I don't believe we did it!
Those of you who know me would be surprised that I would be involved in some stunt like this, but it did happen, honest.
It was my last spring break. By last I mean last. It was the spring break of my senior year - 1964. I don't know why I was headed to Atlanta, even though my home was there. I had been spending most of my weekend leave time in Columbus, GA since the semester break in January. But all that is another story. Anyway, I had bummed a ride home with another cadet's parents to his house in Dunwoody, GA. He gave, maybe, two more cadets and me a lift home. I wish I could remember the names of the other cadets, but all of the names are lost in fog of getting old. When we arrived at the house in Dunwoody, we pull all our bags out the parent's station wagon and loaded up the boy's car. He was going to take the rest of us home in his car. At this time I feel there were three or four of us LWMA cadets in that car.
In between Dunwoody and Chamblee, GA, where I lived, there was then, and still is, a private school named Marist Academy. This is a Catholic high school and in 1964 it was non-boarding military school. The main classroom building at Marist was three or four stories tall with the ground floor open to the outside. This open area under the building was where the Marist cadets did their daily drills. It was neat idea to have a place where you could drill even when it was raining. (I hope I don't give the administrators at LWMA any ideas!)
Meanwhile back in the car, as we were driving past Marist Academy, one of the guys shouts, "Look! They're drilling at Marist!" Then someone else came up with idea of going over there. One idea led to another as the driver turned to the right and onto the Marist campus road. Of course we were all in our LWMA uniforms, as we had to sign out at the LWMA CQ office in our class A uniforms. This was the beginning of the one and only unofficial "LWMA surprise inspection of Marist Academy." This whole thing was made up as it went along. As soon as we parked, we all piled out of the car, put on our hats, straightened up our uniforms and ties before walking to the building. As our little group walked down the sidewalk that separated the drilling platoons under the building, the Marist Cadet Officer of the Day (OD) walked up to me and gave me a snappy salute. That did not surprise me as he was a First Lieutenant and I was a Captain. Not only did I have my three pips to his two, but I also had the black and gray West Point* type captain's stripes on both selves! His uniform was exactly like our cadet gray uniforms except his was standard ROTC with no stripes. All of us had some rank on our NDCC** uniforms. That meant we all had West Point stripes, and my four stripes were as wide as the sleeve and went from my shoulder almost down to my elbow. In other words we looked like some inspection team from a foreign country! The OD asked us what we were doing there and I told him that some of the younger guys in the group were thinking of transferring from LWMA to Marist, as it was a lot closer to their homes. The OD proceeded to take us to the headmaster. We were met by a priest who showed us around and told us all about his school. I think some of the guys even picked up catalogs and application blanks just to keep the bluff going. We thanked the headmaster, got in the car and as soon as we were off the Marist campus we all started laughing and did not stop until we were at my house across Clairmont Road from the DeKalb-Peachtree airport.
From then on the members of this little inspection team from LWMA would have a great time telling our fellow LWMA cadets the whole story, even if nobody believed us!
AND I still don't believe I did something like that.
- LWMA - NDCC - ROTC Patches -
*General Futch, being a West Point graduate made sure that the LWMA uniform had those stripes until the West Point stripes were done away with when LWMA joined the Army ROTC program in 1966. The West Point stripes returned to LWMA in 1990's when the cadet offices and color guard were required to wear the complete West Point style dress uniform.
**National Defense Cadet Corps - LWMA - 1962-1966
P.S. If you were one of the other cadets in this story, please, contact me. I would love for someone to refresh my memory as to who the other guys were.
Brian V. Brunner '64 bbrunner@lwalumni.org