CHESTER

A brand new 2d Lieutenant, I reported to the 82d Airborne Division, my first assignment out of West Point, by going to the Division Headquarters, where I was told to go immediately to the Headquarters of the 1st Airborne Battle Group of the 325th Infantry. I found that easily since all the Battle Groups of the Division had gaudy signs in front of their headquarters announcing who they were and who their commander was.

I entered the headquarters building with some apprehension, not having any idea what to expect. Just inside the front door was a sergeant sitting behind a desk. I told him I was reporting in and the Battle Group Sergeant Major told me to have a seat outside the Adjutant's office. The Sergeant Major then told the Adjutant that a new lieutenant was waiting. In a few minutes I was summoned into the Adjutant's office.

The Adjutant was a Major Chester McCoid. He appeared a little older than other majors I had encountered along the way. McCoid had arrived at this point in his life by a most unusual path. He had joined the Army, according to the widely-believed scuttlebutt, as a 14-year old, lying about his age to enlist during World War II. By the 6th of June, 1944 he had been made a company first sergeant though only about 16 or 17 and only having an 8th grade education. He jumped with the 82d Airborne Division at Normandy, and fourteen years later still wore the fatigue uniform and jump boots that he had worn during that jump. Somewhere along the way he had been commissioned and now was a major back in the 82d again.

McCoid had a daunting personality-extremely serious and somewhat terrifying. To add to the image, he spoke very precisely, enunciating carefully and using unnecessarily long words where shorter, more common ones would have sufficed.

He asked me, "Do you have your personnel file in your possession?"

I thought about the question for a couple of seconds causing McCoid to repeat the question. "Do you have your personnel file in your possession, yes or no?"

I could easily have answered the question if it hadn't been so precisely phrased. I realized I was out of thinking time so I decided I had better start talking.

"I have my 201 file with me but it's on a officer that I would have to take reveille for the next week as punishment. Before that week was over the XO had invented some new reason to punish me with another week of reveilles. It was apparent that I was going to be the officer at reveille formation from then on, or at least until a still newer officer was assigned and started getting the shaft.

So it was absolutely normal that I was standing on the top of the steps in front of the company waiting for the reveille report from the first sergeant one morning when a sergeant left the formation and came up to me to tell me that Major McCoid was in the company area.

The presence of a senior officer in the company area required that I immediately report to him, but the reports were coming in from the platoon sergeants and it was only going to be a few seconds until the first sergeant reported to me. I thought that if I waited another few seconds I could both receive the report from the first sergeant and report to Major McCoid, fulfilling both of my obligations.

As soon as I received the report from the first sergeant I went looking for McCoid, but couldn't find him. Every couple of minutes some other soldier told me that Major McCoid was someplace else and was looking for me. But as soon as I went there I found that McCoid had left there and was somewhere else and looking for me.

Five frantic minutes later I was still pursuing the elusive McCoid. Rushing out of the front door of the company I ran right into McCoid who instantly launched into a tirade about how I should have reported to him as soon as he arrived. As the chewing out went on it became more and more eloquent and more and more profane. Streams of profanity were issuing forth the likes of which I had never heard before. I actually began to enjoy it. I listened with great admiration as McCoid crafted unique combinations of common swear words. It was an oratorical gem. It went on for a full four or five minutes without a letup.

All of this was semi-public since it was occurring on the front steps of the company and soldiers were constantly passing.

When McCoid finally ran out of things to yell at me about he lowered his voice and leaned in close to my right ear and said, "That is the worst ass chewing you have ever had, isn't it?"

I, remembering the seemingly unending and unprovoked "corrections" I received for a solid year as a plebe at West Point replied, "Not even close, sir!"

A look of anger flicked across McCoid's face, but I detected the corners of the major's mouth turning up in the closest thing I had ever seen to a smile on his face. I sensed that I had just passed some sort of test.

Over the next several years our paths crossed again. McCoid had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and reassigned to the division staff. Then, a Battle Group was put together to go to Okinawa to be the "strategic reserve" in the Pacific. Both of us were assigned to this unit, ensuring that we would serve together for the next two and one half years, unusual in the Army.

Lieutenant Colonel McCoid was now the Battle Group Executive Officer and I continued to serve in a rifle company. When we passed outdoors, where saluting was required, McCoid, by far the senior and the "saluted" officer according to protocol, would usually preempt my salute with his own and would shout, "Let's go, McGrew!" "Let's go" was the motto of the 325, the unit they had been in together in the 82d. The custom in the new unit was to shout "All the way, sir", which was properly answered by "Airborne!"

True to our long history together, I never knew how to answer McCoid's "Let's go!" The only thing I could think to do was respond "Airborne", which I always did. I have often wondered what those soldiers who heard this strange exchange thought of the colonel yelling "let's go" at the lieutenant, and the lieutenant's apparent glee at hearing it.

LTC McCoid had developed another interesting trademark. Whenever he sent out something to the unit over his signature, rather than following convention, he simply signed it "McCoid". I could think of only a few precedents for this. Pershing, MacArthur, Eisenhower came to mind. I found it both presumptuous and somehow admirable that this Lieutenant Colonel would adopt the practice of persons so important that their names alone were more telling than their titles. And, I thought, it was perfectly appropriate. To every officer in the unit, the name McCoid was all that was necessary. It mattered not what his job was, it was his name that mattered.

Years later I was on a short trip during the Christmas season to the Pentagon. I took a few minutes to try to locate my old comrade, now a full colonel on the Army staff. I found his office, but McCoid was not there that day. I left him a note to say that I had been by. I signed it "McGrew". A few days later I received a Christmas card in response. It was signed "McCoid."