The Brown Shoe Army

In 1959 Ray Smith joined the 340th Engineers unaware that he might be expected to fight on a nuclear battlefield. After an eventful Basic Training, Ray was ordered to a Fort Gordon Georgia unit named after the Reserve Forces Act (RFA #1). There, 470 low-ranking enlisted men, mostly college graduates, were supervised by a first lieutenant, a sergeant and a corporal who ran the mail room. All were unmotivated “short-timers” whose interests were comfort, sleep and counting the days, not unlike characters from previous generations—No Time for Sergeants, Biloxi Blues or M*A*S*H—except that one day, with a few weeks remaining in their enlistment, the RFA #1 boys were told that they were to become Pentomic warriors modeled after the 101st Airborne Division.