WMU ROTC Wall of Fame Award
Colonel Gil Green, B.B.A.’54
(posthumous award)
Upon graduating with the first ROTC class from Western Michigan University, COL Green attended the Adjutant General Basic Course at Fort Benjamin, Harrison, Indiana. His first assignment was at the Armed Forces Examining Station, Nashville, Tennessee, as officer in charge of psychological testing. His next assignment took him to Stuttgart, Germany, as officer in charge of the Enlisted Assignments Division, 7th Army. He requested a branch transfer to Field Artillery, which was approved, and he was selected for a Regular Army commission.
His officer’s career course included composite training in both Field Artillery and anti-aircraft at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Bliss, Texas. Green was then assigned to the 28th artillery group of the Detroit, Michigan, Air Defense, where he commanded an artillery battle during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
His first combat tour was in 1963 where he served as an advisor to a South Vietnamese infantry battalion. His duties included strategic hamlet and civil affairs advising, as well as psych-ops. Upon his return from Vietnam, he attended Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and was then selected for advanced schooling at American University in Washington, D.C. While there, he earned an MBA and a graduate certificate in operations research systems analysis. He was then assigned to the Pentagon as executive assistant to the Deputy Controller of the Army.
After his tour in the Pentagon, COL Green commanded the first gender integrated Basic Combat Training Battalion at Fort Ord, California, as the Army disbanded the Women’s Auxiliary Corps for full integration of women into the Armed Forces.
During his second tour in Vietnam, he served as deputy chief of the Four-Power Commission, established by the Paris Accords to facilitate diplomatic relations with North Vietnam. The primary goal was recovery of the remains of soldiers missing in action.
Upon his return from Vietnam, he attended the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where he was asked to stay on as a professor of defense management. He also served as the senior Army advisor to the president of the Naval War College.
Green retired from the military in 1980 after 26 years of commissioned service and created the department of economics at Salve Regina University, also in Newport. In 1985, he established his own investment management business and managed it until his retirement in 2010 when he and his wife moved to Sarasota, Florida.