The QBS Express

QBS_Ep036
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Podcast Welcome
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Scott Heidner: [00:00:00] Welcome listeners to the QBS Express, the ACEC Kansas Podcast. I'm your host, executive director, Scott Heidner. And do I have an exciting guest with me today? It's gonna be my pleasure to introduce you to retired doctor and Colonel Fred Reynolds a former longtime ACEC member through Black and Veatch, and with an impressive bio to boot Okay, Colonel, I think there's so much here. I'm just gonna read it word for word. It's pretty darn impressive. So . Colonel Reynolds is a graduate of the Army War College, the Army Command and Staff College in the US Military Academy, west Point, New York.

He's [00:01:00] got a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Missouri, a master's of Science degree from the University of Washington, and a Master's of Business Administration from Troy State University. His military assignments include two combat tours in Vietnam. His senior command assignments include the US Engineer Group, Turkey and the Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station Vicksburg, Mississippi.

He retired as a director of the Command and General Staff College of Fort Leavenworth. His military awards include two awards of the Legion of Merit. Three awards of the Bronze Star, as well as the Parachutist badge in the Ranger tab. He has served with the First Infantry Division and the fifth Mechanized Infantry Division.

After retirement from the US Army, he managed Black and Veatch's water projects in Turkey and speaks Turkish as a second language. Fred is a retired certified flight instructor, CFI, as well as commercial instrument and multi-engine ratings. He learned to fly in the fabric covered J [00:02:00] three Cub which I learned today is pronounced the Sabria.

Very good. I would've screwed that up if you hadn't said it for me first and has CFI in that fabric covered fully aerobatic plane and he lives today in Overland Park with his wife Susan, and they have three grown children. So with all of that two things to start with. Colonel, first of all thank you for your service to your country and for all you've done and given.

And thank you for being with us today.

Col. Fred Reynolds: You're very kind, Scott. Thank you.

Why This Story Matters
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Scott Heidner: So we, on this podcast, we try to tell a lot of different stories, but we focus more often than not on client groups. Obviously we're a business organization, but. I get reminded from time to time that a huge part of the benefits we bring to our members are training opportunities and experiences and networking around leadership.

And I was fortunate to have a, a mutual friend of ours, Chad Tenpenny. Tell [00:03:00] me parts of your story, which made me wanna reach out to you. And after we had a chance to visit, I was pretty sure this was a story our listeners would enjoy hearing. If you don't mind, let's go all the way back to the beginning.

We always start at the very beginning.

Rural Ohio Childhood Roots
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Scott Heidner: Tell me about your childhood. I know you grew up in rural Ohio and family was a huge part ~of, ~in shaping you, but tell me what that was like.

Col. Fred Reynolds: ~Oh, thank you, Scott. ~Yes. That shaped me a great deal. It was a farming community.

Name is Bell. Fountain, which is French for Beautiful Springs. It was spring there and all of my parents' friends ~and, ~and the people that my father worked with were all blue collar. No one was college educated. Some hadn't even completed high school. So, we were all poor, but we didn't really know that.

But our family is very close. My grandmother and grandfather lived not too far away. I'd ride my bicycle over to them when my [00:04:00] parents wanted to shoo me out of the house and close with my brother, who's I'm still very closely connected with back in Delaware, Ohio. So growing up in that, I guess we'd call it a nuclear family.

It didn't have much television in it, but it had a lot of reading. My grandmother taught me how to read at, I guess the age of five or six, and I was very close to her. It's interesting. I, when I was in the Army and I came back to visit her one time, she called me fuddy instead of Freddy.

I told her how much I felt loved when she taught me how to sew buttons onto a postcard. She taught me how to thread a needle and how to use a thimble. And I would sit in this little bay window in the sun and sew these buttons on these postcards. [00:05:00] So when I came back as a captain in the Army, I told her how much I appreciated that.

And she said, well, you know, fuddy, you were always underfoot and I had a lot of things I needed to get done in the house for your grandpa, and the only way I could distract you was to get you to sew buttons on the postcards. And so that's what I did, and I acknowledged that wasn't the objective I, I felt at the time, but I, I still felt loved at that time.

Work Ethic And Hard Times
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So our town was I was born in 1946 while my father was in China, Burma, India. And the town was pretty dependent upon the railroads. Well, when the railroads collapsed after the second World War, the little town that I was in was kind of on the route of the. People coming from Kentucky, going up to Detroit to seek jobs in the automobile [00:06:00] industry.

And this little town of about 8,000 got connected to the automobile cycle providing spare parts. And that meant that it was a boom or bust cycle in the town as long as the automobile companies were making a lot of money while the, the men were all employed. And when that turned downward, many of the men in town didn't have jobs.

And it became almost a barter economy where we would trade food stuffs. And I can remember helping my father put a roof on the pharmacist's house up the street because they went to the pharmacy to get the medications they needed. And and, and so I grew up. Learning that work was a valuable thing and that everybody in the town worked and they, they worked really hard.

Scott Heidner: if I can ask you your comment, well, an [00:07:00] editorial comment and then

Col. Fred Reynolds: Uhhuh

Scott Heidner: lead to another question.

Col. Fred Reynolds: Oh, please.

Scott Heidner: I've heard my mom, my, my mom, they were not of ample means when she was growing up. And I've heard her say the same thing. She said we were poor, but we didn't have the foggiest clue we were poor back then.

'cause everybody else was poor too. And if it, you know, looks normal, you, you don't realize it's poor. So it's kind of cur Yeah. Curious to hear you say that.

Finding A Free Path
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Scott Heidner: Well, on that note, let me ask you this. You mentioned money for school and, and money for anything for that matter. I think one of the most fascinating parts of your story.

Is your post high school plans ~and, ~and how you got there knowing that you didn't have money, the family didn't have money ~to, ~to do a traditional college path. You told me that you found out West Point where you ended up going was free of charge. If you could get in, would you tell listeners your story of~ it's, it's, ~it's almost unbelievable Yeah.

~How you got there. ~

Col. Fred Reynolds: ~Yeah. It, it, it really is. ~My parents didn't put aside any [00:08:00] money for me. They didn't, they had enough trouble just providing for themselves and one of the counselors at the high school told me, Hey, why don't you go to West Point? It's free. And I said, well, how do I do this? And he said, well, go down and, and talk to.

Some a, a guy in the local Chamber of Commerce and I talked to him, he must have been in his forties. I thought he was older than dirt ~and he,~

~I didn't mean that personally.~

Scott Heidner: No, it's just funny.

Washington Nomination Journey
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So he told me, well, you know, need to go see Roger Cloud. I thought, well, okay, who's he? Well, he was on the second floor of this old building I was in, and so I went up to see Roger Cloud. I can remember knocking on the door and going in and there was a secretary in a huge room.

And she said, who are you? And I told her, what do you want? I said, well, I was told to see Roger Cloud about going to West Point. [00:09:00] And she said, well, wait a minute. And so. Later on this Barry August, he was very well dressed, came out and talked to me. I didn't know at the time, but Roger Cloud was the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the state of Ohio.

And he said well, yes, you have to have a nomination from a congressman or a senator, and I'm not either one of those. You need to go see Congressman Brown, Clarence J. Brown in Washington, dc. And he made it sound like this was real easy. So I went home, I talked to my dad and I said, how do I get to Washington, DC?

And he said, well, I'll loan you the money if you pay it back. And I understand you can fly there. And I remember. I went through the, I think I went through AAA to buy a ticket and in the local newspaper, it wasn't a headline, but it was on the front page that Fred Reynolds had flown to [00:10:00] Washington DC in a jet.

Scott Heidner: That was news in and of itself.

Col. Fred Reynolds: So, so my mother was good friends of the local parrot that was her last name, had two daughters, and the older daughter was the same age as my mom. And through her, she knew the younger daughter who name was Jan. Jan Cope, married ~a, ~a lobbyist in Washington DC who he was the head of the American Proprietary Association, which handles all the over the counter drugs.

~That didn't mean anything to me, but later I learned that was a, that was an important position. ~So I flew in a jet plane to Washington, DC and Jan and her husband picked me up and I stayed with them and they got me downtown so I could meet.

Scott Heidner: And can I ask, had you ever met Jan and her husband?

Col. Fred Reynolds: No.

Scott Heidner: Landing

Col. Fred Reynolds: in DC I never met 'em at all.

She was, she's, she's still alive. She's 95. She was 15 years my senior. So I had [00:11:00] no relationship with her. I'm just working off of, Hey, go see somebody else. So, I had a speech all written up because I had a small scholarship to Purdue and a small scholarship to the Carnegie Institute in Cleveland, Ohio.

And not very much. And I thought, oh man, I'm not sure how I'm gonna go to college. And my dad and my grandfather were insistent. Hey, you gotta go to college to to, to make something to yourself. So I was committed and I gave him this speech and he seemed

Scott Heidner: him being, who did you,

Col. Fred Reynolds: Clarence Jay Brown,

Scott Heidner: senior.

So you got in, got in to see him, and

Col. Fred Reynolds: so he made a nomination and then I had to be nominated and then I had to go through a bunch of tests and everything. I took different kinds of tests, physical and intellectual.

Scott Heidner: Do you mind if I pull you back a little bit though?

Col. Fred Reynolds: Mm-hmm.

Scott Heidner: Getting in to [00:12:00] see Clarence J.

Brown had to have been a little bit of a work of art in and of itself. I mean, you typically can't just barge into a congressman's office.

Col. Fred Reynolds: Mm-hmm. Well, at my age, I just barged into Roger Cloud's office. So my thinking was the same way, but Jan's. Husband who was a lobbyist, knew how to do all this stuff.

Scott Heidner: Okay.

Col. Fred Reynolds: And he's the one who set the appointment for me.

Scott Heidner: So he nurtured you through the

Col. Fred Reynolds: Yes.

Scott Heidner: Okay.

Col. Fred Reynolds: And I can remember sitting on this big hard chair at his secretary's office, rehearsing my speech for him.

Scott Heidner: How did your speech go?

Col. Fred Reynolds: Apparently, quite well. He nominated me and you could nominate. I've worked on the Academy nomination system with members of the Senate in Kansas, and so I know the system well.

And Congressman Brown had the option of rank [00:13:00] ordering anybody that wanted to go or having us all take tests. And the guy with the best test score gets. You get in, he chose the first option. And so he rank ordered me at the top. Here I am a, a nobody in the middle of a little tiny farm town in Ohio. And I was convincing enough that based on that, he said, I want this guy to go.

And so I went through the process, took a lot of tests, and eventually I ended up at West Point, my high school class had maybe 90 members and I was in the top 10 out of 90, and there were only three boys. The rest were all girls. And I ended up going to West Point and the guy beside me ended up going to Princeton and the guy beside him ended up going to Annapolis.

It's unusual for such a small school in a little dinky town to send [00:14:00] three young men off to do that.

West Point Reality Check
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So at West Point, that was a real awakening because when I left Bell Fountain, Ohio, I thought I was a top dog. My goodness. Here I am, I'm in the top 10 of my high school and I'm going to a national military school.

Well, everybody there was at that place and higher, I mean, I wasn't the captain of the football team. The guy beside me was, and he was the president of the class. But I found myself in a class of almost a thousand and half, three quarters were presidents of their. High school class or captain of the football team, or captain of the baseball team, or the boy.

I really had to pedal fast to keep up with all these people. And some of them, they were in high schools that [00:15:00] had all kinds of advanced courses. The thing that really weeds out the, the fourth classman, the freshman is the math class. I mean, it's made to just cause people to fall out. And I had to work hard and I'm good at math, but boy, it was a, it was a challenge.

I worked hard there. I'd learned so much. Everything I am today I owe to the United States Army, including West Point. And my parents, what a start they gave me to a marvelous life.

Scott Heidner: I'm gonna say it now 'cause my next question to you is going to then take us into the, the breadth of your military career, the chronology of, of what you did.

I should have said this at the beginning, but for listeners, part of what made me excited to bring Colonel Reynolds on was that this podcast really will have two phases. I'm asking him to share his story in phase one, but I think you're going [00:16:00] to be equally interested. Part two is where I ask him to reflect on a lot of the leadership lessons and takeaways that are a product of the experiences and the training that he's had over the years.

Choosing Engineers And Vietnam
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Scott Heidner: I'm sure West Point or, or the Army has the final say on where you go. But do you get some say did you get to, to indicate a preference and, and what actually transpired?

Where'd they send you and to do what?

Col. Fred Reynolds: Well, it's based on class rank. So if you worked harder and you rose, and that's what I did. I probably started in the middle and I stepped, I kept rising toward the top of my class. The first choice is what kind of an officer do you want to become in the army?

And so it had to be a combat arms. And so that's the infantry or the engineers or the artillery or the armor or the cavalry. So I had to pick one of those. [00:17:00] And we got together in this huge conference hall, the whole, the whole class of 1968. And one by rank order, they went down and each of us stood up and announced what branch we wanted to go into.

And the engineers were actually more limited than all the other branches. So I had my fingers crossed that by the time that got down to my name, that there would still be spaces in the engineers, and there were. So that was the first choice. The second choice was a couple months after that and we were given the option to choose some of the first class to go to Vietnam.

Had really been shot up, badly suffered, very heavy. Deaths. And so the Army made a rule that you can't go directly from West Point into combat, that you have to have a state side assignment. So the first thing was for me to pick what unit in the United States I [00:18:00] wanted to go as my first assignment awaiting, I had to wait 12 months before I could go to Vietnam.

Most of us wanted to go right away, so I picked the Fifth Infantry. That was in Fort Carson, Colorado. And the second thing was I could pick the unit of assignment I wanted inside of Vietnam. And in the case of the engineers, I had these different engineer battalions that I could choose from. Same thing.

First guy got his choice, and by the time it got down to me, I was able to pick a particularly illustrious unit was very important at the Battle of the Balls, the two 99th. ~And I. Throw me into that Briar patch. ~And so I made those three choices and the Army honored those all the way over.

So I served with the fifth Mechanized Infantry. It was the 69th Kansas National Guard Brigade was mobilized and [00:19:00] they became one of the brigades at Fort Carson. And I was in Charlie Company, C Company, ~and I habitually worked with that brigade ~and they went to Vietnam before I did the whole brigade, got up and went to Vietnam.

Ranger Airborne Training
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Scott Heidner: Can I interrupt and ask you a question? Oh, chronologically, I know you were in the Airborne Ranger School. Has this already taken place or that come later?

Col. Fred Reynolds: Yeah, good point, Scott. I jumped ahead after, Graduation. I had a 60 day graduation leave, and then I went straight to the Ranger school.

Boy, that was hard. That was, but that was the best training I ever had on how to keep my men alive in combat. That was, that was the best training that I've ever had and the hardest I've had in my entire life. And the graduation rate wasn't all that hot. I'm guessing only half my class made it through.

And then I went to Airborne School. Ranger School is two [00:20:00] solid months in the swamps in Florida. It's, it's not, it's not fun. I lost a lot of weight and then I went to jump school. And Jump School has a reputation of really pushing all of the wannabe. Parachutist, whether they're officers or not.

But because I had a Ranger tab on my shoulder, nobody, nobody bothered me. So, parachute school was was a lark compared to ranger school. And I got to jump out of C one 19, which is a World War II aircraft, and some jumps out of a C one 30, which is still in the inventory. And I had one out of a C, 1 41 star lifter.

It's a jet. And it's so cool when you, you don't really jump out. You, there's a little tiny foot pad and you try to get your left foot on that pad and you could never quite make it. The slip string just pulls you right out and you watch the tail go overhead. [00:21:00] It's, it's, it's almost magical. So anyway, I did that, then I went to Fort Carson.

I think Vietnam's next. Can I talk about that?

Scott Heidner: I sure hope you will.

Col. Fred Reynolds: Okay.

Vietnam Arrival First Mission
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So off I went and when I got to Vietnam I landed someplace up north wasn't a big place, but there was a jeep there to take me to the brigade commander.

I was in an engineer brigade and the engineer brigade commander had been my regimental commander at West Point, and he was a, a full colonel. And, he wanted to see me. I had no idea why. I mean, I was just passing through there to get to my unit. And he called me in, he said, Fred, you're headed for the two 99th.

I said, you bet. And he said, well, I think I've got a better opportunity for you. I can't really tell you exactly what you're gonna do, but I think you'll be of great service [00:22:00] to the Army. If instead of going there, you go to a place I've selected and throw me into that Briar patch. I mean, I really trusted this guy and the fact that he wanted to change the path I was on, I mean, he, he'd already been in the Army for 25 or 30 years.

So I got sent to another unit, which was the 14th engineers, and they didn't know exactly what I was supposed to do either. And they said, well, you're on this operation and you need to go see. The commander of the 3, 2, 6 engineers, which is in the hundred first Airborne. So I got on a helicopter and they took me there.

I can remember vividly walking up the hill. I saluted to him. Well, this guy had been a professor of mine at West Point as a major, and now he's a lieutenant colonel commanding this airborne outfit. And so he, he gave me a map. He [00:23:00] said, Fred, this is where you're going. When you get there. I want you to take your platoon and you're supposed to report.

And he gave me a kind of report to, and your job is to go out and clear the land in front of this unit. I thought, okay. And I took notes. I had a little notepad with me. I'm taking all these notes. I get back in the helicopter, they take me back to the 14th engineers. I show this to my company commander. He says, well, it's all news to me.

But we'll send you there. So, my platoon had to get prepared to go on a, on a combat mission, and I didn't understand it fully, but my in front of the third brigade of the hundred first Airborne, which is about 3000 soldiers commanded by a colonel in front of them, is a covering force, a cavalry force.

And they wanted me [00:24:00] and my platoon to clear the land in front of this covering force. ~So the, here's the infantry, here's the cavalry, and here's Fred. And we were, we were known as the third herd because we were the third platoon. ~So anyway, so they get us in a big helicopter. It's a Chinook CH 47. We could put the entire platoon on it, plus all of the stuff that combat engineers go with, which are demolition kits, mine detectors, all this stuff.

And they dropped us off, flew us out someplace I could find it on the map. They showed me on the map, this is where you're landing, and that's where they let me out. And the thing flew away. I walked down the hill in search of this officer who was gonna tell me exactly what to do. ~And so I met. In a tactical operations center probably their operations officer major.~

And he said, oh, we're glad to see you now. Here's what you want, what we want you to do.

Sweeping the Ashau Valley
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Col. Fred Reynolds: And so, I, I did exactly what they told me to do. And at, at this, this is in the middle of the Ashaw Valley. I mean, there's, there's nothing, there's no villages, [00:25:00] there's no anything but bombed out trees. The agent Orange has defoliated everything you can see long distances.

So they gave me a platoon from this cavalry squadron. The platoon had armored personnel carriers, and they went out on my flanks to be my security force. And so my job was to take my platoon with three. Squads and just go in a really expanded line and walk down. It wasn't a road, it was just a trail that they wanted to go down.

And my job was to walk down this trail with my platoon. My squads all spread out looking for mine. So we're using mine detectors, finding mines, blowing them up.

Defusing 750 Pound Duds
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Col. Fred Reynolds: And they, this major warned me, he said, now [00:26:00] they've had a whole bunch of B 50 twos come through here and they've dropped a whole bunch of bombs and some of 'em are duds.

And I said, well, what do they look like? Well, he pulled out a picture of a 750 pound bomb. It's 12-15 feet long. He weighs 750 pounds, but it's got 500 pounds of explosives in it. And so he shows me these pictures and he said, now here's the nose and here's a compartment.

And in there is the detonator that explodes the bomb. And behind that is another door that's got a bursting charge in. That sets off all 500 pounds. And I said, okay, what do you want me to do? He said, well find some way to blow these things up so we can move this cavalry outfit through so the infantry can go through.

I said, okay. ~So that's what I did. And, and, ~[00:27:00] and we would just sweep from mines and then we'd go down a bomb crater and up the other side it looked like World War I. And every once in a while we would find the tail of one of these 750 pound bombs sticking out.

Running the Fuse Drill
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So the thing was to dig very carefully down the side of the 750 pound bomb, to find these three doors and to put a charge plastic explosives on this bomb.

And when you do this, ~you, ~you put a fuse in it. It's like in the cartoons, you have a fuse and you light it ~and, ~and you never want to go back. You never want one of these fuses to blow out. So you always put two in. So you put two detonators in and two fuses in. And ~you, ~you measure, it takes so many minutes and so you measure how long it takes you to get to [00:28:00] safety and you light these things.

And though I took one squad and I taught 'em how to do this ~and. And so, ~and I had the other squad leaders with me so they could teach the other two squads. And so that's what we did. We dig this thing out, put plastic explosives on them. They have an adhesive on the back gently, I would say.

Scott Heidner: Yeah, I would, I would say,

Col. Fred Reynolds: and pull the igniters and run as far as we could and get boy, the, I mean, I was in good shape and I could run a long distance, but boy, when those things went off and the, and the, the metal that flew overhead, it was, it was awesome.

So we just kept on. Now I had the one squad leader. Watched me do it. And the other two squad leaders, they went and did it. And I checked on each one of 'em. I watched each one do one of these things. And so that's what we did. We'd sweep for mines and find these, these seven 50 pound bombs [00:29:00] and blow 'em up.

First Operation Lessons
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Col. Fred Reynolds: And I thought at the time, I mean, I'm just doing my job. I have no idea what's going on, way back where decisions are made. But I thought about this a little bit and I thought, you know, if the enemy wanted to find where Fred is, all they had to do listen for these bomb explosions. So, so that was my introduction.

That was my first operation that I was on. And then, so I continued, I'm gonna drop the, the bomb episode and talk about other stuff.

Second Tour and Tiger Hunt
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So I was a platoon leader. And then very briefly, I was a, a an adant. An adjuvant is called an S one, that's the personnel shop. And it was a captain's job, and the battalion commander thought I could do a captain's job.

I left the third herd and went to the [00:30:00] battalion headquarters and worked there. And then I was the first lieutenant. I was coming up on captain and I knew that one of the company commanders was about to rotate home.

And that if I would hang around longer, I'd get to command that company. Well, that's what I wanted to do. So I extended for a second tour and the Army gave me a free 30 days. Vacation any place I wanted to go. So where as a young airborne Ranger go for 30 days, I decided I wanted to go on a tiger hunt in India.

And so that's what I did. And I engaged through some outfitter in Chicago through letters to go meet. The guy was a, a prince of one of the provinces. I mean, he's a royal guy who's Gandhi came [00:31:00] and, and the royalty is out. And so he's conducting safaris. So I went on a safari. I came back after 30 days, and then I commanded Bravo company.

And I, I was very, I think I was successful. I, I didn't have many combat losses. I regret those who died

Scott Heidner: by

Col. Fred Reynolds: command.

Defining Success in Combat
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Scott Heidner: Fred, I was gonna ask you, and I think you just found your way to it, but one of the most, powerful, humbling, sobering things that you've said to me in past conversations is what your definition of success was in Vietnam, because especially so many years after the fact, when, anybody has an arbitrary conversation about Vietnam success is, measured in geopolitical, this and, and whatever, whatever, and tell, tell, share folks what you've always said.

To me, the [00:32:00] definition of success was,

Col. Fred Reynolds: well, success at that level of command is to accomplish the mission, like finding these bombs and blowing them up and taking care of the men. That was success. If I could accomplish the mission and I could take good care of my men, that was success.

Scott Heidner: In a previous conversation, you said success was making sure none of my men got killed.

Col. Fred Reynolds: Yes.

Scott Heidner: And that really landed when you said that.

Col. Fred Reynolds: That was maybe an ideal of mine and my experience and that of my contemporaries is that isn't possible when you go into combat, there are gonna be losses.

As a platoon leader, I had, I had no killed in action. I had no KIAI had wounded, but as a company commander a couple of the deaths affected me greatly. It bothered me a lot. But the mission's still the same. Accomplish submission and take care of the troops taking [00:33:00] care. I wrongly thought that meant I couldn't have any deaths.

But taking care of the men means that you are gonna take good care of 'em. That they're gonna have good meals and they're gonna have adequate ammunition and they're gonna have rifles that work and machine guns that work and you're gonna keep 'em safe and you're gonna keep 'em dry. So,

Scott Heidner: yeah.

Col. Fred Reynolds: I learned that cohesive, well-trained combat teams can accomplish almost anything was just astounding when everybody worked together.

And what we could get done.

Scott Heidner: Yeah. Well, and I suspect, we'll land on some of the, the overarching lessons. We'll touch on that towards the end too. Let's go to the next chapter, if you don't mind. Sure. So two tours plus some extensions. You know, obviously an enormous amount of time spent in the Vietnam conflict, but what [00:34:00] came afterwards?

Postwar Promotions and Grad School
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Col. Fred Reynolds: Well, by this time I'm a captain. And what does the Army do between wars? Well, the army promotions slow way down and everybody spends a lot of time in grade. I think it took me. 14 or 16 years to be promoted to major from captain. The next rank is Major oh four. So the army called me and said, Hey, you know, we really don't have anything exciting for you to do right now.

We'd like to send you to graduate school. I said, okay, throw me into that prior patch. So I went the University of Washington because they had when you graduate from West Point, you don't get an engineering degree, you have a bachelor of science degree. So I really wanted to get a master's in engineering and so I entered an engineering, environmental engineering curriculum [00:35:00] and, went there. And then after you graduate from grad school, the Army has the same question. Well, okay Fred, what do you wanna do now? And I said, well, what do you got?

Learning Turkish Immersion
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Col. Fred Reynolds: And they said, well, we have this program of stationing officers overseas in a region that the army is focused on. And before the army will assign you there, you have to be able to speak the language.

And I thought, well, I, at the time I had Latin in high school, I spoke French, I took French in West Point, I was, I could read, write, converse in French. And I had had a class, I forget why, probably in the senior year about the Ottoman Empire. I. And I was really impressed with what the Ottomans did for several centuries, and I said, well, I, do you have [00:36:00] anything in the Middle East?

And they said, well, yes, we've got a class starting in Turkish. We'll send you to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and you'll learn to speak Turkish. He was quite confident about that. And, and then we'll assign you in that country. And I said okay, how? How long is that gonna be? He said, well, it's 47 weeks.

I thought, oh my goodness. When I got there, after the first week, English was never spoken. If I ask a question in the class in English, it was ignored. Everything had to be done in Turkish, and so I graduated from there. I chose Turkish. It was what I would call an immersion course. And then I got this was my first of several assignments to Turkey.

And I just learned so much about myself and [00:37:00] my culture, things that I didn't really realize. So, so the army inside of an embassy is an outfit called an at attache. An at attache, according to Geneva Convention, is an overt collector of intelligence. These at attache are required to wear a uniform so everybody, friend and enemy can see who they are.

They wear a special a on their shoulder to make them distinctive. So, if, if an official in Turkey or a Turkish officer is meeting with an nat attache, they know this guy is. Writing reports, he's collecting intelligence. So I was assigned to the at attache piece of the embassy, which doesn't report up to the State Department, like the ambassador.

They report to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA back in [00:38:00] Washington dc.

Attaché Work in Iran
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So I spent a lot of time being sent different places I spent time in Iran. Western Iran is a province called a Azerbaijan. They tried to become independent right after the second World War. Remember when Roosevelt met Stalin for the first time?

It was in Tehran. That's where he and Churchill and Stalin got together because it was easy for the powers to get there. And so I, I spent time in Iran because I spoke Turkish. It was interesting when I got to the American Embassy in Iran, ~I was, ~I was told I had to check in with them. They wanted to know, I mean, these are the civilians, not the military people.

They wanted to know what the people in Western Iran had to say about the s Shah. [00:39:00] The Shaw was still in power. And I said, well, ~I, ~I mean, don't you guys know? And they said, well, no, we're not really permitted to travel very much. Tell us what the common people say about, and the common people weren't all that laudatory about the Shaw or the Shaw and Shaw, as he was called.

And so I kind of shook my head. I thought these people in the American embassy would know more than I did, but I talked to 'em about, and I could go into tea houses and sit down and drink tea and play backgammon. That's the standard game for men in a, in a, in a tea house.

Faith Talks and Common Ground
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Col. Fred Reynolds: And it was really interesting too because I carried a copy of the in Angel, which is the, the Bible.

So I had a copy of the Old Testament in the New Testament in Turkish. I also had one in Arabic. And I would sit with these guys [00:40:00] and they would recite, of course, the Quran. Even if you're Turkish, you read the Quran in Arabic. And they would recite the stories of Noah and Joseph and Adam and Abraham.

And I would say, well, wait a minute. Let me read you what I've got here. I'm a, I'm not. Islamic, I'm Christian, but I've got the same story. And we would read and exchange stories. And so I learned that Islam is one approach is to think about there's one God, the, the three major reli religions are Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

And they all flow through Abraham. So these are Abrahamic religions and they all come from a monotheistic God. So some of these Muslims would talk to me and you say, you know, we've got one God, but got three holy books, the [00:41:00] Torah, the New Testament, and the Quran. And I was really struck by that before I went there.

I thought the Quran was something completely different.

Yeah.

Col. Fred Reynolds: But the overlap is great.

Scott Heidner: Can I ask you also well you mentioned that you were, went to several different countries, including Iran while you were there, there's a story I want you to share with folks about Syria ~and~

Col. Fred Reynolds: Oh yeah.

Scott Heidner: And some tail numbers.

But before you do, I think for part of that story, you've already shared the immersion training. You called it in language, where you've got, you know, literally less than a year to, to become completely fluent in something. But you've also talked to me about training that you get and how to memorize sequences and data and to retain it.

Give us the Reader's Digest version of that, and then tell us what, what work you entailed out of that skillset. I guess.

Syria Tail Numbers Memory
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So, Syria of course, was a French [00:42:00] province when the. The Victorians, Victoria's Powers of World War I divided up the Middle East great Britain and France. United States didn't have part of that.

They carved out France, got Syria. So when I traveled in Syria, lots of Turkish French worked well with anybody in retail or anybody in the government. But the, the embassy wanted information on the Russian Syria got most of their planes from the Russians and they wanted to know what kinds of Russian planes were in Syria.

And so, they asked me to learn how to memorize numbers. And I took this course and ~how to, ~how to memorize sequences in the class. I had to learn the dates. In order of the 13 original states as they [00:43:00] joined, as they ratified the constitution. And so they gave me a mental pathway.

And so I used that pathway in memorizing. I didn't want to get caught taking pictures of Syrian tales. And so I would carefully memorize these and then I would go back. We didn't have an embassy. We had a consulate in Syria. So I would go back to the consulate and I was probably followed most of the time I did this and go inside in some safe place and write down all these tail numbers and give 'em to somebody so they could figure out what Russian planes were in Damascus.

Scott Heidner: But you had committed those tail numbers in mass

Col. Fred Reynolds: Yeah.

Scott Heidner: To memory?

Col. Fred Reynolds: Yeah.

Scott Heidner: Hours or days before?

Col. Fred Reynolds: Well, ~hours.~

Scott Heidner: Hours.

Col. Fred Reynolds: I didn't wait very long.

Scott Heidner: Yeah. That's astounding.

Col. Fred Reynolds: Isn't it amazing what the mine can do?

Scott Heidner: Yeah. I can't remember the number on my license plate from the parking lot to the reception area.

Col. Fred Reynolds: So, so I spent time in Lebanon.

Lebanon was [00:44:00] beautiful. And, and then the Civil War came and was all torn down, but it was it was, it was so beautiful. And in the Old Testament, they talk about the, the trees that came from Lebanon, which of course was just a region, not a regular nation, but it was very beautiful.

And that's, I'm sad. That's all. Yeah, that's all gone.

Scott Heidner: ~You after kind of a different phase, but ~you sort of came full circle back to Turkey in a different role. Down the road if memory serves.

Col. Fred Reynolds: Yes. Ah, yeah. Scott, you're your, your memory works better than mine

Scott Heidner: sometimes.

NATO Turkey and Translating
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Col. Fred Reynolds: So, I had an assignment to a NATO headquarters, which was an Isme Turkey, and that was that was astounding because I spoke Turkish, most of the American officers in this headquarters, it was a combined headquarters at Air Force and Army.

Most of the US officers didn't go any place. The Turks would go out on exercises and, and there wasn't anybody there to translate for 'em. But I would go out with [00:45:00] the Turks and I mean, I would be going on an exercise or maybe two months with Turkish officers working on different things. I got to visit the country and see so many, so many interesting aspects of the.

Turkish military in the Middle East. Well, after that I went to what's called the military mission. A military mission was commanded by a major general, and a major general, has usually has two officers for him. He has an aide who's a first lieutenant and an executive officer who's a major. And I was a major and so I worked for him.

And I learned a lot of stuff there also.

High Level Defense Meetings
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Col. Fred Reynolds: But one of the more interesting things was there was a, they called it the high level defense Committee that met every six months and a member of the director of policy in the Pentagon. This is just one level below. The [00:46:00] Secretary of Defense would come to Turkey and have and conduct a meeting with.

High level representatives on both sides. So the, the head of the high level Defense Committee would come from the Department of Defense. He would sit in the center of the table, and on each side would be a whole bunch of generals, a whole bunch, I don't know, there's eight down each side. Well, this particular leader chose me to sit beside him because since I understood Turkish extremely well, he wanted me to sit beside him.

I'm a, I'm a major in this group of generals, US generals, so I could write notes. And in the notes, he wanted to know what the Turks were talking about before they answered his [00:47:00] question. And so he would ask some question in logistics and this. Turkey's four Star General would turn to this three star logistician, ask him the same question and he would answer the question.

Scott Heidner: But in Turkish

Col. Fred Reynolds: ~officer in Turkish. ~And so he would ask me, what'd they say? What'd they say about us? Well, they usually were just answering his question. There wasn't anything hidden there. Every once in a while, maybe there's a big soccer game going on someplace. And one of the generals wanted to announce what the soccer score was at halftime, and there'd be some side discussion.

What'd he say? He says, the score is now.

Spying Fears and Soccer Talk
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Col. Fred Reynolds: And so, and so, this suspicion another story about the same time I can remember, I was on a bus with some American tourist and I'm on the bus doing some work. And these two ladies were [00:48:00] obviously very uncomfortable and they were American and I could hear them speaking. And so I, I crossed over the bus and sat beside 'em and May I sit with you?

I said, you seem to be very fearful. Can you tell me what's going on? And ~they said, ~they said, they pointed to the Turks across the bus. They said, those two Turks are talking about us. And I said, well, wait a minute. And so I focused on them. ~They were, ~they were having an energetic conversation, but it was about two soccer teams and they were getting all fired up 'cause they were from opposite members.

And so I told these ladies, I said, I, they're, they're not talking about you, they're talking about soccer. And I remember when I was it's in South Pacific where Emile sings, you've got to be carefully taught. And so in the US society, I can remember watching cartoons. On Saturday, the bad guys always had [00:49:00] black hats and they always spoke with accents.

So anyway so I went through four of these meetings and they were several days in length and I never relayed anything of any use to to, to the US representative because there wasn't anything to talk about. But this is the Department of Defense doing their thing.

So at the end of each day, my boss, a major general, would take me over to the ambassador's residence and we would, and I would sit down with my boss and the ambassador, and the ambassador would say, Hey, tell me what happened today. And so my job was to, this defense official wanted me to. Tell him what the Turks were saying.

This State Department official, a very high official, wanted me to tell him what the defense department was saying. [00:50:00] So, so what goes around comes around

Scott Heidner: that makes for, makes for an interesting day, I would think.

Wrapping Up and Next Episode
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Scott Heidner: Well, I tell you what, listeners.

I think we're gonna take a pause there. This has been a lot of fun here in the Colonel story, and there's more to come. We're gonna pick this back up on another episode of the QBS Express. [00:51:00]