Sergeant Major John A. Bandy,
USA (ret.) entered the US Army in October 1948. During his military career he had assignments with the 1st Cavalry Division
in Alaska; Armored Training Center at Fort Knox; with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam; Southeastern Signals School;
Petroleum Distribution Command; the Pentagon.
After retiring from the US Army, he earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Elementary Education.
He then taught elementary school in Alabama for 19 years. Sergeant Major John Bandy is the author
of When Whippoorwills Call.
According to the book description
of When Whippoorwills Call, “A 16 year-old high school dropout leaves home to avoid incarceration
in a Juvenile Court Detention Center for placement in an orphanage. Using a falsified birth certificate he enlists in the
army where he finds himself in an extremely hostile environment. Seeking refuge in the army, he discovers that he cannot run
away from himself or escape the family curse. As a member of the elite United States Army Constabulary in occupied-Germany,
he faces the greatest challenge of his life amid the war torn ruins of a conquered nation.
The book describes, in lurid detail, the misadventures of the men in the lower echelons
of the military establishment and the effects of their relationships with the German populace. As a fraudulent enlistee, he
lives in constant fear of being discovered. He is further plagued by premonitions of doom by the family “curse”,
the result of an unconscionable sin committed by his maternal grandfather. Born into an impoverished, dysfunctional family
in the middle of the Great Depression, he struggles to overcome the indoctrination of inferiority and social ostracism resulting
from his mother’s alcoholism.
The
story traces the family history from his ancestors’ 19th century Mississippi plantation to the early 1950s in segregated
Birmingham, Alabama.”