As an 18 year-old in 1956 I was required by law to register for the military draft on or before my birthday. I enrolled at UW-Milwaukee in the fall of 1956. Another legal requirement was that every male student at UW was required to take two years of ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) classes; classroom and marching. However, this training did not protect me from being drafted if or when my number came up in the draft.
Another option available to me was to join the Wisconsin National Guard. In 1956 members of the Guard were exempt from being drafted in active military service. I saw this step as insuring that my college years would not be interrupted by the draft. I was in effect a “draft dodger” of sorts, but legal one.
Membership in the Guard meant attending 2 hour Monday evening drills at the Milwaukee armory on N. Richards St. and attending a two-week summer camp the last two weeks of June at Camp McCoy near Sparta Wisconsin.
In the Guard I was assigned to the 32nd Division, the Wisconsin National Guard and specifically to the Division headquarters in Milwaukee. Within the headquarters I was placed in the division finance section. I am not sure how that happened, but this turned out to be a good thing for me.
For five months my weekly drills focused on becoming more soldierly; marching, saluting, obedience, uniform inspections, general orders, etc., i.e. basic training. Then I was introduced into training in army finance. Our task was to prepare to pay the troops at summer camp, a task that resulted in dispursing several million dollars in cash to the troops at the end of our two week camp.
In the army, there are two types of rank, officers and enlisted men. I was an enlisted soldier. The net result was I was starting at the lowest level anyone could imagine, an E-1 private. There were about twenty men in the finance section, all of them were college graduates, mostly accountants and the like, after all, this was all about finance.
Over the next fours years, while I was studying in college, I continued to be a member of the 32d Infantry Division in the Finance Section. As the years went by the older men in our section finished their duty and left and those of us younger soldiers were promoted to replace them. By my fourth year in the Guard I was a NCO, non-commissioned officer, an E-5; not really an officer, but rather a sergeant. In my case the lowest sergeant rank you can be.
I graduated from UWM in 1960 as an elementary teacher and took a job in Janesville, Wisconsin as a sixth grade teacher at Lincoln School. By this time Mom and I were married (1959) and son Jeff was on the way to us.
Since I was now a key person in the finance office in Milwaukee, being in Janesville, made drilling in Milwaukee impossible. So I was temporarily “loaned” to the Janesville Guard unit, the 32d Quartermaster Company. I went to weekly drills throughout my first year in Janesville. Col. Kaufmann, who was the Finance Officer, and the top officer in the Finance Office insisted on my staying with Finance. His reasons were that I and several NCO’s in finance were newly promoted and he needed to keep us in his unit.
At the beginning of my second year of teaching in Janesville, September, 1961, there was a major confrontation between the United States and our “cold war” enemy, the USSR or Soviet Union. The confrontation was over access to the part of Berlin Germany that was in the control of the US and our allies, France and Great Britain. In a nutshell the Russians closed all the access to West Berlin (air, highway, and rail) an threatened to take over West Berlin. This was seen as a major threat and, then President Kennedy, needed to “show” the Russians that there would be serious consequences if access to West Berlin was permanently ended. A show of force was needed to demonstrate how serious this situation was.
The president decided to call to active duty half a million part-time soldiers (Guard and Reserves), including the 32d Division; the entire Wisconsin National Guard. This call-up gave every one of us about twelve days to prepare to report for active duty. My date to report was 27 September, 1961.
To say that this call-up was a major disruption to me and to my young family would be an understatement. We had purchased our first home in Janesville and moved in in June. Now three months later we would have to move out and rent it. We could not in any way afford to make the loan payments on my army pay. Mom and Jeff had to move in with her parents and we had to rent the house out. We had to move everything to storage in parents’ homes in West Allis.
On September 27, I went to Mitchell Field in Milwaukee to join my Finance Office buddies on an all-day flight to Fort Lewis near Tacoma Washington. Mom and Jeff were there to say good-bye and a newspaper photographer captured the moment and the photo was published in the Milwaukee Journal newspaper that afternoon.
We didn’t have any idea how long this deployment would last. In fact, we didn’t get any clue until the following summer in June. We were to be trained to be comparable to any active duty army division and that would take some months to accomplish.
In our Division Finance Section our role would be to process the pay vouchers sent to us from every unit in our Division, some 27 units in all; companies (Infantry) and batteries (artillery). Our 32d Division strength was at about 80% or about 8,000 soldiers and another 3000 plus reservists would be called to augment our totals to full strength. We soon learned that there would be a major learning curve for our small office of thirty or so soldiers.
We landed late in the afternoon of 27 September at McCord AFB near Fort Lewis. It was raining lightly, something we would learn was usual from fall until spring. Our division would be housed in the North Fort Lewis, an unused area of buildings and barracks not used since the Korean War ten years earlier. Fortunately, they were able to replace all the broken windows, clean out and restore plumbing and electricity to these wooden creamcolorred icons of recent American military history before we arrived. Heat was provided by coal furnaces.
Our first Finance Office assignment was to join the regular army 4th Division Finance Office and work side by side with them as they did their payroll and then we worked on the payroll for our Division (remember 12,000 soldiers each). We soon learned that we were in for a rude awakening on the size and complexity of the tasks ahead of us.
In my case, I was the Chief of Enlisted Pay, a task that meant we prepared to pay all of the enlisted men in the Division; everyone but officers. My counterpart was a crusty old Sgt. E-7 with nearly thirty years of active duty and clearly an alcoholic. I was 23 years old, a sixth grade teacher with one year of experience, and 5 years of very part-time military experience. We were fortunate to have a highly educated group of guys and we absorbed systems and procedures quickly. After one month of this on the job training we took up residence in our own antiquated building near the division headquarters.
Our first month on-our-own was a nightmare and we met the payroll date only with lots of extra hours work; evenings and weekends. Our first payday, in November, was also any eyeopener. The payroll was about $7 million, cash. When the cash arrived so did the MP’s to guard the whole place. Each of the 27 units sent an officer and a guard to get their money. Security was very tight.
What was our process? Well, we received a payroll from each unit with a paper voucher for each enlisted man in the unit. On that voucher was the information that told us the soldier’s pay grade, years of experience, his dependents, and anything else that would affect his pay; like was part of his pay sent to a spouse somewhere else. Was his pay being reduced because of some penalty? We had to calculate withholding for income tax and social security to determine his cash pay on payday.
Each voucher was calculated by hand twice separately, then the two copies were compared for errors. Then each voucher was change listed; that is, we had to calculate his pay in actual cash denominations. For example, if his pay was $155, then we noted he would receive a one hundred dollar bill, a fifty dollar bill and a five. We then determined the exact number of each denomination of currency for the entire unit. Check and double check. It was all about paper and using adding machines.
A critical issue early on was errors on the voucher for each unit. Each voucher was prepared at the unit and typed by personnel on a typewriter. The chance for error was considerable. It became clear quickly that the pace of our work was directly affected by the accuracy of each voucher. Every error caused our people to stop calculating and contact the unit to make the correction.
For the next couple of months we struggled monthly with lots of extra hours to meet the payroll day deadlines; lots of evening hours and weekend hours. We were weary and overworked. We sought to find a way to speed up the process at our end and finally I was sent to the Fort Lewis Post Finance Office. Apparently they had developed a system to assure greater accuracy with the unit vouchers. My job was to visit and find out what they did and bring the idea back for own consideration.
We decided to keep track of errors on the vouchers and then to issue a ranking of all 27 units based on their rate of errors. Some units had errors on over 25% of their vouchers, while others were about 10%. Each error really bogged us down and wasted our time. At first we just created the ranking, keeping the information unannounced so we could decide how to share it. It wasn’t long however before the word got out and each unit was aware where they stood compared to other units. It’s all about competition and pride.
It didn’t take long for each unit to compete for a perfect score. We even found ourselves defending each error we found. A good problem. The result was much more productivity and we began to meet our payroll deadlines with time to spare; time for a little softball and huge donuts when the job was done.
Sometime in July I was called into Col. Kaufmann’s office and he told me that I would be part of a division ceremony and the guest was the U.S. Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance. He told me that I should be ready to go to it since I had been chosen to receive the Army Commendation medal. On 18 July 1962, I found myself standing in a line with a number of others (maybe 10-15) and awarded this mid level medal for “meritorious service”. This was a complete surprise and I soon realized that this was something noteworthy because the Sec. of Defense was doing the honors.
Now as then, I was unable to understand the reasons for this award. Here I was, a school teacher from Janesville, heading a staff of accountants and lawyers who were charged with the payroll for all the enlisted men in the 32d Wisconsin Infantry Division on active duty. I don’t recall anyone telling me why this award was submitted. I never saw any paperwork on this. I have often thought about this and the only thing I can conclude is that the efforts to upgrade the systems described above were thought by those above me to be worthy of special recognition. Furthermore, I was two ranks below the level for the job I was doing.
Col. Kaufmann on several occasions talked to me about his efforts to get me the promotion I deserved for the job I was doing. Finally, they told me the only way I could get promoted to E-6 staff sergeant was to change my military occupation status from finance to infantry, a potentially risky move, but one that I finally accepted. Fortunately I never saw the downside of that decision.
Col. Kaufmann on several occasions talked to me about his efforts to get me the promotion I deserved for the job I was doing. Finally, they told me the only way I could get promoted to E-6 staff sergeant was to change my military occupation status from finance to infantry, a potentially risky move, but one that I finally accepted. Fortunately I never saw the downside of that decision.
Rumors about when we would be ending our deployment and returned home persisted throughout our time in Fort Lewis. Some of our guys plotted a morale chart on the wall and it showed peaks and valleys of morale as these rumors came and died. At one point in late spring the line actually dropped off the chart and went through a hole in the floor. Such was the way we kept ourselves entertained.
Sometime in late July we learned that our release from active duty was imminent and on 16 August I joined two other buddies and drove away from Fort Lewis WA heading for home in Wisconsin.
I have reflected on this unexpected active-duty experience and its effect on me as a person. First of all, I was truly amazed, almost shocked, at how quickly Mom and I swung into action and created a plan to get ready for deployment. Sure we had our moments of emotion but time didn’t allow for much of that. We had to get things in order. I am sure that every military person has had the same types of short notice actions and dealt with them.
Secondly, the nature of my responsibility in the Finance Office meant that I had to develop a leadership style very quickly, under the gun, as it were. In the suceeding seven years I continued as a classroom teacher in Janesville and then in Brookfield. Then in 1970 I was encouraged to apply for a leadership position in curriculum and instruction in the Elmbrook School District in Brookfield. I functioned in this role for the next 26 years in a wide array of leadership roles featuring classroom visitation and evaluation, curriculum development in social studies, science, health, library media and instructional computing. I can say with complete confidence that the military leadership experiences forced on me in 1961-62 were critically important to each of those roles.
Would I have chosen this path? Obviously I wouldn’t have. But somehow the tasks placed before me were appropriate to my abilities to learn and move forward. I am very grateful for the opportunities.
When I am in the audience of a patriotic event and the call is to stand and be recognized for the sacrifices of military service, my first impulse is to remain seated and let others stand. I guess I have my Mom’s Norwegian stoicism. But lately I have decided that we all make sacrifices and make special efforts when called upon and I should stand up and accept the recognition with grace. My Mother and my Father were and would be proud. So am I.
Daryl M. Wunrow
NG 27 850 607
Staff Sergeant E-6
U.S. Wisconsin Army National Guard
“Berlin Crisis” 1961-62
