"The outfit I was assigned to, the 752d Tank Battalion, was more of the same.... The only difference was the vets here were not quite on their way out of town. Everything was loose and everything was wild, but these vets, the majority of whom had fought from Africa to Sicily to Italy, were still lean, mean, combat-ready troops - they just didn't have time for garrison-style discipline. It was not uncommon, for example, to be awakened in the middle of the night by a drunk off-duty trooper running through the barracks firing his weapon, or to hear one of his buddies outside, matching him shot for shot just for the hell of it. All in all, it was some violent world I found myself in - nothing like I'd expected - but with wonderful characters, veterans who could spin drunken tales until the wee hours of the morning about some little way they had beaten the system.... They rarely talked about combat, though, and after a very short time we new replacements stopped asking. Maybe it was just part of the role, but the old soldiers went silent on the horrors of war. It was as though they belonged to a secret fraternity, and we, the pink-cheeked unenlightened, were - in a word - outsiders.

Gradually most of the WWII warriors went back to the States, and the postwar wild-West feeling of lawlessness went, too. It had been great fun for a kid to be part of the hell-for-leather spirit that made up the 752d (the "Seven-Five-Deuce"), but like the tightening of a screw, one turn at a time, each day the unit became more military, the "who gives a damn" attitude of the remaining 752d combat leaders and troopers replaced by the exacting discipline of the peacetime Army."

Excerpted with the permission of Col. David H. Hackworth (U.S. Army, Ret.)