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It's not supposed to happen this way. Not to soldiers such as Maj. Gen. John Chapman Bard.

No, the John Bards of the world battle-tested heroes, leaders of men, dedicated servants to their country and to the proud traditions of West Point's "long gray line" -- aren't supposed to fall in twisted domestic dramas.

Yet on June 28, the 75-year-old man died on a tree-lined residential street on a sunny day, a knife in his back. Brought down, police say, by what soldiers in the field call a "friendly" John Townsend Mustin, the troubled teenage son of Bard's longtime personal friend. A boy Bard had helped raise as his own.

"It's kind of ironic," observed Bard's oldest son, John C. Bard Jr., 46. "He made it through two tours in Vietnam, and died in this situation, because he was such a good person."

Bard's slaying on Albemarle Avenue in Richmond's West End ensured that the retired general would not simply fade away.

But those who knew Bard -- as a child, as a classmate and later commandant at West Point, as a decorated battalion commander in Vietnam and as a father -- say his death could never eclipse his life.

"John was taught to be the leader of men, and that he was," said Yale D. Weatherby, a classmate at West Point who graduated with Bard in 1954. "To have died in this fashion . . . is dreadfully wrong."

If anything, say friends and family, Bard's death was an extension of a life of service -- dedicated first to the Army and his family, then, during the last 15 years or so, to helping single, working mother Courtney Cash Mustin raise three young children.

"I think he felt not only that she needed him but that the kids needed him, too," said John Bard, as he prepared a eulogy for his father's funeral at West Point tomorrow.

"He filled a role. They became his second family."

. . .

Before he married and had a family of his own, John Bard's first family was the Army. But as a young boy born in Akron and growing up in Detroit, a military career wasn't a foregone conclusion.

While he was involved in the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts, earning the rank of Eagle Scout when he was just 14, Bard was also mischievous. He was prone to getting into trouble at school and with his father, Eugene, who worked as a business manager for B.F. Goodrich for 40 years.

According to a biography written in 1995 by a daughter, Catherine, young John Bard was fond of lighting small fires and stealing yo-yos. He spent time in detention for playing practical jokes on friends at school.

Bard's dream was to attend the University of Michigan law school, but his family did not have the money. So in 1946 at age 16, he left high school and forged his birth certificate so he could enlist in the Army under a program that would allow him to receive G.I. Bill benefits for college. Without telling his parents what he was doing, he borrowed 50 cents from his mother, Louise, to catch a bus and a train to Fort Eustis, Va.

"His parents thought he was missing," wrote Catherine Bard. "And his mother said this was the first time she saw his father cry."

. . .

While he later earned a high school equivalency diploma, once Bard entered the Army, he did not look back.

Recognized as having officer potential, he was sent to officer candidate school, where he was commissioned a second lieutenant. In 1950, he won an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, entering a little later than most at age 21.

At West Point, Bard was a track and field star whose main event was the hammer throw. He also excelled in his studies, graduating second in his class in 1954 and named the student commander, or first captain, of of the academy.

"There was never any question at West Point that John Bard would end up a general," recalled classmate and fellow retired Maj. Gen. L. H. Ginn III. "There was just a question of how many stars he would have."

Bard received a Rhodes scholarship and spent two years at Oxford, earning bachelor's and master's degrees. When he returned to to the U.S. in 1956, he married Marjorie Field Jackson, a Smith graduate whom he had met at a West Point dance.

In 1958, Bard's first son, John, was born. Three more children followed as the Bards moved from assignment to assignment: Elizabeth was born in 1960 in Ann Arbor, Mich., while Bard worked toward a degree in aeronautical engineering.

After two years as an instructor in thermo dynamics and fluid mechanics at West Point, he moved the family to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where Catherine Bard was born in 1964. A fourth child, James, was born in Norfolk in 1968, while Bard attended the Armed Forces Staff College.

John Bard Jr. recalled his father as involved in his life whenever he was home. "He was manager for my baseball team when I was 8, and we'd play catch in the backyard," said the son, who attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a full scholarship and works for Sun Microsystems in Palo Alto, Calif.

. . .

There were times when Bard could not be around. As a major, he spent 1965-66 in Vietnam, where he was senior adviser of a 20-man team in the Central Highlands, in Phu Bon Province. After becoming an assistant to the undersecretary of the Army in 1967 and later moving to the State Department and attending the National War College, Bard returned to Vietnam in 1970.

"Being an infantryman, he wanted to command a battalion, so he told his superiors he had his bags packed and could be anywhere in 10 minutes," Catherine Bard wrote in her father's biography. Bard rose to battalion commander, then to the head of operations for his division.

Bard came home from Vietnam virtually untouched, except for a shrapnel wound in the back of his leg caused when a soldier behind him stepped on a booby trap. He received the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit.

After becoming a colonel and moving to Fort Hood, Texas, Bard was promoted to brigadier general and sent to Belgium, where he served in 1975 as chief of staff to Gen. Alexander Haig, who was then Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

The cap to Bard's career came with his appointment as commandant of cadets at West Point in 1977. West Point had just begun admitting women. And it was in the throes of a cheating scandal when he arrived with the task of restoring the academy's reputation.

"He enjoyed having an impact on young adults and shaping them for the Army," his daughter wrote.

"He helped guide West Point through the difficult transition period," recalled former cadet John Meehan, class of'81, who was a plebe during Bard's tenure.

Two years later, Bard retired rather than accept an assignment in Turkey. The U.S. was in the throes of the Iranian hostage crisis, and Bard, according to his daughter and son, had concerns for his family's safety in the Middle East.

. . .

Bard made another difficult decision about 1987, when, with all of his children out of high school, he was divorced from his wife after more than 30 years of marriage.

"He was a very outgoing, gregarious person, and Mom was more inward," said his son John, recalling the time, when the family lived in Alexandria.

(His ex-wife, through her son, declined a request to be interviewed.)

In 1989, Bard also left his post as president of the Aluminum Association, where he had worked for eight years and during which he had obtained a master's degree in business administration from George Washington University at the same time as his son. In 1990, at nearly 60, he entered the College of William and Mary's law school, where he graduated in 1993.

Bard admitted to his family that he looked at the law as something "to keep me busy so I didn't have to worry about being a management generalist and 65 years old," Catherine Bard said.

But the retired general had already found another outlet for his time and talents. Bard had met Courtney Mustin, 17 years younger, with three small children of her own -- Lloyd, Elizabeth and John Townsend, known as "Towney."

. . .

Mustin, a native of Bristol, had moved to Richmond from Northern Virginia after a divorce from her husband, a descendant of a long line of prominent naval officers.

"I know that when he met Courtney, they probably struck it off pretty well," said John Bard Jr., who has met Mustin and her children on several occasions.

The general joined Mustin in Richmond, getting an apartment less than 2 miles away. In 1995, he was chief operating officer of her small transportation company, Gulfstream Limo, and later president of another of her companies, Richmond Connector, a cab service.

The general and Mustin were close. When she accompanied Bard to his 50th reunion at West Point last year, the couple told people they were married, said a classmate who was there.

Bard also became something of a father to Mustin's kids. After Gulfstream and Richmond Connector went out of business and Mustin took a job as a certification officer in the minority business enterprise section of the Virginia Department of Transportation, Bard was an even greater presence in the Lower Stonewall Court neighborhood where Mustin lived in a modest, red-brick Cape Cod.

Current and former neighbors on Albemarle Avenue said he'd arrive early every morning and spend hours working around the house or shuttling Mustin's children to and from activities.

"My impression was he was spending all his time acting as a surrogate father," said John Bard, who had tried to convince his dad to visit his family during a vacation in Maine the week of his slaying.

Instead, on June 28, Maj. Gen. John Chapman Bard confronted Towney Mustin, who, police say, attacked him in the middle of the street with a butcher knife, fatally wounding him. Bard had driven to Albemarle Avenue to go to the aid of Courtney Mustin, who police say had been stabbed in the chest by her son and had called Bard from the house.

"It's going to be OK," witnesses said Bard told Towney Mustin when they met on the street.

Search warrants filed in court indicate investigators believe Towney Mustin, 18, who was on probation after an arrest in Winchester on drug charges in December, may have been under the influence of some kind of medication or controlled substance at the time of the attacks.

Investigators said they found numerous knives scattered throughout the home and evidence that Towney Mustin had numerous self-inflicted cuts on his abdomen and forehead, including a serious wound to his upper arm that nearly severed it.

The prospect of Mustin being under the influence has done little to quell the anger and heartache of some who knew the general and served with him throughout a distinguished 29-year career.

"He was a great soldier and a comrade in arms, and it distresses me to no end to have an event such as this bring an end to a great servant of this nation," said Donald W. Widman, who served in Vietnam from 1965-66 with Bard as a staff sergeant.

"Plebes learn early on at West Point . . . when asked about something, the answers are, 'Yes, sir. No, sir. No excuses, sir,'" recalled Bard's classmate, Yale Weatherby. "There is no excuse, sir, for this young man's actions."

Bard's son said he doesn't want vengeance for what happened to his father two weeks ago. Instead he said he would focus tomorrow's eulogy on the former general's "integrity, his sense of humor and his passion and devotion to the military" and the two families he raised.

"I don't have that kind of anger," said John Bard. "I just feel like a cruel act could have been prevented if he [Towney Mustin] had made better decisions. He [Bard] was trying to help Courtney down to his last moment."