August 2007 President's Corner

Mitch Rowland '71, USNAAA Atlanta Chapter President

Welcome all Atlanta Chapter members. If you aren’t yet a member, shame on you. Go back to the home page and you can join from the comfort of home. We really need you to join now.

This is my second attempt at a monthly column. All I can say is that Steve Frederick promised me that it would get easier. So far, I don’t think it so. At least this isn’t a weekly column or I’d be in real trouble.

The attendance at our July monthly meeting was down. But it is usually down in July and August. I guess family vacations do take precedence. And that’s a good thing.

Those attending in July were: Bill Rentz ‘55, Ed Sundberg ‘68, Beggie Vachon ‘58, Ken Bruley ‘91, Rick Haley ‘72, Paul Hurst ‘62, Jim Hatch ‘47, Doug Fuge “64, Sam Newton ‘68, Bill Holmes ‘64, Arnold Gauft ‘92, Steve Weise ‘72, Clint Johnson ‘60, Bob Shultz ‘71, Jim Slemenda ‘66, Sam Smith III ‘52, Pete Knoetgen ‘77, Philip Knoetgen (son of Pete and USMA ‘11) Steve Frederick ‘72.

Those who were there were held spell bound by our speaker. Col (ret) Ben Malcom was a special agent during the Korean War. He was assigned to lead 600 Koreans in disrupting supply and communication lines. For 12 months, Col. Malcom, a tall, white guy, lived behind the lines in North Korea. His service was so classified that most people didn’t know that even existed. The information wasn’t declassified until 1995. After that, Col. Malcom wrote a book, “White Tigers”, about his exploits living inside North Korea.

Col. Malcom still teaches a course at the Special Forces School at Fort Bragg. As such, he gets to keep up to date on many current operations. He spoke to us about many operations (now declassified) in the current War on Terror. Ben was a wonderful speaker. I watched in amazement as jaws dropped on many of our members during Ben’s talk.

Afterwards Ben autographed copies of his books for our members. This is the first time I remember a speaker running out of books to sell. We may have to bring Col. Malcom back in the future.

One of our own was featured on the History Channel on August 3^rd. (How old do you have to be to be featured on the “History” channel?) Clint Johnson had the first gun kill of the Viet Nam War. Clint was an A-1 Skyraider pilot who was credited with a gun kill of a Mig 17. I think I’ve found a future speaker. I’m sure it will be on reruns if you didn’t catch the original.

BEAT ARMY!

Mitch Rowland ’71
Chapter President