Big gun communications

Matt Meusborn remembers the cold in December 1976 when he stepped off the bus at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Up until then, he’d been used to the “dry cold” of Fort Collins, Colorado, where he’d lived most of his life. But here, just off Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, “it was cold, cold.” Meusborn had trained for a year with the U.S. Army then; he’d overcome the mental shock from the yelling of orders and learned to respect his commanding officers in Fort Knox, Kentucky. And now, the teenager who’d helped on a dairy farm not too long earlier waded chest-deep through a patch of ice, latching cables to a piece of heavy equipment.

“It’s a wet cold out there,” he said, “just goes right through you.”

Without a team effort, Meusborn said, his 1st Battalion, 92nd Field Artillery unit “didn’t have much.” They’d have been stuck in the ice. With a team effort, however, they dislodged the heavy equipment and – upon their transfer two months later to Fort Hood, Texas – really began to move the “big guns”: M110 howitzers fit for a battleship.

More than anything else, Meusborn cited communication as the main skill he took from the Army into civilian life. His military experience moving heavy equipment and welding has proven useful at the CHS High Plains cooperative in Holyoke, where he serves as fleet manager and operations assistant, but he added the ability to respect others that began in Fort Knox made the real difference.

“I have to move to all the different locations and work with different supervisors...and, of course, I have supervisors above me,” Meusborn said. “I learned to respect my supervisors above me and respect the men who are working with me.”

This potential to learn communication, according to Monserrato Conde III, extends to the Army National Guard as well. From 1989-98, he spent one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer at Guard training. Often, he functioned as “a $2 million telephone pole” for the 140th Signal Battalion in Sterling. A “cold weather” unit, the 140th could set up a telephone system for the entire city – around 10,000 people at the time – if needed.

The military, Conde said, taught him promptness, discipline and timeliness – practices he uses both as a parent and in his current job as a trash truck driver for the City of Holyoke.

“I think I’m a pretty good communicator,” he said. “I take pride in being able to express what my needs are...in my personal relationships, my work relationships, because without communication, you don’t have much of anything.”

Both Meusborn and Monserrato come from families whose history of military service goes back through the generations. When visiting both Meusborn’s house and that of Monserrato’s parents, American flags featured prominently outside. Meusborn’s own son currently serves in the U.S. Marine Corps.

“I think, by me not being in a wartime situation, I have more appreciation for those who were,” Meusborn said. The men who trained him in Fort Knox had fought in the Vietnam War, he continued, and “they were hard on us, because they were in it and we were not.

“I’ve had family...World War I, World War II, Korea, everything...I just have the greatest respect for those guys.”

Holyoke High School will hold its Veterans Day celebration at 8 a.m. on Nov. 10 in the commons area.