A Critique of Lucian Truscott Newsletter article: The convictions of Lt. Calley, dead at 80, by Lucian K. Truscott IV, 31 July 2024

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!

Without going into all the details, suffice to say First Lieutenant William “Rusty” Calley was the only soldier tried and convicted of the 1968 infamous My Lai Massacre.  He was found guilty of personally killing not fewer than 20 civilians and was sentenced to life in prison on 29 March 1971. Two days later, President Richard Nixon ordered him removed from the Stockade and placed under house arrest.  He eventually served three and a half years of house arrest before being paroled by Nixon in 1974.

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.