Echo company. 215 members mostly from 61st OCC. CO was Major R. W. Mitchell. XO was Captain Russ Sutton who retired as a one star.
We were commissioned on 7 Nov 69 and I started TBS shortly after. We graduated from TBS on 8 April 70. Pretty much everyone went to either Lejeune or Pendleton. By then the draw-down of USMC forces was almost over (first 9th Marines and then the rest of 3rd MarDiv went to Okinawa while we were still in OCS). A very few from our class went in country after a short stint at Pendleton. Right after TSB about a dozen of us went to a short (6 week) Vietnamese language course they offered in those days near the WM OCS main side. We had one unusual classmate who was a West Point graduate who was permitted to be commissioned in the Corps because his father was a career Marine officer. He was killed in a plane crash at Ft. Sill in 1975.
