On a brisk afternoon in early August of 1959, the United States Army debuted what the service billed as its “ultimate weapon”—not a new bomb, not a specialized tank or fighting vehicle, but a single soldier outfitted in combat gear worthy of the Atomic Age.That soldier was Sergeant First Class Ben Sawicki and, for a few fleeting hours, he represented the Army’s vision of the “soldier of tomorrow”—a future warrior that “will look so weird he may scare the enemy to death without firing a shot,” as military planners told…
