Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Mustangs return to LV

Thursday, Sept. 30, 1999 | 9:37 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

BILL MAULDIN'S "Willie and Joe" cartoons drawn in the field during World War II live on in the memories of that major conflict. So does the humor that kept millions of combat troops going during those dark and bloody days. Recently a Mauldin drawing of one GI apologizing to another for now being a second lieutenant by telling him "Honest, pal -- they done it to me while I wuz unconscious," hit my desk.

Along with the cartoon was the announcement that Omaha's Ben Cohen and his National Order of Battlefield Commissions are returning to Las Vegas and the Plaza hotel-casino Oct. 12-15. It's always amusing to see the real warriors return to our area soon after the Soldier of Fortune gathering leaves.

Ten years have passed since then-Sheriff John Moran asked me to speak at the gathering of Mustangs. This is the title held by the men who went from enlisted ranks to commissioned officer during past wars. The late John Moran earned his commission on Iwo Jima and left the Marine Corps as a captain at the end of World War II.

It was during the 1989 meeting that I met Ben, who seven years later became commander of the NOBC. Ben, like many of his fellow Mustangs, was a natural born leader and fighter. Growing up next to Chicago, in Waukegan, Ill., he had 200 amateur fights and six professional fights before entering the army. He says that "God let me go to the army and saved my life." He had won only four of his six pro fights.

Sgt. Cohen earned the Bronze Star during the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945. In March of that year, Gen. George Patton signed Ben's battlefield commission. A 94th Infantry history book tells us that Patton's trust was deserved. It was Lt. Cohen's platoon that "encountered stiff automatic weapons fire, which it overwhelmed in a bold assault." This was written about an attack on a factory area near Mundenheim shortly after he was commissioned.

Following World War II, a board of officers reported the conditions met when awarding battlefield commissions:

"The one sure method of determining whether any individual has those qualities which make him a successful leader in combat is to observe that man in combat. ... On the battlefield, if a platoon sergeant, whose platoon commander has just been killed, can successfully lead 50 scared, confused men who depend on him for everything, and who must be made to accomplish what they think is impossible, it is of no moment if the AGCT score of that man is less than 100 and he never attended high school. These considerations have long been recognized by the War Department. ... Its value (speaking of battlefield commissions) has been proved in this war as in the last."

During World War II in the Pacific Theater, Maj. Gen. Leonard Wing, commanding general of the 43rd Infantry Division, wrote:

"Leadership, superior leadership, is essential to victory. Some men are born leaders. Others, by dint of hard work and application to the task at hand, acquire it. The ultimate in leadership is developed and demonstrated in battle."

The men Wing was writing about will be in Las Vegas, and if you are a Mustang, join them. Their keynote speaker, also a Mustang, is retired Gen. John W. Vessey, who earned his battlefield commission on red hot Anzio Beach in 1944. Later, during the Reagan years, Vessey served two terms as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not bad for a lad who started out as a private in the Minnesota National Guard in 1939 and was a first sergeant with the 34th Infantry Division when it landed in Italy five years later.