Chapter 1

Every person has a story, I reckon, and each of those stories have a starting point. My name is Jody Jamison, this is my story, and here is where I choose to start.

I am a country boy, born and raised in South Georgia. I lived with my paternal grandmother, Alice Jamison, because my mother died when I was seven and my father couldn’t, or wouldn’t, raise me. Instead he moved out to California to work in an aircraft factory and he started another family. Five years later, just after my twelfth birthday, he invited me to join his new wife and two daughters. I flat out refused to go live with them because I wasn’t about to leave my grandmother. My father was Granny’s only son and she really loved him. I know she cried some because she had grandchildren she’d never met and a son who treated her so cavalierly.

I firmly believed Granny was about the finest person who ever drew a breath. Most everyone who ever met her felt the same way. Granny was a widow. Her husband died in a work accident 1957. My grandfather was a brakeman for the Georgia Southern Railroad. He worked at the big rail yard in Valdosta. He was killed in a freak accident when incorrectly secured thousand pound reels of telephone cable tumbled off a flat car and onto him as he operated a rail switch.

Granny and I survived on her widow’s pension and a few dollars she earned making quilts and taking in sewing for folks. We raised some chickens and Granny and I planted and tended a nice sized side lot garden. Granny had a green thumb so we always had fresh or canned vegetables year round. When I turned thirteen I started working during the summer on a couple of neighboring tobacco farms. If you ever want to know what hot was really like, spend an August day cropping tobacco in the South Georgia sun.

Time marched on and soon enough I was sixteen, almost seventeen, and a senior in high school. I was only in high school because my grandmother insisted on it. If I had my way I’d be working a full time job so Granny’s life would be better. I got passing grades in school. I wasn’t stupid, just apathetic. If a subject interested me, I did okay in it, if not, I did just enough to squeak by. I was the classic underachiever; never living up to my potential. I don’t think I ever received a report card that didn’t include: ‘Jody is capable of doing much better work.’ None of that bothered me much.

Then a couple of weeks into the school year Megan Stedman sat down next to me in the lunchroom. I was just as shocked as the rest of the Robert E. Lee High School’s student body. Megan was pretty and popular. She was the sweet “girl-next-door.” She taught Sunday school and sang in the church choir. At school, she was on the pep squad and the A-B honor roll. Everyone loved her. Unsure of her intent, I sat there like a lump, pretending my bologna sandwich was the focus of my universe.

“Ignoring me is not going to work, Jody Jamison,” she said primly.

“I’m not ignoring you Megan Stedman, I just don’t have anything to say. But how can I help you?” I asked curtly.

She regarded me steadily with those indescribably deep blue eyes for a second, then smiled warmly.

“That’s better. Do you realize that we’ve been in the same English class for three weeks, and those are the first words you’ve ever said to me? That’s okay, though, because we’re talking now.”

Well, actually Megan was doing all the talking, but I was suddenly focused on her every word. It took me months to actually believe that Megan really was attracted to me, but it only took me a few seconds to fall in love with her. Megan’s story, to anyone who wants to hear it, is that when she saw me sitting there that day, something told her that I was someone she’d like to know better. Since she knew it was unlikely I’d ever approach her, she took matters in her own hands.

We ended up becoming high school sweethearts, and we were the couple that no one could understand being together. Megan didn’t try to change me, but her presence in my life did move me more toward what people considered normal. Our relationship worked then, and works now, because Megan keeps us on the right path. I don’t mean that she runs my life or anything like that. I just have enough common sense to leave anything requiring interpersonal skills up to her. I can’t think of a single thing she ever suggested that wasn’t good for me in the long run.

Megan’s parents weren’t as convinced of my potential as Megan was. Still, they trusted their daughter and let us date. I liked her folks, although her father intimidated the crap out of me. Looking back on it, I figured out that was his intent. Megan’s dad was a Georgia State Police captain. Every time I walked in the Stedmans’ front door, the first thing I saw was the captain’s Sam Brown belt hanging on the coat rack. Tucked in the holster of his belt was this huge stainless steel Colt Python 357 Magnum revolver. Stedman would always make a point of glancing at that pistol when he briefed me on when to have Megan home, or what he considered good conduct on my part. He never had a problem making his point to me.

Granny loved Megan from the first time I introduced them. The two of them seem to have some ESP connection when it comes to me. Granny would pick out a shirt for me, saying that Megan would like it, and Megan would rave about the shirt when I wore it. Things like that happened too often to be a coincidence. Megan’s parents even treated me better after they met Granny Alice.

With my girlfriend and my grandmother on the case I gradually started interacting with people instead of having my nose stuck in a science fiction novel. I even went to the prom and danced if you can believe that. I could dance at the prom because over Easter break my cousin Sharon came down from Warner Robbins with her folks to spend Easter with Granny. Sharon’s mama was my father’s sister. As a surprise for Megan, Granny asked Sharon to teach my clumsy butt to dance. Sharon was the person for the job because she was good enough to dance on American Bandstand.

We graduated from high school in June of 1963, but we had to wait until I turned eighteen in November before we could marry. By then, I was working for the Georgia Power Company as an apprentice lineman. I scored high on the power company’s aptitude test and Megan’s dad put in a good word for me so they hired me, even though I was only seventeen. With a steady job I was able to relieve Granny of some of her financial burden even though she insisted she didn’t need the help.

On our wedding night, Megan Claire and Jody Lee Jamison invented making love. Oh sure, folks before us were doing something like it, but it was impossible for anyone to have ever done anything that felt as good or was as intense as when we did it. We were virgins when we tumbled into bed in our motel room in Palmdale, Florida, but thanks to a lot of reading and fooling around, we had a very good idea of what it took to remedy that. Had it not been for the very sweet woman who owned the small beach-front motel worrying about us, we probably would have stayed in our room making love until we starved to death.

The January after our wedding, Megan started college at Valdosta State. I had promised her parents that I would not prevent her from going to college, since they were willing to pay her tuition. We rented a little place in town and settled into married bliss. I worked, she went to school, and we were incredibly happy.

Megan excelled in college, attended class year round and graduated in December of 1966. At about the same time, I completed the apprenticeship program with 600 hours of classroom instruction plus 6000 hours of work experience, and received my journeyman’s card from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Instead of an apprentice lineman, I was now a full fledged transmission line electrician and making good money. I wasn’t crazy about my job, but I worked hard at it to put food on the table, a roof over my wife’s pretty brunette head and to help out my grandmother. Megan’s degree was in Early Childhood Education. There was a shortage of teachers then, so she had job offers even before she graduated.

We had the world by the tail and our lives looked set. We were even talking about starting a family, when a little thing named Vietnam reared its ugly head. In July, my draft status changed and I lost my marriage exemption. The Selective Service Board switched to war time criteria so that married men were now eligible for the draft. My number in the December, 1966 draft lottery was 33, so it was only a matter of time before I received my induction notice.

After a long heart to heart talk with my wife, and with some advice from my father-in-law, I visited the Army Recruiting Station and signed up. Because of my responsibilities, the recruiter pushed my enlistment date out six weeks. My reasons for enlisting were more practical than patriotic, as I felt that by enlisting, I’d have a better chance of controlling the duty I ended up with. I was not trying to avoid combat duty, but if I ended up in a front line unit, I wanted to be something besides cannon fodder. I chose the Army because the sergeant at the recruiting station was honest and straight forward, and that impressed the hell out of me. I realize that’s not the greatest of reasons for a decision that big, but it was reason enough for me.

I told my employer I’d enlisted and gave my notice on the day after I enlisted. He offered to waive the two week notice requirement in our union contract but I didn’t take him up on it because Megan’s school didn’t break for summer for fifteen more days. The business agent down at the union hall told me I would continue to earn seniority while I was in the Army, as long as I kept my dues current. I doubted I would but I didn’t tell him that.

For the four weeks between enlisting and shipping out, Megan and I spent every moment together. The situation made our relationship stronger instead of putting stress on it. That’s mostly Megan’s fault, because she refused to have any negative thoughts about what I was doing. When it came to backing her man, Megan Jamison was Grizzly Bear fierce. As for me, there wasn’t a hound dog in South Georgia half as loyal.

Megan and Granny drove me down to the Greyhound station at noon on July fifth. All of us trying to be brave for each other. Megan and I clung together desperately as the bus’s driver and passengers waited patiently for me to board.

Four hours later I was in Jacksonville. I spent the night at a contract hotel and at six the following morning, I was on a dark blue Navy bus headed to the Military Enlistment Processing Station. I spent the early morning taking the vocational aptitude test. In the afternoon, it was the physical exam, followed by a session with the guidance counselor. The guidance sergeant looked at the results of the tests and glanced up at me.

“These are some of the highest ASVAB scores I’ve seen in quite a while, Jamison. You are qualified for any job in the Army. A month ago, I could have offered you a choice of twenty different career fields, but today that’s down to three. So what’ll it be, Jody ... Infantry, Artillery, or Armor?”

The sergeant handed me a job description of all three and I quickly eliminated humping cannon shells or being cooped up in a tank.

’So much for enlisting to get a better job,’ I thought, as I signed on the dotted line for a three year hitch as a light weapons infantryman.

I took the oath of enlistment and was herded with about fifty other guys out to a waiting Continental Trailways chartered bus. A sergeant took roll call and when he was satisfied everyone was on board, we hit the road in a cloud of black diesel smoke. We stopped at a road side HoJos in Waycross, Georgia, for supper, then motored through the night westward to Fort Benning, Georgia.

I made acquaintance with a few of the men on the bus as we rolled through the Georgia night. We were a Heinz 57 group of blacks, whites, rich, poor, volunteers and draftees. Most of the fellows on that bus ended up in the same basic training company as me. About a quarter of them were in my platoon.

As soon as I departed for basic training, Megan moved our possessions into storage, and she moved herself back home with her parents. She did that so we could cut down on our expenses and her parents were thrilled with having her home. Megan and I were savers. We squeezed our money tightly so we’d have some of it for the future. I took a horrendous pay cut but I lived frugally and was able to send some money to my grandmother every month.

On the day after Labor Day, Megan started teaching second grade at the Azalea Avenue Elementary School near her parents house in Valdosta. While I was in training, Megan and I wrote each other at least twice a week. I called home every Sunday evening. We missed each other so badly that it physically hurt.

During basic training, I discovered that I had an aptitude for the military and that I actually enjoyed being in it. I was a squad leader after a week and the Platoon Guide after two. The Platoon Guide was the trainee acting sergeant in charge of the platoon when the drill sergeants weren’t around. I was honor graduate for my company and was promoted to Private PV2.

Megan drove up from Valdosta for my graduation. My first sergeant, a WWII veteran named John J. Stubbs, arranged for me to spend the night with Megan before I shipped out to Fort Gordon, Georgia for Infantry Advanced Individual Training. My sweet and friendly wife had some sort of magical ability that turned gruff old noncoms into reasonable human beings.

Oh yeah, and while I was in basic training, I volunteered for jump school, mainly because my drill sergeant was a paratrooper, and he was cool as hell. Sergeant First Class Dahl convinced me that a leg (a non-airborne soldier) was the lowest form of life in the universe.

“I’d rather have a whore for a sister, than a leg for a brother,” he once told me.

The Infantry Training Brigade at Fort Gordon was located in an isolated section of the post named Camp Crocket. Camp Crocket was a collection of Quonset huts set in company rows. Each Quonset hut housed half a platoon. There were two battalions in the brigade and four companies in each battalion. Every week, one company started training and one company graduated. Camp Crocket was unique, in that every soldier in training there was destined for jump school and then Vietnam.

We infantry guys were persona non grata around Fort Gordon proper, so we were confined to Camp Crocket for all eight weeks we were there. We weren’t even allowed to go to church, instead some chaplain held a nondenominational service in our mess hall.

With no distractions, I applied myself conscientiously to my training, ever heedful of the cadres’ oft-repeated maxim: “If you don’t learn this, you will die in Vietnam.”

I made a radical change of plans during the third week of AIT. It came about because five of us from my company were called to the dayroom to receive a pitch from a tandem of Special Forces recruiters. Both men were dressed in dress greens, their trouser legs bloused into the top of spit-shined Cochran paratrooper boots, and their green berets worn at a rakish angle. The senior of the two men, a Sergeant First Class named McLemore, sported a chest full of awards and decorations and a hook where his left hand should have been. He looked us over for a minute and heaved a disappointed sigh.

“Is this all of them?” McLemore asked the drill sergeant who had rounded us up.

The sergeant nodded affirmatively and McLemore turned his attention back to us.

“I was hoping for a better turn out, but I guess you five are it for tonight. You are here because of your test scores, physical ability and the recommendation of your company cadre. I’m not here to sell you anything, so if at any point you want to leave, don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

Two guys took him up on the offer and beat feet. McLemore watched them go, then turned back to the three of us remaining. He gave us a wolfish smile and started talking again.

“I am not going to blow smoke up your ass with some rah-rah speech, that’s not our style. What I am going to do is offer you the opportunity to attempt something that only five percent of those who try actually accomplish...”

There was more, but I think you get the drift. In the end, one other guy and I ended up taking the five hour Special Forces written test the following Sunday afternoon. The test was the most difficult I’d ever seen, because it did not test anything I had ever learned. Instead, it tested problem-solving ability and adaptability to strange situations. I was proud as hell I passed the test, even if it was by only the slightest of margins.

I told Megan about volunteering for Special Forces the same Sunday night that I took the test. Meggie didn’t know beans about the green berets, but she told me to go for it anyway. We were both that way about supporting one another. I learned a lot in the Army, but I learned the concept of unstinting loyalty from my wife. Megan stood by me regardless of whether I was right, wrong or indifferent.

In week four of AIT, I competed for, and won, Brigade Soldier of the Quarter. In week five, I competed for the same award at post level. At the post level, I competed against soldiers from the other training units at Fort Gordon, namely the pukes from the Signal School and the pretty-boy prima donnas from the Military Police School. To everyone’s surprise, my own especially, I won. I was the first Camp Crocket soldier to ever win the award. The Brigade Commander was happy enough with me that I was promoted to Private First Class. He also gave me a letter of recommendation for Officer Candidate School. I was proud as hell sewing those mosquito wings onto my uniform sleeves, but I shrugged off the idea of OCS.

Three quarters of the way through AIT, we stopped training and were sent home for Christmas. Just like that, every trainee on the base was moved out on the seventeenth and eighteenth of December, to return to duty on the fourth of January. It was a huge cluster-fuck the Army called Exodus. Each trainee received a round trip ticket and a flying-fifty (fifty dollar advance pay), then away we went. Thank God all I had to do was travel a hundred and fifty miles.

Megan started her two week Christmas school holiday on the twenty-second. For those two weeks, I don’t think we were ever further than a few inches apart. My in-laws were great to me, even though I think Megan and I embarrassed them with our public displays of affection. We split the holidays between their house and Granny Jamison’s place, just to give them a break. Granny made sure we had plenty of time to fool around when we stayed with her, then teased us unmercifully about it.

I caught a bus from the Greyhound Station on Sunday morning, January Second, 1966. I came back to Camp Crocket a day early so I could make sure my platoon was squared away when training started Tuesday morning. I hadn’t been ordered to return early, but as the Platoon Guide, I figured it was my job to do, regardless.

We spent our final full week of AIT on a field training exercise (FTX) that ended in a live fire assault on a pretend Vietcong camp. Then we spent four days squaring away our gear and the company’s equipment for the next bunch to use.

On Wednesday, we had an early morning dress greens inspection, then a brief graduation ceremony. It was mid-week and I’d just been home, so Megan didn’t make the trip. As soon as the graduation ended, we lined up alphabetically outside the dayroom to receive our orders and another advance on our pay.

Pay had been a hot topic for our evening bitch sessions in the barracks lately when we found out the price of our tickets home for Christmas had been collected from our January pay. It was pretty comical when we all had to stand in the pay line for an hour just so they could hand us a pay voucher that was stamped “No Pay Due.” A private made $90.60 a month back then, and a PV2 made $99.10. Out of that princely sum, Uncle Sam took taxes, social security, laundry and the dollar a month the first sergeant coerced us into donating to the Army Emergency Relief and Red Cross, so we all started the new year owing the Army money. Some wag observed that it was all a plot to keep us in the Army longer.

As soon as Mort Adams, the first man in line, stepped out of the orderly room, the suspense was over for everyone in the company, except two of us. Mort’s orders cleared up any confusion he might have had as to what he was doing for the next fifteen months. It was jump school, a thirty day leave, then assignment to the 173d Parachute Infantry Regiment, Republic of Vietnam.

“At least we are staying together, boys, because Top told me that everyone’s orders are the same, except for Jody and Steve’s,” Mort said.

I made some friends there at Camp Crocket, but they were all transitory. By that I mean after jump school, they were all going in a different direction than I was. The exception to that rule was Steve Pleturski, the other guy who signed up for Special Forces. Steve and I decided to stick together throughout our training to help each other out. He ended up becoming the best friend I ever had.

Pleturski was about my polar opposite when it came to backgrounds, personalities and looks. He was loud, outgoing, and boisterous to my reserved and quiet. While I worked hard at being a good soldier, Steve did it effortlessly. I am a little taller than average at five-eleven and weight one-eighty. Steve was six-two, two-ten. I have brown hair and eyes. Steve’s hair was a sandy blonde and his eyes a porcelain blue. I was nondescript looking, I thought; while he was handsome, with a ready smile that drew women to him like bees to pollen. Steve was a Yankee from the big city of Chicago while I was a country boy from the Deep South.

As soon as I finished drawing my advanced pay, the first sergeant pulled me aside and took me to the company commander’s office. I reported to the CO, he returned my salute, and then nodded to the first shirt. Top moved up next to my right side and whipped out a knife about the size of a machete.

“I’m sorry Jamison, but there seems to have been some problem with your promotion to PFC,” the CO said as the first sergeant sawed my stripe off with that pig sticker.

I gulped but kept my face as impassive as I could.

“Yes, Sir,” I replied.

“So you won’t need those skeeter wings any more, I’m afraid,” the captain said. Then he paused for a few seconds as the top kick moved to my left side and sliced off that stripe. Then he continued, “But you will need these.”

I looked on uncomprehendingly as he handed the first sergeant a set of corporal chevrons. The first sergeant took up the narrative.

“The top ten percent of graduating trainees get promoted and since you were our number one graduate, you were in that number. The problem was the earlier promotion you received for Soldier of the Quarter. I talked to the Brigade Sergeant Major about it and we agreed that you deserved E4. The sergeant major called his counterpart at the jump school at Fort Benning and worked out making you a corporal until you graduate the Airborne Course and depart Benning. During the first week there, when the new arrivals provide KPs and details for the students in training, you will be the noncommissioned officer in charge of our troopers. When you leave Benning you will be laterally appointed a spec four.”

A corporal and specialist four were the same pay grade, the difference in the ranks was that a corporal held a leadership position. I almost soiled my skivvies when the first sergeant pinned the new stripes to my sleeve.

Chapter 2

Jump School was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I think the Army outdid itself in selecting the toughest and meanest SOBs alive to fill the ranks of the Airborne Course cadre. From the minute I arrived, until the day I left, those guys were up my ass like a pine cone suppository. My commanding officer and first sergeant back at Camp Crocket hadn’t done me any favors by making me a corporal, because the promotion made me the senior man in my class during ‘detail week.’ As such, the cadre expected me to keep track of the two hundred plus guys that had reported in with me.

During that week, we performed all the duties required to keep the school operating so the airborne students didn’t miss any training. We did KP, drove trucks and pulled guard duty or anything else that needed doing. I must have done a million push-ups that week, as I was held responsible for every fuck up right along with the sad sack who did the deed. If Joe Shit the Rag Man was late for KP, Corporal Jody ended up right beside him pushing Georgia. The cadre really enjoyed raking a new corporal over the coals.

Army officers and NCOs, plus men from the other services, started arriving on Thursday of that week. Their arrival didn’t mean much to me though, because until Sunday evening, I was still nominally in charge of the slugs in the enlisted men’s barracks. We were the low men on the totem pole until Monday morning when training started and the next bunch took over the details. I was thankful when a Captain assumed the position of class leader and I dropped down to squad leader. Ten men were much easier to keep track of than more than two hundred.

The technical aspect of the training we received was not that challenging, but the physical training and harassment made up for that lack in spades. From the first formation until graduation, we ran everywhere we went. Woe be unto your non-airborne qualified ass if some cadre sergeant caught you walking. If we weren’t running it was because some cadre sergeant had us in the front leaning rest position doing push-ups.

“Drop and give me twenty,” was the jump school mantra.

The first week of actual training was called Ground Week. During Ground Week, we learned all about the brand new model T-10 parachute, how to properly exit the door of an aircraft in flight, how to steer the parachute and how to do a parachute landing fall (PLF) once our sorry asses hit the ground. Ground week was home of the thirty-four foot mock door tower. At the thirty-four foot tower we practiced and were graded on our exit technique. You jumped out the door wearing a parachute harness hooked to a cable that was anchored on a berm two hundred feet away. An instructor unhooked you when you hit the berm then you double timed back to the tower to be critiqued by one of the cadre.

If the instructor didn’t like your exit, He made you a rope man. The rope man had the job of pulling the trolley assembly and harness back to the tower. It was hard as hell getting the assembly close enough to the door so the instructor didn’t have to lean out to grab it.

I had nightmares for a week about someone screaming, “Take up the slack, rope man, then drop and give me fifty.”

The second week was Tower Week, where our lives revolved around the two hundred and fifty foot parachute towers that were the most prominent landmark on Fort Benning. The three towers were spaced a couple of hundred yards apart in the middle of a huge field. Each tower had four arms sprouting out of their top like a giant plus sign. The tower gave us would be troopers a chance to fall to earth under a deployed canopy without having to actually jump out of a plane.

The tower had my undivided attention because they put me in a parachute harness, hooked the deployed canopy into a cup-shaped metal frame work and hoisted me up dangling under the frame. When the framework reached the top of the tower, they left me hanging there for what seemed like hours before releasing me. Two hundred and fifty feet was a long way down for a country boy who’d never been in a building taller than three stories.

The cadre sergeant in charge of our platoon during Tower Week was particularly adept at making us miserable. His name was Horace Bechtel, and he had been a paratrooper since there had been an airborne. Sergeant First Class Bechtel was small, wiry and mean as a water moccasin. He set the tone for week two when we formed up for PT on Monday morning.

“I don’t like my Mama because she’s a leg,” he said. “So you can bet I don’t like none of your candy asses from the get go. Do us both a favor and quit now, so I don’t have to run you off.”

After we did fifteen repetitions of the daily dozen, Bechtel formed us up for our morning run. I was pretty happy about him leading the run, because he looked as if he was about a hundred years old. I figured he’d be lucky to make it half way around the two mile track that circled the towers. I changed my tune when we started our second lap and he looked fresh as a daisy while running backwards, grinning evilly and singing cadence. By the time he double-timed us over to the mess hall, we were dog tired and eight guys had quit, all before six-thirty in the morning.

I sucked it up and gutted it out, which is pretty much the only way you can make it through those first two weeks. I heard all kinds of rationales for the harassment we had heaped on us, but I never have figured out if all the bullshit actually made us better soldiers.

The third week of the Airborne Course is Jump Week. During that last week, every trooper has to make five jumps, including one with combat equipment. We jumped from twin engine, twin tail-boomed C-119 cargo planes. The C-119 was an excellent jump platform because there was no fuselage behind the troop doors to bang into if your exit was weak. My first jump was also my first flight in an airplane, so I was more nervous about taking off in the plane than I was about jumping out of it. As it happened, I took off in fifteen airplanes before I ever landed in one.

For our final jump, we didn’t actually use combat equipment; instead, the Weapons & Individual Equipment Containers we jumped were pre-made around a rectangular ammo crate with a couple of sand bags in it. The WEIC (wick) container was an OD (olive drab) canvass affair that would hold about a hundred pounds of equipment. The containers hooked to the same ‘D’ rings on the parachute harness that the reserve parachute fastened to. The WEIC had a big red knob at the top that when pulled, released the container so that it hung beneath you on a fifteen foot lowering line. The container was uncomfortable to wear and seemed to weigh a ton by the time we waddled onto the airplane.

All my jumps were successful, in that I walked away from each of them. In fact, we only had a couple of casualties during the week, both broken legs from bad PLFs. For me, jumping out of an airplane in flight was neither exciting nor scary. I think it’s that way for most guys, because you are so focused on doing what you were taught, you don’t have time to think about anything else. Of course, after riding around in the cramped and bucking plane wearing all that heavy uncomfortable gear made the task of unassing the plane something to look forward to.

We had our graduation from the Airborne Course right on the drop zone after our fifth jump. We formed up as soon as everyone was on the ground and the commander of the course pinned our silver parachutist badges to our shirts. I thought it was cool as hell that we didn’t have to put on our class ‘A’s and march around like we did in basic and AIT.

I was not the honor grad for our class. That title went to a West Point lieutenant who thought he was Audie Murphy reincarnated. That a shave tail from West Point was top man in our class pissed off SFC Bechtel even worse than usual. For some reason, Bechtel hated West Pointers. He subtly let that fact be known during the wing pinning ceremony.

Bechtel’s job during graduation was to follow behind the commander and give each of us the two clips that held the badge to our shirts. He was third in line behind the commander and the course sergeant major. When it was his turn to drop the clips in the lieutenant’s hand, Bechtel stopped and acted as if he was straightening the wings on the man’s shirt. In reality, he used his thumbs to push the sharp points of the pins into the hapless LTs skin. When the second louie yelped in pain, Bechtel gave him his most evil grin.

“Oops, sorry about that, Sir,” he said insincerely.

Megan did not attend the graduation. She wanted to, but I nixed the idea, because I didn’t want her sitting in the bleachers if I had a malfunction and splattered myself across the DZ. I called Megan every night we jumped that week to let her know I was alright, so she wouldn’t worry.

We had the rest of Friday and all of Saturday to get our shit together and clean the barracks before we moved out Sunday morning. Except for a weekly supervised trip to the PX, that day and a half was our only time off for the four weeks we’d spent at Benning. My buddy Steve and I hot-footed it over to the PX as soon as we returned from the DZ. We each bought a pair of the coveted Cochran Jump Boots and glider patches to sew onto our flat garrison caps. The glider patch was a two inch round patch with a parachute and a WWII assault glider embroidered on it.

Back at the barracks, we spit shined our new boots and sewed the glider patches on our caps. Steve sewed a silver dollar behind his glider patch, because some cadre sergeant told him it was a paratrooper tradition. The sergeant said that everyone knew you were a real trooper when you threw your hat on the bar and that dollar clanged. I didn’t follow suit, because I didn’t trust the source of the information. For all I knew, we’d get busted to private for unauthorized equipment or some such during our first inspection as paratroopers in class A’s.

When our boots were like glass and our caps squared away, we put on our summer greens and headed to town. Steve was taking me bar hopping for the first time in my life. Steve could not believe that I had never been ‘pub crawling’ as he called it, but I wasn’t much of a drinker and spent all of my time with my wife. He said taking the little lady out once a week didn’t count, even though Megan and I sometimes went to a tavern for a couple of beers.

We were a couple of sharp looking soldiers with our new jump wings pinned to the left breast of our green jackets above our National Defense Service Medals, and our trouser legs bloused into the top of our spit shined jump boots. We also wore our blue infantry fourragère looped over our left shoulder to let everyone know we were proud airborne infantrymen.

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We weren’t the only newly minted paratroopers looking for a beer that night, but most of our classmates weren’t twenty-one, so they could only drink on post at the EM Club. I was twenty-two and Steve was a year older than I was.

We caught the post shuttle bus to the front gate and walked over to the taxicab stand right outside the gate. We hopped into the first cab in line. The cab driver looked up at us in the read view mirror.

“Where to, Gents?” he asked.

“Somewhere with hot women and cold beer,” Steve replied.

The driver barked out a laugh and shifted the cab into gear.

“I know just the place,” the cabbie chortled.

The place he knew was across the Chattahoochee River in Phenix City, Alabama. I was a little nervous, because Phenix City had a bad reputation even down in Valdosta. According to what I’d heard, anything went in Phenix City, including gambling and prostitution. In nineteen forty when George Patton commanded Fort Benning, he threatened to take his tanks across the river and level the place. In nineteen fifty-five, the governor of Alabama had to call in the National Guard to clean up the town. After the guardsmen departed, Phenix City wasn’t as bad, but it was still a rough and tumble town.

The cabbie turned down a street right over the bridge and slid to a stop in front of a neon sign proclaiming a nondescript honky-tonk named the Drop Zone Lounge. I paid the cab driver, and over Steve’s objections, asked him to come back for us in a couple of hours.

The lounge was everything Steve had asked for and then some. We were no sooner through the door, when two women grabbed our arms and dragged us to a table. The women were Korean and spoke a fractured version of English that Steve seemed to understand perfectly. The Drop Zone had about twenty tables in it, and about half of those were occupied by a pair of bar girls. It cost five dollars an hour to sit at one of the tables with them. In addition, you were expected to buy them over priced drinks and pay them a dollar for dancing with you.

Even if I hadn’t been married, I was too frugal to spend my money that way. Steve paid for the table and I reluctantly ponied up a five spot so ‘Kim,’ the bar girl who attached herself to me, could order a ‘champagne cocktail’ for herself, and a beer for me. Steve and I watched as the women went to the far end of the bar to get our drinks. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the bartender serving them was SFC Bechtel in civilian clothes. I pointed him out to Steve.

“That evil little son-of-a-bitch won’t even let us drink in peace,” he carped indignantly.

I laughed and stood up.

“I’m going to go say hello to him. I figure he’ll talk to me now that I’m not a leg anymore,” I said.

Steve waved his hand and grunted his acknowledgment but stayed in his seat. He wanted nothing to do with the man who had dogged his ass so hard for a week. I was hoping like hell that Bechtel was in the mood to talk so I could make my escape from the table.

It turned out that Bechtel was a completely different person away from his duties at jump school. He pulled two draft beers from the tap and called out something in Korean to a young woman who was also tending bar. She smiled and nodded as he joined me on the other side of the bar.

“You must have a good boss if you can stop work and have a beer with your patrons,” I remarked.

He laughed and took a big gulp of his Pabst Blue Ribbon draft.

“That’s my old lady over there. We bought this place six months ago, but she runs it, mostly. I’ll retire and help her more when the Army tries to send me somewhere else. The women out there are all Korean like her, and are, or once were, married to GIs from Fort Benning. By ten o’clock, this place will be filled with horny GIs looking to get lucky. For the right price, some of them will, but we don’t have a part in that. We run an honest place here, and I look out for soldiers.”

I bought the next round and asked him about the three small gold stars I’d noticed on his jump wings. He told me they were for combat jumps he made in World War Two and Korea. He had some fascinating stories of those olden days that were funny as hell. For my part, I told him about Megan and how much in love we were. He toasted me on that and said it was the same for him and his Susie.

“I met her when I was stationed over there in fifty-eight. She was a working girl and a lot younger than me, but somehow we clicked and here we are. She is one forever more smart woman when it comes to a dollar, so I figure in a couple of years we’ll be right well off.”

He dug out his wallet and proudly showed me a picture of a couple of cute kids.

“Hell, we even have a couple of crumb snatchers at home.”

I was in uncharted territory when Susie slid the third frosty mug across the bar to me, because until then, two beers had been my limit. I nursed it as we talked for another half hour. I carried that same beer with me back to Steve’s table when the crowd picked up enough that Bechtel had to go back to work.

Steve had solved my problem with the bar girls by deciding that he could handle them both. Since Steve had plenty of money, the women were all for it. They had moved their chairs so they were each snuggled up to him and he had an arm over each of their shoulders. He smirked at me when I sat down across from him.

“If you snooze, you lose, Buddy,” he said jovially.

I toasted him with my raised half-finished mug of beer.

“That’s the story of my life,” I said mock sadly. “But remember what got you here before you do anything stupid.”

Steve Pleturski was a heck of a guy and a good soldier. But, had he not been caught messing around with the wife of one of his father’s business associates, he’d still be a college student in Chicago. Steve was caught in the man’s bed, naked as a jaybird. Made it hard to claim he was there to clean the pool. When the angry husband crashed through the door armed with a Ben Hogan signature pitching wedge, Steve dove out the window - the second floor window. Steve claimed that the twenty foot drop to the ground is what convinced him to become a paratrooper so he’d be trained if it ever happened again.

To save the family embarrassment - and Steve’s head from becoming a driving range - his sister drove him to the recruiting office over in Jolliet. Thankfully, his family was rich, so Steve always had plenty of money, which made his self imposed exile easier to take.

The woman Steve was caught with turned out to hold the family purse strings, so nothing happened to her. In fact, she was still hot for young Steve’s body and made no bones about it. She sent him outrageously sexy letters and glossy nude pictures of herself in suggestive poses that he had taped to the inside of his locker’s door, for all of us to enjoy.

Steve caught my meaning. He shrugged and grinned as he held up both girls’ left hand, as if the absence of a ring meant something.

“They are single,” he said, “and small enough that I figure I’ll need both of them.”

I sat with Steve and his new friends, Kim and Lee, until the taxi driver came back for us. I did finish my third beer by then, and Steve stood me my fourth. It sat untouched on the table in front of me. Steve declined to go back to Benning with me. Instead, he hugged the girls tighter and told me he’d see me tomorrow. He’d slammed down about twice as much brew as me, but it didn’t seem to faze him. I had a last word with Bechtel before I left. He assured me Steve was in safe hands.

“Those are a couple of wild girls, but I’ll have Susie talk to them. Old Pleturski will be tired, broke and happy about it, next time you see him, just the way a young paratrooper ought to be,” Bechtel promised.

Sure enough, the next day about three in the afternoon, Steve came wandering into my room. The Navy petty officer I had shared it with was already on his way back to Norfolk. Steve did look tuckered out, but his uniform was squared away and he was grinning like a jackass. He plopped down on the empty bunk and heaved a contented sigh.

“I think I’m in love,” he said, right before he passed out.

Steve went back to the Drop Zone Lounge Saturday night. I begged out of going and tried to get him to stay in the barracks also. He just laughed and told me to quit worrying.

“Our passes don’t end until ten tomorrow morning, and I’ll be back well before then,” he assured me. “I’m all packed and ready to go so no sweat, GI.”

In spite of my reservations about the wisdom of what he was doing, I had to laugh at his imitation of the sing-song English of Kim and Lee.

The next morning I was in a near panic when it turned 9:45 and Steve was still gone. I dragged our duffle bags out onto the company street, in case he showed up at the last minute. At five till ten, a Thunderbird convertible screeched up in front of the orderly room and Steve hopped out of it. As everyone standing around the barracks applauded, Steve hurriedly kissed the two small women in the car and sprinted to the building to sign in from his pass.

As he dashed away, Lee stood up on the passenger seat in her mini dress and go-go boots.

“You come back soon Baby-san! You number one GI, and I love you too many!” she yelled.

The difference between the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) and the other Army schools I attended was like night and day. The instructors at the Q course did not supervise us every minute. Instead, they told us what we needed to do and left us to get it done. Then you either accomplished the mission or you hit the road.

I arrived at the Special Forces School as a spec four, and there were a number of NCOs in our class, so for once, I was just one of the guys. That made me happy because it left me time to absorb the fast paced instruction. Steve and I lucked out and ended up in the same four-man room with two guys from Hawaii. One of the guys was a Japanese-American named Greg Tomatsu. Greg was some sort of Jujitsu champion in Hawaii, and for a little guy, he was one bad dude. Greg was a combat engineer. The other Hawaiian was this very large Native Hawaiian and Portuguese medic with the unlikely name of Pookie Ramos. Pookie was about six-six and weighed at least two-hundred and fifty pounds. He was strong as an ox and as quick as a cat, but he was about the nicest guy I’ve ever met.

The four of us became good friends and helped each other throughout the course. We were all on the same detachment for the first phase of our training. Since we all had different strengths and weaknesses, we made good teammates.

Phase One of the SFQC consisted of a couple of weeks of classroom lectures about the organization, history, and missions of Special Forces. We were also introduced to the A-team concept via a dog and pony show in which a team from the 7th Special Forces Group briefed us both in English and Spanish and demonstrated some of their skills. We were all impressed as hell by those guys and more motivated than ever to join their ranks.

After the classroom portion was over, we conducted a night combat equipment jump into Camp McCall, the Special Forces training area adjacent to Fort Bragg. It was my first ever night jump and the first time I’d jumped with exposed equipment. It didn’t help things a bit that in addition to the seventy-five pound mountain style rucksack I had dangling between my legs, they strapped an old WWII A-6 air-cooled machine gun across the top of my reserve. The A-6 made me wider than the side door of the C-123 we were jumping from, so they put me first in line, turned me slightly sideways and when the green light came on, booted my ass out the door.

As a result of my less than textbook exit, my risers (the four fabric straps to which the suspension lines that held the canopy to the harness were attached) were twisted down to the back of my neck. I frantically bicycled my legs and tugged the risers apart so I could at least look up and see if I had a good canopy over my head. I finally untangled myself about a hundred feet above the DZ. When I saw how close I was to the ground, I jerked the quick release and dropped my rucksack, then prepared to do that good PLF I’d been practicing. I hit the ground like a ton of shit because I didn’t have time to turn myself into the wind and I was swinging back and forth from my exertions to untangle my risers.

Luckily, I landed feet, ass and head in some soft sand. Unluckily, a wind gust prevented my canopy from collapsing, and I suddenly found myself being dragged backwards across the DZ. I reached up and pulled one of the quick releases on my canopy like we’d been taught just as I slid onto the hard packed dirt road that ran across the DZ. It was definitely not my night because the section of road I slid onto was right in front of the Drop Zone Safety Officer and his detail. I heard a yell and glass breaking as the riser I’d release whipped backwards. I laid there for a second, gathering my wits when a very pissed off man in a green beret loomed over me. I almost crapped my pants when I recognized him as Master Sergeant Travis, the NCOIC of Phase One.

“On your feet and secure that canopy before it does any more damage, Meathead,” he yelled.

I jumped up as if I had a spring up my ass.

“Clear Sergeant, Airborne!” I yelled as I yanked off my harness and dashed over to grab the two inch nylon loop at the apex of my canopy.

I was about to have a stroke as I shook the canopy out and started rigger rolling it under Travis’s baleful glare. It only got worse when he spit out a wad of Redman at my feet and proceeded to give me the ass chewing of my life. Travis was from Boston and had a thick Massachusetts accent. His voice grated on my brain like fingernails on a chalk board. I don’t think Travis had much love for southerners either, because he started calling me Opie the first time he heard my accent. Of course every one in the world jumped on the unwanted nickname because I guess I slightly resembled Opie Taylor on the Andy Griffith Show. Now that’s all anyone called me.

“I should have known it was your hillbilly ass, Opie. From start to finish, that was the worst fuck-up I’ve seen in fifteen years on jump status. There are WACs down at post headquarters that could have done better. To top it off, you broke the windshield of the school commandant’s brand new jeep and the old man loves that thing. I knew you needed watching boy and I’m going to give you my full attention from now on. You are going to get a statement of charges for that windshield, and every time I look at you I better see nothing but assholes and elbows, got it?”

I humbly acknowledged that I did and quickly grabbed all my gear and staggered over to the parachute turn-in truck, the laughter of the DZ party making my ears burn from embarrassment. It was only thirty minutes into the first night of a two week survival and patrolling exercise that determined if we moved forward to the next phase of training, and I was already in deep doo-doo.

Chapter 3

I soldiered my butt off the remainder of those two weeks, carrying my share of the load and then some. The survival training was as much about surviving without sleep, as it was about food. The cadre made us move every night to a new area, recon a target and conduct some sort of offensive operation. The success of those operations determined if you ate the next day, because a case of ‘C’ rations or some other food stuff waited at each target. If the cadre thought your attack or ambush was good enough, you received the loot. If they didn’t approve, you got the finger as they drove off.

That was a preview of Silver Wings. To read the rest purchase the book.

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