This is a critique of an article that just appeared in a Newsletter published by Lucian Truscott IV that was prompted by the recent discovery that Lieutenant Calley of My Lai Massacre fame had passed away this past April. Lucian IV, a disgraced West Point Grad cashiered out of the Army “Under Other Than Honorable Conditions” had been a reporter covering Calley’s Court Martial so used this opportunity to rehash his grievances against those superiors that found him unfit to serve as well as disparage ALL Vietnam era Army Officer Candidate School (OCS) produced officers. During Vietnam almost half of all junior officers came out of OCS and the vast majority of them were exemplary. Calley was an anomaly that slipped through. Here is a link to Lucian IV’s website if you want to waste your time reading his garbage or you can just read my critique and see why he is full of shit! As full disclosure, I was a Draftee that graduated from OCS and went to Vietnam as a Second Lieutenant, extended to come how a decorated Captain with a Combat Infantryman Badge (CIB) and remained in the Army to retire a Colonel.
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/the-convictions-of-lt-calley-dead?triedRedirect=true
Lucian K. Truscott IV was born in 1947 in Japan into a
distinguished US Army family of West Point graduates. His father was Army Colonel Lucian K.
Truscott III and his grandfather was Lucian Jr., a US Army general during World
War II who commanded the 3rd Infantry Division and later the Fifth Army in
Italy. His father Lucian III served in Korea and Vietnam and young Lucian IV
attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1969. In that most of his West Point classmates and
young Lucian IV were destined to do a tour in Vietnam, after completing only thirteen
months of his four year commitment pay back for his free education and still a second
lieutenant, he was found to be unfit for Military service and was cashiered out
of the Army “Under Other Than Honorable Conditions." Truth be told, his
“unfit act” was probably his way of avoiding the dangers of combat because he
was a COWARD!
Young Lucian IV having been drummed out of the Army Under
Other than Honorable Conditions, the Village Voice deemed he was the ideal
person for the hatchet job they wanted done on the Army, especially the officer
corps, so they employed him and sent him to Fort Benning to cover the Calley trial
that began in November 1970. Needless to
say young Lucian IV did not disappoint which brings us up to the present.
The death of former Lieutenant Calley had just became public
on 30 July 2024 when it was discovered in a public record. He had died in a
hospice at age 80 in Gainesville, Florida on 28 April 2024. Now the not-so-young 77 year old Lucian IV decided
to use this as an opportunity to ostensibly rehash the Calley story but
actually it appears his real intention was to vilify the Vietnam era Army
Officer Corps and especially Officers commissioned out of Officers Candidate
School (OCS), as well as other senior officers he felt had “done him wrong.”
This Officer Corps he obviously despised was the same one that found him unfit
to serve in and booted him out of “Under Other Than Honorable Conditions.” It
seems this article was just another one of his efforts to “get even” with
others that had recognized his unfitness to serve.
Without going into all the misstatements and outright lies
contained in Lucian IV’s article, I’ll provide these few directly quoted
passages to illustrate how ignorant he really is and especially ignorant about OCS produced
officers:
“He (Calley) had been
drafted into the Army as part of Project 100,000, a program initiated by
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that lowered IQ standards and removed the
requirement for enlistees to have a high school diploma. It came out at dinner that when he was
drafted, Calley had a high school diploma and one year at a junior
college. What we were not told was that
he had flunked out. When he was drafted,
Calley was one of the better recruits in 1967, when opposition to the war had
created a system of dodging the draft that was being employed by college
students who dropped out or reached the end of their studies and became draft
eligible.
The Army’s standards
to become an officer had demanded a college education, but under Project
100,000, that went away, and a year of junior college was deemed sufficient,
apparently even if you had flunked out.
Calley was sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS), a program at Fort
Benning that lasted 90 days after soldiers graduated from Basic Training. Calley, with only two months of Basic and
three months of OCS, popped out a second lieutenant…”
First off, Calley was NOT drafted and he certainly was NOT
part of McNamara's Project 100,000, a controversial Department of Defense (DoD)
program to draft soldiers who would previously have been below military mental Category
IV or medical standards. Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara in October 1966 and was ended in December 1971. Calley
voluntarily enlisted in July 1966. Seems Lucian IV was also under the delusion
that “The Army’s standards to become an
officer had demanded a college education, but under Project 100,000, that went
away.” In fact, a College degree was NOT required for an Army commission
until the mid-1980’s and even today as an exception under the “Early
Commissioning Program” graduates of the four Military Junior Colleges can be
commissioned as second lieutenants with just two years of college.
During Vietnam about half the junior commissioned officers
came from OCS with many being “College Ops” who were college graduates that
enlisted with a guarantee of attending OCS but not necessarily graduating.
Except for a very few NCOs that applied for OCS, the vast majority were
voluntary enlistees and draftees that were identified during initial Reception
Station testing as officer material. At the Reception Station new inductees
were administered a series of tests called the Armed Forces Qualification Test
(AFQT) (the predecessor of todays Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery [ASVAB])
to match aptitude with the needs of the Army. Inductees that scored high on the
GT Test (the IQ Test) were given a series of other tests such as the Officer’s
Leadership Inventory (OLI) to qualify to apply to attend OCS. Most of this
latter group were not college graduates and Calley’s scores including his GT/IQ
Test were high enough to qualify for OCS.
Seems Lucian IV was under the mistaken impression that
“Officer Candidate School (OCS) was a program at Fort Benning that lasted 90
days after soldiers had graduated from just 8 weeks of Basic Training.” In fact, OCS Lieutenants had attended 8 weeks
of Basic Training, 8+ Weeks of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) and 23 weeks
of OCS “Hell” (with an attrition rate >50%). In fact, by 1968 there were
three six month OCS courses, Infantry at Fort Benning, GA; Artillery at Fort
Sill, OK; and Engineer at Fort Belovir, VA.
OCS was designed to put a candidate under the constant stress they would
experience under combat conditions and provide the knowledge to keep a new
lieutenant alive in Vietnam. As a
result, OCS Officers were the most sought after by commanders for Platoon
Leader positions.
If Lucian IV was
interested in finding out what he obviously didn’t know about Vietnam era OCS,
I would recommend he read “Not a Gentleman’s War” by Ron Milan, a Professor of
Military History at Texas Tech and a Vietnam Vet OCS Officer.
In 1967, Army Chief of Staff GEN Harold K. Johnson placed
LTG Ralph E. Haines Jr. in charge of The Haines Board, an eleven member review
board comprised of a 3-Star LTG, a 2-Star MG, two 1-Star BGs, and seven COLs
and LTCs that examined the training of newly commissioned officers from all
three of the major commissioning sources: the United States Military Academy
(USMA) West Point graduates, Reserve Officers Training Course (ROTC) from colleges
officer training programs, and Officer Candidate School (OCS) graduates
comprised of both college graduates
guaranteed attendance but not graduation and Regular Army Soldiers and Draftees
normally identified during Induction Stations testing as having officer
potential.
The Haines Board Final Report contained the following
“Analysis of Current Army System of Officer Schools” and especially OCS:
Ø “The Board did reserve its highest praise in terms of providing officers ready to assume troop command and to this source of commissioning it could not have been more complimentary…. The OCS program produces well trained and well motivated second lieutenants … and probably the best prepared of all newly commissioned officers for immediate duty assignment are OCS graduates.”
Ø
“… it should be noted that of the graduates of
the three major sources of commissioning it is the OCS graduate who is
considered by senior commanders as the best trained for platoon-level troop
duty, in the initial duty assignment …. The concentrated six-month program of
training that comprises the current OCS schedule is able to focus instruction
at the platoon leader level. As a result, the average OCS graduate is a
technically trained leader, well qualified to assume an appropriate company
level assignment.”
During the Vietnam War the Army contracted with George
Washington University to conduct numerous studies of its activities under the
umbrella name Human Resources Research Office or HUMRRO Contract and one of the
studies was “An Analysis of U.S. Army Officer Candidate Schools.” The results
of that study confirmed the findings of the Haines Board.
Finally, to get a comparison of proficiency of new second Lieutenants
from the three sources, the Army Infantry School Analysis & Review Branch
of the Director of Instruction at Fort Benning tested 1200 newly Branch
Qualified Infantry Officers using the “Basic Officer Course Military Stakes
Examination” and the results were shocking.
USMA Graduates scored 57.1% on the test while ROTC College Graduates
scored 48.1% but OCS Graduates scored 70.3%.
Bottom line and to put it mildly, Lucian K. Truscott IV is
full of shit! Not only does he not have
a clue about the quality of Officership in the US Army during the Vietnam War,
he doesn’t even know how long OCS was during Vietnam or how potential officers
were selected to attend it. As a
disgraced former officer cashiered out under “Other Than Honorable Condition”
as unfit to serve, he has a lot of gall criticizing anyone that actually had
the qualifications and guts to serve. Lucian IV was simply an unfit COWARD and I
suspect his father and grandfather were ashamed of him in 1970 and looking down
from Heaven are still ashamed of him today.
