Posted by Richard E. Killblane on June 5, 2006:

Lance as I remember him Richard E. Killblane I always like to remember the funny side of Lance, so I will share some of my fonder and funnier memories of him. I knew Lance because we shared the same love for playing Army. We both were in the Tactics Club. Yes, he was enthusiastic and bound to be a hero in battle. I remember him making a comment about hoping our class would have a war because he would hate to return as an instructor with nothing more than an EIB and ARCOM on his chest. We became friends, but that was because I did not have to live with him. We were in different companies. After the class shuffle going into our Cow year, I roomed with him in H-1. I was not looking forward to it because all his other room mates had wanted to kill him. Lance loved to debate and was very good at it. He would debate over anything - even the color of the sky. And he often won, if by nothing more than wearing down his opponent. His favorite tactic was to challenge his opponent's sources. You could not just say, "I heard this or that." You had to quote the source, and it had to be a credible source. Even then, he would attack that source. "How did he know it?" "Where did he get his information?" It was usually at that point that I wanted to strangle Lance. This was straining our friendship. The best advice I was given by one of his former roommates was to not take him or his debates seriously. Well, I changed my tactics. When he challenged my sources, I made them up. The difference is that I began to lead the argument to the ridiculous. Lance became so preoccupied with attacking my sources that he failed to grasp that the issue we debating had ventured into the absurd. There would come a point where he realized this and he would smile, knowing he had been had. We would both laugh. Our friendship survived. Lance pushed himself hard at everything he did. His little ruck sack march at the end of plebe year grew into legend. He just pushed himself until he passed out and was picked up by the Commandant. He applied himself at academics the same way. I, on the other hand, emphasized pacing oneself. Like boneheads, several of us gave up our Spring Break to go to Air Assault School. For the 12-mile road march, many cadets started off with good brisk paces far too swift to maintain for 12 miles. Ed Dottery and I set out at a pace we knew we could maintain and began passing the others along the way. Each time we would ask how many cadets were still ahead of us. We finally passed everyone but one cadet. I kept thinking to myself, "I hope it is not Lance." I wanted to show him how pacing oneself was the better way to do things. Ed and I would fast walk up the hills and jog everything else. We never caught up with Lance, who ended up breaking the record for the fastest time on the course. In loosing the race, I also lost my argument. Well, in my last conversation with Lance upon graduation, I was pleasantly surprised to hear he had mellowed out. Individually, Lance was a hell of a soldier. The problem is that no one else could keep up with him. He pushed himself hard and likewise expected others to do the same thing. Even as room mates, he could not understand why I would go to bed when I still had not finished all my studies. Lance made the Dean's list and I made the Dean's other list. As we prepared to go our separate ways, I told him that he could not push his men too hard. He understood it. He was greatly looking forward to leading men. Our last conversation gave me hope for his success and that of his men. Typical Lance, he did nothing typical. He drove his car home then flew back so he could ride his motorcycle across country. I did not see Lance again until the Advance Course at Benning in 1983. He was a changed man. He seemed a little disappointed. His experience had not been a happy one. Mellow for Lance was evidently still too hard for others. He left the 82nd Airborne Division for the 2nd Ranger Battalion. If there was ever a home for Lance, it had to be in the Rangers. I was shocked to learn that he was too hard even for the Rangers. He was surprised too. He said they whined too much, especially when he would not let them take any snivel gear, like cold weather clothing, when living in the field in Washington during the winter. OK, Lance had not changed. They pawned him off to the 9th ID. Lance was getting out of the Army. This shoe just did not fit. I was shocked and disappointed myself. I could not see Lance doing anything else. Well, Lance was not one to let anything hold him back. He had some time left and as usual was able to rise to any challenge. The rest of what I heard about Lance came from stories picked up in Honduras in 1984. I felt like I was on the trail of Kurtz in the Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness. The first stories came from LTC Rey Garcia, Comandante of the Regional Military Training Center in Trujillo, Honduras. Garcia had run the OCS course for El Salvadoran officers at Ft Benning, 1983. Garcia had a great reputation for taking care of officers. He was given Lance, whom he assigned during the preparation phase to course development. The problem with Lance is that he was a perfectionist. No matter how good it was, he could always find a way to improve on the course. The problem is that everything was in constant change which made life miserable for his NCOs. Constant change did not allow them to adequately prepare for their classes. So Garcia made Lance one of his staff officers. He knew an officer of Lance's caliber worked best alone. He would give Lance a staff project that he rightfully assumed would take any normal man three days. Lance would finish it in one. Garcia soon realized that it would take a full time job just to keep Lance gainfully employed. Garcia was a great officer to work for. He was reasonable, fair and employed common sense to training. He definitely was not anal about typos, but he realized he had to be with Lance. Garcia would bleed all over Lance's staff papers and then hand them back for him to correct. He had to keep Lance busy. The colonel then asked his secretary to purposefully type errors in Lance's papers. Lance would become frustrated and the secretary seemed to handle it very well but successfully kept Lance out of everyone else's hair. Once training began, Garcia could put Lance back out in the field where he belonged. The one story I still remember is that Lance was in charge of camouflage training. Garcia was escorting one his many VIPs along the trail. Suddenly he heard a voice just behind him. They turned to see this bush wave at them. He recognized Lance's smile and voice. Lance had perfectly camouflaged himself to the point he was invisible as they walked right by him. Lance left the Army at the end of his five year commitment in 1984. I heard from one source that he rode his motorcycle down to El Salvador just to see what the war looked like. Without people trying to kill you, the road conditions in El Salvador were not good for motorcycle riding. Another day while sitting in the mess hall talking with LTC Garcia, and a couple other West Pointers who had known Lance, a sergeant walked in and told Garcia that he met a bearded dark haired guy in Tegucigalpa who told him to tell the colonel hello. We asked if he had sunken eyes and that menacing stare. We determined that it could only be one person, Lance Motley. The next question was what was he doing in Honduras? The sergeant said he was working but could not say what. Well, knowing Lance and the type of work that fit that description, we figured he was training Contras on the border. I thought to myself that he was where he belonged. After that I lost all contact with him until Tim Deady sent me a newspaper article about his death in Thailand in 1989. At first I felt a sense of loss, but as I thought about it, I realized he died doing what he loved. It was not his first love. That would have been leading American soldiers in battle. I later read the article written about his time writing for Soldier of Fortune in their November 1989 issue. It filled in the gap of what happened after he left Honduras. Lance was a one of a kind individual. I've never met another like him. He lived his life the way he wanted. He had some disappointments but always found another challenge. He traveled to war zones on his own dime and eventually found someone who would pay him to do what he loved. Few people had that kind of courage.

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