"STU DET MDW" Courtesy of Ralph Reinhart
That special haven for ASA troops fresh out of basic was DLI EC ( East Coast ) with a special barracks known as STU DET MDW (Student Detachment, Military District of Washington) This barracks was filled with ASA and MI trainees who attended the language schools in the DC area. I went to the Crowell-Collier Institute at 1600 Wilson Blvd in Arlington Va. The STU DET Barracks was located at South Post, Ft Myer and the whole South Post was levelled to make way for parking, visitor's center and most importantly, more graves at Arlington National Cemetary.

When I was at the STU DET ( ca Apr 68-Jan 69) I was able to see the Bobby Kennedy graveside service and had LBJ's limo pass within feet of me. I was there for a 37 week course in Swahili. The class started with 4 ASA slick sleeves and 4 Green Beanies 1 E4, 1 E6 & 2 E8's. The GB's all failed out though one of the E8's stuck around as NCOIC of the building we were in. ( Another example of RHIP )
None of my class mates for Swahili were black. The only black student in the school was taking Hebrew. Another friend was there for Spanish. It took Jose several weeks to convince the Army that he was Puerto Rican and did not need to learn any more Spanish. Eventually he was assigned to a Brasillian Porteguese class.

The neatest thing about language school was getting E-4 upon graduation. I remember that there was a steady flow of MI graduates from Holabird into the language school and they had a sweet situation. Holabird gave E-4 to each graduate and E-5 to the top 10%. These guys got their stripe upon graduation too until some GB's objected to the MI E6's with under 18 months in service.

Last year I went to a reunion of the 199th LIB at Benning and the Top for the reunion crew was First Shirt at STU DET before and after I was there. He went to Nam in time to be a hero during TET. He said that when he returned to STU DET, he was surrounded by a bunch of ASA'rs who said "We heard you were killed over there." George was the founder of STU DET and used Pentagon connections to get the Top that I knew reasigned to an overseas post so that he could take over the STU DET again. (RHIP again!!! ) He was there when the word came to leave so that the whole post could be torn down. I have a recent picture of him and will try to scan it sometime for the entertainment of other STU DET alumni.
Anyway, there was a period of time where a whole bunch of STU DET graduates went to Devens to become 98C2L's and then go to Two Rock and on to RVN. I certainly met more STU DET people in the rest of my service that I met graduates from Monterey. ( One sidelight, I talk to a guy occasionally who was sent to Indiana University while in the Air Farce to learn Russian. Part way through the course, he and some classmates were in a bar describing in Russian what they thought of the women and what they would like to do to them. After a while, a lovely young thing came up and said in perfect Russian: "You assholes would die trying."

I met lots of linguists who had no need of the training for how they spent their productive time in the Army. I did meet one Burmese language student while at STU DET. On my last day in Viet Nam I met his guy again at TSN terminal. He was an officer and had just returned from Burma where he had made a movie for the Army. We both were amazed to see the other but also were both in a hurry to move on.

To wrap this up, I have to review my pictures to see if I have anything of the STU DET. I have some pictures from Devens but I wish I had a picture of my favorite ASA Character, SGT Bess who was a troop pusher at Company C. He was famous for telling the troops that their pay raise was going to be "radioactive" and his most famous line: "You three mens, half of you come here."