ARMY PEOPLE: GUYS YOU MEET AT THE START

No one who served forgets the people, in my case Army people, they meet in the beginning.

Fellow enlistees ranged from age seventeen to thirty five years old. Some of the Army people were older than the Drill Sergeants. That was a surprise.

That some of the Drills looked like they could be doing other things with their lives was a surprise, too. Competent, bright, and trained to lead, I didn’t see a sucker or loser in the whole bunch.

That I was recognized and rewarded and groomed for bigger things helped. What reward?

For some reason I was chosen as Platoon Guide for my group. That’s the guy who stands in front of the company formation with three other guys. (Four platoons in a company.)

I wasn’t asked, I was assigned. Army people do lots of assigning.

After everyone settled into the barracks the first night, I got another assignment: put everyone’s SS# in their dress shoes for identification. Drill Sergeant Easterling wanted it done by the next morning.

My first night in the Army found my bunk surrounded by pairs of shoes with name tags and social security numbers, white fingernail polish and pens, with the idea of painting a white stripe inside the shoes and writing numbers.

My first decision as a leader of men was pulling the four squad leaders in for an all nighter of nail polish fumes and getting to know each other. I was tired the next day and never caught up on sleep the whole training cycle.

But, I wasn’t alone.

Unforgettable Army People On Veterans Day

Looking back over the years shows the guys I met in the Army haven’t aged a bit. It helps that I haven’t seen any of them since 1974.

It feels like memories of large groups started in high school. Reunions every ten years, if you go, make for good reminders even if people have changed as decades pass. Those name tags come in handy.

College reunions are different for dropouts than those who move straight through from freshman to graduate. Reunions don’t fit for that class of student, or that class of Army people. It was a once in a lifetime view of others in trying times.

The mid-70’s were a trying time for the Army. The rebuild had already begun after Vietnam and my year had some of the first soldiers in the New Army. Some of them came in ready to stake out their future as career military; some wandered in with other goals.

As a wanderer, the Drill Sergeants saw an opportunity in me to pitch the career path. I’d already been in the recruiter’s office, now another recruitment began. Since I was in on a two year sign-up, the Drills laid out the climb to the top.

The first thing I needed to do was sign up for a longer stretch. I was in bootcamp and they wanted me to extend my service? If I did that I’d be eligible for so much more training. The extra time was for the Army to get their money’s worth.

As a nineteen year old I didn’t give a hard no. I wasn’t going to disagree with The Man. Without a hard no, I heard more about the benefits of a longer Army enlistment. But I was more a fan of the Citizen Soldier model, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

Get in, get out, get on with the rest of my life, was my plan.

Go in at Fort Ord, California. Come out at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Coast to coast with a stop at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

Last Days For Army People

As I cycled through the honorable discharge process I spent the night in a room at Fort Dix while my stuff was still in Philadelphia. It was something about waiting for a big group coming in from Germany so we could all be discharged together.

The Army wanted some of their stuff back, like the field jacket, overcoat, dog tags, ID. Two year guys gave it back, the others kept their stuff.

I had a roommate for the night, a kid waiting to go home after an incident. His story was that the Army decided he would be better off helping his family instead of helping the Army.

That’s what they told him, and what he told me. There had to be more, though. The guy was unfit as a roommate, the same characteristics that made him unfit for service. He was messy, couldn’t focus, and raised his voice with alarm in normal conversations.

So I kept things quiet. The last thing I needed was a problem the day before my exit. When I started two years earlier I saw trouble brewing the first day on the hill. My first overhead bunk mate was a bed wetter. I was moved before the showers started.

The four man room I was assigned to next already had four guys in it with their stuff on the bunks they had decided on. I asked the biggest guy of the group which bunk was his, threw his stuff on the ground and put my stuff up there.

“Let’s be friends. You guys fight it out for who’s sleeping on the floor. I’m not,” I said.

The Drill Sergeant moved me to a private room. Three weeks later I got fired as Platoon Guide and moved back into the barracks at the end of the hall. My new overhead bunk mate was named Brisco. I called him Marlon Brisco after a football player.

The first night he talked about why he didn’t like white people. Since we’d just met, I knew he wasn’t talking about me. He was in the platoon and saw me out front, but we had never talked. Now we talked a lot.

After he decided not to cut my throat in the middle of the night, we were good neighbors. We decided we didn’t like the same people, which were the screw ups who made the Drill Sergeants punish the entire platoon.

Since he didn’t screw up, and neither did I since I got fired due to platoon problems I was supposed to ignore, but didn’t, we bonded.

Forty Seven Years Later

A guy in my neighborhood is former Navy. Together we are the Army – Navy competition, though I haven’t told him.

This Veterans Day morning I wanted to get my flag up before him. I found my dad’s funeral flag, my rainbow flag, but not the American flag flown around the neighborhood. My regular house flag is an earth flag.

I looked and looked and finally decided to fly the second best flag in the house, the one certified to have flown over the US Capitol. I’ve got the box and papers for it. My mother in law ordered it years ago, but I’ve left it indoors.

Not today, not when my neighbor raised his flag first. It’s silly to carry any feud on, besides family feuds, but I get a personal kick out of living next door to a Navy man.

The years go by and I count them with joy. In spite of bumps and bruises along the way, I’ve milked my Army time every chance I get. Do I rub it in on the wrong people? Probably. Do they join the fun? Never. But they’re not veterans. If they were we’d have a big laugh.

Prior service people make fun of each other. The best is the inter-service observations. Who were those idiots? They were us. Hoo boy, that was you, me, and the rest of the service line. As a group we know when to put up, when to shut up, and when to walk away.

Those are important lessons that get hammered home in the land of the free, home of the brave. If you are prior service, you know the drill: be a good citizen and don’t shame your outfit.

Happy Veterans Day from Oregon.