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Deah father, dear heart, dear lost...</div>
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<em>Henry Mershon Spengler III </em>died at age 25. He left his wife and two children. He will not be remembered for how he died, but for how he lived. And he did live!</div>
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What do you say about a twenty-five year old man who dies? That he loved life, his family, his work? I think you say only that the man is gone leaving his loves behind, each the richer for his having possessed them.</div>
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History will show that there was a breed of young men in the last decade, confident, self-possessed, skilled, and determined; who went to the other side of the world to meet the demands of their profession. They were soldiers. They were more than that. They were "new centurions,” men with the spirit of old soldiers fighting a new kind of war. They were set apart from those they led by their training and dedication to their work as a profession; and separated from their own leaders by youth, newness in the profession, and closeness to the men that would, on occasion die for them. They suffered. They separated themselves from their new wives and young children. They put thir lives in peril. If they lived, they were hardened, free of any naivete about the glory of battle; and occasionally, they were weakened inside. This is the truth. On the other side of the world from their homes, they changed from boys eager to please into men who, because they hated war, soldiered well.</div>
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Henry Spengler was one of these new centurions. He died near An Loc, Vietnam, on 5 April 1972, when the Cobra helicopter gunship he was piloting was shot down by hostile fire. How he came to be there and what kind of man he was are things worth remembering.</div>
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As we grew up together first at West Point and then as new Army officers, one could note on occasion a certain confusion of goals: grades instead of education, money instead of happiness, security instead of challenge. Some of us seemed to want to follow the path of least resistance. Henry was somehow different. Thinking about this difference brings to mind those familiar words from MacArthur’s address to the Corps: "...a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease.” At West Point, Henry kept his sense of values and helped us maintain contact with reality and an appreciation for what was really important. As we battled the OC, WCR’s, EDP's (saying the acronyms makes it all seem somehow closer), Hank would worry about "getting something out of this,” and not just his grade. It may have been a comfortableness with the system because of his family background in the service that enabled him to see a purpose in it all when the rest of us would bog down in the trivia of the moment. We can see him now clowning in some home movies taken in Old North barracks. I remember seeing him one afternoon outside the entrance to the track in the gym having just completed the obstacle course. He always wore a knee brace for athletics. Sweat was pouring off him. His sides were heaving. He was gasping for air. He always said that the Office of Physical Education spent the night before the course was run beating old feather pillows in the gym “to improve the quality of the challenge.” He had given the course all he could. With characteristic good humor and ability to see the important, he looked at me and said, “This too will pass.” The pain did go away. He had a firm grasp of the fact that only the value of having met the challenge well would remain.</div>
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I saw him in similar circumstances a couple of years later. He was not seeking security in Ranger School. Those that have been there know that course is a challenge for any man. Henry’s feet were swollen and bleeding. His Ranger buddy’s feet were in similar condition. Yet they carried (often literally) each other. I could almost feel his pain just by glancing at the grimace on his face and the tender way he walked. He kept going. Perhaps the pain he experienced rowing crew on the Potomac River in high school had prepared him for these times when he was able to disregard his own pain. Or perhaps he was here preparing to bear some future burden.</div>
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After Ranger School he went to the Engineer Officer’s basic course at Fort Belvoir. He was home. His wife Bette was too. Having both come from military families (both their fathers were generals) they were accustomed to the Washington area. Having spent more time with his Ranger buddy than his new bride in the first months of his young marriage, the months at Belvoir were remembered for their opportunity to live as a family for the first time and work in the company of close friends. We would visit one another’s apartments and talk endlessly about the future and all it offered. New in our profession, already we had “war stories” about our Ranger experiences.</div>
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We went to Jump School. Henry’s grin always seemed more impish with his head closely shaved. He was excited about his first jumps on the drop zones along the shores of the Chattahoochee River, but confided that he would not want to make his living jumping from planes unless he had to. He mentioned that it might be interesting to fly them someday. On the last parachute jump of training, Bette met him on the drop zone and pinned Airborne wings on the grinning young man with the bad knee.</div>
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Germany, their next assignment, offered Henry long, cold, difficult hours away from his wife. Bette found herself decorating a converted barracks while Henry commanded a company as a lieutenant in a European Army hard hit by the demands of an Asian war. While in Germany, Henry and Bette participated in the dedication of an airfield named in honor of Hank’s father, a brigadier general killed in a helicopter in 1961 when Henry was fifteen. Henry never would talk very openly about his father. We knew from Jim Locher, his classmate in high school and at West Point, that Henry and his father had been close...and we could see that loss had an effect on Hen. When home, he would visit his father’s gravesite at Arlington by himself. Perhaps it was this tragic accident that in part accounted for Henry’s singularly devotion to duty.</div>
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Destined to join in Vietnam the unit that had provided his summer military training at West Point, the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile), Henry returned to the states and flight training for which he had volunteered. He capped off the regular course of instruction in helicopters with a much-sought-after Cobra gunship transition course. Flight school involved moving between three posts in the southern United States: Fort Walters in Mineral Wells, Texas; to Fort Rucker in Enterprize, Alabama; to Hunter-Stewart Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. In Enterprize, Henry and Bette lived in a mobile home, a dwelling familiar to many Army families during times of upheaval. Bette made their place a haven for friends and relatives. One day, Shawn, their year old son, fell out of the door of the mobile home. After they assured themselves that he was uninjured, Shawn was called “Airborne” because of his brief free-fall. Shawn loved it. Henry would fry fish he had “captured” fishing week-ends in the Gulf. He enjoyed entertaining. In his conversation he was amiably disciplined. He enjoyed an evening of far-ranging conversation with a few friends there in the heat of the torrid Alabama summer. He enjoyed as best he could everything that he did. “My mind to me a kingdom is,” he’d say with Milton. “Nothing is so bad that thinking can’t make it better. Remember when Lawrence (of Arabia) touched the burning match and extinguished it slowly, smiling...his fingertips burning but his pretending not to notice? Mind over matter.” He was concerned about happiness. “As far as I know, you go around only once,” he would say. “The secret of living well must surely be to enjoy things while you’re doing them and not defer enjoyment for some dimly-perceived future.” He’d look at me waiting for disagreement. He sipped “Black Russians” and always “add a shot of cream” that made the drink look like chocolate milk with melted ice cubes floating in it. I was continually concerned about the importance of enjoying one’s work and career. Henry believed that too, but he was the one who taught me that there was more to life than work. There were family and friends to enjoy. There were children to raise. Henry had a style, a certain grace. When we were in our third year at West Point, he invited me to Alexandria for a “long weekend.” He took me to buy a suit. “How you look is important. It adds to your confidence and you can live better with confidence than you can with doubt.” His own confidence influenced others spontaneously. It was not didactic. It was contagious and you found yourself emulating Hank because his attitude, outlook, behavior, and performance of duty became him so well.</div>
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Henry was “professional.” That over-used, West Point-engendered word fit him so well. He was born to be a professional soldier. His style, his background, his family, all fit that role with such certain grace that one could see easily that he would go far in his profession and be a great influence on others as he went. “EASY!” he would say and call you by name. And you would. You would take it “easy” like Hank and do your work better with his example in mind.</div>
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At twenty-five few men realize their own mortality. Even Army officers. Henry had come home to Washington, D.C. from Vietnam in March for a two week leave. We all gathered for a party. Henry spoke of his interest in aviation and its influence on the war in which he was involved. The 101st had been returned to the United States and he had been transferred to the First Cavalry Division to complete his tour. Everyone thought the war was winding down and we had a great time that night. Hank joked and seemed to enjoy himself. He found himself on the periphery of an argument on the nature of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When he returned to Vietnam in mid-March, he had a month remaining on his tour.</div>
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Henry was an influence. He was a soldier, husband, father. Perhaps as much as anything he was a great friend. His loss is irreparable. It is only with great difficulty that we can accept a world of which he is no longer a part. It is difficult to smile missing him, thinking how he died. I cannot help thinking about him in life though, peeking around the corner of the sallyport at West Point where our grades were posted “sneaking up on my juice grade;” or dangling from a swinging rope haplessly suspended over muddy water on a cold Georgia morning at the obstacle course in Ranger School; or laughing as we jogged in Jump School; or thinking up an alibi for the practice Prisoner of War camp at flight school should he be captured during a mock escape; or the dreamy, easy way he talked about “the future.” You know, we all really did love him.</div>
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I remember how excited he became one time when I showed him a few lines copied from some book that read in part, “That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children...who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.” Henry was a success.</div>
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For the remembrance of it, Henry Spengler is survived by his son Shawn, his daughter Melissa, and his loving wife Bette.</div>
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Sleep softly, Eagle remembered!</div>