Ronald Lechner Case Summary

While those caissons go rolling along, the life of a U.S. Army recruit goes far beyond the grandeur of dodging machine gun fire, or inching up beaches and hills awash with unexploded mines and exploding artillery shells. The vast organizations comprising our nations defense require massive informational and logistical support in order to operate in a smooth, reliable fashion, and a single cog out of place can bring even the most well oiled machine to a grinding halt. One of these jobs, cryptologic linguistics, is as necessary for the common defense as even the most seasoned flapjack flippers and piccolo players. After joining the Army, this species of soldier undergoes an extensive and ongoing education, ultimately progressing from duty station to duty station, providing an invaluable service to a primarily unilingual force operating on a multilingual planet.
I.
Ronald Lechner joined the Army on January 1, 1981, leaving his home
Some positions require little training, while some, including linguists, will only scratch the surface of their total training with the 70 week jumpstart that is their intro schooling and advanced training. In Ronald Lechner's case, this time was spent becoming familiar with and fluent in Mandarin Chinese, the largest of 10 distinct Chinese dialect groups.. For those whose speak English as their first language, Chinese, among Arabic, Korean, and Japanese, are regarded as the most difficult languages to become fluent in. William Milne, an English missionary to China, said the language to be "a work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of springsteel, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Methusalah." After 70 weeks of intensive training, education takes a backseat to translation, and Ronald was sent to his first duty station, sandwiched between East China and Philippine