A Few Army Misfits

(Written January 11, 2013)

 

In August of 1968 I was drafted into the United States Army.

I completed basic training, and was sent for further training as a medic at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas.  On the way, I was sent to a two week training course in leadership, which I duly completed, and was told that I would be a squad leader during my further training, leading a small group of regular trainees.

Since I was in no hurry to report to medic school, I waited until the last minute before signing in.  This turned out to be a big mistake – but not really.

The mistake was that I got last choice of the squad of trainees I was to lead.  There was only one squad left, and they were the guys that none of the other leaders wanted.

Out of the dozen guys I was nominally in charge of, nine were black, three were white.  All of them were discipline problems.  And most of them were ghetto residents who had been given a choice between the Army, and jail time, for various crimes.

When I first walked into the barracks, I was shown the row of bunks where “my guys” were.  The old-timer Army sergeant who took me to them, called them to attention, and they stood up from their bunks.  He very briefly introduced me to them.  He then gave me a list of tasks that I was to have them do, such as emptying the garbage.  Then he left.

“My guys” promptly resumed their previous postures on their bunks.

I said something on the order of, “We have to take out the trash.”  Nobody paid me any heed.

I then walked up to the nearest fellow, and began to say something like, “Let’s get a move on.”

But before I could really say anything, the young man had jumped up out of his bunk.  Towering over me with the stature of a football lineman, he began yelling at me about how I was not going to make him do anything, and if I didn’t like it, I could take the trash out myself.

I found that to be prudent advice, so I said, well okay then, and I turned, walked away, and grabbed the nearest trash can, which was full and heavy.  I heard another squad leader tell me, the sergeant told you to supervise, not to do the work yourself.

But I grabbed the can, and since we were on the second floor of the barracks, I began lugging it laboriously down the stairway, trying not to fall.  I was thinking to myself, this is going to be a very long tour of duty.

Suddenly, the can became instantly light as air.  I turned and looked behind me, and the football guy who had refused to take out the trash was now holding the can by the handle, and saying to me something like, “You okay man.  I’ll take it from here.”

A few days later, we were assembling outside a classroom to be marched inside.  I saw one of my fellow squad leaders arguing with one of my guys.  So I walked over and asked, what was the problem.

The leader looked at me and said, this guy says he refuses to go into the classroom.

I looked at the trainee and said, why are you refusing to go inside?

I just don’t want to, that’s why, and that’s all the reason I need.

So I told the other leader, well, if he refuses to go inside, then there’s nothing we can do to force him, so let’s just leave him here.

The other leader’s jaw dropped in horror, and he said something along the lines that he was going to report me.  Then he walked away.

I turned away also, heading for the classroom, when the trainee said, okay, I’ll go inside now.  And he did.

During the following few weeks, my guys kept me busy in the commander’s office, defending them against various accusers.  Most of the time, my guys were actually in the right.  Sometimes they were definitely in the wrong.  But I always managed somehow to persuade the commander to just let me take care of it.  Then the commander would threaten me with, well, you’d better, or I’ll hold you personally responsible.  But in my mind, I always figured well, in a few weeks I’ll be killed in combat anyway, so how much more trouble can I be in than that?

We had very little time for ourselves, and when we did, I quickly learned that there were “white” areas of the base, and black areas, and if you were white, you did not go into the black areas, and vice versa.  Race relations in the military, in those days, were not always smooth.

But since none of the white squad leaders in my unit liked me, then in our off time, I hung out with my guys.  And several times during our outings, my black squad members would step between me and some hostile black guy who didn’t like seeing a white face in “his” area.  And the black guy would just look with disbelief at all these black guys sticking up for this one white guy, but they would always back off.  But he’s whitey.  Oh yeah?  Well he’s OUR whitey, so lay off.

Every week in the training unit, squads would be awarded a prize of some kind for “best barracks,” best this or best that.  We never got one single best of anything.

But at the end of the training, we got awarded “best overall squad.”

The other squad leaders challenged that, since we had never once gotten best anything.

But the commander explained that each week, a score had been assigned, and the best score won the “best” award.  Even though we had never gotten best, we had always come in second place.  We were consistently in second place.  The other squads would occasionally get “best,” but then their score for the next couple of weeks would plummet.  In my opinion, this was because their squad leaders ran them into the ground seeking that prize for that one week, but then, they could not keep up the pace.  As a result, because we were slow but steady and reliable, we tallied the highest total score for the entire duration of training.  So we were the best squad.

After training, I was shocked when one of my guys told me that he had decided to break his agreement with the judge who had sent him to the army.  This would result in him going back to jail.

I asked, why would you do that?

His answer was, the army is harder than jail.  In jail, they don’t work you so hard, you have lots of free time, and the food is better.  Plus, most of the guards give you better respect than you get in the army.

I told him that maybe all that was true.  But I said to him, think ahead twenty years from now, when you will have had kids, and they will ask you what you did during the Viet Nam War.  What will you tell them?  Will you want them to be proud of you, or ashamed of you?

He thought it over, and then said, well, okay.  I’ll stay.

After we finished training, we all went our separate ways in the army, and I never saw them again.  I sometimes think about my guys, and wonder how their lives turned out.  Maybe some of them did wind up in jail.  Maybe some died in combat.  Heck, maybe some of them died in street fights in Detroit, for all I know.

But for the few weeks we spent together, we were the best trainee squad in the whole army.  That will stay with me forever.
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