General Foss began his military career when he joined the Minnesota National Guard with most of his football team at age 17. In 1950, at age 18, he enlisted in the Army. He later accepted an appointment to West Point, and was commissioned in 1956. After a two-year stint at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England, where he learned small unit tactics and counterinsurgency, now-Major Foss deployed on his first tour to Vietnam in 1967, where he served first as the deputy G-2 at the 4th Division, then as S-2 and finally S-3 of the 2nd Brigade, 4th Division. And then came Tet ’68, during which the 4th Division utterly destroyed the VC’s H15 Battalion. “It was a turkey shoot,” said Foss. In 1969, he returned to Vietnam for his second tour as a battalion commander. He describes one particularly harrowing battle which lasted four long, hard days. While they won, “the cost was kind of high.” He learned lessons from that intense period of combat that made him a better leader. His disappointment with high command also served him well as he sought ways to better care for our Soldiers. Foss remembers reading a gratifying intercepted radio message from a NVA battalion commander to his superiors. When asked why his battalion wasn’t getting stuff moved through the area, the North Vietnamese commander responded, “This is a very tough aggressive battalion. They're moving all the time. They aren't like the others.”

Key Words: West Point, Sandhurst, General Abrams, scout dogs, jungle penetrator