‘Snot-nosed brat’ private makes warrant officer in 9 years

Jerry Barksdale
Jerry Barksdale

EAST LIMESTONE June 29, 2009 03:31 pm

— Sgt. Ed Sevigne, an instructor at the Ft. Benning Jump School, was expecting to receive orders any day for Germany.
Smokey and Mama West were also at Ft. Benning for a few days, visiting and babysitting Buster’s twins.
Ed and Smokey talked. “Buster and I are fixin’ to go to Germany, and I probably won’t see you anymore,” he said.
“Why don’t we get married?”
Ed agreed. They decided to marry right away and planned a big military wedding. There was no time to lose. Ed had to talk it over with Papa West and get his permission to marry Smokey. They jumped in Mama West’s Chevy and drove to Greenbrier.
Papa West was watching a baseball game on TV when they arrived. Ed asked him for permission to marry Smokey.
“Man, yeah, you can marry her!”
Ed had to be back at Ft. Benning the next morning for duty by 6 a.m. and Papa and Mama West offered to drive him to the Greyhound bus station in Decatur. Smokey wanted to go too, but Mama West had other ideas.
On the way to Decatur, Mama West laid down the law to Ed. “I want you to understand one thing,” she said. “If you ever have an intention to hurt that girl in anyway, you know where you got her, you can bring her back.”
Ed rode a Greyhound all night, arriving at Ft. Benning the next morning in the nick of time.
The following weekend, he returned to Greenbrier where Papa West had been pondering the forthcoming marriage. “I don’t want a big military wedding,” he announced.
“What do you mean?” asked Ed.
“I’ll drive you and Smokey to Iuka.”
On Jan. 24, 1956, Papa warmed up his ’52 Ford pickup and made ready to head to Mississippi. Smokey, who was only 17, wasn’t enthusiastic about an Iuka marriage. Finally, Papa and Ed coaxed her into the pickup and they sped off to the county courthouse. When they arrived, Smokey was reluctant to get out of the truck. Ed got her by one arm and Papa West by the other one and they walked her into the courthouse. Then another problem developed. The Judge wanted $5.
“I’ve only got two bucks,” said Ed. “Papa, have you got three bucks?”
“Yeah.”
They forked over the money, and the Judge tied the knot.
When they returned home to Greenbrier, the yard was full of cars. Nobody knew where Ed, Smokey and Papa had been.
“When I opened the door,” says Ed, “Mama West saw a ring on my finger.”
“Ya’ll went and got married!”
“Yep, sure did.”
They honeymooned overnight in the West home before departing the following morning for Ft. Benning.
Instead of going to Germany, Ed decided he wanted to fly choppers and talked it over with his first sergeant.
“Ed, you gotta have a high school education.”
“How can I get it?”
“Take the GED.”
Ed, who had only completed the fifth grade, took the test and passed.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he says.
Preliminary to attending helicopter school he was interviewed by a psychiatrist to determine his mental status. Never at a loss for words, Ed told him about his childhood and responsibility to his large family.
“I’m not believing what I’m hearing about your family,” said the shrink. “You are 90 percent crazy! But you’re going to helicopter school, and I don’t care what happens.”
After completing basic helicopter training at Camp Wolthers, Texas — “the hottest place in the world” — he went to Ft. Rucker for advanced flight school.
His 1957 graduating class had begun with 42 students. Of the 22 who graduated, Ed’s standing was 14. The night before graduation, he was seated at the dinner table with the major general who would pin on his wings the following day.
“We had a good conversation,” recalls Ed. “Well, the next day at graduation exercises the general said, ‘I talked to a kid yesterday and am so proud of that young man and I’m going to pin him with a set of wings. If anybody deserves it, that young man deserves it.”
“I walked up there just as proud as I could be,” says Ed, choking with emotion. The general pinned on his helicopter wings and warrant officer bars. In nine years, Ed had gone from a “snotty-nosed brat” private who didn’t shave to a warrant officer flying helicopters.
In November 1959, Ed flew to Dallas in an H-37 chopper, picked up Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson’s two daughters, Linda Byrd and Lucy Baines, and flew them to the family ranch near Austin.
LBJ was throwing a big barbecue bash for President Lopez of Mexico. Also present was former President Harry Truman, with whom Ed shook hands.
Eddy Arnold and the “Tennessee Plow Boys” were entertaining. While flying the band back to their motel Ed turned on the speaker in the chopper and he and Eddy sang “The Cattle Call”.
LBJ not only gave Ed a big cake, which he and Smokey fed on for a month, he also mailed him a personal thank you note.
In late 1960, Ed and Smokey departed Seattle on the U.S.S. Darby and sailed for Hanau, Germany. The Cold War could become hot at any moment. During the Cuban Missile Crisis Ed went on alert and headed toward the border where the Russians were expected to attack. Smokey and other Army wives jumped in their cars, which they always kept full of gas, and drove to a pre-determined location.
After three years in Germany, they returned to Ft. Benning, Ga.
“Suddenly, I got orders for Vietnam,” says Ed. “We got everything arranged to go and I had a bad accident. While I was stopped at a traffic signal someone slammed into my rear.”
Several vertebrae were damaged, causing excruciating headaches. Dr. Compton, the flight physician examined him and asked how he was doing.
“Great.”
“No you’re not. Why are you taking a half-bottle of pills?”
“I do get a little headache.”
“Ed, I’ve got bad news for you,” said Dr. Compton. “You’re not going to be able to fly. We can’t take a chance on you flying troops in Vietnam.”
Says Ed, “That was the hardest part of my life. I was gung-ho. I wanted to go.”
Later, he was stationed at Ft. Bragg with the 82nd Airborne when he received orders for Vietnam. He shipped out August1969 for Cam Ranh Bay where he was stationed with the 163rd Air Drop Company. But, he wasn’t flying choppers. He rigged aircraft for heavy parachute drops and “low-lexing,” providing supplies for troops in isolated areas. “Low-lexing is when a C-130 comes over the field about 25 feet off the ground and throws out a drove chute that pulls ammo and fuel drums out the back and drops it on thick rubber pallets.”
He was awarded a Bronze Star “for distinguishing himself …. in connection with ground operations against a hostile force …”
After serving a year in Vietnam, he returned to Ft. Bragg.
General Jusoliak, who was a 2nd Lieutenant when Ed put him through Jump School and now an assignment officer at the Pentagon, called one day.
“Ed, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you,” said the General.
“What’s the good news?”
“You are going to be one of the first warrant officer 5 in the military.”
Ed had made warrant officer 4, which was high as one could go, but the Army was coming out with a WO5. “Yeah, okay, what is the bad news?”
“You are going back to Vietnam.”
“No way, Babe, I’m going to retire. I’m getting out of the military.”
The U.S. was pulling out of Vietnam and Ed knew there would chaos and casualties.
Retiring in October 1974 after serving almost 23 years, he and Smokey moved to East Limestone. He could have worked at Redstone Arsenal or flown a helicopter on the Alaskan pipeline, but he didn’t want to be away from Smokey. For 14 years he operated an antique and furniture repair shop.
He and Smokey were foster parents over the years and later adopted Paul and Tippi. Tippi, who was a cheerleader at East Limestone, asked Ed to be their mascot. Why not? He figured. He had a feathered headdress, leather moccasins and buckskin suit made and called himself, “Chief Win’em All.”
On the afternoon on July 24, 1986, before he got a chance to run out onto the gridiron in war paint and full regalia as Chief Win ’em All, Tippi and her girlfriend, Greer Brownlow, stopped by his shop.
“I’ll never forget that day,” says Ed, quietly sobbing. “They were on their way home from cheerleading practice and were driving off, and Tippi yelled out the window, ‘we’ll see you, super punk!’ That’s what they called me.” Later, their vehicle crashed into a tree, killing both girls instantly.
Following the tragedy, the other cheerleaders urged Ed to be the mascot. “I became the Indian,” he says. “It was rough knowing that my daughter wasn’t over there as a cheerleader.”
He told children he was a third grader at East Limestone, psyched-up the crowd by throwing pouches of candy and bubble gum and dancing to “Louie Louie” on the sideline.
After Papa West died in 1959, Ed and Smokey took care of Mama for 14 years until she died in 1999 at age 90.
“Mama was the finest woman in the world,” says Ed. “She died in our home.”
Buster West retired as a master sergeant from the Airborne and became an Athens policeman, city councilman and finally Limestone County’s juvenile probation officer. He fell dead at his desk in 1991.
Ed and Smokey live on Sweetland Road, east of Athens, and are active members of Bethel Church of Christ.

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