Captain Arnold R. Rosenfeld, U.S. Army – Adjutant at Ayers Kaserne
Captain Arnold R. Rosenfeld, U.S. Army, enjoyed his time in the military. He committed himself early on to being a good officer and doing the best he could at everything he was assigned. He saw difficult jobs as challenges to overcome and opportunities to learn and grow. The Army tested him by giving him responsibilities that required competence, judgment, and leadership. His experience matured him, made him confident, and taught him to never give up.
Arnie comes from hardy immigrant stock. His father, Jacob Rosenfeld, emigrated from Russia to the United States with his brother after they walked and hitchhiked across Western Europe. They caught a ship to the United States in England and ultimately settled in Waltham, Massachusetts. There, Jacob started working at a dry cleaner, eventually buying his own stores. He also began dating his best friend’s sister, Mary Rosenburg, who was the first American-born daughter of Russian immigrant parents. Jacob and Mary married and had two sons, Harvey and, three years later, Arnie.
Arnie attended public schools, including Waltham High School. In addition to working part-time for his father’s dry-cleaning business, he played basketball from the tenth through the twelfth grade. Although he was not one of the star players, his participation had ramifications for him down the road.
During the summer between his junior and senior years, Arnie traveled to France as an American Field Service exchange student representing Waltham High School. Due to a last-minute change, he was assigned to live with a poor farming family with five young children. Arnie worked on the farm all summer, living in a small room next to the family’s chickens. Since the farmer spoke no English, Arnie practiced his French day in and day out. By the time he returned to Waltham at the end of the summer, he could speak French well enough to get by.
In his senior year at Waltham High, Arnie began to set his sights on college. Because his basketball coach knew he was a good student and a hard worker, he recommended Arnie consider Bowdoin College in Maine. When Arnie admitted he had never heard of Bowdoin, his coach suggested he visit the college for a weekend to check it out. The visit worked. Arnie applied for admission and was accepted.
Arnie graduated from high school in the spring of 1958. After spending the summer working for his father, he began classes at Bowdoin College in the fall. To augment his academic life, he joined a fraternity. He also worked a host of odd jobs such as taking attendance at required lectures and managing the gym at night. Since he only had a small scholarship, the extra money came in handy.
Believing he would be required to serve in the Army after college given the peacetime draft, Arnie also enrolled in Army ROTC. His logic was simple. If he had to serve in the Army, he would rather do it as an officer than as an enlisted soldier. In any case, ROTC at Bowdoin was not demanding, with the primary activities being marching around campus and learning basic Army courtesies like saluting.
Arnie graduated from Bowdoin College in May 1962 with a bachelor’s degree in American government and American history. Rather than going right into the Army, he deferred his service obligation to attend Boston College Law School. However, after completing one year, he decided to take a break from his legal studies to marry his high school sweetheart, Lois Beaton, and fulfill his Army commitment.
Knowing he would want to return to law school after completing his hitch in the Army, Arnie asked the law school dean if he would be permitted to return. The dean, Father Robert Drinan, told him he would be welcome back any time—all he had to do was show up at the door. Lois was concerned Arnie did not have the dean’s promise in writing, but for Arnie, Father Drinan’s word was good enough. It had to be—it was all he had.
Thus began the whirlwind month of June 1963. Lois graduated from college on June 10. Three days later, she and Arnie got married. They spent their honeymoon driving from Waltham to Fort Benning, Georgia, so Arnie could begin the Infantry Officer Basic Course on Monday, June 20. They arrived on time but out of money, so they had to move off post into a dump of an apartment with no air conditioning. Arnie drove to the base every morning with two other new officers, but Lois had to stay in the hot and bug-infested apartment. Arnie suggested she return to live with her family in Waltham until he completed his training, but Lois wanted to remain with him. Accordingly, they toughed it out through the grueling heat of the Georgia summer.
The infantry officer course put Arnie to the test. He arrived slightly overweight, but the Georgia sun and the constant physical conditioning quickly burned off his extra pounds and got him into excellent shape. In addition to attending classes on infantry tactics and leading soldiers, he and his fellow new officers spent lots of time in the field crawling through underbrush. Arnie found bugs and spiders everywhere. Although he took his training seriously and gave it his best efforts, he was thrilled when the ten-week school finally came to an end.
After the infantry course, Arnie and Lois drove back to Massachusetts, where they prepared for Arnie’s first assignment in Kirch-Gons, West Germany. Arnie flew over first in October 1963. An officer picked him up at the airport for the final thirty-mile drive north to Ayers Kaserne, which was a U.S. Army base dubbed “The Rock.” Arnie was assigned as a platoon leader in Company A of the 2nd Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, which was part of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Armored Division headquartered at the kaserne. Once Arnie got established, Lois joined him.
Arnie soon discovered he was the most junior second lieutenant in his battalion. This meant he got all the assignments no one else wanted—especially those that involved time in the field. About one month into Arnie’s tour, a captain backed out of a field exercise because his wife was two months pregnant and he tagged Arnie to replace him. Accordingly, Arnie took charge of the company providing security for a nuclear-capable Honest John missile battery and deployed with it near the border of East Germany as part of the exercise. The assignment placed a lot of responsibility upon Arnie given that he had only been a platoon leader for a month, but he approached it as a learning opportunity.
A black soldier drove Arnie and the first sergeant, who was also black, to the exercise location. A big tent had been set up for Arnie as the acting security company commander, so he told the soldier and the first sergeant that they could stay in the tent with him since they would be working together closely over the next few days. When the soldier and the first sergeant left to retrieve their gear, a group of white southern sergeants approached Arnie and told him he could not share his tent with black soldiers. Arnie, a fiery New Englander, felt his blood boil. He told them in no uncertain terms if they ever suggested anything like that to him again, he would have them court-martialed. They left chastened, now well-aware of Arnie’s determination to treat all his soldiers fairly and with respect.
Soon after that situation resolved, battalion headquarters informed Arnie that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. They placed Arnie’s security company on high alert as the Honest John missile battery shifted its posture from exercise to real world. No one knew what would happen over the next few days, including if the Soviet Union would use the assassination as an opportunity to make gains in the West, so everyone was on edge. Arnie kept his soldiers mission ready until the chaos resolved and the company could return to Ayers Kaserne.
A few months later, Arnie received orders to attend advanced infantry training at Vilseck, located northeast of Nuremberg. Arnie’s fellow officers told him he could take Lois, too. Accordingly, they set out on a day-long train ride to Nuremburg. An open-top jeep met them when they arrived and drove them the rest of the way to Vilseck through a light rain. The driver pulled into Vilseck around 9:00 p.m., and Arnie left Lois in the jeep while he went to check in.
Exhausted and looking haggard after the long trip, Arnie rendered the captain behind the front desk a tired salute and said he was checking in. Unimpressed by Arnie’s salute, the captain directed him to go outside and come in again, this time rendering a proper salute. Arnie did as instructed and again reported to the captain. The captain chewed him out and then told him to go to the bachelor officers’ quarters. When Arnie told him he had his wife with him, the captain blew his stack. He told Arnie he was not authorized to bring his wife and left the room in exasperation.
Arnie’s only thought was to have the driver take him and Lois to the officers’ club to see if it had any rooms. The manager there said he had one room available, but Arnie would have to vacate it if anyone senior to him requested it. Arnie took the room and began his training the next day.
Having Lois with him made Arnie something of a celebrity. As Lois was the only woman there, whenever Arnie walked into a room with her, everyone in the room stood up. He soon became known as the guy who took his wife to Vilseck. In addition to giving Arnie some additional respect not normally due a lowly second lieutenant, his fellow officers looked out for him by warning him when a certain general arrived at the facility. They told him to watch out for the general because he was “the biggest prick in the Army.”
One evening, after Arnie and Lois finished dinner, Arnie suggested they take a shortcut back to their room. It involved going down a hall and through a restroom. As long as the restroom was unlocked—meaning it was unoccupied—they would avoid having to walk around the entire perimeter of the officers’ club to get to their room. Lois wasn’t sure the plan was a good idea, but Arnie convinced her it was okay.
As they walked down the hall, they passed an open door where Arnie noticed a general’s hat sitting on the bed. Not wanting to run into the troublesome general, he hurried Lois down the hall to the restroom. Arnie pulled on the unlocked restroom door, ready to rush through with Lois. There, to his surprise and in full view of Lois, sat the general on the toilet with his pants down around his ankles. Arnie did the only thing a second lieutenant could do—he saluted the general, apologized profusely, closed the door, and got out of there.
Arnie was sure the general would court-martial him. The next morning, he went to the front desk and asked if everything was okay. The desk clerk said it was. Arnie then asked how the general was doing. The clerk responded the general had checked out unexpectedly. Arnie could not believe his good fortune!
After Arnie completed the infantry training and returned to Ayers Kaserne, he continued as a platoon leader until he had been in Germany about six months. He then became the battalion adjutant, supervising the battalion’s administrative responsibilities. As part of his duties, Arnie coordinated with the company commanders to understand their manpower requirements and then assigned newly reporting officers and soldiers to satisfy those requirements. When the person reporting was a new junior officer like he had been, he took them under his wing and helped them until they got on their feet in their unit.
One new officer Arnie became friends with was a second lieutenant from West Point. Arnie assigned him to be a platoon leader in Company A, the same company where Arnie had started. Lois also became friends with the West Pointer’s wife, who was the daughter of an Army colonel. One pitch-black night when the West Pointer was out in the field, he was killed saving one of his soldiers from an oncoming train.
When the battalion commander—a colonel—learned about the tragedy, he asked Arnie to go with him to notify the West Pointer’s wife. Then, when they arrived at her house, the colonel told Arnie to do most of the talking because he thought the news would be better coming from someone who knew her. Although his friend’s wife took the news with the stoicism of someone who had been around the Army all her life, it was one of the hardest things Arnie ever had to do. Arnie and Lois helped the woman get her things together and she departed Germany within forty-eight hours of her husband’s death.
Arnie excelled as adjutant, not only because he had an instinct about what needed to get done and how to do it, but also because he had a great staff working for him. Together, they completed and submitted the myriad daily, weekly, and monthly reports, and helped the command score very high on inspections, allowing the battalion commander to focus on the operational readiness of his soldiers.
Arnie’s hard work paid off with the colonel as evidenced by his reaction to a situation with the 3rd Armored Division. The colonel buzzed Arnie on the phone and asked him if he had just told off a captain at the 3rd Armored Division headquarters. When Arnie admitted he had, the colonel told him not to do it again because he’d just “gotten his ass chewed” by the 3rd Armored Division chief of staff. He told Arnie, “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that shit doesn’t flow uphill?” The colonel then moved on as if nothing had happened, so Arnie knew the colonel had his back. The colonel’s words stuck with Arnie during his legal career later in life. Anytime he was tempted to say something smart to a judge, he remembered the colonel’s admonition and found a professional way to make his point.
Another incident that had a significant impact on Arnie involved a soldier who had refused to follow an order. Rather than try to reform the soldier, his company commander gave him the maximum punishment at an Article 15 administrative punishment hearing. Now he was refusing to follow any orders given by anyone. When Arnie spoke to him, the soldier said this was the first time he’d ever done anything wrong and his commander had thrown the book at him. Feeling like he had nowhere to go, the soldier gave up trying. Later in life, when Arnie worked as a public defender, he used his experience with this soldier to argue in court for proportional punishments and rehabilitation rather than solely retribution.
Arnie served as the battalion adjutant for eighteen months, but his time was not all work. Lois was also able to take time off from her teaching position at the base school and the two traveled around Germany and the Netherlands in Arnie’s red Austin-Healy Sprite. When Austria hosted the 1964 Winter Olympics, Arnie called in a chip and got tickets from the captain he had bailed out by deploying in his place with the Honest John missile battery. Arnie and Lois loved the Olympics, and Arnie even stood next to the Shah of Iran at one of the events.
In August 1965, it came time to go home. Arnie, now a first lieutenant, had completed his two-year service obligation and wanted to finish law school. Accordingly, the Army released him from active duty to the inactive Army Reserve, where he promoted to captain. Following Father Drinan’s instructions, he returned to Boston College Law School, which permitted him to resume his studies without question. He graduated from law school in May 1967.
Fresh out of law school, Arnie found it hard to find a job. His best friend’s father, Robert Meserve, who later became president of the American Bar Association, stepped in to help. He gave Arnie a hand-written introductory note to present to Elliott Richardson, who at the time was the Attorney General of Massachusetts. Richardson hired Arnie on the spot to help with Massachusetts’ implementation of a model criminal justice program. Although Arnie had no experience yet as a practicing attorney, his stint as the adjutant for his infantry battalion had taught him how to get things done. Elliott Richardson recognized this and made Arnie a deputy assistant attorney general. He served in this role until 1970.
From 1970–75, Arnie served as the executive director for the Massachusetts Committee on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, the agency responsible for making criminal justice reform grants to localities in Massachusetts. In this role, Arnie worked closely with the Massachusetts attorney general and governor, traveling around the state to distribute grant money and implement criminal justice reforms.
After overseeing the grant program, Arnie became the deputy chief at the Massachusetts Defenders Committee, which provided full-time public defenders throughout the state. He initially handled the administrative work as he had in his adjutant’s role, but he later started to also represent criminal defendants in court. A gifted trial attorney, he handled serious felonies and dozens of jury trials. The combination of his trial lawyer and administrator skills ultimately led him to be designated as the first Chief Counsel for the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services, which provided public defender services throughout the state of Massachusetts. He remained in that role from 1984–90.
In 1991, Arnie became the Chief Bar Counsel for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. As Chief Bar Counsel, he led the office responsible for administering attorney discipline in the state. He stayed in that position until 1999. He also started teaching at Boston University Law School in 1989 and Northeastern University School of Law in 1995. He taught at Boston University for over twenty years and still teaches at Northeastern University.
On the home front, Arnie and Lois settled in Acton, about twenty-five miles west of Boston, where they raised their three children—daughters Jennifer and Mary-Rachel and son John. John followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Army, serving on active duty for ten years and participating in Operation Desert Storm. Sadly, Lois passed away in 2016. Arnie now lives in Boston.
Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Captain Arnold R. Rosenfeld, U.S. Army. Arnie volunteered to serve during a turbulent time in history, when the United States and the Soviet Union vied for nuclear superiority. He served in Germany for two years, always ready in case the Soviet Union tried to overplay its hand. He then went on to a distinguished career in public service, making sure the constitutional protections of our justice system were available to all. We thank him for all he has done and wish him fair winds and following seas.
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