Col. Carl Bernard, 81; From Korea To Berkeley, He Found Right Tactics

Carl F. Bernard, 81, a retired Army colonel and decorated combat veteran who died of a stroke March 4 at his Fort Belvoir home, found himself on more than one occasion in a sticky situation that tested his bravery and ingenuity.

In 1950, for example, he was stationed in Japan as a platoon leader with L Company, 21st Infantry, and was sent to Kokura Airfield to help a task force led by Col. Charles B. Smith load a plane for a trip to Korea shortly after the North Korean invasion of the south. "Stay on the plane. I've got work for you," Smith told him.

Five days later, then-Lt. Bernard was at Osan when it was overrun in the first engagement between U.S. and North Korean forces in the Korean War. He led a group of survivors through enemy lines and back to U.S. positions a week later.

He rejoined L Company, but the unit was overrun again a few days later at Chochiwon. Caught up in close combat with North Korean tanks and forced to rely on weapons tagged "Combat Unserviceable," he fought to save himself and his men. His Distinguished Service Cross citation noted that "Lieutenant Bernard's aggressive attacks on the enemy tanks and machine-gun emplacement inspired the outnumbered men of his command to fight with him, until out of ammunition, against overwhelming odds."

He found himself in a sticky situation of a different sort years later when he was assigned the task of restoring an Army ROTC program at the University of California at Berkeley in 1972. Striding in full uniform into the epicenter of the antiwar movement, the decorated colonel was not particularly welcome on a campus that was reviving its ROTC only because of pressure from the federal government.

Working out of a basement office in the athletic building, Col. Bernard jettisoned elements of the ROTC curriculum that he considered the military equivalent of basket-weaving classes and began putting together courses that explored topics ranging from the Hegelian Dialectic to social justice and its relation to armed conflict. Lecturing on such subjects as Che Guevara and revolution, he began to attract audiences that included notable Berkeley radicals.

He told friends over the years that winning the hearts and minds of Berkeley was his proudest accomplishment.

In an interview yesterday, retired Berkeley political science professor Kenneth Neal Waltz recalled Col. Bernard conceding that during summer maneuvers his ROTC students might have lacked the spit and polish and marching precision of their counterparts from the University of Montana or the University of Wyoming. "But my kids are smarter," he told Waltz. "And they make better soldiers."

Col. Bernard received a bachelor's degree in Asian studies from the University of Kansas in 1960 and a master's degree in political science from Boston University in 1967. He also completed doctoral course work at Berkeley.

Carl Franklin Bernard was born in the oil-boom town of Borger, Tex., in 1926 and grew up in the oil fields of the West during the Depression. He joined the Marines as an 18-year-old in 1944 and served in the Pacific and China as an enlisted man. He joined the Army in 1947.

In 1948, then-Cpl. Bernard was made an honorary member of the 555th, an African American parachute regiment known as "Triple Nickel." Because he was "the nerdy, bookish, glasses-wearing guy at 82nd [Airborne Division] Headquarters" -- his son Joel Bernard's description -- he was assigned to discover why the members of the unit did poorly on standardized Army tests.

He quickly realized the answer was simple: No one had taught them to take such tests. He put together a program of test-taking skills, and soon the unit was achieving some of the highest aggregate test scores in the Army.

Commissioned an infantry officer in 1949, Col. Bernard followed his Korean experience with numerous posts, including a company command in Germany, Ranger School at Fort Benning, Ga., and the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He also helped develop the curriculum at the newly formed John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, N.C.

In 1960, he was dispatched to Laos, where he worked with CIA officer William E. Colby in villages of the Hmong hill tribes as part of the White Star Mobile Training Teams. He developed an affinity for the Hmong people and became their tireless advocate. He also became a persistent critic of what he considered the U.S. government's abandonment of the Hmong to the Pathet Lao communists after the fall of Saigon.

After his retirement from the Army in 1978, Col. Bernard ran a consulting firm that specialized in Army readiness and U.S.-French military relations.

His marriage to Barbara Browne Bernard ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 42 years, Edith Jouanin Bernard of Fort Belvoir; two children from his first marriage, Mary Santos of Jacksonville, Fla., and Hugh Bernard of Annapolis; two sons from his second marriage, Joel Bernard of Alexandria and Jacques Bernard of Vienna; a sister; five brothers; and five grandchildren.

On the afternoon he died, Col. Bernard stretched out for a nap, a book on Korea in hand. He went to sleep and didn't wake up. "For an old soldier, it was the perfect way to go," Joel Bernard said.