| Summary: | (6:08) Mr. Brown discusses his assignment to the Panama Canal Zone and eventual transfer to the National Guard in Huntsville, Alabama.
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Charles Brown
June 27, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 8
Charles Brown: Then in June of ’67, ’68, yeah, ’68 I went to Panama Canal Zone for an assignment there with the 8th Special Forces group. And that, that, it was a good assignment. We enjoyed it. There again it sort of shocked Nancy’s system because that was back to the tropics. Well I knew what to expect but it was still, after being home for eighteen months to get readjusted to the wet/dry season, high, high humidity. But we adjusted and had fourteen months, I think, June through August. Left there in August of ’69. Oh, while I was there I took a military training team to Nicaragua for three months, was a, there again if you can imagine an instructor in their military academy. It’s their equivalent to West Point. It’s the only way a Nicaraguan can become an officer is to go through the military academy. They had asked us to come in and teach some classes on insurgency and urban warfare, things like that. So I carried a team in and had a warrant officer and a 1st lieutenant went with me. Lived there for a little over three months. Got to meet the president of the country; that was a big deal. Of course President Somoza was overthrown and I’ve often wondered—there was a coup in Nicaragua not long after we left—and I just often wondered if any of the class members, we had about twenty-two men in the class, if they were part of that coup. Now, I don’t, I don’t know. The president’s nephew was in our class and he was assassinated and his assassination was the signal for the coup to begin. I read that in the newspaper back in Panama that he was the first person that was assassinated and President Somoza had to leave the country.
Clint Alley: Ah, so did you, you came home after Nicaragua, back to Fort Bragg?
CB: No, I came back home.
CA: Oh, okay.
CB: Ah, I’d just reached a point that I had to make a career decision. I’d been in 4½ years, much longer and I would need to make a career out of it. We wanted to have other children and I knew I couldn’t get insurance when we came home if Nancy was expecting. If we stayed, you know, that was going to be at least another year and I had already, while we were living in Washington I had resigned my commission. Or I had tried to. It was rejected. They extended me for another year because my, my commission, when I was commissioned at UNA, it was for a three year, I was obligated for three years. And so at the end of the three years I resigned and got extended an additional year. I still have that letter. Remember it well. ‘Due to the needs of the United States Army and the current conflict in Vietnam, we find it necessary to extend your tour one year. If at the end of that time you desire to resign please resubmit.’ So while I was in Panama, I resubmitted that letter and it was accepted. I had been offered a job here in Florence from an engineer that I had worked for while I was in high school and college. He told me through a letter that, you know, anytime I came home my job was waiting, so. That sort of fell into place too, so I came home and went to work for that engineer and missed the Army. And, just, I missed it. And there was a Special Forces detachment in the National Guard that was stationed in Huntsville. I went over there and talked to them and they had a vacancy for a captain so I joined with them and stayed 23½ more years. The last part of my assignment—with, with that Special Forces unit, after several years, I was gonna have to transfer to Birmingham for a promotion and it was just a little bit more travel than I wanted. We were drilling twice a month and two weekends out of the month I was going to Huntsville and I’d have to go to Birmingham two weekends out of the month, so I found a, a position I guess you would say working with the Emergency Management Agency in Florence. At the time they called it Civil Defense.
|
|---|
