King of the Battlefield

By Mark Pittman

King of the Battlefield is an autobiography written by Mark Pittman shortly before his death from cancer in 2023. He details his midwestern upbringing, relationships, and education. Planning to follow his father into an academic career, his life is interrupted by the war in Vietnam. When he returns from a tour of duty in the Marine Corps, he is a different person.  He spends the rest of his life grappling with these changes and in a love-hate relationship with the system that created them.
Written by Kathleen DeBoer, Mark Pittman’s widow Dec. 2023

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889821496

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Introduction

Earliest Years: Des Moines, Iowa (1946–1954)

Childhood Years: Downers Grove, Illinois (1954–1958)

Adolescence and Beyond: Warrensburg, Missouri (1958–1967)

Later Years: Death, Grief, and Moral Compromise

Adolescent Redux: Senior Year

Undergraduate College: Central Missouri State College (CMS), 1963–1967

Graduate School: New Adventures—Military

United States Marine Corps (USMC), 1969–1971

Officers Candidate School (OCS): A Short Academic Detour

Officer Candidate School (OCS): The Real Thing

The Basic School (TBS)

Arty School, New Friends, and Culture Shock

Saying Goodbye—USMC HDQ Surprise

United States Marine Corps: Vietnam, I Corps Tactical Area (December 23, 1969–December 20, 1970)

Eleventh Marines—Initial Assignment

4/11 Marines—Headquarters

It's a Dog's Life and China Beach

Lima Battery, 4/11

Luck of the Bounce, Aerial Observation: Eleventh Marine Headquarters

Back in the States

Graduate School Again, Infidelity, and Emotional Encasement: Michigan State University (MSU), 1972–1984

Can You Jump, Feminism, a New Relationship, and a Lawsuit

University of Kentucky, Marriage, Book, AVCA (1984–2017)

Fun and Games, Travel, Opera, Friends, the Lost Cause

Like Father, Like Son

UCM Reunion Retrospective Interlude (2017–2022)

Divine Grace or Luck

In Sickness and in Health

Fits and Starts

Philanthropy

What Is the Point

Acknowledgments

Selected Bibliography

Selected Index

About the Author

cover.jpg

King of the Battlefield

Mark Pittman

Copyright © 2023 Mark Pittman

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88982-148-9 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-149-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Mark Pittman's autobiography is an authentic view of growing up in middle America as one of the first baby-boomers born after World War II. His story encompasses his growing up during the 1950s and 1960s in a typical small Midwest town through his graduation from his hometown college, Central Missouri State. From there he expands his horizons to graduate school at Michigan State University, and then ultimately to Vietnam in the United States Marine Corps. The author provides a unique view of a first time in combat second lieutenant USMC artillery officer in Vietnam in 1970.

Dr. David J. Bettez, author of Kentucky Marine: Major General Logan Feland and the Making of the Modern USMC.

This is an autobiography of a young man who grew up equally disposed to faith in, and skepticism toward, America's institutions and mores as he experienced the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution and the challenges of Marine training and serving as an artillery officer in Vietnam. Inevitably these tensions all manifest themselves in the age-old tension between faith and mortality. The author provides a selective bibliography and multiple quotations to help the reader explore tension that might arise in their own lives.

Dr. Eugene J. Valentine

Professor of Philosophy, Shawnee State University, (Retired).

Captain USMCR, Infantry Platoon Commander, Republic of Vietnam, 1965-1966.

Mark Pittman's autobiography takes the reader on a thoughtful contemplative journey through his childhood, adolescence, college, graduate school, marinization in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam war, and post-war travails in navigating divorce, post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as personal and family illnesses. It includes a vivid description of growing up in a bye gone era of a small Midwestern American town where religion, sports, and education shaped a person's values, character, and mindset: where people developed close interpersonal relationships and thoughtfully, respectfully discussed current topics around the dinner or kitchen coffee table—a practice that is too infrequent in the present era dominated by the swallow, angry, dishonest, and biased monologue that we are bombarded with daily through social media and television. Mark's is an introspective story about how one man's values, character and mindset helped him cope with and negotiate the emotions, feelings, and challenges in his life, particularly those associated with and resulting from his Vietnam experiences as an artillery officer, where artillery is King of the Battlefield. Best of all, it culminates with a wise and valuable, heartfelt, take-home message—CARES—one learned by living life fully as a mensch and Marine, that we should all adopt and practice in our own lives and disseminate.

Andre Thomas Baron, M.S., Ph.D., M.P.H.

Assistant Professor, Mayo Clinic Foundation, Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center (Retired).

Brushworks LLC, Painting and Renovation, Lexington. KY (Founder, President, CEO).

Mark Pittman has been a friend since we met in graduate school at Michigan State University fifty years ago following his return from service in Vietnam. In King of the Battlefield, Mark lays out a life filled with opportunities, challenges, choices, and consequences. Many of these will be generationally familiar to many of us who were born into Post-World II America. However, Mark's story is also an account of an intense personal search for understanding of how his experiences were impacted by social structure, history, and institutions (schools, sports, churches, the military). Incorporating references throughout, Mark links the events of his life to a larger body of scholarship that illuminates how the struggles he faced fit into the larger struggles in contemporary society. Mark's story offers particularly cogent observations about the role and impact of the military (especially the Marines) on contemporary culture in America.

Bruce K. Alexander

Director, Enterprise Business System Projects, Michigan State University (Retired).

Napolean Bonaparte—God favours the side with the best artillery.

To my Family and Friends

Thanks for your encouragement, love and support!

Foreword

Every person has a unique personal history. During my teaching and research at the University of Kentucky for more than thirty-six years, I often wondered how to appreciate the unique history of students when they are taking specific science and engineering courses. The course syllabi list course outcomes that students are required to achieve, but they do not list the personal history of each student. This is an interesting point of discussion since Howard Gardner, in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, explains that there are seven different talents: visionary, hands-on, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, and logical, which affect their learning process. Education must offer students the use of at least one of these seven different talents to learn specific technical knowledge identified as the course outcome. Interestingly, Charles Smith stressed the essence of education, Education is what is left after the facts are forgotten. ¹ So what is left is not technical knowledge but something more fundamental to human characters, such as values, thinking, attitude, behavior, and relationship. This connection between learning technical knowledge and personal history has not been well explored, although it is of tremendous importance in students' learning process.

Mark Pittman shared his unique personal history in his autobiography as an educated family man and an athlete with military experience, offering his positive perspective on life to try and see how it works. He had many different plans for his life and experienced failures and successes, as almost all of us experience. For him, the final success is not measured by the outcome of the plan but by the relationship building that took place during the projects. His unique-focused lifestyle coincides with the principles of the Toyota Production System—also known as the Lean system—with which he is familiar, as one of the most powerful organizations and business models. Thus, Mark Pittman practices the Lean principles in his life, which is the key to successfully transforming organizations from low efficiency to the highest one. His autobiography is filled with stories of process-focused people relationship building through win-win and treating people with respect. His seemingly typical life will give readers the peace of mind and comfort to be happy in their everyday lives. The significance of this everyday mind was stressed by D. T. Suzuki in Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery as the essence of artless art.

Kozo Saito

Professor Emeritus and Founding IR4TD Director

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Kentucky

Lexington, Kentucky 40506

December 21, 2022

Introduction

Is it possible to succinctly contextualize and encapsulate more than seventy-six years of experience? Hmm…let's see from youthful naivete to a more mature outlook informed by questioning skepticism. From 1958 to 1967, I lived in Warrensburg, Missouri, the good ole show me state. I would have thought some of the show me would have become almost second nature. I'm not so sure, as you will soon discover. Philosopher George Santayana (1863–1952) wrote, Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

Do you suppose Mr. Santayana grew up in Missouri? Of course, he didn't, but if he had been a Missourian, he might have eclipsed the fame and legend of Missouri's most noted, Harry S. Truman. I mention both not because of an emotional connection but rather for the pithy advice of skepticism or doubt, if you will, as a virtue. A virtue to be well developed and exercised in my lifelong travels, travails, and triumphs. And Truman as a historical figure of some note who, according to Kenneth Weisbrode's charitable depiction, was an exaggerated everyman from Missouri.²

Truman faced almost implacable dilemmas: how to end the Pacific War against a fanatical and resolute enemy; how and to what degree should military demobilization following victory proceed; what was enough and what too much; massive postwar strikes; how to address civil rights issues and integrate the United States Armed Forces—the July 26, 1948, Executive Order 9981; how to confront the unfolding hegemony on the Korean peninsula; what to do about the global projection of Soviet power; and his eventual General MacArthur problem, to name a few.³ Dilemmas aside, Weisbrode writes of Truman as the following:

Provincial, but not rustic. He was prim. This was the imagine conveyed by those round spectacles, the hair combed neatly, the pursed lips. This image went back to his earliest years. If we did not know any better, we would say he modeled himself upon Twain's model of the Missouri mama's boy.

It sounds like an oxymoron. Missouri had long had the reputation of a rough borderland. Its people resembled its famous mules: hard, sturdy, difficult with a kick to them.⁴

Notwithstanding Santayana or Truman, my emotional connection to a Missourian, with a kick or strength to toss me to the ground during high school football practice, was to Harold Hunter. As I describe below, our high school days together were memorable, and his death in Vietnam was shockingly disturbing when I found his name on our National Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. Discovering his name on that stark obsidian slab pierced my soul. Out roiled unexpected and unwanted emotional turmoil. Like a cracked egg yolk dropping into a sizzling skillet, my emotional turmoil tumbled into a kaleidoscope of scrambled eddies and currents—free-flowing and coagulating that inexorably led to feelings of guilt, recrimination, and remorse.

Earliest Years: Des Moines, Iowa (1946–1954)

Des Moines, Iowa (1946–1954)

Years before our 1958 move to Warrensburg, Missouri, in 1946, when I was about one year old, my father, Riley H. Pittman, became a faculty member at Drake University, located in Des Moines, Iowa, where he taught philosophy, religion, and sociology. Drake University is home to the famous Drake Relays, in which I competed in 1965. Des Moines was quite different from Huntington Park, California, where I was born on September 12, 1945.

While at Drake University (1946–1954), my father was instrumental in establishing the Des Moines Civil Rights Commission. In addition to his teaching and civic actions, he frequently served as a guest or interim pastor in nearby rural communities when called to temporarily fill a vacant pulpit because of an ongoing search for a new pastor or when the church's pastor was attending a conference or vacationing. As a child between the ages of four to eight, I remember frequently traveling with him on these hinterland ministerial sojourns. I enjoyed these trips and relished the time spent with my father as we passed through rural landscapes and played verbal travel games. These travel games probably helped my father stay awake and provided diversion during our longer trips and were at times educational or at least practical, like adding up license plate numbers from vehicles we approached or being the first to shout zoom as we encountered an approaching vehicle or being the first to identify the manufacturer of a vehicle or trying to name the state capitol of vehicles with out-of-state license plates.

I also remember how restless I often became as I sat alone squirming in a church pew, trying to pay attention to marginally recognizable and, at times, vacuous rituals and mostly incomprehensible homilies, but knowing I was supposed to behave. Behaving meant to quietly sit so as not to become a distraction. My father was easygoing, and looking back now with the hindsight of seven decades, I realize how tolerant he was of my occasional less-than-decorous and obvious bored behavior.

My mother intermittently worked for the Des Moines YWCA until my sister was born in 1950, shortly after my fifth birthday, but she continued in her role as the children's religious education leader for the church we attended in Des Moines, Plymouth Congregational Church.

My fondest memories during my young childhood period were looking forward to school, playing with neighborhood friends, singing in the children's choir, learning to ride first a scooter and then a bicycle on the sidewalk along the street we lived, Thirty-First Street, playing games with my father, and the not so happily remembered nonconsequential mischief and scrapes into which I would occasionally blunder. I also recall having many sore throats and ear infections, making frequent visits to the doctor necessary and eventually resulting in a frightening and unwanted (of course) hospital appointment to have my tonsils and adenoids removed. When informed about my impending hospital stay, I had a private violent tantrum as I smashed, socked, and viciously rubbed the face of my favorite teddy bear into the floor of our main bathroom. I still have the teddy bear, although it sits closeted, only occasionally noticed and nostalgically remembered, but obviously not forgotten. I suspect, parenthetically, teddy may very well return as a comforter in a consolatory role when I slip toward non compos mentis. A sobering thought, teddy will outlast me.

I recall my occasional sprints from my bedroom into my parents' bedroom and leaping onto their bed, much as a frightened puppy on a thunderous stormy night, after experiencing terrifying nightmares and their patient, calming, and soothing words until I was reassured enough to return to my bedroom afraid no longer, at least temporarily, of separation from their physical as well as loving security. How could I, so young and well sheltered and secure from the vagaries of poverty and abuse, experience such vivid dreams, and what was the cause? I recall how monstrous these seemingly lifelike assailants were. Now I dream of other things.

I remember how ashamed I felt when my new exciting grown-up activity of puffing cigarettes was discovered by my father. I wasn't as clandestine or smart as I should have been when experimenting with this habit, learned from an older neighborhood boy, as I thoughtlessly discarded cigarette butts from my favorite partially hidden perch in our front yard's biggest tree. It wasn't long before my father noticed the litter, and when questioned, I admitted I had been smoking. Not living up to my father's expectations was enough to extinguish this behavior. Forever, well, not quite. The summer between my eighth grade and freshman year in high school with a newly arrived classmate as we thought smoking was a sure sign of coolness. This being cool experiment lasted until football preseason conditioning and drills just before entering ninth grade, and our respected coach expounded on the detrimental consequences of smoking and what he would do to anyone he caught. This time I really was finished with cigarettes.

Another incident that elicited stern parental rebuke and subsequent feelings of chastisement arose from my exploratory impulses when I mischievously braced up 30 feet onto the first-level roof of the church located across from our house. I was an avid tree climber, and heights did not particularly frighten me, so the challenge must have been intriguing as I methodically braced my back and feet on opposite-facing walls and gradually inched my way up to the rooftop. Working my way up to the roof was easy compared to the prospect of going down. I could not devise a way to initially bridge the opposing walls without imagining I would fall. Luckily the sanctuary walls supporting a higher roof had windows, one of which was unlocked. I was able to climb through onto balcony pews and exit through a church door. Somehow my parents found out about my mischievousness, and their rebuke made it clear; I was to explore and challenge myself in safer and more conventional ways, like climbing trees and not entering places I did not belong.

It is hard for me to judge if I was a difficult child during these years as I didn't have a comparative someone as my childhood friends, nor I talked about home discipline. Homelife was private, although when playing at a friend's home, I could briefly observe, experience, and perhaps sense the house rules, resulting in sanctions whenever the rules were broken. I was rowdy, full of energy, beginning in rudimentary ways to assert my will in opposition to adult authority, perhaps showing early signs of becoming a smart-aleck, often too loud for my own good—probably, I was not the easiest child to socialize with or learn conformity. All these tendencies occasionally resulted in some form of discipline at home and school.

As I recall, home discipline was not corporal, although some may consider cuffing or paddling or spanking on the behind a mild form of corporal punishment. Even when my behavior probably merited it, there were no whippings, beatings, or canings. Home discipline was mostly psychological, with moments for learning a lesson, momentary depravations, and incentivizing appropriate behavior. I believe my parents' approach to discipline not only reflected their temperament and education level, their enlightenment, but also perhaps a reaction from their own childhood experiences. For example, my father was strongly opposed to firearms in the home. Although while in high school, he did allow me to briefly keep a single-shot bolt action .22 caliber rifle a friend had given me, he went to great lengths to teach me about the care, maintenance, and safe use of the rifle. I only kept my rifle for a brief time because after shooting a crow out of a tree, I felt as though I had committed a mortal sin. I later learned his firearm anathema, which I mostly adopted, stemmed from his memories of his older brother, Albert's, accidental shooting death on February 2, 1947, by a security guard visiting his father's car repair shop in Haskell, Texas. This tragic incident happened when the guard's revolver accidentally fell from its holster and discharged as it struck the ground. The bullet hit my uncle, whom I had never met, and killed him. This wasn't the only tragic event to strike my father. It was on a stormy Sunday morning, March 13, 1921, when he was almost ten years old when rain and hail pelted the Christian church in Haskell, Texas. The church's steeple bell was struck by lightning. He states, My Sunday day school class was in the adjacent building. When we thought the storm was over, we rushed out to pick up hail. Another lightning bolt struck and killed Deo Hunt and knocked down Jackson Hudson, who was standing just in front of me, and I felt it but was just out of its reach. Once home, I wondered why God wanted to strike his church and children.⁵ One answer which seemed to satisfy my father was provided by the Morris B. Margolies book review.⁶ My father wrote verbatim—the role of God in the Jewish scheme of things.

God is loving, caring and all knowing, but since He has granted free will to humanity, He will not intervene when the exercise of that free will leads to disastrous results. Hence God cannot be held responsible for the Holocaust or the lightning that struck the Haskell church.⁷

My most usual home discipline was banishment to the intermediate staircase landing between our home's ground floor and basement, appropriately called Sheol. In our household, this was my place for reflection and supplication.

But I recall a few instances when my behavior exceeded Sheol's intended restorative benefits. On these occasions, my father and I together skipped Shoel's liminal-like status and descended to the basement depths and entered Hades, a place for far more earnest negotiation and unsuccessful more hands-on discipline. After a few hand swats to my behind, I learned what behavior exceeded the "go to Sheol" command, and even as I later came to understand these philosophical and religious terms as a hopeless admixture of syncretism, I still remember my childhood efforts to avoid Hades and its almost certain punishment nearly in whatever way I could. I also recall a more immediate and less contemplative inducing punishment in the form of a light cuffing on the back of my head from my father—much like Gibb's cuff in the now popular television show NCIS. When I was in middle age, after asking my father about my childhood years, he related he soon realized he was cuffing me too often as I would flinch when he raised his arm when I was nearby. On occasions, I must have been a handful, but instead of cuffing, according to my father, when appropriate—I could comprehend—he soon crafted appropriate behavior lectures and inducements to reward good behavior.

At elementary school, obstinate behavior, not becoming sufficiently quiet when repeatedly asked to do so (sassiness was not part of my school repertoire), being overly aggressive during recess activities or getting into schoolboy fights (typically shouting, pushing, and shoving) were my major transgressions and occasionally meant a visit to the principal's office. I soon came to recognize going to the principal's office was the equivalent of the Hades home discipline. In fact, perhaps worse. The few times when the principal's admonishments did not have the desired effect, one of my parents was asked to attend this conference of meeting of the minds, and I always felt doubly chastised. Not only did I feel guilty for breaking the