That's My Story

            “He hated the Cat.”

            When I opened my eyes I realized that that was the only thought rumbling around in the darkness of my mind.  I was lying on the sidewalk, curled into a fetal position with an old lady prodding me with the tip of her umbrella.

            “Get up you lazy bum,” she shouted continuing to poke me with her umbrella tip.

            I quickly rose from the sidewalk on which I had found myself.  Looking around, I noticed that a few other aging baby-boomer types, along with a larger number of muscular and closely cropped younger men, were also slowly rising from the sidewalk as well.  We passed furtive glances at one another, nodded imperceptibly, hurriedly dusted ourselves off, and continued on our various ways. 

            The umbrella lady continued her harangue.  “Drunk this early in the morning?  It’s a shame how old men let themselves go like that.”  I didn’t argue, but instead mumbled a hurried apology and continued on my way grasping my attaché tightly.

            It hadn’t been drink that brought me low.  It had been the low, ominous thud, followed by the acrid smell of gunpowder emanating from the nearby construction site that had invoked a long forgotten, involuntary, visceral reaction.  It was true that no one ever rose to meet the occasion; instead, they merely defaulted to their level of training.

            Apparently the construction crew had detonated a small amount of dynamite at the site which passed unnoticed by most of the passers-by.  It was only those chosen few, the “lucky ones” who instinctively reacted to the thud and smell and hit the deck without further thought.  Those who had been afforded the opportunity of government training to recognize the situation and take immediate appropriate action.  Make yourself small, inconspicuous, and hide.  Run away if possible.

            Survivors who had learned well that a “stay down below the tree line and you just might be all right” life philosophy, mixed with a healthy dose of paranoia, was not a psychiatric problem waiting to be explored on a therapist’s couch, but instead a way of life to embrace fully if you intended to keep on living.

            In other words, these were men who had been inmates of the various service arms of the military establishment, and had now been cast out, back into the civilian world. 

            The people around us had just stood there stiffly, like frozen sheep, blank looks of morning commuters on their faces.  They had been totally and blissfully ignorant of the thud and smell, and only anxious to continue uninterruptedly on their daily boring routines.  Their biggest concern was whether the coffee maker had been left on all night, or whether the copier repair man would show up on time today.  They were truly “sheeple,” hollow hulks of humanity moving like lemmings in the morning flow of the awakening city.  They would march lock step to their offices and waste another day under the glare of fluorescent lighting, promising themselves to exercise this weekend to make up for the guilt they felt in eating a second sticky bun with their morning latte, dreaming of living life this coming weekend and running in neutral until then.

            As I hurried to get away from the prod of the umbrella tip and the scowling old lady, my mind wandered back to the thought that it had involuntarily found under pressure.

            “He hated the Cat?” 

            Where had that phrase come from?  An early childhood memory of Dr. Seuss?       No….  Then slowly it came back to me.

            Psychiatrists will tell you that the human mind after undergoing times of extreme or intense duress will respond by blocking out the stressful events, recalling later only the pleasant times, if at all.  I think they call it “repressed memories” and have developed an entire therapeutic procedure designed to bring these buried memories once again to the fore. 

            What are they, nuts?

             These memories were buried for good reason.  Why would I want to unearth and relive them once again voluntarily?  Another disconnect between the academic ivy tower and reality.  I worked hard and earned each and every one of those nervous tics, eye twitches, annoying habits, and vague fears of impending doom.  They represent the wisdom that I have accumulated over the years by passing through various life situations presented me by a perverse Universe. 

            Long ago I had decided that Camus’s Stranger was wrong, and that the Universe held not benign indifference towards me, but instead alternated between being either mischievous or diabolical in its dealings with me, depending on some unknown warped sense of Cosmic Humor or randomness for its selection.  At this stage in my life’s journey, I no longer wanted to win every encounter.  Life’s experiences had tempered and lowered both my expectations and standards to where breaking even was considered both good and acceptable.  Many a better man than I was no longer here, but yet I remained.  I took to heart the old adage spoken by an ancient sage who, in condensing his life experiences, pithily observed that “while eagles fly high, weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.”  Words of wisdom to embrace, ponder, and live by.

            Nevertheless, the appearance of the phrase in my conscious thought, however unwillingly, brought back a flood of repressed memories that had been blissfully buried under the minutiae of my daily routine.

            “He hated the Cat.”

            Actually the word “hated” was patently insufficient to describe fully his feelings toward the Cat.  Words like “loathed”, “abhorred”, or “detested” may have come closer to his true feelings, but even these would fall far short, even when accompanied with phrases such as “with every fiber of his being”  they would remain deficient and continue to fall far short of communicating his true relationship with the Cat.

            Some said it was a symbiotic love-hate relationship, but I never saw the “love” side of it.  In fact, it was more like a Moebius strip kind of relationship having only one side and one edge.  It was a love hate relationship without the love.  It was the kind of relationship that rose and fell faster than a Coney Island rollercoaster run by a drunken fat man, stinking of summer sweat and booze. In other words, it was a classic slow motion train wreck unfolding right before our eyes while we could only sit on the periphery paralyzed, unable to move or avert our eyes, awaiting its inevitable tragic conclusion.  You get the idea.

            Having re-read those last few lines, I now realize how much the events have affected me, leaving me, a once semi-decent writer of English, to write bad prose such as found in Ernst Hemingway’s or Dashiell Hammett’s best works.  Run-on sentences, clumsy constructions, inappropriate use of commas, etc.  At least I have not split any infinitives (Sister Eileen would be proudly smiling and my knuckles less bruised.  Actually, Sr. Eileen would be proudly smiling even if my knuckles were bruised.  The woman had no problems with pain.) 

            I guess purging my soul by telling the tale may be my only path to salvation, or at least to closure.  But I guess, as with most stories, it is the journey of the tale (tail?  wagging to and fro?) and not necessarily the conclusion that provides enlightenment for the reader.  So let me start at the beginning of the tale.  (Note:  After some thought, I believe the tail comment above as an analogy breaks down.  For this is only a short story and not a novel.  For were it a tail we would be proceeding not from the tail to the nose, as in a novel length discourse, but merely part ways along the animal, and, with my luck, stop far short of the nose, probably somewhere in the lower intestinal tract, most likely near the colon, waiting to be evacuated whenever convenient.  This is therefore not a tail so ignore the analogy as being inapplicable.)

            First of all, it must be made perfectly clear that we were there unwillingly.  We were draftees who were granted the opportunity to serve LBJ in helping keep the world safe against the godless Communists.  Or at least that is what they kept on telling us.  Most of us, at least those of us capable of reading without simultaneously vocalizing the words, felt that it was more likely the opportunity presented itself to us due to the fact that we were born on the wrong day and had gotten a low draft number in the lottery.

            Mine was 35.  Well at least that ended the nagging question of what to do after graduation from college, which companies to interview with, whether instead to apply to graduate or law school.  All conundra had been resolved for me by a mere accident of birth.

            Whatever the true reason, we were too patriotic, dumb, or lazy to head for Canada and learn a new language and end all of our sentences with “eh”. Instead, we endured the poking and prodding of the induction physical only to be stamped 1-A and welcomed into government service.  The induction physical is a tale unto itself, complete with a trip to beautiful downtown Newark, New Jersey, long lines of frightened, semi-naked boys snaking through an old run-down building, subjected to constant orders and threats from shouting uniformed drill sergeants who could hardly contain their disgust with the in-coming recruits.  In other words, it was a perfect introduction to the adult world of politics and large impersonal organizations.

            First, the induction physical notice, a marvelous piece of government prose, terse, formal, and utterly confusing, ordered us to show up in the early morning hours for the physical at a government building in downtown Newark, New Jersey. 

            Now for those of you unfamiliar with the Garden State and its environs, Newark, New Jersey is an urban center located within handgun range of New York City.  I am sure you have heard of that place.

            Newark is a city whose reputation is eclipsed only by such other Garden State Edens as Camden or Trenton, and is known for having a vibrant and exciting night life.  It is a city that not only New Jersey National Guard troops, but regular Army troops, hesitated to enter during the riots in the 60’s and remains so to date.  In other words, it is a domestic training area for troops scheduled for combat deployment against a hostile and well armed citizenry, where the authorities travel in convoys and never at night.  A place best to be found in the rear view mirror as the sun sets.  It is a city where years ago a local “alleged” Mafia boss, convicted and sentenced to Federal prison, ran for mayor from his jail cell in a nearly all black city, and won overwhelmingly.  It was a city where the dead continue to do their civic duty and vote with regularity, often more than once.  A no man’s land shown on maps with large swatches of blank territory marked only with the legend “terra incognita” as indicating places where no one had ever ventured into and returned from. You get the idea.

            My odyssey began with an early morning bus trip into Newark. 

            Few things aid the digestion and attitude as much as a sleepless night followed by a hurried trip to the local bus depot.  Now bus depots are usually located in parts of towns that have seen better days and better clienteles than at present.  The smiling and courteous bus driver, and ticket taker, as well as the gleaming rocket-like bus shown in commercials are long gone, having been replaced by, let it be said, less photogenic but more colorful characters.  The modern ticket office usually comprises a solitary and surly older man bathed in a fluorescent glow, sitting in a small booth behind a heavy plexi-glass shield having slots for pushing your money through and receiving back your ticket.  The other holes in the plexi-glass appear to be air holes, as they certainly do not assist you in communicating with the person in the booth.  Also, the crazing in the plexi-glass window entombing the clerk appears, on closer inspection, more ballistic than artistic in nature suggesting its more likely origin.

            After having been dropped off at 5:45 A.M. (nobody leaves their car in this area and expects to find it again), I quickly ran across the parking lot past the zombie like people milling about before they could approach me, and headed for what I believed to be the relative safety of the building.  Once inside, I immediately realized my mistake.  The zombies outside were merely the more intelligent ones who had figured out how to escape from inside the building.  The ones unable to make that cerebral leap were milling about as I imagine Neanderthals might have, looking for fire or the stray Mastodon dinner. 

            I kept my eyes down, took a determined step and headed for the ticket counter.  As I approached the booth, the ticket seller appeared to be either asleep or dead.  At this hour and location, either was a distinct possibility.  I politely inquired about my need for a bus to Newark.  The clerk stirred.  Well at least he wasn’t dead, yet.  He raised his skull like head and looked at me with unblinking, and uncomprehending eyes.  His mouth appeared to move but all I heard was a muffled, “mmmumph.”  What the hell?  I leaned forward, pressing my mouth against the holes in the plexi-glass shield and repeated my request, quickly putting my ear to the holes afterward.  This time, faintly but distinctly, I heard him say, “mmmumph.”  Oh great I thought, he doesn’t speak English.  Figures. 

            Finally, after pressing a bus schedule to the plexi-glass and pointing out “Newark” several times he nodded his head, blessed himself, and wrote the fare on a piece of paper he showed me.  I pushed my coins through the slot and he reciprocated by pushing a piece of paper back.  I assumed it was my ticket and quickly moved away before I drew any further unwanted attention from the locals milling about.

            I went outside, figuring that there I had more options and space to run than inside the building.  The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon.  That was a sight of beauty to behold. 

            Now in beautiful New Jersey, or “Joisey” to the locals, depending on time of year, weather, and what the local pharmaceutical/chemical companies were brewing, the sun would appear greenish, purplish, or some other color not naturally found on Earth.  This particular morning it had a rather unearthly hue that failed to register in my known vocabulary of colors.  That was not a good omen.

            Remembering that a moving target is harder to hit, I joined in the parking lot zombie shuffle, both to keep warm and keep moving until the arrival of our bus.

            Now having grown up in New Jersey and spending time in New York City (The City to locals) survival instincts were in-bred with mother’s milk.  Avoid eye contact, keep a protected area around you, keep moving, check alley ways, doorways and between parked cars all before walking past.  These were the in-bred traits of survivors, for in Joisey only the strong survive, while others say, only the stupid stay.  But even the effectiveness of these techniques varied depending on the area you found yourself.  One good defensive technique, but one which requires all the skill of a trained psychiatrist and some luck, I had learned from my travels on the Pelham Ave (No. 6 Local) subway.  It was not to hide behind a folded New York Times avoiding eye contact like an ostrich with his head in the sand, but instead to maintain unblinking aggressive eye contact with those around you making sure they you thought you crazier than they were.  If successful, they would leave you alone and move on to saner pickings.  If not, the ride got even more interesting than normal.  The Pelham Ave. Local came out of Harlem, passed through Spanish Harlem, and headed downtown to spew its contents into the relative safety of drug and hooker infested Times Square.  In the wee hours of the morning I had seen things on that train that are best described as otherworldly, although exactly what other world I am not sure, but those adventures are for another time.  

            Soon out of the retreating darkness came our chariot.  Not exactly like those gleaming, well-scrubbed, trans-continental buses of the commercials, but a weary veteran of several wars, not all of which it had won.  Covered with graffiti, dents, and other camouflage, it pulled into its dock and breathed a short lived sign of relief, echoed by those inside its battered hulk.

            A bleary eyed, non-descript crowd of passengers eager to escape the bowels of the bus were quickly regurgitated, and a new batch of equally bleary eyed, non-descript passengers queued up to enter. 

            The driver, squirming in an attempt to dislodge his sweat soaked underwear from the crack in his butt, stood at the doorway like some modern Charon, demanding tickets and scowling as each of us passed, probably wondering what sins he had committed that had damned him to this particular place and time.  Wonder if he knew that I was also thinking the same thing?

            People jockeyed for seats. 

            The first in line had commandeered the best seats, placing their bags on the seats besides them and either turned to face out the window or pretend to sleep in the hopes that no one would ask them to move their bags and sit next to them. 

            The last few in line had less options, and had to choose sitting with the 300 pound bag lady, the wide-eyed psychopath mumbling incoherently to unseen companions, or the drunken sailor smelling of “mal de mer” returning from a three day shore leave. 

            I rolled the dice and took my seat.  Fortunately as I sat down, the sailor, turning a rather becoming shade of light green, quickly snapped to attention, covered his mouth with his right hand, grabbed his AWOL bag with his left, and staggered off the bus.  I thanked Bacchus for my good fortune and moved to the window seat. 

            As punishment, a late-comer jumped onto the bus as its door closed and came down the aisle. He was wearing a cowboy hat and boots.  Cowboy hat?  Boots?  That kind of shit could get you killed in place like this.  He was obviously a transient passing through, lost in his travels somewhere between East Earthworm, Texas, and God-only-knows-where when he found himself stranded in Jersey.

             “Please God, Please God” I thought. But God, apparently having had a tough time of it the night before, missed my plea and the stranger plopped down into the seat besides me.

            I feigned sleep in the feeble hope he would not talk to me but just sit there occupying space.  No such luck.  He quickly adjusted his ten gallon hat and turned to me asking loudly, “You sleeping?” He then commenced to tell me his life’s story as if he were in a confessional and I his confessor.  The fact of the matter was I had my own problems.  I was heading towards an unwanted military career, and I wanted to sit and worry in silence. Besides, his life story was boring, filled with people I neither knew nor cared to know.  It was along about when he began the description of the birth of his pet heifer that I began to wonder if a person could actually die from boredom or was that just an old saying?  Thoughts of justifiable homicide began to creep into my mind.  (“Your Honor, the man needed killing.”  “I understand son, case dismissed.”)  Just a dollop of added punishment on this my trip across the River Styx with Charon manning the steering wheel. 

            The bus drive up the New Jersey Turnpike was uneventful.  Well, uneventful that is for the New Jersey Turnpike.  We encountered the morning crawl of desk jockeys, secretaries, and functionaries all beating the morning rush by leaving early and creating a new, earlier morning rush.  We hurtled towards our destination at speeds varying from 5 to a mind numbing 15 miles per hour.  One lemming in a sea of many.

            Charon, eyes gleaming, teeth clenched, steered the bus like Ahab at the helm of the Pequod manically pursuing the Great White while a typhoon raged around him.  He screamed non-stop obscenities, making suggestions to drivers around him, all adding to the general ambiance of the bus ride. 

            On occasion, passengers would join in this running commentary and shout out helpful suggestions or observations to assist him.  The comments ran the gauntlet, but were generally in the class of “Holy Shit you almost hit that guy!” or “Hey, can you hurry up?  I’m gonna be late!”  These helpful suggestions were greeted by return comments made by Charon which, while intriguing, were generally considered as being physically impossible for someone to perform on himself but might be pleasurable with someone of the opposite sex. Soon, shouting between the passengers and driver took on the atmosphere of a participatory entertainment, better than an in-flight movie or a bag of stale pretzels.  I only hoped the drive would end before emotions rose to the point where fighting began.

            The bus pulled into the Newark depot, another bunker like building proudly sporting badges of gang graffiti, misspelled obscenities, and other unidentifiable scars.  The buildings surrounding the bus depot were none the better and might actually have looked worse, with individuals lying in rumpled heaps in the doorways, milling about, or just assessing passer-byes for any weaknesses.  The scent of alcohol, vomit, and urine greeted us as we walked.  Ah, beautiful Newark had neither changed nor lost its unique atmosphere.  It could be identified with your eyes closed, like passing through Elizabeth or Linden, New Jersey on the Turnpike, merely by the smell that penetrated the closed car windows.  That smell burned an olfactory memory in the nose of any traveler that was not soon forgotten.

            We hurried along, now a small group of teenage boys looking for the address given in our induction notices.  No sense in asking the street people that we saw as they were obviously waiting for the Mother Ship to retrieve them and police were nowhere to be seen.  We stumbled around in a herd until we finally found Federal Street and quickly determined from the numbers which way to walk.  We, being cowards, ran, believing that whatever fate awaited us with the military was better than what we saw surrounding us.

            The building we found on Federal Street was, like most government buildings, plain, grayish-green in color, and tired to its very foundation from all of those passing through its doors.

            Greeting us as we entered were uniformed guards carrying side arms.  Well, we could easily understand the reason for the guns having just walked from the bus depot and wondered if we could be issued guns for the return journey.  Later we came to realize that the guns were issued to provide protection not from the locals, but from us!  Thus began our induction into the twisted logic of the military establishment.

            The future citizen soldiers were quickly alphabetized, categorized, standardized, stripped down to our skivvies, and placed in long snaking lines that meandered not merely through a room, but up and down stairwells and across several floors.  It appeared to be a waiting room for Hell on a busy day.

            We were each given a brown file folder and told not to open it nor lose it, as it represented our disposition and future assignments.  On occasion, a table with clerks would appear as the line moved who would demand the folder, make indecipherable marks in the folder, and return it to you with a smirk and a curt order to move along.

            The street wise were quick to size up the situation as we stood in the final line.  They saw that the clerks at the table had four large inked stamps which they applied in rotation to the inductees standing before them.  The stamps were ARMY, NAVY, AIR FORCE, and MARINES.  They were applied in monotonous order, over and over, to the folders presented them by the semi-naked boys standing in line. 

            Immediately, those who could divide by four quickly adjusted their position in the queue, either by feigning courtesy and allowing someone to cut ahead of them, or by sneaking into a desired spot in another line.  Thus bets were placed to obtain selection for either AIR FORCE or NAVY, while attempting to avoid the dreaded ARMY and the unthinkable MARINES.  This was the second challenge made to our intelligence that day, having failed the first by showing up in the first place.  Thus, as on Judgment Day, we were quickly separated into goats and sheep, the blessed and the damned, and sent out on our military careers.

            I had carefully counted the people in line before me, watching the application of the stamps and selected my position in line accordingly.  As with all seemingly good plans of mice and men, the large farm boy standing in front of me (as wide as he was tall) managed to block a skinny, bespectacled kid standing in front of him, giving me the opportunity to become an ARMY inductee.  Four years of college studying honors abstract mathematics had not gone to waste.  Already my achievements had been recognized and I was given the lowest ranking of any raw recruit off of the streets, an E-1.  My disappointments began early in my military career.

            A college friend of mine, Denny, had determined not to participate in the government’s proposed opportunity, and had begun early during college to claim a Conscientious Objector status with his local draft board.  He regularly sent them various items for inclusion in his draft folder that he felt were necessary to understand his position.  These items were wide-ranging, and included empty candy bar wrappers, used tissues, and even a small dead Christmas tree.  He would then, on a regular basis, demand a review of his folder to make sure that it was “complete” and check for each of these submitted items against his list.  Once, during a review, he found that someone had discarded his dead Christmas tree, probably wondering, “What the hell?”  That was worth a formal demand for an investigation and suspension of any action on his folder until it was completed and the missing item found.  After all, how could the Board make a decision based on an incomplete folder?

            Apparently the Board had no such compunction and sent him for his induction physical in Chicago.  It was at this juncture that things became weird, even by 60s standards.

            Denny went to the induction physical and quickly demanded to see the Army psychiatrists, saying that he was crazy and not qualified to become a soldier.  Granted the interview, he quickly told the officer that he was insane and could not be inducted but should be given a Section 8 deferral.  The officer commented that insanity was not an automatic disqualification for service, but which might instead qualify him for officer training.  Not to be outdone by a mere psychiatric professional, prior to the interview Denny had smeared peanut butter on his butt and now pulled back the elastic on his boxer shorts and quickly scooped a rather large finger full and plopped it into his open mouth.  The psychiatrist watched him with a mixture of disbelief and horror, quickly admitting defeat and granted him the coveted Section 8 deferral. Denny was a smart and determined individual.  Who knows?  He may actually have been a little crazy, but we all were back then.

            Failing to have any peanut butter handy, I was quickly herded into another long line for a waiting bus to Fort Dix and Basic Training.  Or at least I thought it was for Fort Dix, that being the closest and most logical choice.  My second mistake.  I was now dealing with the Army.  Instead of Fort Dix, we were being sent several hundreds of miles away to Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina for our forming into soldiers. 

            AWOLs were fairly easy to predict in the Company.  In the first few days of Basic Training it became painfully obvious among us those who had never previously been away from hearth and home.  Some boys were heard softly crying at night and, since the daily grind had only just begun, it was assumed that they were homesick for their mother or the security of a warm bed in a comforting home.  They were of course ridiculed by their fellow trainees in either a misguided attempt to help them out of their homesickness, or just because it was funny to those who were not.  A psychiatrist looking for thesis material need not look further.

            They represented easy pickings for the Drill Sergeants who, like a pack of marauding wolves inspecting a herd of deer for an easy kill, descended on the weak and concentrated their early efforts on breaking these “weaklings” as quickly as possible so as not to waste valuable time on them only to have them wash out later in the training cycle.

            The second wave of AWOLs was mostly comprised of those who were not homesick, but instead rebelled against the rigid training regime and The Man’s Authority over their lives.  They had been unable to accept the fact that their lives of careless debauchery and sloth had disappeared and that now they were merely cogs in a machine to which they would either conform or be ground to dust between the gears.  They were labeled as “misfits” and further subdivided as those with “bad attitudes” or just “plain stupid.”

            Perhaps a quick aside should be made at this point as to what opportunities were made available by our gracious hosts to those who either decided not to participate fully in the training regime or who were unable to learn the rather sophisticated technique of shooting somebody when told to do so.  They were offered reassignment from the Company to a specialized training group known only as the dreaded Motivation Battalion.

            Now the Motivation Battalion was located in a separate area from the regular Basic Training Battalion and had its own Company Streets, Mess Hall, and PT area.  Apparently to keep the privileged members of the Motivation Battalion from having to share their facilities with outsiders, these facilities were carefully surrounded with barbed concertina wire.  Funny thing was that the wire on the top of the chain link fences surrounding these areas appeared to be angled inward at the top.

            The Motivation Battalion had its own training schedule and training cycle designed to inspire its trainees to strive to better their performances and attitudes.  In fact, that was its officially stated goal:  “to inspire and motivate by providing close, personal supervision over trainees with additional opportunities and training designed to assist the slow to learn needing additional time not provided in the standard training schedule.”  A Motivation Battalion trainee was given the opportunity to repeat the training cycle ad infinitum and ad nauseam until he finally conformed or died.  It offered quite an incentive that even the slowest among us could comprehend, and we weren’t even in the Motivation Battalion.

            If Basic Training were Hades, then the Motivation Battalion was Tartarus, the lowest part of Hell.  But unlike Tartarus, not all of its inmates were deserving of their fate.  Some were obviously deserving of the additional attention and gave as well as they received.  Blanket parties, a fairly rare occurrence in our Company, reserved for the recalcitrant who the Community decided were being merely stubborn, but capable of reform and needed only a little incentive, were common in the Motivation Battalion.  (A Blanket Party, for those uninitiated among you, is a Community decision of your trainee peers, tacitly approved by the Training Staff, where at night a blanket is quickly and tightly thrown over a sleeping trainee in his bunk holding him from escape or observing who was present, and the proverbial shit is beat out of the held occupant as a reward for, or incentive to refrain from, some specified action they had previously committed, such as, forgetting to lock their locker and obtaining a cancellation of weekend passes for the entire Company.  The Party recipient usually bore their bruises silently as the training staff was deaf to complaints and witnesses could not normally be found as it had been a Community decision rendered in extremis.)

            It was possible for a member of the Motivation Battalion to “graduate” and be reassigned to the regular Basic Training Battalion.  When that did occur the newcomer usually appeared as a hollow, beaten shell with lifeless eyes constantly darting around fearfully.  He was treated with suspicion and returned the same to his new Company members.  Most were sullen and silent, kept to themselves, and never did talk much about their Motivation Battalion experiences.  They bore additional scrutiny from the Drill Sergeants looking for any minor infraction to send them back.  Needless to say they did not hold the Army in high esteem and on that point we all agreed.

            The Drill Sergeants worked to form us from a collection of individuals into a solid, competent, fighting unit acting as a single entity.  At least that was the theory. 

            We had to either march or double-time everywhere.  We ate together, trained together, showered together, slept together (at least we slept in the same barracks.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a good idea back then. The 60s South was not known for its embrace of diversity, as I myself was constantly referred to as “Hey, Alphabet!” or “You goddam Mackerel Snapper,” referring to my religious distain of eating meat on Fridays, although that had been abandoned several years prior. Being Gay was dangerous to say the least, so DADT was a pretty good idea for all concerned.)  We trained repeatedly, that on the command “Take Seats” we would strive to make the sound of a single ass hitting the folding metal chair’s seat, and not the cacophony of fifty separate asses being seated.  We assumed that such detail was important on the battlefield. 

            Shoes and boots were shined to a blinding finish, perhaps in the belief that the sun glinting off our footwear would either stun an enemy into surrender or embarrass them sufficiently to cause them to leave the battlefield, crawling back to their barracks to shine their own boots.  Not content with blinding footwear, we were further instructed to polish the “sacred space” between the rows of bunks in our barracks to a blinding, mirror-like finish as well.  We did so and walked on the floor only in socks or hopped from bunk to bunk to avoid scuffing the floor.  All of this was in vain, however, as we were like Sisyphus where each morning our Drill Sergeant would appear at our barrack’s door with a full trash can which he would promptly empty in the center of our “sacred space” and then proceed to do a spastic St. Vitus’ dance with his boots to scuff up our previous night’s efforts.  This endeared him to us immensely.

            Likewise, our beds were checked to determine if a quarter would bounce on our tightly folded blankets.  If not, our beds would be unceremoniously pulled apart and thrown about the barracks.  One trainee tried to beat the system by using bungee cords to hold his blanket taut, only to be discovered when the Drill Sergeant tried to pull his blanket off and was hit by the entire mattress coming along with the bedding. 

            Later, in Officers’ Candidate School, I learned that these were simple annoyances easily overcome by having a second pair of highly shined shoes and boots hidden in your locker and brought out merely for inspection, while a more practical pair was worn for the day’s activities.  Beds were carefully made, sometimes using bungee cords, but now we brought sleeping bags and slept on the floor beside or under our bunks to avoid having to remake them each morning and thereby saving some extra time in the morning rush.  Survival of the fittest includes the ability to innovate and adapt.

            Company unity was encouraged, and thus began one of our first little rebellions against the oppression of The Man.

            Each morning our PT session ended with a long run that wound around the base, cumulating in a run down “Generals’ Lane” which bore the on-base housing for Colonels and Generals.  We normally reached the terminus of our early morning activity well before the sun even considered rising above the horizon or the milkman began his delivery route.  By this time we were all tired, as well as being sweaty and hungry to boot.  Our anger at seeing our “superiors” still firmly ensconced in their warm beds led to seditious thoughts.  One day these thoughts took form, and quickly erupted among our Company as we ran down Generals’ Lane.  We plotted a small revenge for the next day’s run.  After all we were already in the Army.  What else could they do?  Send us home?

            Now, our standard modus operandi while running was to sing encouraging military marching ditties hoary with the age of yesteryear.  On this occasion, however, we had composed a new song.  The next morning, as we entered Generals’ Lane, we discovered new strength and pulled ourselves up straight, opened our mouths, and shouted at the top of our lungs, in unison with our steps, a new running song,

This last “clap” being made with our hands.

            We continued this new ditty with ever increasing enthusiasm as we ran down Generals’ Lane, noting with pleasure that lights were coming on in the houses as we passed.  Obviously we had developed an appreciative audience with our enthusiastic efforts.

            By the time we reached our barracks, calls had been made, and a new, shortened running route had been proposed, established, and approved, cutting our early morning run so that we no longer had the opportunity to serenade our “superiors” in the early morning mist.

            Following this debacle, a “suggestion” was made for an official Company song that we could sing as we joyfully paraded from barracks to mess hall, mess hall to training field, training field to latrine, etc. that would replace the ditties currently in use that had originated sometime during the Civil War or, perhaps even earlier.  Catchy little tunes like, “You’re stepping out with your Left, You’re Right,” repeated with a chorus of “Sound Off” “One, Two, Three, Four, One, Two, Three, Four.  Break it on down, One, Two, Three, Four.”  A catchy little tune, but still one that some of the slower members found difficult to master, much less to march to in accord with the words.

            One of the more literate of our group offered a tune that he thought would be appropriate.  In a rare case of largesse, the Drill Sergeants agreed to put it to a Company vote, and we quickly rallied the unsuspecting to accept the suggestion as our “official” Company song.  I still think back fondly as how singing that song as we marched along lifted my spirits time and again.  Fifty proud male voices raised to the heavens loudly singing,

            We had adopted the “Internationale” the official song of the International Workers’ Communist Party as our own and took every opportunity to sing it as we marched.  We were indeed the wretched of the Earth and knew what it was like to be oppressed by The Man.  I know it was childish and petty, but so is Basic Training.

            I do not know if diversity was a well thought out concept back then, but our Company encompassed all types of individuals from every walk of life.  It was in this hodge-podge that several strong impressions and conclusions were drawn during our Basic Training about individuals from different regions of this great country of ours.  Not all were favorable, but as we were all armed with M-16s, we were grudgingly accommodating of one another. 

            An Armed Society is a Polite Society.  While academics may debate this truism in their ivy towers, there was no questioning this obvious fact for us down in the trenches.

            We soon fell into socially homogenous groupings.  Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, Mid-westerners, those who could read without simultaneously moving their lips, those that could not do so, and, during the heyday of the draft, those who simply did not read at all. 

            Yessiree, we were a diverse bunch, plucked from the bosoms of our respective homes and tossed together with only one unifying thread:  We all hated the Army. 

            Our hatred bordered on clinical psychosis, and soon crossed over.  It was centered on our Drill Sergeants.  Debates were held as to whether our Drill Sergeants were human or an alien infection allowed by God for Adam’s sin.  Our particular Drill Sergeant was beyond question in the latter category.  An individual for whom the word “brains” was something eaten during breakfast with scrambled eggs.  A conscious thought had never perplexed or even crawled across his broad, un-furrowed brow.

            We were his personal punishment and he ours.  He loathed the ground we walked upon and we returned the feeling, hating even the space he occupied and air he exhaled.  Every opportunity he could, he made our lives miserable under the guise of making us better soldiers. We figured that unless a good soldier was a borderline psychotic capable of snapping at any moment and going postal, it was more likely a reflection of our Drill Sergeant’s personal demons and failure to come to peace with the fact that he was a 50-year-old bully, ruling a kingdom of acne-scarred smart alecks and dumb farm boys.

            Nowadays, an enlightened psychiatrist would have excused his actions as those of a “victim” suffering from Agent Orange or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his three tours in Southeast Asia.  But we knew that he had actually volunteered for and enjoyed his tours in ‘Nam and helping to increase the body count whenever possible.  This was a man who provided the perfect Direct Object for the Verb “to frag”, and it was only the fact that the M-48 fragmentation grenades were tightly controlled that the Sentence was postponed.

            He took our misery as his God-approved goal and purpose in life.  He had no shame and would employ even the weather of a usually hot and humid, bug-infested South Carolina summer to make us even more miserable.  He adjusted our training schedule so that heavy rains preceded our having to traverse the well worn ruts in the training area used to practice crawling under barbed-wire, while live machine gun fire passed over our prone, wiggling torsos.  One trainee during our training cycle became disoriented, or had finally cracked from the pressure, and stood up from his muddy rut in mid-crawl.  Tragically, he was hit by the overhead machine gun fire, normally a good twelve inches above our mud buried heads.  We heard that in the next training cycle the live fire was replaced by blanks, which irritated the training staff to no end and who remarked that the lack of “realism and incentive” in the training would be more dangerous for the trainees destined for the jungles of Viet Nam.  They were always concerned about us.  We never did hear what happened to the unfortunate trainee, but training was cancelled for the remainder of the day and a new hatred of our tormentors grew in us.  We now clearly understood that our own superiors hated us more than any black pajama clad Viet Cong ever could.  We returned the favor.

            So for nearly 8 weeks, this monumental battle between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Right and Wrong, Rationality and “the Army Way” continued, wearing the protagonists to the breaking point.  Some even suggested that we were dead and this was Hell, made worse by the fact we could not remember our obviously very pleasurable sins that condemned us this deep into Lucifer’s domain. Theological niceties such as Good, Evil, God, Satan, no longer mattered to us.  We began living at a very primal level.  They had finally achieved their stated goal of Company unity.  We all hated them with every fiber of our being.  It was now us against them.

            Whenever we now stabbed the dummies with bayonets fixed to the barrels of our M-16s, we fantasized and performed with relish.  However, now I wonder why would a bayonet be needed at the end of a perfectly good M-16?  Why not carry additional magazines or just turn and run like hell before the bayonet became necessary?  No matter, we stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, trying to relieve our growing frustrations.

            It was at this point that the Cat entered the picture.

            Now the Cat had been a fixture of the Company Street and barracks since our arrival.  At first we just ignored it as another poor soul condemned as we were to pay for sins.  Initially, some thought it to be part of the Enemy’s Camp, but we soon learned that our Drill Sergeant hated the Cat almost as much as he hated us.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  The Cat quickly became our friend or at least uneasy ally.  We stole food from the mess hall and left it for the Cat who in turn would carefully spirit it away and provide it with a decent burial in a sandy pit dug in South Carolina’s sandy soil.  In spite of trying to poison the Cat with mess hall detritus, the Cat harbored us no ill will. 

            In fact, the Cat on occasion struck on our behalf by defecating in the Drill Sergeant’s dress shoes.  Now it must be understood by those who have not had the opportunity to experience military life, that mirror-like shinned shoes and boots are essential to the battlefield soldier as noted above.  Thus, the Cat’s actions were more than just a minor annoyance, it was a gauntlet thrown, not tossed, to the ground. 

            Some argued it was the bright shine on the shoes that drew the Cat’s attention and not a desire for revenge, others argued that it was a calculated decision on the part of a wise and cunning feline brain.  Whatever the reasoning or cause, we fully adopted it as a blow from our side against the oppressor.

            Since the Cat could not be easily caught, we bore the full brunt of the Oppressor’s wraith.  Push ups, extra PT, snap inspections, and generally miserable conditions became even worse.  However, we endured these punishments with quiet pride.  Actually,.during Basic Training we were never “punished.”  We were given “extra privileges” not available to others, such as the “privilege” to do PT while others were forced to sleep, another “privilege” of “voluntary” KP duty on our otherwise day off.  Semantics took on a new meaning for me.

            Now it is not known how exactly the idea arose, but soon we were leaving food scraps in the Drill Sergeant’s room in the barracks to encourage the Cat’s incursions into The Man’s Domain. 

            Then something magical happened.  One night while collapsed in our bunks we heard a muffled scream.  The Drill Sergeant burst forth from his room screaming that someone had tried to smother him while he slept.  While we each allowed that pleasant thought to roll around in our minds, we all adamantly denied any such activity.  He claimed that he dreamt he was lying there when his breathing became hard and he felt as if he was being smothered.  He awoke grasping for air and found the room empty but the door open.  He figured that one of his charges had finally snapped and had tried to extract vengeance by smothering him in his sleep.  He finally calmed down and went back into his room muttering about damn gooks sneaking around in the dark, an obvious reference to his days in Korea when he had the opportunity to strangle a sentry using only his hands.  We did not have the courage to ask whether the sentry was one of them or one of ours.  You must understand that while we hated this man so very much, that we were genuinely unable to agree on the nationality of his victim.  The fact that he had strangled a man with his bare hands was beyond question.

            He drove us even harder the following day as if trying to escape from some personal demon by proving himself more demonic than the Demon himself.  He came close to his goal, and convinced many of us that he was indeed Lucifer, but without the style and class.  He moved more trainees to adopt a good life than any preacher we had ever known because we all figured he was going to Hell and no one wanted to have his company for eternity.

            That night we once again collapsed in total exhaustion in our bunks, only to be awakened in the early morning hours by a blood curling scream piercing our dreams of mayhem, our lost homes, and loves. 

            Our Drill Sergeant loomed ominous in the dark, ranting and raging against the unseen assassin demanding he come forth and face him mano-a-mano.  As I rolled over covering my head with my pillow I noticed a tail disappearing through the open window.        Yes, it was the Cat.

            Apparently the Cat had chosen, for some inexplicable reason, to sneak into the Drill Sergeant’s room and curl up on our tormentor’s face while he slept.  The Cat had been so gentle in his approach that it took several minutes for the thick fur to flow into our Drill Sergeant’s rather large nostrils, one of his more alluring features.  Soon the Cat’s fur and nose hairs became a tangled mass impeding the airflow, but, unfortunately, not enough to cut off all airflow.  As his breathing became labored, our Drill Sergeant’s checkered past and questionable crimes came to the fore in his primate, or as some believed, reptilian mind, causing him to believe that Cosmic Justice was being visited on him while he lay helpless.

            O.K., now the Cat became our silent partner in righting the imbalance in the Universe and was immediately adopted by our barracks as a protected Avenging Angel.

            The next day’s schedule and our “special privileges” flew by without a complaint in anticipation of that night’s revenge.

            As we collapsed into our bunks, we fought sleep so as not to miss a moment of the anticipated action.  Time seemed to stop.  Not a bird or insect could be heard outside, and for South Carolina in the summertime, that is quite miraculous in itself.

            Unable to resist Morpheus I fell asleep, but in the early hours I was quickly aroused by the sound of gunfire and screaming.

            It seems that, as if on cue, the Cat had entered the sleeping Drill Sergeant’s room and taken his regular perch.  However, this time when he awoke, the Drill Sergeant saw the disappearing tail and began firing with his trusty 45 normally kept under his pillow.  Now he knew that his enemy was flesh and blood and not beyond his power.  Battle lines had been drawn and the parties were immovable in their hatred for one another. 

            Our Drill Sergeant quickly leapt from his bunk and jammed his feet into his boots, only to find a small gift deposited in each by his disappearing friend.  Enraged, he ran out of the barracks screaming and firing round after round at the Cat while feeling his toes squish in his boots.  We could hear the shots recede into the distance until finally stopping and silence descended.

            We all lay there in our bunks wide awake, fearful of moving, hopefully expectant, but of what we were unsure.  The MPs arrived about an hour after the commotion had begun (remember when seconds count, the authorities are only minutes away) and quickly rousted us from our bunks with their truncheons for questioning, apparently in an attempt to forestall a Communist invasion right here in South Carolina of which we just might be the vanguard.  They soon left in disgust to look for our missing Drill Sergeant.

             Later that day, we were met by a new Drill Sergeant who, at first glance at least, appeared to be from an adjacent limb of the primate tree as some of our barrack mates.  Things continued looking up when our old Drill Sergeant failed to appear at the end of the day, and the new one moved in.

            Later, we were mustered out in formation and informed that our old Drill Sergeant had been given some leave time to “sort out some personal issues” and that we had a new Drill Sergeant.  Clearly, this was Official Army talk for “he went bat shit and won’t be coming back.” 

            When the MPs had finally found him, he had fallen into a latrine disposal pit, screaming incoherently and shooting at imaginary rats and other less identifiable objects in the pit.  It took 4 MPs to extract him and another two to subdue him with truncheons once extracted.  (Some suggested that having to extract a belligerent and armed Drill Sergeant from a latrine pit in the middle of the night may have contributed to the use of excessive truncheon force during the extraction and post-extraction process.  No witnesses came forth, and the MPs stank so badly that the matter was quickly dropped.)

            When found, our Drill Sergeant had been shouting about hidden Cat assassins trying to smother him in the dark.  When later questioned about his claims, we all innocently denied any knowledge of “hidden assassins,” silently promising to go to confession at the next opportunity.

            Things were now better, not only with a new Drill Sergeant, but the 8 weeks of Basic Training were almost over and a new wave of innocents was arriving to divert attention from us.  We kept our heads low, mouths shut, and waited for our emancipation from Basic Training.

            It was at this time that I made one of the few vows that I ever made in my life.  I swore that I would make both the government and military sorry for what they had done to me.  Years later, after graduating Officer Candidate School (that is worth another story in itself), and taking a government job in Washington, (I could tell you about that, but then I would have to kill you), I made good my vow.  But those are other stories best reserved for another time.

            In the meantime, we adopted the Cat as our barracks mascot and began leaving small gifts for him, all to the obvious puzzlement of our new Drill Sergeant. 

            So what got me through those 8 weeks?  A sense of humor, a Cat, and knowing that he hated that Cat.

            The wave of memories had passed me by, and once again I became aware of my surroundings. The sun was now high in the sky and birds were chirping in the nearby trees.  I was still here and Life was still good.

            I have been advised by counsel that in this litigious society with so many persnickety people about, a legal disclaimer for liability purposes should be added concerning the characters, names, and places appearing above.  Having paid an unconscionable amount of money for such obvious advice, I would like to state formally that the characters, names, and places appearing above are both real and properly identified.  It is only my name that has been changed for obvious reasons.  Likewise, in an effort to forestall any and all complaints, I additionally hereby formally deny any and all involvement in whatever I am being accused of, due to the fact that I didn’t do it and wasn’t even there at whatever time, whatever I am being accused of, was done.  At least that is my story and I’m sticking to it.

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