In Beast Barracks, after the march back to Garrison from weeks in the field, I staggered into our room and fell to the floor groaning. “Hey, c’mon. Get up. We have to be out in ranks in exactly four minutes,” George shouted, in the jocular yet authoritative tone that showed why he ranked at the very top of our company peer leadership ratings from the git go.
George Wilhelm Kirschenbauer was an only child born to Else and Hans Kirschenbauer. They lived in Allendale, NJ, close to the New Jersey-New York border and only 40 miles or so from West Point. He was a standout athlete at Ramsey High School, starring as a halfback in football and as a catcher in baseball. Senior year, his dreams of playing for Army became reality when one of legendary football coach Red Blaik’s assistant coaches, Barney Gill, appeared at his doorstep to personally ask George to join the Army Football squad next season.
At the first practice session, everyone was decked out in a jersey that indicated where he stood in the plebe team pecking order. A white jersey slotted you for the first team, red meant second team, orange, third; black, fourth; and purple, fifth. George gulped, tugged at his purple jersey, and lined up with the rest of his mates for the first wind sprint. He excelled. By yearling year, he was a starting halfback, a threat carrying the ball and receiving passes as well as defending against runs and passes as a hard-nosed defensive corner. He completed his football career at Army with three letters.
In his senior year, he joined the Army Baseball Team and played center field. Against the 1961 World Series Champion New York Yankees in an exhibition game at Doubleday Field, George hit a “Bullet” Bob Turley fastball over the tree in left field and triumphantly trotted around the bases. The next time George was up to bat, catcher Yogi Berra, crouching behind the plate, said to him, “Well son, you’ve seen the last inside fastball you’re going to see today, so hang on to your hat.”
George was elected president of the Class of 1962 to nobody’s surprise. He was a fixture as spokesman at all the class events that involved honoring or welcoming Army brass and other luminaries. He was a generous and loyal friend. Roommates who were unable to get home over holidays were routinely invited to spend weekends at the Kirschenbauer homestead, sitting at the dinner table with George, Else and Hans, and the grandparents, speaking mostly German.
George chose the Infantry branch, and in 1963 reported to the 505th Airborne Battle Group in Mainz, Germany as a platoon leader. It was there that he met Karen Kristofferson, whom he eventually married in a quiet private ceremony. He was selected to serve as aide-de-camp of the V Corps commanding general. There, they started their family that eventually grew to include three sons.
In Vietnam in 1967, George took command of B Company, 1-28th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division in the midst of an air assault operation in the Iron Triangle. He was choppered into a hot LZ with orders to replace the wounded company commander and to execute the mission of moving over flat terrain covered in dense vegetation, affording 10 meters of visibility, to engage Viet Cong in their own back yard. His baptism of fire involved maintaining operational control of a company-size unit under impossible combat conditions, discovering a personal answer for every soldier who wonders how he will maintain his composure creeping toward an enemy he knows is peering back at him through funneled fields of fire. In the words of one of his combat comrades, “George was a great company commander.”
George went back to Mainz to study German and then taught at USMA from 1969 to 1973. After another tour in Vietnam, several staff assignments, attendance at CASSS, command of a battalion, attendance at the Army War College, and command of a brigade at Fort Lewis, WA, George retired in 1986.
George and Karen moved into a house on 10 acres in Middleburg, VA. George got himself a position in the Loudoun County Planning Commission, where he worked tirelessly to at least slow the growth of new subdivisions threatening to gobble up all the open space of the county. He joined the local golf course and served as a starter and unofficial interpreter of the rules of the game for anyone who would listen when he wasn’t playing the game, diligently edging towards a score of anything less than 90 for 18 holes.
George kept himself fully occupied riding his mower over his vast lawn, mucking out the stalls of his two horses, religiously spreading feed over the long driveway for a herd of wild deer, and chasing foxes away from his chicken coop. Continuing a tradition they started while stationed at West Point, George and Karen traveled to New York to spend weekends attending multiple off-Broadway plays. They hosted neighborhood play readings around the dinner table, Karen in the lead female role and George, the good sport, doing his best in bit parts. He could be loud and boisterous, greeting every friend in person or on the phone as if they were his greatest chum in all the world.
Karen died in 2005, and George missed her mightily for 14 years until his own death. They are survived by three sons: Kraig (wife Karen); Kevin (wife Audrey and children Heather, MeKenna, Justin and Samantha); and Kirk (wife Marisa and child, Jackson).
—Larry Crane ’62, classmate