Return to main pageCLOSING A NIKE SITE
by Edward Dowd
< dowdeddowd2 atsign yahoo dot com >
posted October 18, 2015Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Arrival at Wilmington, Ohio - CD-27DC
- Accounting and horse trading ...
- Announcement of site closing
- Please stay to help
- The Trucks Arrive
- People waiting for General Discharge
- Loan Sharks worried
- ... we could hire a local security company to handle the front gate.
- Leaving, but the gate is not locked yet
As a happy techie, I (Ed Thelen) figured that to close a Nike site, you turned off the power, rolled in the trucks, loaded 'em up, rolled 'em out, and locked the gate.
More or less ;-))
The following is a more complete story -I called around to some people I knew from Korea, and from my days at Xavier University in Cincinnati. I figured out that there was a unit in Wilmington, Ohio, about 30 miles north of Cincinnati. I also heard that one of my classmates, Dick Berg was at that site, so I called his Mom, (I went to grade school, high school, and college with Dick, so I was not a stranger to her), and she gave me his home number. I called his apartment right away, and he was there, having worked ADDCP duty the past 24 hours. Dick said that they had several openings in the ADDCP, but the base was rumored to be closing as the Felicity, Ohio site and the Dillsboro, IN site had been closed already, leaving the unit in Wilmington, the HQ, and a Guard unit in Oxford, Ohio as the only batteries left.
So I called the Adjutant, a Major, in Oakdale, back and asked him to ask General Dean to assign me to Wilmington. He was incredulous and asked why I thought General Dean would change my orders, and I told him that I worked for General Dean when he was CO at the 38th Brigade, and I was his Asst. Adjutant and flew all over the country with his Annual General Inspection (AGI) team where my job was to inspect the S1 administrative functions that included the morning reports, the filing system, the Unit Fund, personnel records, etc. The Adjutant was very hesitant, but said he would mention it to General Dean. About an hour later, he called with admiration in his voice and said that General Dean said: “Let Lt. Dowd go wherever he wants to go”. So I was assigned to the 88th Arty Group, a Nike site. Dick Berg called from the ADDCP the next day, laughing about my assignment and wondering how I pulled it off.
Accounting and horse trading ...
One of the most important things about becoming a CO, was that either you or your other junior officer, the XO, would hold the property book, which listed everything of any value that the battery owned. When you held the property book, you signed for all of it…and they cautioned me:”If the unit were to ever close, you would be responsible for all of those items to the point where you would have to pay for anything that you didn’t turn in.”
That was very sobering, and since I was the only HQ Battery Officer, I also held the property book. Every senior officer warned me as I started checking the property book warned me that I should count everything. By this time it was October, and I think they knew we were closing. So I counted every spoon and fork, and jeep, and my supply sergeant, in turn resigned everything out to the troops who actually used the equipment. In other words, I was signed for the rifles, field jackets, desks, etc, and, in turn, the people that used those items were signed out to me, so I was not liable if they were lost.
My Father was an accountant and I worked for him in college taking factory inventories, so this was not a mystery to me. Unfortunately, the Officer I was getting the property book from, did not due his diligence when he took over the property book the year before, and he was short a whole bunch of stuff, (mostly sheets and blankets), that I would not sign for. He was short 87 blankets, worth about $1200. So this was a problem that he had no answer for, and he was exiting the Army. Items like sheets and blankets can be written off 4 or 5 at a time on a monthly “wear and tear” report, but he never did that, so he had no explanation and no money. Fortunately, he had 47 more field jackets than he was signed for. He had no idea how that happened either, because he had not counted them when he took over the property book. So, I called a good friend of mine in Ft. Bliss, who ran a training battery, and he had plenty of blankets, and had been ordering field jackets for months with nothing coming in. So, we started trading, and as the blankets began rolling in I gained confidence that I could make up the shortage and I let the old Property book officer off the hook. He was relieved beyond words.
I found the biggest issue to be people: everybody was leaving: my First Sergeant left almost immediately and the HQ staff was pulling out so they could be at their next assignment by Thanksgiving, so they could take some time over the holidays at their new location. Most of the RA (Regular Army) Captains and above were really Artillery officers, not ADA officers, so almost all of them went to Ft. Sill. The CO, went to the Minnesota defense as he was getting his Brigadier star in January and needed a year of command time before he went back to the Pentagon, where he had worked in the Officer’s Assignment Branch for 24 out of his 30 years in the Army. He was a great guy and offered me a career in the AG doing what he did, but I couldn’t get by the Vietnam thing. With the wonderful help of the CWO4 Childers, the Personnel Warrant, I figured out all of the people in the command who would be exiting the service in January, February, and March.