was assigned to the Infantry Training School, teaching young draftees how to stay alive and kill other young guys. The infantry sucks, by the way, but training new infantrymen was better than being one in Vietnam.
The country was in open rebellion by this time, the quality of the draftees was pretty low, and morale and discipline were in the toilet.
But all good things must come to an end, and I knew I was on the verge of getting orders for Vietnam, Part Two.
I really wanted to avoid this exciting opportunity, but I also had to get out of that hellhole I was in, including, I’m sorry to admit, my marriage. I wouldn’t be the first soldier who chose war over garrison duty and marriage, and I wouldn’t be the first to regret it either.
And there were other considerations; my brother Benny was now draft age. Benny was and is today a great guy, very bright and easygoing. Unfortunately, he spends a good deal of time with his head up his ass, and his chances of surviving a combat tour were not good.
The army had a sort of semi-official policy of not sending brothers, fathers, and sons to ’Nam at the same time, so I knew if I went back, Benny would probably not go until I returned, or might never go if I didn’t come back. The war was starting to wind down, and the name of the game was buying time.
I had a plan, and I’m a clever, take-charge kind of guy, and I managed to get accepted to Military Police School at Fort Gordon, Georgia. This was temporary duty, so Patty stayed at Whispering Pines Trailer Park in Midland, while I went to MP school at Gordon.
Under the conditions that prevailed at that time, if a soldier left his young wife alone for more than twenty-four hours around a military base, some guy named Jodie was helping her get over her loneliness. I wasn’t sure that’s what happened with Patty, but something happened. Or, as the country western song says “She’s Out Doin’ What I’m Here Doin’ Without.”
So, I returned from Fort Gordon after three months with a new MOS—military occupation skill. My old MOS had been Eleven-Bravo, meaning infantry, meaning a second tour in Vietnam from which I had no reasonable expectation of returning home alive this time. My new military occupation skill was Military Police, and Vietnam was a possibility, but not a sure thing. And even if I went to ’Nam as an MP, my chances of getting killed or maimed by the enemy were less than the chances of that happening breaking up a brawl in the Enlisted Men’s Club.
While I was at MP school, Benny got drafted, completed Basic Training, and was at that time in Advanced Infantry Training with a high probability of going to Vietnam, despite the troop reductions. We all knew that within the next year or so, someone was going to be the last guy in ’Nam to turn off the lights when he left, and someone was going to be the last man killed there. No one knew exactly when that was going to happen, but everyone knew they didn’t want to be one of those guys.
In any case, my marriage was heading south, so I decided to do the same and volunteered for ’Nam.
Quicker than you can say bye-bye, and with no leave time, I was at Tan Son Nhat Airport in January of 1972, where I got orders for Bien Hoa, the big replacement center nearby. Bien Hoa was where some of the fresh meat arrived from the States, awaiting further orders to join their units up country. It was also where a lot of the guys heading home waited for the freedom flight. It was a crazy place, made more so by the juxtaposition of the damned and the saved. They didn’t share the same barracks, but they mingled. They had little in common except two things: Those who were going home wanted to get drunk and get laid, and those who were about to go to the front wanted to get drunk and get laid. I, an MP sergeant, got caught in the middle.
As I said, morale and discipline had gone to hell, and I barely recognized the army that I had entered only about four years earlier.
The country was in open rebellion by this time, the quality of the draftees was pretty low, and morale and discipline were in the toilet.
But all good things must come to an end, and I knew I was on the verge of getting orders for Vietnam, Part Two.
I really wanted to avoid this exciting opportunity, but I also had to get out of that hellhole I was in, including, I’m sorry to admit, my marriage. I wouldn’t be the first soldier who chose war over garrison duty and marriage, and I wouldn’t be the first to regret it either.
And there were other considerations; my brother Benny was now draft age. Benny was and is today a great guy, very bright and easygoing. Unfortunately, he spends a good deal of time with his head up his ass, and his chances of surviving a combat tour were not good.
The army had a sort of semi-official policy of not sending brothers, fathers, and sons to ’Nam at the same time, so I knew if I went back, Benny would probably not go until I returned, or might never go if I didn’t come back. The war was starting to wind down, and the name of the game was buying time.
I had a plan, and I’m a clever, take-charge kind of guy, and I managed to get accepted to Military Police School at Fort Gordon, Georgia. This was temporary duty, so Patty stayed at Whispering Pines Trailer Park in Midland, while I went to MP school at Gordon.
Under the conditions that prevailed at that time, if a soldier left his young wife alone for more than twenty-four hours around a military base, some guy named Jodie was helping her get over her loneliness. I wasn’t sure that’s what happened with Patty, but something happened. Or, as the country western song says “She’s Out Doin’ What I’m Here Doin’ Without.”
So, I returned from Fort Gordon after three months with a new MOS—military occupation skill. My old MOS had been Eleven-Bravo, meaning infantry, meaning a second tour in Vietnam from which I had no reasonable expectation of returning home alive this time. My new military occupation skill was Military Police, and Vietnam was a possibility, but not a sure thing. And even if I went to ’Nam as an MP, my chances of getting killed or maimed by the enemy were less than the chances of that happening breaking up a brawl in the Enlisted Men’s Club.
While I was at MP school, Benny got drafted, completed Basic Training, and was at that time in Advanced Infantry Training with a high probability of going to Vietnam, despite the troop reductions. We all knew that within the next year or so, someone was going to be the last guy in ’Nam to turn off the lights when he left, and someone was going to be the last man killed there. No one knew exactly when that was going to happen, but everyone knew they didn’t want to be one of those guys.
In any case, my marriage was heading south, so I decided to do the same and volunteered for ’Nam.
Quicker than you can say bye-bye, and with no leave time, I was at Tan Son Nhat Airport in January of 1972, where I got orders for Bien Hoa, the big replacement center nearby. Bien Hoa was where some of the fresh meat arrived from the States, awaiting further orders to join their units up country. It was also where a lot of the guys heading home waited for the freedom flight. It was a crazy place, made more so by the juxtaposition of the damned and the saved. They didn’t share the same barracks, but they mingled. They had little in common except two things: Those who were going home wanted to get drunk and get laid, and those who were about to go to the front wanted to get drunk and get laid. I, an MP sergeant, got caught in the middle.
As I said, morale and discipline had gone to hell, and I barely recognized the army that I had entered only about four years earlier.
Similar Books
