The Psyn-Post

Reconstruction of Newsletter of the PsyWar Detachment at Fort Riley, KS

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VOLUME 1 # 20             SPECIAL SEND HOME COPY, THE PSYN-POST             PAGE 3

Where did it all start? How far back do we have to go to reach the beginning----the day the Detachment was born? We go back to an ante meridian in September of 1951 when the Detachment was created by a flick of the fingers on a typewriter keyboard preparing another Morning Report, and assigning the first EM to what was to be known in future days as the Psychological Warfare Detachment, 5021 ASU, Fort Riley, Kansas...

Way back when . . . .    We old-timers look back on the days when the Detachment was in its awkward beginnings and find they had about them a touch of romance. It shows how hazy retrospect is...anything that happened last year looks like the Good Old Days. Still, those early times were carefree. We were a select, disorganized token force of misplacements upon which the present Detachment was built. In the summer and early Fall of '51, this great big repple depple was just a little old repple depple.

In the first place, there was hardly any brass. The outfit was bottom heavy with rable. Our confines ----the AOC Area---- were the melieu for that gay figure of abandon, the original PsyWar Casual, the sloven with the wrinkled fatigues who for 5 months fouled up a landscape kept neat and trim by the AOC Boys.    Out stepmother organization, who kept us on the roster for laughs, was our one tie with authority. To pass the time we pulled their details; we cut grass, washed windows, pulled weeds and KP, mopped floors, removed strange debris from these floors, and policed latrines. In spite of the facination and challenge in these details, however, there was a rowdier element (about 99% of the casual unit) which tried to dodge them. The 1st Sgt and his now-famous Schecklemobile hunted us down unmercifully, but there were secret gullies and ravines about the camp even the all-seeing M/Sgt Scheckles couldn't reach. Harder to dodge were the Aggressor details, which even the most-artful casual couldn't miss.    But it was not all work and no play. The Forsyth Swimming Hole and the Cadre Club was exclusively ours, casuals were its clientele, its bouncers and its barflies.    This giddy epoch had to end, of course, and end it did, in a burst of brass and a new order. As new men came in and the Detachment mushroomed into alarming proportions, the carefree days were gone, and the original PsyWar Casual just faded away.    As he looks ahead, he can't help but glance back and remember fondly the "good old days".

This is not a copy of the original.  However the text is as it was originally and the photographs are inserted in the same general location as in the original.  Many thanks to Elmer Horne, former 2nd Lt in the 2nd L & L and PsyWar Detachment (see S 2 Section on Page 9), who supplied a copy of "The Psyn-Post" and without whose help this page would not be possible.

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Second Publishing:  27-Sep-2005 04:18 PM   -   Last Update:  25-Feb-2006 09:15 PM
© 2005 by Frank R. & Alina B. Haus   -   All Rights Reserved