With Veteran’s Day approaching, I was invited to speak to a group on Wed about my “Inadvertent Pioneering” time in the Army. I am usually asked about why I haven’t written my memoirs yet. I think I’ve mentioned in previous posts it isn’t time for me to do that yet. I do capture bits and pieces and occasionally do a post here about different incidents. One amusing vignette had to do with the .45 pistol I had when I was in command of a large unit at Fort Campbell, KY (I think I’ve posted about that.) For those who aren’t familiar with the .45, it’s the same pistol you see in war movies from WW II through Vietnam. It was replaced with the 9 mm. Anyway, for reasons that aren’t terribly important, an individual convinced me I should be able to field strip and reassemble my pistol with my eyes closed and I ought to be able to do this in under 1 minute. I decided to develop this skill and so, when I was at my desk with enough spare time, I would check my pistol out of the arms room and work on this. As usual in the office configuration, my First Sergeant and clerk were in the outer office that led into mine. They became accustomed to this and the First Sergeant would time me.

At this point, the fact that I had one of the largest company-sized units at Fort Campbell and was the first female to do so was still somewhat of a curiosity. One day I was going through the pistol field strip and reassemble with my eyes closed. I called, “Time?” to my First Sergeant and opened my eyes to see one of the other company commanders from a different unit standing in my doorway. “There was no way I wanted to interrupt you,” the visitor said. (I was under a minute by the way). The gentleman had come to introduce himself because our units did have occasional interactions, but it was fairly obvious what he was really doing was checking out the “female” aspect as much as anything. It wasn’t a bad first impression to make.