SGT. HARDCORE

10 x 11 inch ink and watercolor painting by George C. Clark   Collection of the Artist

Comment:

Hardcore was crew chief on one of our 175mm guns.  He was called Hardcore because unlike most of us who were draftees, he was Regular Army, a volunteer who had already re-upped (re-enlisted) once.  The vast majority of soldiers in Vietnam ranking E5 (sergeant or spec/5) or below were draftees.  Most of the officers ranking captain or below were draftees who had qualified for Officer Candidate School.  I qualified for OCS.  I picked artillery and was sent to Fort Sill where I was trained to work in a fire direction center.  When I realized that if I then didn't go to OCS I would be doing the same work as an artillery officer but without the commission, I dropped OCS to avoid the extra year and a half in the army that being an officer would have required.  This worked out well for me as I wound up doing one of the very few combat jobs the army had that I was actually good at and I made crew chief and spec/5 after about 8 months.