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Most of us do not have the opportunity or the strength to die with honor and poise while doing that which we love and do best. <em>Mort O’Connor</em> died that way, as a soldier, leading men superbly and courageously in battle. That he was killed in Vietnam, a battlefield as ambiguous as any in American history, rather than diminishing the integrity of his death, enhanced those qualities of strength and fidelity to duty that a nation demands of its soldiers even in times of paradox.</div>
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This is not to imply that Mort expected death in that tragic land; he was in the prime of his life, and he cherished all the things life brought to him. In order to understand Mort’s sacrifice, it is necessary to understand the paradox of the man himself. For in Mort a family tradition of military professionalism was combined with his own irreverent individualism that would at times burst through the norms of discipline. Throughout his life there was a duality in his character, a fragile balance between a rationalism and an earthy spontaneity.</div>
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The O’Connors are one of those remarkable families in the American military tradition who have proudly sent their sons to West Point and on into service to their country during both peace and war. Three uncles and his father before him graduated from West Point, and Mort grew up in that special world of regular Army life on pleasant old garrison posts scattered throughout pre-World War II America. It was a good life, a life valued by the nation, and it was assumed that Mort, almost from the time he was born on 13 June 1930 at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, would become an officer and lead men into battle.</div>
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After graduating from LaSalle Military Academy in 1947, Mort went on to Sullivan Preparatory School in Washington, D.C., to study for the West Point entrance examination. His entry into the United States Military Academy was delayed for two years. He spent them at Texas A&M, which he enjoyed thoroughly and which gave him a sound academic background for West Point. Efforts to enter the Academy were resolved when he received an appointment from North Dakota.</div>
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Having already been initiated into the stringencies of life as a cadet at Texas A&M, Mort confidently and with good humor survived the rigors of Beast Barracks at West Point in the summer of 1949. He was assigned to Company G-l during his plebe year, and subsequently to H-l. Ruddy-faced, quick to smile with a mischievous glint in his green eyes, Mort had a straight-forward, open personality that concealed an incisive intelligence. He loved to compete—not in academics, which he surmounted with little difficulty—but physically, man-to-man, in contact sports such as lacrosse. When victorious he would exultantly claim to be descended from ancient Irish warrior kings. And it may be true, for he had in him a wild romanticism, a tragic lilt of heart, which only the Irish have.</div>
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However, his exuberance would sometimes get away from him, especially on trips away from West Point when the constraints of discipline dissolved at parties in New York that lasted past the return time of the cadet bus. So Mort spent his share of time walking off demerits on the Area. He took punishment with wry grace, and would spend much of the time on the Area memorizing poetry, especially his favorite military ballads by Kipling. On the brighter side of his four years at West Point was his good fortune to meet Betsy—Elizabeth Wright—a charming and witty lady who would temper his impulsiveness with love and special strengths of her own the rest of his life.</div>
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When he graduated in 1953 Mort knew clearly where he was going: into the Infantry and eventually into the 1st Infantry Division. This outstanding unit held a special association with Mort. His father, Brigadier General William W. O’Connor, at one time commanded the division’s 16th Infantry Regiment, and Mort’s uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Richard E. O'Connor was killed in action in World War II while serving with the Big Red One. Mort’s service in the Army began, and would end, with this distinguished division. Following graduation, and after the Infantry School and Airborne and Ranger training at Fort Benning, Mort joined the 1st Division in Germany in 1954 as a platoon leader in Company B of the 26th Infantry. It was in Bamberg on 5 June 1954 that he and Betsy were married. Germany was for them, as it was for many classmates assigned to duty there, a place of warm memories in a time of new responsibilities in their lives. Germany was where their son Sean was born, the beginning of a large and affectionate family.</div>
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In 1955 the O’Connor family moved to Fort Riley with the 1st Division when it rotated from Germany. At Fort Riley and then at the Advance Course in Fort Benning in 1958 Mort learned the special skills and demands of commanding small infantry units. His next assignment, as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia in 1958-1959, prepared him for a pleasurable three-year tour at West Point in the English Department.</div>
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Mort returned to troop duty in 1962 as a company commander in the 7th Cavalry stationed in Korea, followed in 1963 by assignment as a Reserve Officers Training Corps Instructor at Temple University in Philadelphia. During his three years at Temple, Mort completed the course work and began his dissertation for a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania. He and Betsy left many friends on the faculties and among the students at Temple and Penn when Mort was sent in 1966 to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. Meanwhile, more children had come to the O’Connor family throughout those happy years: Brian in 1956 and Michael in 1957, both born at Fort Riley; Shevawn at Philadelphia in 1959; Brendan at West Point in 1960; and Elizabeth born in 1966 in New Jersey.</div>
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By June 1967 when he left the Command and General Staff College, Mort’s professional life had acquired the complex duality which reflected his character. On one side he had been in the academic world for almost seven years as a graduate student and as a teacher who was knowledgeable and took pleasure in the resonances and ironies of 18th Century English poetry and drama. This intellectual side was deep and satisfying to Mort, and he seriously considered the possibility of teaching English literature after retirement from the Army and completion of his Ph.D. However, along with this reflective outlook was the deeper and more ambitious commitment to action as a combat commander. With the eruption of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960’s Mort sought duty on the battlefield. He received his orders and after settling Betsy and the children in Tucson he reported in August 1967 to the G3 section of the II Field Forces. In October he sought out a position as an executive officer in the 1st Infantry Division. Within a month he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and took command of the 1st Battalion, 2d Infantry, in the Big Red One.</div>
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Mort held no illusions about the war in Vietnam. He was aware of the complexities and ambivalence of the American involvement, but he never placed his subjective opinion above the mandate of duty. Domestic American opposition to the war neither surprised nor dismayed him; he would smile and quote Kipling’s lines, learned long before as a cadet, on society’s equivocal view of the professional soldier:</div>
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<em>Then it’s Tommy this, an Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, 'ow’s yer soul?"</em></div>
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<em>But it's "Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll...</em></div>
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For Mort the months of late 1967 and early 1968 were filled with intense combat as his units fought to clear the enemy from the northern approaches to Saigon. This was his happiest time as a soldier despite recurring danger. He was decorated several times for valor and earned a reputation as a tough, exceptionally talented officer. His brigade commander, Colonel Frederick C. Krause, wrote of him: “Mort’s spark of fire showed the men of the Big Red One they had an outstanding combat leader. He fulfilled every expectation and was regarded as the best of our battalion commanders.”</div>
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Following the shock of the Vietcong’s Tet Offensive in February 1968, units of the 1st Division were ordered to push the enemy from an area in Binh Duong, 45 miles northwest of Saigon and 15 miles west of divisional headquarters at Lai Khe. In late March 1968 Mort’s battalion was attached to the 3rd Brigade, and on 1 April his companies spearheaded a reconnaissance-in-force out of their base camp at Quan Loi. The area is just north of the Iron Triangle, a jungle that was the very heart of the Vietnam battlefield throughout twenty years of bloody combat.</div>
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After some initial contacts with a retreating enemy force, the forward company encountered sharp enemy fire in the early afternoon. Mort, who was near the center of his battalion column, spontaneously moved up to the fight. Along with him moved his radio man with the distinctive tall antenna of the command radio set. As if waiting for that one unique target, a Viet Cong rose out of a spidertrap and fired at Mort. The burst of gunfire put an end to the special cadence of Mort O’Connor’s heart. He died instantly, imparting to his life in that moment a unity of purpose few men enjoy, doing what he had been bom to do—leading men forward in battle.</div>
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In Mort O’Connor’s death, as in his life, a paradox remained not only in the unfulfillment of what he might have accomplished if he had lived, but in the validity of his sacrifice at that premature time and in that alien place. While his commitment to duty was a shining example for all soldiers to respect, it was harsh compensation for those who loved him as a man beyond his fine qualities as a soldier. Mort, however, understood what sacrifice means to those who are prepared to give their lives in the constant wear of service. For them, sacrifice retains its meaning even if everything for which it happened miscarries.</div>
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To interpret Mort’s death, or the deaths of others in Vietnam, as a means to an end is to traduce the man and the soldier. He did not die in vain. His purpose was an object of moral struggle that makes life not worth living if the sacrifice is not risked. That high purpose imparts enduring honor to his life and to the way he died, even while it leaves a sense of bittersweet regret in those of us who knew and loved Mort O’Connor.</div>
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<em>—R.F.R</em></div>