Captain Full-of-Himself
by Don Drewniak
It was the day
of the second anniversary of my marriage to my
wife, Dolores. I checked out our mailbox mid-morning
and found one piece of mail. My heart sank as I
looked at an official U.S. government envelope.
My luck had run out. I had missed a military
service marital deferment by five days and I had
drawn number twenty in the Vietnam draft lottery.
The first word
of the text was “Congratulations.” Yes,
I was being congratulated for being drafted into
the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. The stamped
signature at the bottom was that of one of the
most corrupt and evil men to ever have lived
— Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Just under
four weeks later on the day I had been scheduled
to begin my third year of public school teaching,
I arrived at Fort Jackson, South Carolina with
hundreds of other draftees and a handful of boys
and men who had enlisted. Transportation was a
train that left Boston at 6:30 on a Tuesday
evening and arrived at the fort just before
midnight the following day — over twenty-nine
hours later. The reason for the length of the
trip was numerous stops along the way to pick up
additional potential cannon fodder.
Deluxe
accommodations! Each of us had a private room on
the train. However, they were five feet by five
feet. The “bed” was a two-inch thick
mattress on a wooden bench two feet off the floor.
That was it. The lone window looked like it hadn’t
been washed since the Korean War. Oh, there was
one other pleasantry. Someone had scribbled
“Napalm Johnson” on one of the walls.
There was a
two-to-three hour stop in Washington, D.C. The
outside temperature was in the low 90s with high
humidity. What had been a noisy car that I was in
became totally silent. Traveling north to our
left was a train pulling cattle cars, all of
which had wide-open doors. It was not cattle
being transported, instead, there were coffins
draped with American flags. I wasn’t alone
in imagining that was going to be my fate.
The eight
weeks of basic training were not as bad as I had
imagined they would be. Before moving on to our
next assignments, all in my platoon were given a
one-week leave. When Dolores, my wife, met me at
the Worcester, MA airport, she was stunned to see
that I had put on twenty pounds of muscle.
Leave over, it
was back to Fort Jackson and a bus trip south to
Augusta, Georgia, and Fort Gordon for twelve
weeks of training in communications.
This was
followed by two weeks of training to prepare me
to teach communications. Instead of living in a
barrack, I was transferred to a brick dormitory-style
building in which I shared a large room with
three other soldiers. We had our own restroom and
showers. I then taught for three weeks. Next came
what appeared to be a disastrous transfer to the
385th Signal Company within Fort Gordon. It was
back to living in barracks.
When I learned
that I was being transferred, I was crushed. I
asked a senior instructor why. He replied, “You
are being prepared for a final assignment down
the line.”
“What
type of assignment?”
“That I
don’t know.”
The 385th was
sometimes thought of as a “bucket of worms.”
Half the troops were back from Vietnam and
waiting to be discharged — most of them
within three months. The other half (my half)
expected to be shipped there en masse sooner or
later.
The company
commander, we’ll call him Captain Full-of-Himself
as that designation to my mind is a perfect fit.
He was a man not to be messed with as he was
slightly over six feet in height and over 200
pounds in weight. Rumor had it that he had seen
combat. I never had the “pleasure” of
speaking to him.
The first
sergeant, Sergeant Starch Man (my name for him),
was a near opposite physically — about five-seven
and thin. He was arrogant, nasty, and self-centered.
His trademarks were heavily-starched fatigues.
How heavily starched? I often wondered how he
could bend his right elbow in order to salute.
Most days (Monday
through Friday) were spent out in the field
during mornings pretending we were working on
communications in a war zone (Vietnam).
Afternoons were usually spent in a large building
fooling around with communication equipment that
was in need of repair. We also got to mess around
with old jeeps.
Two events
stand out in my memory during my four-to-five
months in the 385th.
Off to the
right of Captain Full-of-Himself’s office
was a large, circular cement-encased goldfish
pond, his pride and joy. We lined up for morning
roll call on a chilly, cloudy mid-April Monday
morning. Instead of just the First Sergeant and a
Spec 5 who took attendance (to make sure no one
was AWOL), there was the second in command, a 1st
lieutenant. Normally, Starch Man would read and
or announce anything of importance (real or
perceived).
Instead, the 1st
Lieutenant announced that someone had dumped
bleach into the goldfish pond sometime during
Saturday night thereby killing every fish in it.
The only ones who did not already know what
happened were those who lived off post and
arrived shortly before the roll call. Saturday
nights were the optimum time for such a prank as
a large number of us came in late or not at all.
On that
particular night, I took the last bus to the fort
out of Augusta at 0230 hours. There was standing
room only when I squeezed into it. Unless the
perpetrator was spotted in the act, there was no
way to track him down. There were thirty-two
bunks on each of the two floors of my barrack.
Only about ten were occupied on the bottom floor.
Had this been on any night from Sunday through
Thursday, an empty bunk would have been easily
remembered as would someone coming in late.
Lights out was nine pm. Friday nights were a
distant second.
As a result of
the bleaching, there was mandatory overnight
guard duty at the pond in two shifts: 2000 to
0100 hours and 0100 to 0600 hours seven nights a
week. One guard per shift. A roster for the first
week was posted at 1100 hours. Thankfully, I was
not one of the “lucky ones.”
Two weeks
later, again on a Saturday night, the bleacher
struck. The soldier on duty heard something hit
the water followed by a second splash. His story
was that he ran in the direction from which the
incoming “rockets” came, but to no
avail. Two separate bleach-filled gallon
containers with open tops had been lobbed into
the pond from what had to have been a short
distance. The new stock of goldfish was killed,
as was to be expected.
The pond
remained empty for two weeks before being
restocked. The guards were doubled and MPs
increased patrolling the area on Saturday nights.
No more attacks happened by mid-summer. As a
result, guard duty ended.
Captain Full-of-Himself
put together a baseball team complete with 385th
Signal Corp. custom-made uniforms. He “drafted”
the best players in the unit and scheduled games
against basic training units. Total mismatches.
The basic trainees came wearing white Army t-shirts
and the green fatigue bottoms.
Attendance at
the games, which began at 1830 hours, was
mandatory. We were dismissed early from duty (1530).
Game one passed without incident. It was lopsided
with the 385th seemingly scoring at will. Full-of-Himself
played second base and made two spectacular back-handed
grabs, pivoted, and threw laser shots to first
base. He had base hits all five times batted,
including two home runs. I had no doubt that he
had played organized baseball in his younger days.
I guessed he was in his late thirties.
Game two, or
rather what happened prior to the start of the
game, is firmly planted in my memory. I'm certain
that the same is true for most who were at the
ball field that evening. Rather than eat supper
at the mess hall, a group of eight to ten of us
opted to go back to the barrack, take showers and
change into civies.
One of those
in the group was a Spec 4 who was back from a
tour in Vietnam and had about two months left
before discharge. His nickname was Pru and if
memory serves me correctly, it was short for his
last name, Pruban.
Pru, who was
about six feet in height and thin, lost part of
one of his fingers in Vietnam. He used to joke
that he lost part of the finger protecting us
from the “commie hordes.” Once while
telling the story, a wit interrupted by saying,
“You mean the commie whores.”
“That too,”
answered Pru.
In addition to
returning to civilian life, he was looking
forward to getting a monthly disability payment
of $75.00 per month (about $670 today in
purchasing power) for his “war wound.”
It was off to
the nearest canteen, a small outdoor building
where one could purchase hot dogs and potato
chips as well as other snack food, candy,
cigarettes, and 3.2 canned beer. I opted for
three or four hot dogs, a couple of small bags of
potato chips, and two cans of beer. Pru downed
one beer after another claiming he never got
drunk. The final count was somewhere around seven.
By the time we had to leave for the game, he was
smashed.
Ten minutes or
so before the scheduled start of the game came a
surprise, Sergeant Starch Man dressed in one of
his trademark fatigues and his wife. She could
not have been more than five feet tall.
Our group was
sitting in a small bleacher between home plate
and third base. Pru stood up and yelled, “Hey,
there’s the First Pig and Mrs. Pig.”
He remained
standing for about twenty seconds before falling
back to a sitting position. Not a sound could be
heard for at least thirty seconds.
Shortly
thereafter, I noticed an MP approach Captain Full-of-Himself
and seemingly ask him a question. I’m sure
it had to do with Pru’s beyond-the-pale
insult. Full-of- Himself shook his head back and
forth as if to say no.
As I lined up
for roll call the next morning, Starch Man was
noticeably absent. In his place was a first
lieutenant and two MP’s.
When Pru’s
name was called during roll call, the two MP’s
came at him from opposite directions and escorted
him away. That was the last time any of us saw
him.
From my
perspective, the best he could have hoped for was
a dishonorable discharge. That would mean a loss
of all post-service benefits including VA health
care, and undergraduate and postgraduate
education benefits under the GI Bill. Also gone
would be the disability pension.
The beer
obliterated what every U.S. soldier knows, “You’re
in the Army now.”
Copyright
© 2023 by Don Drewniak. All rights reserved.
|
