confidence to his troops. Rescorla's Vietnam War honors included the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, a Purple Heart and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. Silver Star Bronze Star with one Oak Leaf Cluster Purple Heart Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry He left active duty in 1967 and reached the rank of colonel in the United States Army Reserve before retiring from the military in 1990. In April 2001, Rescorla was chosen for induction into the Infantry Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame and was invited to participate in ceremonies at Fort Benning. Post-military career Education and teaching After service in Vietnam, Rescorla returned to the U.S. and used his military benefits to study creative writing at the University of Oklahoma, eventually earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, followed by a Master of Arts degree in English, and his law degree from the Oklahoma City University School of Law. He then moved to South Carolina, where he taught criminal justice at the University of South Carolina for three years and published a textbook on the subject. Corporate security Rescorla left teaching for higher-paying jobs in corporate security. Moving to New Jersey in 1985, he joined Dean Witter Reynolds at their offices at the World Trade Center in Manhattan. After the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Rescorla worried about a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Because his old American friend from Northern Rhodesia, Daniel Hill, was trained in counterterrorism, in 1990, Rescorla asked him to visit the World Trade Center to assess its security. When Rescorla asked Hill how he would attack the building were he a terrorist, Hill asked to see the basement, and after the two walked down to the basement parking garage without being stopped by any visible security, Hill pointed to an easily accessible load-bearing column, and said, "This is a soft touch. I’d drive a truck full of explosives in here, walk out, and light it off." That year, Rescorla and Hill wrote a report to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, insisting on the need for more security in the parking garage. Their recommendations, which would have been expensive to implement, were ignored, according to James B. Stewart's biography of Rescorla, Heart of a Soldier. In the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, terrorists would detonate a truck bomb 30