Posted by Robert C. H. Schmidt on December 14, 2009:

A dog and a watch Does no one else remember Edwin Woods Martin? It has been 44 years since we, my family, last saw Woody. My memory may be imperfect, but the warmth of his friendship is indelible. It was in 1957 when I was assigned to the 2nd Battle Group, 502nd Airborne Infantry in Germany and met Woody Martin, a platoon leader in one of the infantry companies. My wife and I began inviting bachelor officers in the 502nd to our apartment for weekend suppers. Woody was one. We had just acquired a German shepherd dog and a barbeque grill. (We later learned that the dog had been kicked by a black NCO and never forgot the insult.) I had never before grilled hamburgers and made the mistake of firing up too many coals, which immediately ignited the fat dripping from the meat and created a small inferno. While putting out the fire we failed to notice that the dog, named "King," had climbed onto Woody's lap and was looking fondly down on him. It was an embarrassing beginning to what would become a close relationship between Woody and King. A year later the 502nd was deactivated and redesignated the 23rd Infantry (leg!). I had been assigned to be the Fire Direction Officer in the mortar battery, using field artillery procedures instead of the M-10 plotting board. Woody was then the weapons platoon leader and asked me how the artillery worked. He then improvised a set of instruments for the 81-mm mortars and promptly failed the annual training test for using non-standard procedures. Woody was also non-standard in taking care of the troops. He often drew training films from the audio-visual library and showed them on weekends for the 50% of troops who had to remain on base for readiness. (The Russians never came.) At Thanksgiving he used Unit Funds to rent china and table linen to make the meal more like home. Stainless steel trays got a break. When it was time for my rotation to the States we had two kids and one on the way. We couldn't afford to ship King home with us. Woody solved the problem by adopting King. They bonded well, although keeping a dog in the BOQ was a problem, so Woody often took King to work when he was assigned to an office job as assistant adjutant and newsletter editor. Once, during a staff meeting in the colonel's office, King passed gas loudly. Another time, after work, King bolted ahead of Woody to the BOQ and treed a black captain on top of the captain's car. Finally, when Woody rotated back to the Land of the Big PX, Woody found a home for King with a German farm family. We happily met Woody again in 1963. I had been teaching chemistry for a year at USMA and Woody had just been assigned to the English Department. As part of his Master's degree work he has researched the history of the Big Red One, the First Infantry Division, and its commander during World War II, Terry de la Mesa Allen, a former cadet in the Class of 1911. But the general wouldn't let Woody publish the thesis as a biography. Had Woody lived three more years he might have been able to do so after the deaths of the general and his son of the same name. I wonder where that manuscript is now. Does anyone know? By 1963 my family had grown to five children and another on the way. Woody was a frequent visitor and played with the kids as if they were his own, letting them climb all over him begging for "airplane rides." He left his sports car with us when he went on leave in 1964. We used it to take the family to the Catholic chapel for the baptism of our last child, Thomas Martin Schmidt. The older kids chose the name - "Thomas" from the children's book, "Thomas the Turtle," and "Martin" for Uncle Woody. Later that year Woody came to our quarters with a German shepherd dog, King II, bought from a local kennel to replace the dog we had left with Woody in Germany. I tried to pay for the dog with a check, but Woody never cached it. That was also the year that my high school graduation gift watch stopped running. Woody insisted that I use one of his, a dressy watch without luminous hands, which he, Infantry all the way, preferred. I gave him a check for the watch, but he never cached that one either. I was wearing the watch while passing a baton during a jump with the West Point Skydiving Club that summer. As the other skydiver and I parted the watch fell off my arm and plummeted to earth. But a cadet found it on the drop zone and returned it to me - still running, but with a mangled wrist band. We were in Washington, D.C., when I read about Woody's death in Vietnam. The kids were three to ten years old. We decided to wait until they were older to tell them because I could also be assigned to a tour in Vietnam. That happened in 1970. Eventually the kids started asking why we didn't hear from Woody any more, not even at Christmas. King II grew old and had to be left behind when we were assigned to Okinawa. We finally told the kids about Woody during that assignment in 1974. The older kids, who remembered him, cried. Years passed but Woody was never forgotten. Our oldest son, Mark, while a plebe in the class of 1981, located the kennel from which King II had been obtained and arrived home at Christmas with King III. The dog accompanied Mark to Fort Rucker while he was attending helicopter flight school until Mark's death in 1982. Mark was buried in his parents' home town in Minnesota. Several hundred dollars, contributed by mourners, were forwarded to West Point to be used in a fund supporting activities of the Boy Scouts of America because Woody had been a volunteer leader with a scout unit during his time at the Point. Woody's watch finally quit the same year that Mark died, so now I wear my son's watch. Woody's watch will pass on to one of my kids, a reminder to them of a good friend. King III lived with us and later with our son, Matthew, in Texas until the dog's age and infirmities led to his being euthanized and cremated. At the kids' request, I scattered the ashes on Mark's grave. Robert C. H. Schmidt

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