Register, Benjamin Franklin, Jr., Gen., 2008 May 28

This is a Living History interview with General Ben Register, class of 1951, conducted by Marilyn Somers on May 28, 2008 at his house in Bleecker, Alabama. The subject is the interviewee’s life, and experiences at Georgia Tech.

Gen. Register was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1930. His father and mother were both teachers and both were from Georgia. His father graduated from college by the time he was only seventeen years old. He got a Master’s Degree at Oglethorpe University by the time he was nineteen. His mother went to Bessie Tift College and was very gifted in music and singing. Gen. Register has an older sister who also attended Bessie Tift College. His earliest memory is of him sitting on an old ice cream churner when he was very young. The elementary school that he attended was right behind his house in Columbus, Georgia. He remembers traveling with his father and his father’s baseball team to various cities throughout the south. Because of the amount of time he had already spent watching Georgia Tech sports, Gen. Register decided to attend the Institute and was awarded a basketball scholarship. He remembers people such as Miss Twiggs, “Puerto Rico”, “Batman Brown”, and “Shorty” Bortell. He was involved in the Baptist Student Union, ROTC, and Varsity Basketball while he was at Georgia Tech. In order to get married to Betty, Gen. Register had to ask Coach Bobby Dodd for permission. After completing training in Aberdeen, Gen. Register was shipped to South Korea. His first big mission was in resupplying ammunition to the troops who needed it at the Yalu River. He was then assigned to work in Inchon and then went aboard the hospital ship, Haven. Most of the work in Inchon and on Haven dealt with interrogating American troops who had been POWs. When he returned from Korea, Gen. Register left the Army and started working in his father’s business; however, he returned to the Army after taking fifty-six hours of business classes. The Army assigned him to Field Artillery and sent him to Guided Missile School in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. After his two year term with the Field Artillery, he was moved to an Ordinance Unit, then went back to Redstone and worked with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency with Wernher Von Braun. His next station was in Alaska, then the Command General Staff College. After getting a Master’s in Logistics Management, Gen. Register went to Biggs Air Force Base to prepare to go to Vietnam. Gen. Register arrived in Vietnam just as the Tet Offensive broke out and worked with the supply side of operations. He left Vietnam in 1968 and went to work for the Ammunition Procurement Supply Agency for fourteen months. His next assignment was with the Office of Personnel Management, where Gen. Register was the coordinator of five two-star Generals and determined who was to be promoted. Gen. Register was promoted to Colonel and went to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, where every student had the opportunity of going to three countries; Gen. Register chose Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain. After getting done at the Industrial College, Gen. Register went back to Vietnam and worked in the Defense Attaché office where he worked with an Army Major and a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel on the Reconstitution Plan for the Defense of Saigon. The plan was not implemented correctly and eventually led to Operation Frequent Wind, where all Americans were evacuated from Vietnam.