The Ghost Warriers of Fort Hood

A Sergeant’s Tale from Honest John Rocket Battery A of the 16th Air Defense Artillery Unit of the 2nd Armored Division.
By Richard Erschik

His service years were 1965-67. The Vietnam War was escalating, and the world teetered on the edge of uncertainty. While the battle raged in the jungles of Southeast Asia, a highly trained, somewhat secretive artillery unit stationed at Fort Hood, Texas stood at constant readiness. Their weapon? A surface-to-surface Rocket with the destructive force capable of leveling entire enemy strongholds—the MGR-1 Honest John. Their mission? To be prepared, at a moment’s notice, to deploy the Army’s most devastating field weapon system into enemy territory.

Among them was NCO Sergeant E-5 Richard Erschik, a 21-year-old draftee who became the unit’s Senior Assembly Specialist, entrusted with one of the most critical tasks in military artillery—arming the mighty Honest John Rocket’s high-explosive and nuclear warheads.

This is his story.

A Weapon Unlike Any Other: The Honest John Rocket wasn’t just another artillery piece—it was the Army’s largest and most powerful field-deployable weapon at the time. It left the launching rail at Mach-2 and with a 20-kiloton nuclear capability—outmatching even the bomb (13kt) dropped on Hiroshima—it was the ultimate deterrent.

Unlike conventional artillery, this free-flight, fin-stabilized Rocket didn’t require a sophisticated guidance system. It was a brute force weapon, designed for obliteration, not precision. And in the hands of the 2nd Armored Division’s 16th Artillery, it was a silent menace that could be unleashed at a moment’s notice.

“We knew what we were dealing with,” SGT Erschik recalls. “We weren’t just soldiers; we were handlers of a weapon that could shift the balance of war in a single strike.”

Living on the Edge of Deployment

The firing unit trained relentlessly. Day or night, rain or shine, the battery drilled under conditions mimicking real-world combat scenarios. Rockets were often transported in secret, assembled in total darkness, and positioned for launch under extreme timelines.

“Every time we prepared the Rocket, it was treated as a real-time deployment,” SGT Erschik explains. “We had to be perfect because there were no second chances.”

Behind the secrecy and constant readiness was a grim reality: If things got bad enough, if the enemy refused to break, our unit was the one they would call. “We were briefed constantly on the escalation of the war,” SGT Erschik (Rich) remembers. “Captain Hans Dollhausen, our commanding officer, made sure we understood that when the call came, we wouldn’t have the luxury of hesitation. We had to go, right now!”

But even in Texas, danger was never far away.

A Misfire in No Man’s Land

One particular training and ‘live’ fire mission nearly ended in catastrophe. A misfire in the launch area—a scenario no one wanted to face—turned into a moment of sheer adrenaline and nerve-wracking precision.

“The Rocket didn’t fire. It just sat there after the button was pushed,” Rich recounts. “That was the most dangerous moment of my service. That Rocket was prepped, armed, and ready to fire downrange, and now, it was a ticking time bomb sitting in the launch zone.”

As Senior Assembly Specialist, the responsibility fell on SGT Erschik to walk out to the armed Rocket and disarm it. With no room for error, he approached the multi-ton instrument of destruction, each step measured, each breath calculated. One mistake could have been his last as he troubleshot the mishap by-the-book and disconnected the 50-yard wire leading from the launch button to the firing box on the 5-ton truck (launcher.)

And just like that, the live Rocket was disarmed. The team went right back to training mode and fired the deadly weapon—because failure was not an option. In all, the team fired 11 training Rockets downrange in Ft. Hood.

A Clandestine Brotherhood

In an Army where discipline was paramount, the men of the Honest John Rocket Battery were something more than comrades—they were a brotherhood operating in the shadows of what would become history.

They trained, ate, and slept beside each other, bonded by the unspoken knowledge that they were the last line of artillery defense in a war thousands of miles away. They were soldiers Bill Ensminger, Wayne Hannusch, Ed Baker (RIP), Ken Curran, Fred Newhouse (RIP), Dave Lundberg, and Bill Nesiba—a band of warriors ready to bring the enemy to its knees at a moment’s notice should they be called.

Their nuclear capable weapon was kept under 24-hour armed guard, and every movement of the Rocket was shrouded in secrecy. “We were elite,” SGT Erschik says. “Not in the Hollywood sense of the word, but in the very real, classified, ‘we exist, but we don’t really exist’ kind of way.”

Their unit never made it to Vietnam, but that wasn’t for lack of preparation and readiness. Had the war reached a certain threshold, they would have been on the first transport out—Rockets and warheads loaded, targets identified, mission ready. They were all in, all the time.

And when they weren’t training, they were laughing, sharing stories, and finding moments of normalcy like young adults in a unit whose very purpose was anything but normal.

Gone, But Not Forgotten

The memory and landscape of what SGT Erschik once knew as Fort Hood, Texas, has all but vanished. The place where he and his comrades prepared for nuclear warfare no longer exists as it once did. The Army base he remembers, with motor pools of OD painted vehicles, barracks full of OD-colored fatigues, and mess halls run by soldiers who carried out KP duty, has faded into history.

The base itself, renamed in 2021 to Fort Cavazos, no longer bears the iconic title that once marked it as a cornerstone of the U.S. Army’s tactical operations.

Even the 16th Air Defense Artillery Honest John Rocket Unit—once a critical piece of American military power—is gone. Only a replica of one of the Honest John Rockets remains outside the base museum. So, too, gone is the entire 2nd Armored Division, “Hell on Wheels,” once an unstoppable force in the Cold War era. The insignias SGT Erschik once wore proudly on his uniforms have become relics, surviving only in memory.

But those memories are vivid

As time passed after their service, each member of his unit found new paths in civilian life. Bill Ensminger became a security guard in Florida. Wayne Hannusch took to truck driving and refereeing youth baseball in Chicago. Ken Curran became a union plumber in Boston. Bill Nesiba built a career in classic car restoration and now resides in Nebraska. Dave Lundberg became a diesel mechanic in Amarillo, Texas. Fred Newhouse (RIP) went back to coal mining in PA. Ed Baker (RIP) took over his father’s machine shop in Indiana.

A Lasting Legacy

As for SGT Erschik (Rich,) he went on to build a national marketing services organization, became a respected speaker in the trade show industry, and authored seven books, including “My Time Served in the United States Army,” a tribute to his military service and extension of this story, available by title on Amazon and Apple Books.

“It’s been nearly 60 years since those days, but my book serves as my lasting tribute to a vanished era,” Rich says. “The 2nd Armored Division, Hell on Wheels, A-Battery of the 16th Artillery, the Honest John Rocket, and Fort Hood as I knew them all may no longer exist, but we were there. We were ready. And we will always remember.”

The brotherhood, the discipline, and the history they all lived still exist—but only now in the hearts and minds of those who were there in service to their country.

Final Thoughts

The men of Ft. Hood, the 2nd Armored Division’s 16th Artillery’s Honest John Rocket Battery A were a shadow force of history—unseen, unrecognized, but crucial to the Cold War’s balance of power. Had they been called; they would have brought the enemy to its knees with the mightiest tool of destruction in the military at the time.

They were young. They were fearless. And they were ready to unleash the mighty power of the Honest John Rocket.