Bill Bock earned his commission through ROTC at Gettysburg College in 1966. After basic officer training camp at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania and basic artillery training at Fort Sill, he was assigned as a forward observer to one of the three battalions north of the Imjin River at the DMZ in South Korea. That experience of living with and working with infantry units, he says, prepared him for Vietnam, where he then volunteered to serve. Bock arrived in 1967, was promoted to first lieutenant, and was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 6th Artillery in Pleiku, “supporting the 4th Division, the 173rd, and CIDG and Special Forces units in the area.” He remembers “relying on those young gunners and the section chief that has laid that gun and has put those bubbles exactly in the center of the theodolite, have put the trails in the dirt so that when the gun recoils, it doesn't take it off its position. You are relying on … a young section chief … that when he gives the thumbs up, that gun is ready to go. And you rely on the fact that the folks in the fire direction center have taken into consideration the temperature, the humidity, the elevation between where the supporting element is and where you are, the age of the tube, wind speed, the age of the ammunition, all those imponderables. And you're sending something six miles, five miles, four miles away. And you just pray to God that everything was done correctly.” He fondly recalls helping out a Catholic nun with her orphanage, and moving a Montagnard village to safety. For Lieutenant Colonel Bill Bock, helping to arrange a memorial for the 14 Gettysburg College students who made the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam “probably had more of an impact than the actual time I was there.”