Deeds Alone

I belong to a group of friends that get together usually twice a month at a local brewpub to play trivia. We’ve been doing it for over a year. Teams, with a maximum of six persons, compete for usually just the satisfaction of winning and sometimes trinkets.

Our team has six regulars with three subs who we can call on if one of the regulars can’t make it. We’ve been fortunate in that we usually have been able to field five or six.

Not that one needs all six to win. Often, smaller teams win. But it never hurts to have another brain. And we have won several times, though recently we have been sucking pond water.

Each team has to choose a name. Ours is “Deeds Alone”. I chose it when just two of us first began. When I was a captain in the Army in 1972, I was stationed in Germany with the 1^st Armored Division “Old Ironsides”.

A major I worked with told me that only the 4^th Armored Division didn’t have a nickname, and the commanding general said the “Fourth Armored Division was name enough”; “They will be known by their deeds alone.”

His point at the time was that we in the Division Headquarters G-3 (operations & Training) section would also be known for our “deeds alone”. I always remembered that.

In 1975 when I was assigned as a tank company commander in the division, it was to the 1^st Battalion, 37^th Armor, stationed Katterbach, an old Luftwaffe airbase during the war. Interestingly, the 37^th Tank Battalion was in the 4^th Armored Division in WW2.

Its commander was Creighton Abrams when it was the first U.S. unit into Bastogne breaking the siege during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. 

Abrams went on to become a commander of all forces in Vietnam after Westmoreland, then Army Chief of Staff, and lastly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Abrams tank is named for him.

(Book Antiqua 12)