Posted by Robert E. Orkand on July 22, 2013:

As a brigadier general, Sid Berry pinned light colonel insignia on my shoulders when he was assistant commandant of the US Army Infantry School in 1969. He had personally selected me to be editor/publisher of INFANTRY magazine while I was a student at Leavenworth, maybe because we both held degrees from Columbia. I have never known or worked with a more honorable man. When LIFE magazine was preparing its 10-pager on him (I think the reporter was Lewis Lapham, but I'm not sure), the reporter would sit in a stuffed chair in my office at Infantry School headquarters (I was deputy secretary of the school at the time) and we would chat about what a brilliant man Sid Berry was. I don't understand why Sid never made it all the way to Army chief of staff, which was more or less predicted in the LIFE profile. Sid Berry was truly a great, good man who reflected the very best of those of us who were proud to wear the uniform. Bob Orkand Lt. Col. Inf. (Ret.) Huntsville, Texas CO, lst Bn (Mech), 58th Infantry, Ft. Benning, 1972-74 XO/S-3, lst Bn (Airmobile), 7th Cavalry, lst Cavalry Division (l967-68) Pentagon spokesman on the death of Gen. Creighton Abrams (1974) Editor/Publisher INFANTRY Magazine !970-71) Editor, "A Distant Challenge: The US Infantryman in Vietnam, 1967-70."

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