Lt. Col. Lawrence H. Alexander

 

  The picture above shows Lt. Col. Alexander and Major General Anderson during a transportation briefing at the 5th RTMO, following Wintershield exercises.

  We got our new commanding officer almost immediately after Polumbo’s departure.  Lt. Col. Alexander had been in theater and was transferred to Stuttgart. I really liked this guy.  He didn’t suffer any fools and told me more than once that, '”Daugherty, you can make as many mistakes as you want, just never make the same one twice.”  And I didn’t. In fact we made few mistakes over the years. We mostly came along behind and repaired other peoples errors – this included losing three railcars carrying two small groups of MP’s and sandwiched in between the two MP cars was a railcar carrying super sensitive artillery warheads. Will cover this escapade in another entry.

  Lt. Col. Alexander had been in the U.S. Army for about 27 years when he arrived at Stuttgart. During discussions over the years I found that he had been an infantry officer, a port commander, a tug boat captain, a pilot, a personnel officer and been briefly in Armored.  He had been passed over for Colonel twice and had no blind ambitions about becoming a Colonel or General. He just wanted our unit to do its job and do it very well.  One thing I found out was that he knew the Army and he knew a lot of people.  He knew where to go to get things done and the people and places to avoid.

  He tried to get me to reenlist in early 1963 when I made E-5.  He said, “Daugherty, If you reenlist for six years I’ll guarantee you stay here in Europe and make E-7 before you go home.  It sounded good and I really enjoyed the service. I talked with my Dad and he asked how much longer the colonel was going to be there.  The colonel only had another year and a half to retirement so I passed on the guarantee of advancement.  If he was going to be my Rabbi I wanted him there not in retirement. We also just got a new 1st Lt. assigned. He was taking my place and I couldn’t stand the guy. The colonel didn’t care for him  either.  I couldn’t see serving the next few years with the jerk.  He also screwed up my last leave which is another story to be told later.