West Point in the '30s and into
the '40s. During that time it was difficult to get into the engineers. You made your choice
based on class standing, and those slots went early. I think that was still the case when you
were making your decision.
A:
Yes. As I recall, I was something like 63 out of our class of about 480. I don't know where
engineers went out, somewhere on the order of 120 or 140, I believe. About 34 classmates
went engineers.
At that time we still had 25 percent of our class who went into the Air Force. So, of the 480,
about 360 went Army and 120 went Air Force.
Q:
I guess the big competing choices were Air Force and armor out of the top half of the class?
A:
Yes, armor was, but engineers went out first. Air Force because the numbers went down
quite a ways. You basically had to want to be Air Force--people made their pick one way or
the other, Army or Air Force.
Within the Army, though, armor was a strong choice because there were such strong armor
personalities at West Point in the tactical department. General [James F.] Hollingsworth,
later a major commander in Vietnam, Korea, all around, was very flamboyant. The stories he
would tell of armor and cavalry! When we'd go into our military training, he really ignited
the class and really brought out this feeling of mobility and fire power of armor. This was the
branch that knew how to do things. I remember two instances still vividly today.
One of them was an evening lecture. There were dialogues going on in our nation then about
the future and, of course, we're talking '55, '56, we're talking about McCarthy hearings of
the Secretary of the Army, and we're talking the Cold War and the Soviet Union. I still
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