Hungry as I was, I was glad to be eating last.
“Gimme five,” a voice beyond the screen door shouted, indicating that the next five diners should enter. Each meal brought a different method of determining who went next. As we stood in two rows, some drill sergeants would take five from one row and then five from the other. Others would send in the closest five to the door. Still others would be more inventive, choosing arbitrarily or through some unknown criteria who or what number were next to enter.
Eating in the Army rarely qualified as a pleasure, especially in basic training, except that trainees were always hungry at meal time. The simple act of filling our stomachs was a pleasure, regardless the taste of the food.
I was happy to be eating last because the drill sergeants monitoring chow couldn’t eat until all recruits were fed. We had about as long as they took. Troops at the start of the line had no time to eat. Back of the line also meant larger portions, and occasionally, seconds. Which, it turns out, isn’t always a good idea.
Drill Sergeant Moore stood before the door deciding who would go next. Inside, Drill Sergeant Bartlett made sure no one lingered too long over their lunch. Leeway came only to those who prayed first, and even that had a limit. We could hear him clearing the chairs.
“Shovel it down and move the fuck out,” Bartlett yelled. “What you waiting for boy?” His drawl was transplanted Kansas, not originally from there but bred into an existing accent more southern.
Moore’s method for moving the line today came straight from the Smartbook, “The Soldier’s Handbook,” the compendium of all that need be mastered during basic training. He stopped the line five feet from the door, asking questions of the next five Joes. Anyone who answered correctly moved up to the door. If a question were answered incorrectly, the troop waited while Moore asked the one behind him.
According to Army standard operating procedure, basic training was officially over. In a system called OSUT, basic trainees finished basic training in nine weeks, then moved on to five weeks of advanced infantry training. We were about 10 days into that, but with no change in venue and with the same drill sergeants breathing down our necks all day, it still felt a lot like basic.
The next five through the door, I stood at attention, marched one step forward, and returned to parade rest (a modified position of attention). Moore quizzed me on the maximum effective range of the weapon I was learning about that day, and the answer—which I can’t remember now—rolled crisply from my tongue. Behind me, I heard Deblois (they pronounced his name deb-lee-ous) deliver the wrong answer. The guy behind him advanced.
I don’t remember our lunch options that day. They usually had a second choice of entrees in case of allergy, and plates sat atop the counter already made up. We could get our own salads and deserts, both already prepared. The dessert counter caught my eye.
Nothing says “I love you” like a creamy, chocolaty cup of pudding. A perfectly formed dollop of whipped cream on top sold me. “I love you,” I told myself by taking a cup of pudding. They rarely offered pudding. Usually it was cookies or pie, occasionally cake—and then, usually something with re-hydrated fruit and unnaturally colored frosting. Drill sergeants always made note of who ate dessert, especially those who had weight problems when they arrived. I had not, and no drill sergeant ever looked twice at me for taking dessert.
I ate it first and then plowed into my meat substance. As I was finishing the pseudo-potato, I heard the most magical words I’d heard in 10 weeks, “Everyone’s welcome to seconds on dessert if they want,” the lady at the counter said. I nailed off my veggies like a ravenous rat working its way through a meat farm, ate my cornbread and ran for the dessert counter.
Apparently, I don’t hear so well.
As I turned, prepared to love myself again, Bartlett called my number. “313, just what the fuck are you doing?” I don’t remember exactly what he said, but that was the gist. I looked up in confusion. Was I about to have it taken away?
“So you think my orders don’t apply to you, Davidson?” He asked as though I had done something wrong. I could see his flippant albino eyebrow bouncing around above his freckled red face. His lip twitched like saliva was about to cascade past his chin and fill a coffee cup. I never wanted to slap anyone so bad in my life.
I stood at parade rest with the pudding directly out in my right hand.
“You hard of hearing or something?” He had walked away from his plate and was now so close he spat on me as he spoke. “Apparently,” was not the answer he wanted to hear. “Did you not just hear me tell third platoon to stay the fuck away from the dessert counter?”
“No, drill sergeant,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.” I started to turn toward the dessert counter as I said “I’ll put it back.” But he was having none of that.
“That’s unsanitary,” he said. “Do you think anyone will be able to eat that after you’ve had your dick-slappers all over it?” He motioned to my table and tray. “Sit down and enjoy it, 313, because you’ll be paying for it.”
I didn’t actually want it anymore, but I sat to eat it. As I started, Bartlett came over and told me to meet him upstairs in our billet when I was done. And, he said, “Pray to God you get there before I do.”
When he was gone, I finished it, knowing that I was going to suffer. While I was picking up my tray, Moore asked to look at my pudding cup. “I know you finished that like you were told,” he said. Sweat shined on his bald, black head as he smirked. “You better hurry. Drill Sergeant Bartlett doesn’t like to wait.”
Drill Sergeant Bartlett was an asshole. Not that it was part of his job, I believe it was part of his personality. In his introductory speech to our platoon, he informed us that his transfer to our company would include a few days in the vintage WWII billets because his wife had started a disagreement, and after too much “lip,” he said, “I knocked the bitch out.” Quite fitting, he thought, to coincide with reassignment to a unit whose motto was “death before surrender.”
I beat him by enough time to catch my breath. I heard him coming up the stairs. I did every exercise he could think of until every muscle couldn’t do it any more. Then, he started again. After about 20 minutes, he sent me to get ready for duty formation.
At formation, Bartlett had the entire platoon doing pushups for not looking out for me. “You might think this is Davidson’s fault,” he said, “but he wouldn’t have gotten up for pudding if you lazy cocksuckers had been looking out for him.” He emphasized “cocksuckers” because they weren’t supposed to say things like that. It was Bartlett’s way of saying he wasn’t afraid to break the rules. “This is not Davidson’s failure,” he said. I wished above all else that he would stop saying my name. “This is third platoon’s failure and it has resulted in Davidson failing individually.”
Apparently, only Bartlett saw it that way. I heard shit from everyone in the platoon at some point that week. Toward the end of it, I started blaming them outright for being whining pussies and told them I had every intention of doing it again.
They watched me like hawks at every meal.
And each time Bartlett had dining duty, he’d ask how I was enjoying dessert. When he monitored the line, he’d ask if I was planning to have seconds. On graduation day, they had a reception for family and friends after touring the barracks and grounds. Bartlett told my dad how I had stepped up in the face of an angry platoon and won, simply by applying a little psychological warfare.
It seems the only thing that stood out more than my eating a second helping of dessert was how I dealt with the backlash from it.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Little bunny Feux Feux
Life within the white and brown, cinder-block corridors of Fort Bragg could feel meaningless at times. Like clichés, we were numbers with guns waiting to be called or to expire quietly. To help keep us sane, we would bring, buy or otherwise acquire things to remind us of home. We would place them in our shared 15’ x 15’ rooms to feel a little more like people. These trinkets could be anything, a Bud Man poster, Earl the (stuffed) dead cat, a college sweater hung on the wall. Everybody had something to bring them back while they counted down days in the barracks.
There just needed be something to remind us all that life wouldn’t always be jump boots and camouflage, even if it was something as simple as a stuffed bunny gifted by a baby sister—Dave Reid’s secretly prized possession, a little piece of Maine-made memories that he loved enough to fight for. I know this because I thought he was going to kill me over it.
But the furry little bastard had it coming (Reid, not the bunny).
Coming home from a training mission, April 1990, and looking for nothing more than a cold beer, I had reached into the fridge and found that, not only did Reid drink my last beer, he left in its place a bowl of water, frozen, with my ninja turtles in it. I had two of them. I’d read the comic books before enlisting; when the movie came out a month prior, I had started collecting the action figures.
I felt violated, but I let it go, mostly because he’d done it just before going home for his grandfather’s funeral. Reid was a family-values kind of guy. He’d take a death in the family pretty hard. So, I thawed and dried them. They returned to action poses in places of prominence around the room, and the deed was forgotten…until he got them again. Boredom leads to inventive means of entertainment, another thing life in the billets of Bragg begets: mischief.
This second time, not two weeks later, he wrapped them into a ball of hundred-mile-an-hour tape—dark green duct tape—and left them atop the TV. Getting them out of the ball was like surgery. As I operated, I plotted revenge. These abuses were pretty common among Joes. They didn’t happen because of like or dislike; they happened through a combination of opportunity, vulnerability, and lack of concern for repercussions. Sometimes they ended in conflict, other times, with a good laugh.
I was Reid’s easy target since I was out training on both occasions (we called that a “target of opportunity”), and he and Traveling Matt Farrell, my roommate, were good friends. And while I wasn’t vulnerable, a pair of four-inch plastic turtles weren’t any challenge for Ranger Reid, a martial-arts expert with almost four years of infantry experience. Repercussions didn’t concern him either, as he outranked me.
The second violation told me that I couldn’t let it slide again. If I did, I’d find something every time I came back to my room, so long as Farrell was there. I started planning blindly, immediately, knowing that opportunity would provide me with a victim, and I knew I’d best be ready when time came.
To defeat an enemy, one must know him. Reid didn’t have a girlfriend, didn’t drink much; he really only left the barracks for physical fitness types of things and for food—which he always took at the nearest dining facility. He didn’t qualify as a barracks rat because he socialized within the company, and he would inevitably be found at any room party.
The first keys to opportunity would be finding a weakness, and then finding the victim. Once these found me, I’d be able to set my slowly developing plan into motion.
Now as then, the Army has a stringent policy on physical security, something I always called the “my-shit principal.” To me, the idea was that everybody wanted my shit, my stuff. If I left it out or unsecured, they would take it. Looking through the open door of Reid’s room one afternoon, I discovered his first, most exploitable weakness: he didn’t lock up the way he was supposed to; he’d gone to the first-floor vending machine and left his room wide open.
I scanned the room quickly. Knowing which bed was his (he didn’t have a roommate at the time), I found my target. In the corner of the bed, where walls intersected, sat a bunny. A soft, brown and so very cute stuffed rabbit. Hearing no footsteps on the nearby stairwell, I looked also at shelves next to the door.
The plan formed. And it wasn’t enough to surprise him. I was going to announce my intentions.
“Hey, Farrell,” I called across the hall to my roommate. He grunted a response. “Hey,” I said, “Did you know Reid sleeps with a stuffed bunny?”
“What?” Reid kicking his way through the fire door drowned out the shuffling of Farrell coming to look. I looked to Reid and smiled.
“What the fuck are you doing, Davidson?”
“Sgt. Reid,” I said, still smiling as Farrell emerged from our room. “Do you really sleep with a stuffed bunny?”
He read my face, my smile for a second and said he did. It was a gift from his youngest sister and “Don’t you fuck with it, Davidson.” I’m not sure if I was smiling a full shit-eating grin, but I was definitely on the verge.
“Trust me, Sergeant,” I said. “I would never hurt dear, sweet Flopsy.” I smiled, both Reid and Farrell laughed, and I walked away secure in the knowledge that Karma was on my side. All I needed now was to remember a Jesus quotation or two….
“Good things come to those who wait.”
Or was it the Rolling Stones?
“Time, time, time is on my side. Yes it is.”
The following Sunday, I got my chance. I had prepared carefully, knowing still that the window of opportunity would be short. I heard the charge of quarters call to him. “Reid, your sister is on the phone.” I was certain this would be the sister in college out west, as he had been home the previous week and seen his younger sister. That meant a long phone call, and my plan being detail oriented, I would need time.
His door swung open and shut. I muted the televised football game—to complaints from Farrell. When I heard the stairway fire doors swing, I jumped up; throwing him the remote, I looked down the hall. No Reid in sight, his door, almost directly across the hall, was ajar. I burst quickly in, secured Flopsy and a spring loaded training knife.
Back across the hall, I pulled out my 100-mph tape and several plastic shopping bags. Farrell gawked as I stuffed the collection into my wall locker. His face asked a hundred questions that I answered by saying “Wait a minute.”
Calls on the barracks phone were limited to five minutes, most of which had passed while I ransacked his room. If this were a typical family call—and it turns out that it was—he would come back, get the calling card from his room and return her call from the payphone, end of the hall. As long as he didn’t notice Flopsy’s absence, he’d call back right away. He was in and out in seconds, and I set to work.
Flopsy was the soft, gentle kind of bunny given on one of three occasions: to a child (hypoallergenic and soft as brushed fleece directly from the dryer), from a child (same reasons, Reid’s 8-year-old sister loved it and figured he would), or to a woman one is trying to bed. That is, Flopsy was the softest, sweetest, cutest bunny on Fort Bragg.
Poor little bastard.
To start, I secured a shopping bag around each ear with the duct tape. It was big enough to cover Flopsy’s face as well (Flopsy was about 18 inches, foot to ear). Care to keep tape off its fur was paramount because Reid really would kill me if I damaged his baby sister’s bunny. So I kept about half an inch of plastic showing beneath the tape.
Next, I put the torso into a second bag with the arms through the carrying straps. Taping each leg at the crotch, I made sure they maintained their appearance. I also taped it at Flopsy’s beltline to keep it in place. A third bag with spaces for ear holes covered the face a second time and allowed ample room to isolate the arms, each taped at the armpit. I secured this one below the beltline, again to ensure that no tape would touch his fur.
I held it out for Farrell to inspect, a plastic bag shaped perfectly like a bunny. “Priceless,” he laughed. To finish Flopsy, I covered every inch—limbs, ears, head, and torso—with duct tape. He was still a perfect bunny shape, only now he was a dark green, duct taped bunny, not a plush, sweet, cute one.
I had other things in mind, but the detail and care taken thus far had consumed much time. I had to check that Reid was still occupied. Leaned into the corner, elbow atop the phone, his posture suggested plenty of conversation was left to be had.
The training knife from his room, a spring-loaded, plastic blade attached to a steel knife handle, allowed self-defense students like Reid to learn defense against, and disarming of, knife-wielding maniacs, without worry of getting stabbed or slashed.
I couldn’t think of a better knife-wielding maniac than Flopsy. I taped it to one of his hands.
Finally, from the corner of my room, I grabbed a decoration from home that had been a point of contention between my platoon sergeant and me since he had taken charge: a hangman’s noose (a point of contention because, visible through the neck loop, a hand-written sign read “emergency exit”). I tightened the noose around Flopsy’s neck, pocketed my Government Issue signal mirror, and walked to the door as though headed for the bathroom.
Actually, I checked Reid. He wasn’t looking. Across the hall in a flash, I took great care to not slam the door. Standing on his desk chair, I knotted the trailing end of the noose several times to keep it anchored over a ceiling tile. Placing Duct Tape Flopsy With Knife alternately on shelves by the door, I tested which gave the rope proper tautness before placing him.
Putting the chair back, I slid the door open just enough to get out. Nervous, coated in sweat, I used my signal mirror to look back down the hall. As soon as Reid looked away, I was back in my room.
“You’re gonna love this,” I told Farrell. But I wasn’t sticking around for it. Since Reid and I weren’t really friends, I couldn’t be too sure that he wasn’t going to flip out before realizing Flopsy was unharmed. I asked Farrell to let me know how it went.
The bar was a rewarding place that night as I relayed to friends the story of Reid and his stuffed bunny. When I returned, I found a note. “Reid is going to kill you,” it said.
At 6 am, I tried to get to formation without seeing Reid, but I didn’t get out of the room. He burst in and started ripping me going into his room. But he couldn’t hold it. He put me at parade rest, shouted a few words and then started laughing.
After his call, he’d unsuspectingly swung the door open to his room. It hit the rope, which pulled Duct Tape Flopsy With Knife from the shelf, sending him swinging toward Reid with knife in hand.
“All I could think was ‘I’ve been had,’” he said. “It’s a hell of a thing to come home to.”
There just needed be something to remind us all that life wouldn’t always be jump boots and camouflage, even if it was something as simple as a stuffed bunny gifted by a baby sister—Dave Reid’s secretly prized possession, a little piece of Maine-made memories that he loved enough to fight for. I know this because I thought he was going to kill me over it.
But the furry little bastard had it coming (Reid, not the bunny).
Coming home from a training mission, April 1990, and looking for nothing more than a cold beer, I had reached into the fridge and found that, not only did Reid drink my last beer, he left in its place a bowl of water, frozen, with my ninja turtles in it. I had two of them. I’d read the comic books before enlisting; when the movie came out a month prior, I had started collecting the action figures.
I felt violated, but I let it go, mostly because he’d done it just before going home for his grandfather’s funeral. Reid was a family-values kind of guy. He’d take a death in the family pretty hard. So, I thawed and dried them. They returned to action poses in places of prominence around the room, and the deed was forgotten…until he got them again. Boredom leads to inventive means of entertainment, another thing life in the billets of Bragg begets: mischief.
This second time, not two weeks later, he wrapped them into a ball of hundred-mile-an-hour tape—dark green duct tape—and left them atop the TV. Getting them out of the ball was like surgery. As I operated, I plotted revenge. These abuses were pretty common among Joes. They didn’t happen because of like or dislike; they happened through a combination of opportunity, vulnerability, and lack of concern for repercussions. Sometimes they ended in conflict, other times, with a good laugh.
I was Reid’s easy target since I was out training on both occasions (we called that a “target of opportunity”), and he and Traveling Matt Farrell, my roommate, were good friends. And while I wasn’t vulnerable, a pair of four-inch plastic turtles weren’t any challenge for Ranger Reid, a martial-arts expert with almost four years of infantry experience. Repercussions didn’t concern him either, as he outranked me.
The second violation told me that I couldn’t let it slide again. If I did, I’d find something every time I came back to my room, so long as Farrell was there. I started planning blindly, immediately, knowing that opportunity would provide me with a victim, and I knew I’d best be ready when time came.
To defeat an enemy, one must know him. Reid didn’t have a girlfriend, didn’t drink much; he really only left the barracks for physical fitness types of things and for food—which he always took at the nearest dining facility. He didn’t qualify as a barracks rat because he socialized within the company, and he would inevitably be found at any room party.
The first keys to opportunity would be finding a weakness, and then finding the victim. Once these found me, I’d be able to set my slowly developing plan into motion.
Now as then, the Army has a stringent policy on physical security, something I always called the “my-shit principal.” To me, the idea was that everybody wanted my shit, my stuff. If I left it out or unsecured, they would take it. Looking through the open door of Reid’s room one afternoon, I discovered his first, most exploitable weakness: he didn’t lock up the way he was supposed to; he’d gone to the first-floor vending machine and left his room wide open.
I scanned the room quickly. Knowing which bed was his (he didn’t have a roommate at the time), I found my target. In the corner of the bed, where walls intersected, sat a bunny. A soft, brown and so very cute stuffed rabbit. Hearing no footsteps on the nearby stairwell, I looked also at shelves next to the door.
The plan formed. And it wasn’t enough to surprise him. I was going to announce my intentions.
“Hey, Farrell,” I called across the hall to my roommate. He grunted a response. “Hey,” I said, “Did you know Reid sleeps with a stuffed bunny?”
“What?” Reid kicking his way through the fire door drowned out the shuffling of Farrell coming to look. I looked to Reid and smiled.
“What the fuck are you doing, Davidson?”
“Sgt. Reid,” I said, still smiling as Farrell emerged from our room. “Do you really sleep with a stuffed bunny?”
He read my face, my smile for a second and said he did. It was a gift from his youngest sister and “Don’t you fuck with it, Davidson.” I’m not sure if I was smiling a full shit-eating grin, but I was definitely on the verge.
“Trust me, Sergeant,” I said. “I would never hurt dear, sweet Flopsy.” I smiled, both Reid and Farrell laughed, and I walked away secure in the knowledge that Karma was on my side. All I needed now was to remember a Jesus quotation or two….
“Good things come to those who wait.”
Or was it the Rolling Stones?
“Time, time, time is on my side. Yes it is.”
The following Sunday, I got my chance. I had prepared carefully, knowing still that the window of opportunity would be short. I heard the charge of quarters call to him. “Reid, your sister is on the phone.” I was certain this would be the sister in college out west, as he had been home the previous week and seen his younger sister. That meant a long phone call, and my plan being detail oriented, I would need time.
His door swung open and shut. I muted the televised football game—to complaints from Farrell. When I heard the stairway fire doors swing, I jumped up; throwing him the remote, I looked down the hall. No Reid in sight, his door, almost directly across the hall, was ajar. I burst quickly in, secured Flopsy and a spring loaded training knife.
Back across the hall, I pulled out my 100-mph tape and several plastic shopping bags. Farrell gawked as I stuffed the collection into my wall locker. His face asked a hundred questions that I answered by saying “Wait a minute.”
Calls on the barracks phone were limited to five minutes, most of which had passed while I ransacked his room. If this were a typical family call—and it turns out that it was—he would come back, get the calling card from his room and return her call from the payphone, end of the hall. As long as he didn’t notice Flopsy’s absence, he’d call back right away. He was in and out in seconds, and I set to work.
Flopsy was the soft, gentle kind of bunny given on one of three occasions: to a child (hypoallergenic and soft as brushed fleece directly from the dryer), from a child (same reasons, Reid’s 8-year-old sister loved it and figured he would), or to a woman one is trying to bed. That is, Flopsy was the softest, sweetest, cutest bunny on Fort Bragg.
Poor little bastard.
To start, I secured a shopping bag around each ear with the duct tape. It was big enough to cover Flopsy’s face as well (Flopsy was about 18 inches, foot to ear). Care to keep tape off its fur was paramount because Reid really would kill me if I damaged his baby sister’s bunny. So I kept about half an inch of plastic showing beneath the tape.
Next, I put the torso into a second bag with the arms through the carrying straps. Taping each leg at the crotch, I made sure they maintained their appearance. I also taped it at Flopsy’s beltline to keep it in place. A third bag with spaces for ear holes covered the face a second time and allowed ample room to isolate the arms, each taped at the armpit. I secured this one below the beltline, again to ensure that no tape would touch his fur.
I held it out for Farrell to inspect, a plastic bag shaped perfectly like a bunny. “Priceless,” he laughed. To finish Flopsy, I covered every inch—limbs, ears, head, and torso—with duct tape. He was still a perfect bunny shape, only now he was a dark green, duct taped bunny, not a plush, sweet, cute one.
I had other things in mind, but the detail and care taken thus far had consumed much time. I had to check that Reid was still occupied. Leaned into the corner, elbow atop the phone, his posture suggested plenty of conversation was left to be had.
The training knife from his room, a spring-loaded, plastic blade attached to a steel knife handle, allowed self-defense students like Reid to learn defense against, and disarming of, knife-wielding maniacs, without worry of getting stabbed or slashed.
I couldn’t think of a better knife-wielding maniac than Flopsy. I taped it to one of his hands.
Finally, from the corner of my room, I grabbed a decoration from home that had been a point of contention between my platoon sergeant and me since he had taken charge: a hangman’s noose (a point of contention because, visible through the neck loop, a hand-written sign read “emergency exit”). I tightened the noose around Flopsy’s neck, pocketed my Government Issue signal mirror, and walked to the door as though headed for the bathroom.
Actually, I checked Reid. He wasn’t looking. Across the hall in a flash, I took great care to not slam the door. Standing on his desk chair, I knotted the trailing end of the noose several times to keep it anchored over a ceiling tile. Placing Duct Tape Flopsy With Knife alternately on shelves by the door, I tested which gave the rope proper tautness before placing him.
Putting the chair back, I slid the door open just enough to get out. Nervous, coated in sweat, I used my signal mirror to look back down the hall. As soon as Reid looked away, I was back in my room.
“You’re gonna love this,” I told Farrell. But I wasn’t sticking around for it. Since Reid and I weren’t really friends, I couldn’t be too sure that he wasn’t going to flip out before realizing Flopsy was unharmed. I asked Farrell to let me know how it went.
The bar was a rewarding place that night as I relayed to friends the story of Reid and his stuffed bunny. When I returned, I found a note. “Reid is going to kill you,” it said.
At 6 am, I tried to get to formation without seeing Reid, but I didn’t get out of the room. He burst in and started ripping me going into his room. But he couldn’t hold it. He put me at parade rest, shouted a few words and then started laughing.
After his call, he’d unsuspectingly swung the door open to his room. It hit the rope, which pulled Duct Tape Flopsy With Knife from the shelf, sending him swinging toward Reid with knife in hand.
“All I could think was ‘I’ve been had,’” he said. “It’s a hell of a thing to come home to.”
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Uninvited guests: part 1
Everybody had a pattern to deal with stress.
Ralph Roman clipped his nails, then the cuticles, and finally, he trimmed away the calloused flesh of his fingertips with the nail clipper tied to his combat harness. Mike Stone slept, a puddle of drool gathering in the corner of his mouth and waiting for gravity to give it means of escape. Sgt. Hilgenhurst composed a letter to his wife in the subdued, tactical red glow of the cargo hold. Normally, I would have dissected lyrics I hadn't heard in awhile, picked apart the phrasing and painstakingly assured that I had every word, line and verse correct.
Had I not been painfully aware that I was flying nap-of-the-earth, 500 feet above Panamanian jungles where, soon, I would meet people who wanted to kill me, I might have thought of a song to work with. I couldn’t. I pushed bad thoughts away and tried to focus on anything, even the 150 pounds of equipment hanging from my shoulders and the 30 or so hanging as the parachute from my back.
When the jump doors opened, 80-degree air filled the cabin—quite a shock after the 30s in North Carolina and the chill of 30,000 feet. As the heat intensified, faces turned pale and canteens came out. Half the chalk looked like it would suffer heat exhaustion before leaving the bird.
The engines' drone stuttered and dropped to a fluctuating hum. When the light turned green, I had tunnel vision on the door.
Feeling the tug of jet engines and the roar of the wind, I counted four seconds, checked that I had a canopy—the plane had almost disappeared from view in the night sky. Heat and humidity brought stillness to the night. Other than people being killed just below, it felt almost tranquil.
Beneath me, green tracer rounds flew outward. Red ones returned, some streaming toward the planes overhead. Explosions rocked the airport terminal; the heaviest fighting.
As treetops passed, I pulled the straps to drop my rucksack; two of them would send it sprawling to the end of a 15 foot line, where it would hang until I landed. Unfortunately, the line didn't extend before it hit the ground. I wasn't high enough. I came barreling in on top of it, bounced, and landed with the gun I carried firmly embedded in my ribs.
I like trees.
Hence, I spent the ensuing 30 or 40 seconds staring at a majestic acacia. It took most of the time to focus and to ascertain that it was an acacia, but that's what I looked at while I tried to figure out if any bones or equipment were broken beyond repair.
Merry Christmas, Pfc. Davidson, welcome to Panama.
****
Sunday, Dec. 17, 1989 had been a good day. That is, it had been a good day until someone woke me from drunken slumber to tell me I had 24-hour duty. I had slept about four hours. I reported as runner to the Charge of Quarters, CQ. My job entailed anything the sergeant on duty required. I did receive the bonus of Monday off, but not until 9 am.
Nothing about that day stands out in memory with the exception of a 24-hour bug known as hung-over-bag-of-ass syndrome. "Rough shape” didn't do my physical ills justice. I had planned on sleeping most of the day.
Monday's relief arrived right on time—about 23 hours later than I wanted—and I went to bed. For waking me around noon, Traveling Matt Farrel received a laundry list of expletives as he told me we had been put on alert. Sgt. Hilgenhurst wanted me in the command post, immediately. Farrel had a habit of playing jokes when people were most vulnerable. I went back to sleep.
I should have listened. A little later, Hilgenhurst burst through the door and unceremoniously dragged me from bed. He let me shower and shave. I got the short form on what had happened the previous three hours and what the next 18 held in store.
That afternoon, we headed to green ramp, the section of Pope Air Force Base reserved specifically for paratroopers. The grounds provided all the space and equipment for training and preparation. Long, wide benches had room to don parachutes and sit comfortably while awaiting inspection. Randomly arranged tables bolted in place stood ready for loading magazines, rearranging gear, packing, repairing, even eating. Vacant lots had storage space for equipment or—on a drizzling day in December—for paratroopers who were not flying out on schedule.
After drawing ammunition and ordinance, we learned that parachutes wouldn't arrive until morning–not enough covered cargo trucks. Paratroopers operate efficiently when drenched. Parachutes, not so much. We took the rest of the day getting ready, going over plans, doing whatever needed to prepare ourselves. At night, some played cards; some wrote letters. I made my gear ready for quick morning departure, and sacked out in my cot before the tent lights went out.
Tuesday defined Army life and the 1000 clichés it’s spawned. Hurry up and wait; multi-denominational services every hour, Catholic on the 15s, Episcopalian on the 30s, etc; repetition breeds remembrance; if it ain’t raining, we ain’t training. We had a hot breakfast and lunch and were back to green ramp proper for 3 pm. The brain trust scheduled takeoff for 6 with a six-hour flight to a coordinated airborne assault at about half passed midnight. During a fresh sleeting, we feasted on MREs while technicians de-iced wings on a fleet of C141 Starlifters, their sleek, black backs shimmering in sub-freezing evening sky.
Around 6, we packed in like school girls on the free bus to a New Kids on the Block concert. I’m sure a few would rather have gone to a show rife with teenage girls than hang out in a freezing plane waiting to wage war.
I had to piss as usual, had since before we loaded. I tried to sleep. It lasted about 20 minutes before one of the crew shouted down the line. I woke, spent the rest of the flight meditating in silent dread the concept of actually going to war. Sure it’s what I’d signed up for, but I never expected to have to do it.
Our mission was a classic airborne operation: an airfield takedown. Intelligence pinpointed Noriega's Dignity Battalion's strongholds, though there were few. We, in concert with the 1st Battalion/75th Rangers, intended to reduce resistance at Tucomen Torrios Airfield, establish a base of operations and then take a sunrise helicopter ride to the south coast of Panama City, a village called Panamá Viejo.
But at our target time, we were still over the Gulf of Mexico. At altitude, ice formed on our wings, so we flew lower and slower than planned. We were going to be late. Already on station in Panama instead of flying in from Georgia, the Rangers would be on time and, potentially, notice our absence. By 1:15, everyone was awake, internal clocks suggesting that something was wrong.
At 1:30, the jumpmaster gave the 20-minute warning. In those last minutes between the door opening and steps out of the plane, it sank in that this wasn't another training mission. Locals waiting below wanted to kill me.
I searched my mind for something to concentrate on. Nothing came. The jumpmaster held up thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. Thirty seconds. Counting down mentally, I held my cool until the jumpmaster motioned to the door jumper, "Stand by."
The tension was palpable; it wasn't a feeling in the plane. It carried the plane. It was a creature in space breathing down every neck. It was every hair, every hackle, every fluttering eyelid and labored breath. I leaned into my assistant gunner's ear and with all the strength I had—which amounted to quite little at the moment—I screamed "fuck yeah."
I wasn't motivated. I was scared shitless, but I had to make it seem as though I was motivated. Stewart responded with a sort of open-mouthed growl, "aargh," and the whole plane lit up. It culminated in cries of "get some," as the light turned green.
I charged the door fast on Stewart’s flank, handed off my static line and passed through roar and shake, into calm. I could see Rangers were in the thick of the fight.
Something else had changed. The original plan had thousands of paratroopers dropping unannounced in the middle of a runway before any fighting began. Call it a misdrop; call it quick thinking on the part of the pilot. He had veered right of his intended target. Perhaps he was afraid of having his ship and cargo shot up during the approach; maybe, he knew we would be landing in the middle of a firefight. Either way, we landed about a kilometer away from where we needed to be. And being the first plane, all other pilots had followed him.
As I surveyed all this, I forgot to do my math problem: If Pvt. Joe Snuffy exits a C141 aircraft traveling 200 miles per hour at approximately 500 feet above ground level, descends four seconds at 75 feet per second, how long does he have before he hits the ground descending under canopy at approximately 20 feet a second. Answer, not long (8-12 seconds, depending on atmospheric conditions—humidity and heat help keep parachutes aloft).
I was close to the ground. Dropping my rucksack, I watched it impact from about 12 feet up. I didn't have time to prepare for landing. Feet and knees together, I angled my legs and tried to miss the ruck but couldn't. It happened too quickly.
Pulling my gun from what seemed to be permanent residence in my ribcage, I got ready to move, which, believe it or not, included what’s known as the sixth point of performance. I took a piss.
I left my chute where it came down, donned my rucksack and unsheathed my mortar tube. Trees obscured the landscape, but my compass knew the way. I spied the elephant grass that I had to pass through, alone, in the dark. The scraping and ticking of blades brushing together in the breeze sounded like footsteps and whispers.
And a song finally came crashing into my thoughts, a Grateful Dead tune that, as of 0150 hours, Dec. 20, 1989, I knew exactly three lines to: "Dire Wolf." I knew the chorus, and as I waded, pistol drawn, among eight-foot stalks of elephant grass, I sang them in my head.
"Don't murder me.
I beg of you, don't murder me.
Please, don't murder me."
Ralph Roman clipped his nails, then the cuticles, and finally, he trimmed away the calloused flesh of his fingertips with the nail clipper tied to his combat harness. Mike Stone slept, a puddle of drool gathering in the corner of his mouth and waiting for gravity to give it means of escape. Sgt. Hilgenhurst composed a letter to his wife in the subdued, tactical red glow of the cargo hold. Normally, I would have dissected lyrics I hadn't heard in awhile, picked apart the phrasing and painstakingly assured that I had every word, line and verse correct.
Had I not been painfully aware that I was flying nap-of-the-earth, 500 feet above Panamanian jungles where, soon, I would meet people who wanted to kill me, I might have thought of a song to work with. I couldn’t. I pushed bad thoughts away and tried to focus on anything, even the 150 pounds of equipment hanging from my shoulders and the 30 or so hanging as the parachute from my back.
When the jump doors opened, 80-degree air filled the cabin—quite a shock after the 30s in North Carolina and the chill of 30,000 feet. As the heat intensified, faces turned pale and canteens came out. Half the chalk looked like it would suffer heat exhaustion before leaving the bird.
The engines' drone stuttered and dropped to a fluctuating hum. When the light turned green, I had tunnel vision on the door.
Feeling the tug of jet engines and the roar of the wind, I counted four seconds, checked that I had a canopy—the plane had almost disappeared from view in the night sky. Heat and humidity brought stillness to the night. Other than people being killed just below, it felt almost tranquil.
Beneath me, green tracer rounds flew outward. Red ones returned, some streaming toward the planes overhead. Explosions rocked the airport terminal; the heaviest fighting.
As treetops passed, I pulled the straps to drop my rucksack; two of them would send it sprawling to the end of a 15 foot line, where it would hang until I landed. Unfortunately, the line didn't extend before it hit the ground. I wasn't high enough. I came barreling in on top of it, bounced, and landed with the gun I carried firmly embedded in my ribs.
I like trees.
Hence, I spent the ensuing 30 or 40 seconds staring at a majestic acacia. It took most of the time to focus and to ascertain that it was an acacia, but that's what I looked at while I tried to figure out if any bones or equipment were broken beyond repair.
Merry Christmas, Pfc. Davidson, welcome to Panama.
****
Sunday, Dec. 17, 1989 had been a good day. That is, it had been a good day until someone woke me from drunken slumber to tell me I had 24-hour duty. I had slept about four hours. I reported as runner to the Charge of Quarters, CQ. My job entailed anything the sergeant on duty required. I did receive the bonus of Monday off, but not until 9 am.
Nothing about that day stands out in memory with the exception of a 24-hour bug known as hung-over-bag-of-ass syndrome. "Rough shape” didn't do my physical ills justice. I had planned on sleeping most of the day.
Monday's relief arrived right on time—about 23 hours later than I wanted—and I went to bed. For waking me around noon, Traveling Matt Farrel received a laundry list of expletives as he told me we had been put on alert. Sgt. Hilgenhurst wanted me in the command post, immediately. Farrel had a habit of playing jokes when people were most vulnerable. I went back to sleep.
I should have listened. A little later, Hilgenhurst burst through the door and unceremoniously dragged me from bed. He let me shower and shave. I got the short form on what had happened the previous three hours and what the next 18 held in store.
That afternoon, we headed to green ramp, the section of Pope Air Force Base reserved specifically for paratroopers. The grounds provided all the space and equipment for training and preparation. Long, wide benches had room to don parachutes and sit comfortably while awaiting inspection. Randomly arranged tables bolted in place stood ready for loading magazines, rearranging gear, packing, repairing, even eating. Vacant lots had storage space for equipment or—on a drizzling day in December—for paratroopers who were not flying out on schedule.
After drawing ammunition and ordinance, we learned that parachutes wouldn't arrive until morning–not enough covered cargo trucks. Paratroopers operate efficiently when drenched. Parachutes, not so much. We took the rest of the day getting ready, going over plans, doing whatever needed to prepare ourselves. At night, some played cards; some wrote letters. I made my gear ready for quick morning departure, and sacked out in my cot before the tent lights went out.
Tuesday defined Army life and the 1000 clichés it’s spawned. Hurry up and wait; multi-denominational services every hour, Catholic on the 15s, Episcopalian on the 30s, etc; repetition breeds remembrance; if it ain’t raining, we ain’t training. We had a hot breakfast and lunch and were back to green ramp proper for 3 pm. The brain trust scheduled takeoff for 6 with a six-hour flight to a coordinated airborne assault at about half passed midnight. During a fresh sleeting, we feasted on MREs while technicians de-iced wings on a fleet of C141 Starlifters, their sleek, black backs shimmering in sub-freezing evening sky.
Around 6, we packed in like school girls on the free bus to a New Kids on the Block concert. I’m sure a few would rather have gone to a show rife with teenage girls than hang out in a freezing plane waiting to wage war.
I had to piss as usual, had since before we loaded. I tried to sleep. It lasted about 20 minutes before one of the crew shouted down the line. I woke, spent the rest of the flight meditating in silent dread the concept of actually going to war. Sure it’s what I’d signed up for, but I never expected to have to do it.
Our mission was a classic airborne operation: an airfield takedown. Intelligence pinpointed Noriega's Dignity Battalion's strongholds, though there were few. We, in concert with the 1st Battalion/75th Rangers, intended to reduce resistance at Tucomen Torrios Airfield, establish a base of operations and then take a sunrise helicopter ride to the south coast of Panama City, a village called Panamá Viejo.
But at our target time, we were still over the Gulf of Mexico. At altitude, ice formed on our wings, so we flew lower and slower than planned. We were going to be late. Already on station in Panama instead of flying in from Georgia, the Rangers would be on time and, potentially, notice our absence. By 1:15, everyone was awake, internal clocks suggesting that something was wrong.
At 1:30, the jumpmaster gave the 20-minute warning. In those last minutes between the door opening and steps out of the plane, it sank in that this wasn't another training mission. Locals waiting below wanted to kill me.
I searched my mind for something to concentrate on. Nothing came. The jumpmaster held up thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. Thirty seconds. Counting down mentally, I held my cool until the jumpmaster motioned to the door jumper, "Stand by."
The tension was palpable; it wasn't a feeling in the plane. It carried the plane. It was a creature in space breathing down every neck. It was every hair, every hackle, every fluttering eyelid and labored breath. I leaned into my assistant gunner's ear and with all the strength I had—which amounted to quite little at the moment—I screamed "fuck yeah."
I wasn't motivated. I was scared shitless, but I had to make it seem as though I was motivated. Stewart responded with a sort of open-mouthed growl, "aargh," and the whole plane lit up. It culminated in cries of "get some," as the light turned green.
I charged the door fast on Stewart’s flank, handed off my static line and passed through roar and shake, into calm. I could see Rangers were in the thick of the fight.
Something else had changed. The original plan had thousands of paratroopers dropping unannounced in the middle of a runway before any fighting began. Call it a misdrop; call it quick thinking on the part of the pilot. He had veered right of his intended target. Perhaps he was afraid of having his ship and cargo shot up during the approach; maybe, he knew we would be landing in the middle of a firefight. Either way, we landed about a kilometer away from where we needed to be. And being the first plane, all other pilots had followed him.
As I surveyed all this, I forgot to do my math problem: If Pvt. Joe Snuffy exits a C141 aircraft traveling 200 miles per hour at approximately 500 feet above ground level, descends four seconds at 75 feet per second, how long does he have before he hits the ground descending under canopy at approximately 20 feet a second. Answer, not long (8-12 seconds, depending on atmospheric conditions—humidity and heat help keep parachutes aloft).
I was close to the ground. Dropping my rucksack, I watched it impact from about 12 feet up. I didn't have time to prepare for landing. Feet and knees together, I angled my legs and tried to miss the ruck but couldn't. It happened too quickly.
Pulling my gun from what seemed to be permanent residence in my ribcage, I got ready to move, which, believe it or not, included what’s known as the sixth point of performance. I took a piss.
I left my chute where it came down, donned my rucksack and unsheathed my mortar tube. Trees obscured the landscape, but my compass knew the way. I spied the elephant grass that I had to pass through, alone, in the dark. The scraping and ticking of blades brushing together in the breeze sounded like footsteps and whispers.
And a song finally came crashing into my thoughts, a Grateful Dead tune that, as of 0150 hours, Dec. 20, 1989, I knew exactly three lines to: "Dire Wolf." I knew the chorus, and as I waded, pistol drawn, among eight-foot stalks of elephant grass, I sang them in my head.
"Don't murder me.
I beg of you, don't murder me.
Please, don't murder me."
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Bean Soup
Plump black bodies soaked in brine
ruptured or whole, purpled and bloated
steam steals the moisture from their hearts
ruptured or whole, purpled and bloated
steam steals the moisture from their hearts
The Gladiator
It wasn’t that it was cold at night. It was that the temperature dropped from mid nineties to high fifties. In the morning, we would freeze as we stirred, some going so far as to keep an empty water bottle with them so they didn’t have to get up to piss.
Something called "stand-to" required us to remain immobile in the chill from half an hour before sunrise until half past. Theory held it as the most likely time for an attack. But we were so far from the Iraqi and Kuwaiti borders that we’d know a day in advance if anyone was attacking on any given morning.
It was September, and we were just practicing. But we sat and shivered as told.
Once the sun rose and security was placed, we started preparing for the day. But the preparations started well before that. In pre-dawn darkness, we shook out our boots and helmets. Scorpions spent the night hunting, and as dawn approached, they’d hunt something else, solitude, more darkness.
So after boot shaking and breakfast, we’d flip rocks and sandbags to see what the night had provided. It’s easy to get bored half a world away from everything you know. Reality was all we could cling to, and reality was war, casualties, and possible death. We found hobbies, some our own, some shared.
Scorpions liked to gather beneath sandbags, and we liked scorpions. They came in three varieties. Black, white, and green. None of us had ever seen the white ones. Legend told of a white scorpion named Moby Dick.
We had modified a box to suit our needs. Cutting the corners off and layering sand across the bottom, someone had scrawled "Madison Square Garden" on the side. It was our Coliseum. We held battles daily with scorpions culled from under rock and sandbag.
The battles were all perfunctory, nothing to write home about. Usually, the bigger scorpion wandered around the arena while we used bayonets to push the smaller ones back toward him. Eventually, fear would lead the smaller ones to strike preemptively, or annoyance would make the big one kill them off.
The reigning champ was a green scorpion about three inches long, not counting pinchers and tail, about five inches total, almost an inch wide, luminous, translucent. He was the arachnid equivalent of the soft-shell crab. His veins weren’t quite visible, but they were easily imagined. He looked soft, squishy, like a bug should be.
We never pitted him against anything except smaller green ones because we had never seen anything bigger or different.
***
No one was sure who found it because it was already in the Coliseum when we gathered that day. Black, like see-in-the-dark black. About three inches, Black sent a chill down the spine, the kind of thing one is loathe to have crawling across his chest in the middle of the night. His lobster claws looked solid, like he could use them to smash stones. His textured tail, equally armored, looked incapable of extension—the way the green ones spent most of their time. Where the green tail rose only when agitated, the black tail looked like it rarely came down.
We gathered. Out of his box, Green landed on the battlefield. He knew instantly something was different. Where previously his stinger had taken time to show, it swung up immediately. He moved quickly around the rocks and across the hills and valleys of the sand floor. He covered the two feet in seconds, searching out his adversary.
And their eyes met.
Stingers wet with venom showed immediately as they felt each other out. The dance took them each a step left in concert, two steps right, and back. They circled, neither an aggressor.
Green advanced and withdrew. Then, Black advanced. They mimicked each other two minutes or more in attempts to get the advantage.
Green had size, weight, and reach in his advantage. Black mirrored him, his perpetually curled tail twitching. His presence alone had put green on edge.
It happened instantly. Green took the offensive. His tail like the trail of a whip swung forward. He aimed for the only soft spot Black offered, the spot that would have been a mammal’s neck.
Before it could find purchase in flesh, Green’s stinger slammed harmlessly into Black’s right claw, captured. At the same time, Black snatched Green’s right claw in his left, pulling him close.
Black’s stinger pierced above and just right of Green’s left eye, where it unloaded lethal doses. Black withdrew then, prancing around the arena, the victor, as Green’s body convulsed with neurotoxins flowing through his brain.
We stood, impressed with images of the impenetrable beast exercising its wrath on all who opposed.
The Coliseum went unused a few days.
The crash site
Eastern central New Mexico is about as flat and geographically unspectacular as anyone would expect from an area called the High Plains. Geometrically sound towns are formulaic from start to finish. Avenues and streets run north to south; drives and boulevards run east to west. There are no cities; it's just miles and miles of nondescript, perfectly gridded suburban sprawl.
Clovis, New Mexico, my home town, was one of these. It boasted a 10 storey hotel and a 7 storey city hall, kind of pathetic, really, but a pleasant place, none the less.
My family lived in a standard-sized suburban lot with some vines and fences at 600 Sandia drive. From the front, it pretended to be adobe up to the roof, where it became something else. It would be called a ranch in New England, except that it wasn't made of wood. It was stucco, chicken wire covered in plaster.
Streets had alleyways between them wide enough for dump trucks to get to the dumpsters. As a child, these were my favorite routes from A to B and points beyond. I could see into backyards sometimes, each one a little insight into the owner's mind.
Two alleyways intersected behind our house, forming a T. We would go out, my brother and I –sometimes with our sister – and we would ride our motorcycles down the alley to a field near Barry Elementary school.
Our dad would escort us most of the time, to make sure we didn't do anything stupid. We were a little family-sized fleet of motorcycles, my brother on his Suzuki 125 cc, my sister or me on my Honda 100 and my dad on his Honda 450.
My brother was the more adventurous. He fearlessly raced around the trails, trying to perfect jumps and speed into turns. He loved to spray dirt on anyone standing near the track. He handled the motorcycle same as I handled my bicycle. What we called an "enduro," it was made for off-road, with lights and signals making it street legal.
And it was light. On the few occasions he dropped it, he picked it right up. Mine was proportionately heavier, especially in relation to me. Being older, my brother was probably 40 pounds heavier, but the bikes weighed almost the same.
I had never really had a lesson other than stop and go. Decked out for a street-riding midget, the Honda fit me better than my brother's fit him, but the suspension wasn't meant for potholes and jumps. All I did was find flatter tracks and will the thing to do what I wanted. Basically, I learned to use my weight to maneuver it as I drove in dirt circles around the field.
It didn't always work out well, but the worst that ever happened was running through Yucca plants or brambles—until one day when my brother had to mow the lawn. I must've been about 9 years old.
Dad brought out the mower so my brother could cut the grass. We kept the motorcycles parked beneath a fiberglass awning at the right side of the yard and dad threw me the keys, telling to move the bike.
I kicked it started and eased into the saddle. Pulling the clutch with my left hand, the transmission clicked lightly as I stomped it into gear.
New Mexico is hot during the summer. On the average August day—like this day—it routinely breaks 100 degrees. People sweat just for standing, and I had been out playing in the yard. After all, I was 9.
Starting to let the clutch out, I gave it a little gas.
I remember having wiped the sweat off my face with my bare hands then wiping them on my jeans. Well, it turns out denim isn't all that absorbent.
The clutch lever slipped from my sweaty palm and engaged the transmission, causing the bike to lurch forward, throwing me off balance and forcing me to hold on. The only solid grip I had was on the throttle; as I jerked backward under the strain of momentum, my right hand twisted the throttle higher.
I rode the length of the fence, screaming. Bare wood shredded the end of the grip just inches from my right hand, and I managed to avoid the first three support beams of the stockade fence, some by only millimeters. When I finally returned my left hand to the handlebar where it belonged, I realized I was headed straight for the house. This distracted me from the support beams, one of which was approaching rapidly.
The beauty of hydraulics is that the brake lever doesn't pull all the way in unless there's no brake fluid. So when the brake lever hit the beam, my fingers weren't crushed. The brakes did what brakes do, stopped the bike. The bike did what physics dictated: it jammed the front wheel into the fence.
I flew up and over the handlebar, flipping and landing on my back in the overgrown grass.
I remember hearing my sister scream and my brother yell to our dad. He was kneeling over me before I even realized that the ride was over, saying my name and asking if I was okay.
I was fine. I said something prophetic like "ouch," or "oops." I remember how glad I was that mom wasn't home.
When the motorcycle and I were both standing again, dad gave me a look of assessment. I was fine, and it was fine. "I told you to move your bike," he said, holding out the keys once more.
I hadn't even had time to replay the scene in my head or to be scared. "Okay," I said. I got back on and moved it to the front yard, avoiding fences and all other structures.
That was 30 years ago.
Since then, I've upgraded from 100 cc to 1450. I've fallen down a few more times, and I still try to avoid running into things.
Call it what you will.
We get the names we're given in life, rejecting some, embracing few. And the Army gives new ones each day as readily as it's currently passing out disabilities. And in a similar though far less dramatic way, a name changes a person's view of the world, sometimes for good, sometimes for not so good.
Like my parents did when I was born, the Army gave me a name. I had no choice but to accept it until I had the rank or anonymity to change it. Fortunately, it didn't suck.
Soldiers ("Joe's") like shortcuts above all else, excepting beer, women, and time off. Each day revived mantras celebrated like hymns: "if you're not cheating, you're not trying," "if you get caught, you're not trying hard enough," and "if you look busy, you are busy." The goal was to accomplish more while doing less. If less was accomplished, well, that was ok too.
It applied equally to names; a name disappeared quickly in favor of something shorter or more appropriate. It was part convenience: fewer syllables required less effort, resulting in verbal economy. But it sometimes left a mark like Hawthorne's scarlet "A" marked Hester Prynne.
Most often, the nickname was derivative of the surname. Two weeks into Fort Bragg, my name officially and forevermore became Dave—far less cumbersome than Davidson. Even as a sergeant, I was Sgt. Dave.
Some got off easy like that, names not morphing much or at all. Todd Gravely was always Gravely (although occasionally mispronounced like the adverb); Casey and Stone were never anything but. Bernholtz became Bernie, Burgmeyer – Burgie, Williams–Will, etc.
Mickey Paolucci became whatever that combination of vowels and consonants allowed–Pappy Loochie, Pappy, Pooch, etc (though it seems like a significant change, remember that many infantrymen had a tough time pronouncing words like pasghetti or Massatoosis.). He might even have been the original Papa Roach.
Derek Battle and Sgt. Slaughter had names built for an airborne infantry unit. One Sergeant's last name eludes me because his first made him Stormin' Norman long before the media passed it off to a general. John Friezen became the Freeze. Matt Farrell became Traveling Matt of "Fraggle Rock" fame.
With a high percentage of southerners, some people became an abomination of themselves. Anthony Powell became Powl (rhymes with fowl); Bradley B. Binkley (I am not making that up) got Binky or Blinky depending on mispronouncer preference. We kept those.
Others kept their names, but with new meaning. James Keck was neither reliable nor competent. When people addressed him, it sounded like something was caught in their throats. Steve Gurly, "girly," had to deal with the name his parents passed down.
Nicknames also came from traits. Ralph Roman loved comics and video games. When the movie and game based on the comic "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" came out, Roman's resemblance to the venerable rat Splinter won that as nickname until someone dubbed him Ratman. The latter stuck like a high school reputation.
Sean Stewart resembled a shrew. His mannerisms, dwarf-like appearance, and facial expressions earned him Shrewert. And Sgt. Foster, the company's chemical expert spoke with such a lisp that behind his back he was Tharenfothter—you have to say both aloud to appreciate them.
Because the Army is above all a hierarchal order, names we used varied with situations. My friend John Friezen was a Sgt., so I called him by rank and name on duty and whenever there were sergeants or officers present. Among the enlisted men, references were usually along the lines of "The Freeze is looking for you."
As enlisted men, we also had endless fun with officers. My first company commander was more motivated to kill than anyone I met before or since. Among the enlisted and lower ranking sergeants, he was known as Captain Combat.
His replacement, Capt. Ramsdale, seemed more concerned with appearance during combat drills than with Joe's proper execution of the drills. Because of this, he became Captain Kevlar, named for the helmet we wore.
Next to lead us was Capt. Martin P. Schweitzer, Marty P. (also occasionally Herr Scvitzer), and since the senior Sgt. in our company was Martin B. Matney, they became collectively "Marty B and Marty P."
Second in command was the XO (executive officer), Lieutenant Stephen Donaldson. Donaldson's name was the first step in him becoming Lt. Sam. The second was the way he talked to people; sometimes you believed that he thought he was addressing an entire nation on the five o'clock news. His best friend and roommate was first platoon's leader, Lt. Dan Cotell. Cotell somehow avoided a nickname. Collectively, they were Sam-and-Dan, pronounced samandan.
Third platoon's Lt. Guthrie didn't like me, mostly because I created his nickname. He was transferred to our unit late one night while we were training in the woods. Because he hadn't eaten since the previous day or slept in over 24 hours, Marty B moved him to the front of the chow line, right in front of me.
"Good morning, sir," I said. He responded in kind.
And then I saw his name. "Sir, I don't suppose you're related to Arlo, are you?"
"It's a distant relation," he said. I didn't note the distaste in his voice, took it for exhaustion.
"Sir," I said, oblivious to the fact that I was digging my own grave, "will you sing a verse of 'Alice's Restaurant' for me?"
Oops.
We had about a week left in the woods; the only shitty job I didn't do during that time was sleep. His opinion of me never recovered. But from that moment forward, he was Arlo.
Names were mutable. A Joe could spend years with the best nomenclature in the Army, and do one stupid thing Sunday Morning in the chow line in front of two people and be changed forever.
There was one kid who couldn't help fucking up. It didn't take long before everybody but the officers in the company called him Soup, from the phrase "more fucked up than a soup sandwich."
I wonder what would've happened if he had gotten to keep his real name. Would it have made a difference in his assimilation into military life? As it was, the obvious lack of support that "Soup" suggests played into his rapid departure.
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