Experiences and memories Donald Vosel served multi-branch career

The year 1952 was pivotal in the life of Donald Vosel.

The Bridgeville, Penn., native married his high school sweetheart in January, graduated from Penn State in June and was drafted into the Army in September.

The war in Korea came to an end a year later—in July 1953—but being drafted marked the beginning of a military career that spanned nearly a quarter of a century for Vosel.

“In those days, when you were drafted, you took placement tests,” Vosel explained. “We had several of the college graduates automatically put into the medical field.”

Vosel was no exception and was sent to Medical Service Corp basic training at what was then called Camp Pickett—now a Virginia Army National Guard post—located near the town of Blackstone, Va.

Vosel, who had been drafted into the Army as a private, applied for officer candidate school after completing basic training there.

Selected for OCS, Vosel was sent to Fort Benning, Ga., for Infantry OCS but graduated and was commissioned as a Medical Service Corp 2nd Lt. He then applied for flight training because at that time, the MSC was “just getting cranked into” medical air evacuations.

Army fixed and rotary wing flight training was all done at Fort Sill, Okla., until late1954 when the flight training school was transferred to what was then called Camp Rucker.

“My military schooling is probably a bit different from a lot of officers,” Vosel said with a smile as he explained that he then graduated from flight training school at Fort Sill in 1954.

“When I graduated from helicopter school, they kept me at Fort Sill as a flight instructor,” Vosel said. “I had a class that graduated in December 1954 and picked up a new class in January 1955 after the Army moved the entire flight training, all the pilots, instructors and their families to Camp Rucker.

“We didn’t have anything (at Fort Rucker) but a closed camp when we first got here,” Vosel said. “When we got here there were occasionally mules pulling wagons on Main Street in Enterprise.”

The main unit operating at Rucker during the Korean War was the 47th Infantry Division which trained replacement troops for combat in Korea. The camp became inactive in June 1954 but reopened in August of that year when the Army Aviation School began the move from Fort Sill, Okla.

“When we first moved aviation here from Fort Sill, we had no hard facilities, we had no runways, nothing,” Vosel said. “Support people on post would take cloth panels and stake them down in the middle of a big field and we used those panels as approach spots and stage fields.”

Vosel served as a flight instructor at Camp Rucker until 1956 when he was transferred to a 15-month tour of duty with a medical air ambulance unit in Korea.

“I was assigned to the 50th Medical Detachment in support of the 43rd MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital),” Vosel said. “We had four H13s with outside litters, four pilots and we flew all of the medical (air) evacuations on the east side of Korea from the DMZ (demilitarized zone) south to Seoul.” The unit did not turn down a mission day, night or bad weather for the 15 months that he was there, he added.

Vosel applied for a military branch transfer to the Transportation Corps after his return from Korea. “At that time you also had to apply for inclusion as a Regular Army officer,” which he did, he said.

“The Army had a requirement that you spend two years in Combat Arms before you could be in the Regular Army,” Vosel explained, adding that he was sent for artillery training school at Fort Sill, and then assigned to the 2nd Armor Division at Fort Hood, Texas.

“Then after that two years was up, I was back into Transportation Corps, went back to Fort Sill and was assigned to an H37 Company, which was a multi-engine helicopter company,” he said.

The Vosels moved to Bridgeport, Conn., for a few months as part of the start-up for the Sikorsky twin-engine heavy-lift helicopter named after an 18th-century Wyandot Indian Chief. “I was flying a factory aircraft with factory test pilots and got qualified in the aircraft and instructor pilot qualified in the aircraft,” he said about the Tarhe, or Crane.

“The Army bought four of the aircraft and we took them back to Fort Benning and to a pasture in South Carolina where we started the CH-54 Flying Crane Program and then to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division,” Vosel said. “It was the world’s largest helicopter at that time.”

Upon returning from Vietnam Vosel initiated the Flying Crane Program at Fort Rucker and had four warrant officers—Dave Jardine and Curtis McVey of Daleville, Bob March of Ozark and Jerry Verveek “from some place up north”—that were with him during his first tour in Vietnam in 1965.

Vosel served two tours in Vietnam, the second one two years after the first. “I went for a year in 1965 with the First Cavalry Division out of Fort Benning,” Vosel said. “It had been called the 11th Air Assault Division but had been re-designated the First Cavalry Division.”

After returning from his second Vietnam tour in 1968 where he served as the commander of the 605th Transportation Company, Vosel was selected to attend the Command and General Staff College. Following that, in 1972, Vosel earned a Master of Science Degree from the University of Southern California.

Vosel stops to clarify a timeline of his multi-branched military career that includes Infantry Officer Candidate School, Medical Service Corp Basic Course, Transportation Corp Advanced Course and the Artillery Battery Officer Course. “There is a book in there someplace,” he laughs.

Vosel had first met the woman who has been his bride since 1952 because the two attended the same high school in Bridgeville, Penn. Virginia Vosel had moved to the town 10 miles south of Pittsburgh, Penn., after her cost accountant father had a job transfer. “She loaded up on her college courses and graduated from college a semester ahead of me,” Vosel said. “She was an honor student at Marshall College who had previously graduated as valedictorian of our Bridgeville High School class.”

Despite multiple moves as a military family, the couple’s three children—Jeff, Mark and Lee Ann—all graduated from the same high school, Enterprise High School. “It is an excellent school that more than adequately prepared them for university,” their father said.

“Virginia raised the kids, no matter where we where,” Vosel said. “When she says, ‘We sure have three good kids,’ I always say, ‘Yeah, you did a good job—excellent in fact.’”

After serving as the contracting representative for the entire fleet of aircraft at Fort Rucker from 1970 until 1975, Vosel retired from the military as a lieutenant colonel with 24 years of service. “The reason I got out was I got orders to go to Iran on state department approved orders,” Vosel said. “It was going to be an 18-month tour unaccompanied (by family) or a 24-month tour accompanied.”

The Vosels had built a home in 1974 on 250 acres of land in the Tabernacle Community in Coffee County that they had purchased two years prior. With two of the couple’s three children in college and one still attending Enterprise High School, moving to a foreign country to become the aircraft maintenance advisor to the Shah of Iran was not an option he wanted to consider.

Vosel retired from the military and went to work at Fort Rucker National Bank, ultimately becoming an assistant vice president.

When DynCorp was awarded the maintenance support contract at Fort Rucker in October 1988, Vosel went to work there as Director of Productivity.

He worked at DynCorp until 1996, he said. “I looked in the mirror while I was shaving one day and I said to myself, ‘You are 66 years old. How long are you going to do this?’

“So I decided to retire,” Vosel said, adding a smile when asked if he would do it all over again if he could. “Yes,” he replied without hesitation.