Single Striper: A Sideways Odyssey through the Peacetime Army

Preface

This brief jaunt through the olive-drab landscape of the peacetime army resurrects the flavor of that moment between the Korean War and Vietnam when, with no enemy against which to hurl itself, the Army sank into a lethargic stupor, its collective pulse scarcely measurable by the usual military standards.

Thus was born the Army of skin-crawling boredom and endless waiting; of mind-numbing and pointless details known to GIs everywhere as chickenshit; of time dripping slowly and without trace into a vacuum; of days marching one after another in monotonous, stifling sameness into the dim future.

Eager to escape stodgy college classrooms for a taste of real life, I saw the Army as an adventurous rite of passage as well as a passport to exotic places and, fueled by this delusion, volunteered for the draft. I soon discovered that life in the Army’s feudal atmosphere was a living, breathing comic strip in which we enlisted men and draftees were engaged in an underground campaign to maintain our sanity and steal moments of illicit pleasure when the Army’s minions were looking the other way.

That’s how it was back when the Army was almost fun, kind of like a relaxed prison system run by humorless primates called NCOs. So grab hold of my shirttail and haul back with me to the wacky days of the peacetime Army, a time and place which, regrettably, will never be again.

Brace yourself . . .

. . . and you swallowed that crap? Hell, a recruiting sergeant’s just another salesman with a quota to fill. He dazzles you with words like duty, honor and manhood, and your imagination paints an irresistible picture of you standing torn and bloody and noble as hell at the summit of some blood-soaked volcanic ash pile holding a smoking carbine with the flag whipping in the wind above you and a dozen of the enemy sprawled lifeless at your feet. Then you see yourself in your hometown victory parade passing dear old Mom in her Sunday finest dabbing a proud tear from her eye, and all the girls from your senior class tearing their clothes off and screaming your name. All this goes through your mind in less than a second, and then you sign away your life.

—Sgt/poet Gardner A. Ryser, Sand Hill, GA, January 1959

Chapter 1

Fort Carson, CO

Icy breath from the Rocky Mountains a few miles to the west knifed through my lightweight fall jacket and stung deep in my sinuses, making my eyes ache. While I rocked from one foot to the other in a futile attempt to get warm, my torso jerked with spasms of shivering. It was my first day in the Army and around me in the dawning light of a mid-November morning stood eighty other green recruits before a one-story wood-frame building bearing the sign:

Orderly Room-

Fort Carson Reception Center

The word reception conjured in my bleary mind a vision of tables covered with trays of home-baked cookies and lemonade served by young ladies from a nearby church testing their attractiveness on a captive audience. This hopeful notion didn’t survive the next moment.

No talking in ranks, snapped Sergeant Gherlisch, one of two NCOs who had herded us into formation.

And no smoking, added Sergeant Loveleigh.

A ripple of unease went through the formation followed by a jittery silence. Intrigued by the NCOs’ unlikely surnames in this masculine setting, I surreptitiously jotted them down in my pocket spiral notebook.

The orderly room stood in the center of a block the size of a football field. Two-story barracks ran along the perimeter, leaving the center, packed bare by millions of pairs of boots from the 1930s on, free for formations like ours. A canopied light bulb above the orderly room’s lone door illumined a four-foot-square porch. I was wincing from the eye-watering tang of pure mountain air mixed with coal fumes from nearby chimneys when the door swung open.

A massive figure appeared in the doorway, face obscured in shadow, his bulky frame cutting off most of the light behind him. He stood unmoving long enough for the menace emanating from him to inspire a mass intake of breath. Then he brushed through the doorjamb onto the porch, resolving into a scowling black NCO built like a rhino and radiating hostility. He scanned us briefly, then shook his head, clearly unimpressed.

Welcome to your temporary home, he said in the tired baritone of a man who had done this many times before. For those of you who can’t read, this is the Fort Carson Reception Center. I am Sergeant First Class Hackbart F. P. Grissup, your acting Company Commander. But, understand this—I am not your daddy. So don’t come to my office complaining about the food or a lumpy mattress or anything else, unless you are bleeding or dead . . . in which case the welcome mat is out.

While we digested this astounding pronouncement, Grissup continued, You will be at this station for a week before being sent on to other locations for Basic Training. During this time you will draw your uniform allotment, test for your Military Occupational Specialty and learn how to wipe your ass military style.

Loveleigh and Gherlisch snorted.

Now, said Grissup, pay attention to what I am going to say as I will not repeat myself. From his clipboard he began reciting in monotone the rules and procedures we were to follow to avoid ending up on his shitlist.

He interrupted himself to address a recruit watching birds fly over as if this were a nature outing and not his induction into the most rigid sub-class of American society. He patiently endured the recruit’s wandering attention, reminding him a second time that there would be plenty of time to look around later and the little birdies would always be there for him to watch.

The third time he dropped his clipboard and his weary manner. Listen, you stupid sonofabitch, he snarled, turn your goddamn head to the front and pay attention or I’ll come back there and wring your fucking neck.

Another mass intake of breath took place. Glad to be in the next-to-last row, I whistled softly in sympathy for the dumb gawk who didn’t have the sense to close his mouth in the rain.

Didn’t you hear me! Grissup bellowed. "You! The numbnuts in the next to the back row."

Jeez, I thought. Talk about dense. Some pathetic clown is going to get fed to the hyenas as an object lesson. And then, as a sparrow hurtled overhead, I had a sort of epiphany. With it came a sense of my skull expanding and my scalp growing uncomfortably warm.

I turned my head.

A long moment passed in brittle silence. I stared at the guy’s ears in front of me, trying to reduce my outline.

Grissup shook his head and resumed reading from his clipboard while audible sighs and groans went through the formation. I imagined the loudest came from those who had enlisted for three years. Despite my embarrassment, I loosed a sigh of relief knowing I was only in for two.

Chapter 2

Tom Sawyer Joins Up

Early in my junior year at El Paso’s Texas Western College (Now UTEP: University of Texas at El Paso) in the fall of 1958, a sense of going nowhere settled over me like a damp shroud. Feeling at a dead end, I slumped morosely in stuffy classrooms while my insides writhed with a sense of inaction and waste. After weeks of restless fidgeting in my chair, I finally recognized the signs . . .

Life was calling.

One October morning, after a torturous half hour enduring the undecipherable rantings of my Ed Psych prof, G. Hilliston Buob, I shut my notebook scrawled with intricate and surreal doodles, by far the best work I’d done in college, hoisted my textbooks, and walked from the room mid-lecture, Professor Buob’s slack stare and gaping mouth following me as I exited his class without explanation or comment. Within minutes I had left the campus and my favorite classroom, the campus pool hall, for good.

At home I walked into my backyard and with a liberating yawp flung my textbooks into the broad, rocky ravine behind my Wheeling Street home for the flash runoff from the Franklin Mountains rising steeply to the west to carry down into pal Phil Mulvey’s rocky back yard. Feeling buoyant and a little dazed now that I had abandoned my college phase, I sat on the back steps to think things over. Full-time work now faced me while I sorted out what I was going to do with my life. The only skill I possessed that might lead to a career was the ability to throw a baseball with good speed and accuracy. I had spent the summers following high-school pitching for semi-pro teams around the Southwest and had drawn top notice from St. Louis Cardinal Scouts at a tryout in Las Cruces.

During this period I worked variously as a goop-packer for the Forest Service, hauling jerry cans of insecticide by hand through the tangled climax forest of Southwest Colorado’s Uncompahgre National Forest out of a place thirty miles from civilization called Dunton, Pop. 7; as a lineman with the Dona Ana County Surveyor’s crew in Las Cruces, New Mexico; and on a photographic unit shooting Honest John and Hawk missile test flights at White Sands Proving Grounds. But my dream of a baseball career showed signs of never getting out of the on-deck circle. And now that I had discarded my educational deferment the draft lay ahead.

I weighed my options. There was the Navy, but since I was a poor swimmer, water made me edgy. And deep water that heaved affected me likewise. Then there was the Air Force, but the four-year service minimum seemed more like a prison term than a military tour. On the advice of college friend Roy Hickman I rejected the Marines and the paratroops as being too military, maybe even a little crazed.

That left the regular Army, the least glamorous and most plodding of the services—KP, hiking, cleaning latrines, early wakeups, crude humanoids called NCOs, dust, dirt, grit, mud, sweat. Since the draft loomed, it seemed sensible to get it over with. Picturing the military as the launching pad for my post-college life, I’d be two years older when I got out, possibly more mature, a virgin no more it was devoutly to be desired, and ready to deal with my future. The next morning I told my folks of my plans and went to the Army recruiting office in downtown El Paso where I signed the document certifying I was a voluntary draftee. This meant a two year tour. Watching the recruiting sergeant type up the forms, I made sure he entered 2 under the box marked years-of-service.

My summons came by mail within a week. Three days later, having passed a cursory physical exam at Fort Bliss that a fresh cadaver could have aced, I joined the line boarding a plane at the El Paso Airport along with thirty other recruits from the surrounding area. While I shuffled forward last in line carrying my suitcase, Sergeant Albertus, the recruiting sergeant who had signed me up, walked over with a wizened little guy in tow.

He stopped in front of me. Your name is—

Smith.

Albertus’ eyes narrowed. Smith, right. Okay, Smith, you’re now in charge of this guy. He handed me some papers. He’s a re-enlistee, name’s Vatos, Ermer P. I want you to see that he gets to Fort Carson without any problems. That means keeping him away from alcohol in any form, got it?

Ermer? I studied Vatos. He was scrawny and looked in his thirties, pretty old to be going through Basic Training again. He blinked constantly, his upper lip drawn up under a thin, upturned nose, exposing uneven and nicotine-stained front teeth. He put me in mind of a cartoon rat in a Disney film. I nodded without enthusiasm.

Okay, Smith, said Albertus. Just remember, he’s a lush, so don’t let him out of your sight. Can you handle it? All this in front of Vatos, who didn’t appear offended. Instead his smirk seemed to say, This chump think he’s gonna get between me and my suds?

Sure, I shrugged. I’m a lush-handler from way back.

Albertus studied me in the light of this comment, the product of a misguided impulse to inject an awkward brand of humor into everything. Then he nodded and spun off, Vatos watching him. When he was far enough away, Vatos grabbed for his papers. I yanked them out of reach. When we get to Fort Carson.

Come on, gimme ‘em, he whined. Don’t be a jerk.

I drew up manfully. I got my sworn duty to the United States Army.

Look, Mack. This is my second go-round. I was a Spec/4 when I left before. I know how this shit works, man. You won’t get in any trouble. Come on, be a buddy.

I’ll give ‘em to you on the plane.

All right, he growled. Jesus Christ. Candy-ass, gotta play by the pissant rules.

Behind me all the way up the boarding steps he grumped and muttered and exhaled noisily. Once halfway down the aisle I handed him his papers and waited until he sat, then took a seat as far away as possible. At this point something told me that the Army might be a little cracked and that I should record my impressions during my tour as there might be a book in it.

Since my freshman year at TWC I was in the habit of capturing my more intelligible thoughts and recording them before they vanished, as a French priest named Ernest Dimnet had advised in his book The Art of Thinking. Story ideas and reflections had a way of winking on in my mind and just as quickly began to fade unless I pinned them down and put words to them. I filled a notebook every two weeks with ideas of varying significance while busing between college and home.

None of my peers seemed to be engaged in this kind of cerebral play and I began to sense that I was onto something life-changing. From habit I now got out my pen and pocket spiral notebook and recorded the initial event of my two-year hitch.

Chapter 3

A mess cook was wiping down the door of the walk-in refrigerator with a damp towel when six of us filed into the mess hall. A few scattered lights revealed the institutional barrenness of the place. The NCO shepherding us announced, Got some hungry recruits here, chief. Late arrivals. Hope you got some chow left.

We had arrived at the Colorado Springs Airport around six that evening and then bused into Fort Carson on the southwest edge of town. After reporting to the reception center and handing over our papers, the NCO on duty as CQ (Charge of Quarters, a kind of night nanny) escorted us to the mess hall.

On the verge of closing for the night, the cook studied us with a flat, half-lidded look and began hauling trays out of the refrigerator. We got cold cuts and that’s about it.

As he was setting bread, mayo and a tray of sandwich meat on a dining table, I noticed a still figure standing stiffly at a back sink dimly illumined by streetlights shining through the windows. His sleeves were rolled up and he held a handful of cooking utensils in his right hand. He stared at us with an expression of acute anguish and seemed to be quivering.

He then sprang straight up, flung the utensils in the filled sink with a thunderous splash, and yelled, ShitGodAlmightyDamn-SonofabitchFuck!

The NCO looked up and said for our edification, KP. Musta had a long day and then we troop in. Poor bastard.

Momentarily surprised at encountering sympathy in a career soldier, I regarded the KP, at the moment little more than a slightly comical figure with a salty turn of language. It wouldn’t be long before I had full and exact understanding of his feelings.

That evening we recruits milled around in our barracks getting acquainted and forming cliques. In short order testosterone flared and the barracks bullshit artists began relating accounts of their adventures, primarily sexual. A competition soon was born, and the anecdotes became so improbable and delivered with such exaggerated gestures and expressions that Terry Whittaker, Bern Williams and I glanced at each other in disbelief from our adjacent bunks.

Listen to them fools, Williams said while two guys tried to outdo each other recounting their amorous encounters on trains and in public buildings. They expect us to believe that shit? What idjits.

Whittaker and I laughed, and in that moment the three of us became buddies. Terry, five-eight, bespectacled and deceptively mild-looking, regarded the goings-on with tolerant skepticism. Williams, a rangy six-foot-four east-Texan with a breezy outgoing nature, listened some more then shook his head. Gettin deep in here.

The next morning, following chow and our welcoming speech from Sergeant Grissup, we recruits fell into a line going into a squat one-story building. Inside the door a sign prompted us to remove our right shoe.

I planted my foot against a painted diagram on the floor and its size was recorded on a printed slip of paper along with my name. While one NCO measured me from ankle to crotch, then my arm length, another wrapped his tape measure around my waist, then slid it up to my chest. I wondered if these NCOs ever dreamed when they signed up that their weapon would be a measuring tape instead of an M-1.

What war did you fight in, Uncle Nate? Well, son, I measured other men’s inseams. You can’t fight a war without proper-fitting uniforms. No, sirree. Them inseams gotta be just right.

These measurements were recorded on the slip and handed across a counter to another NCO who went down a row of stacks and came back with two pairs of olive-drab fatigue pants and shirts. He dumped one pair on the counter and shoved the other at me, then went down another row of stacks and came back with two pairs of khaki uniforms.

A Spec/4 (Specialist 4, equivalent to corporal) found a dufflebag with my name and serial number stenciled on it and packed the extra fatigue uniform and khakis inside. The NCO came back with the heavier class A dress uniform and tucked this inside the dufflebag. Boots, shoes, socks and the rest of the ensemble went in a rubberized water-proof bag half the size of the dufflebag.

Taking these to an open space, I stripped to my skivvies and dressed in fatigues for the first time. While enjoying the near-perfect fit and the rugged masculine feeling of being encased in fatigue uniform, I felt the first vague stirrings of soldierly readiness and sensed that I stood straighter and was more physically defined than I ever was in my civilian gear of jeans and T-shirts.

I packed my civvies in my suitcase, which was labeled and set aside with the others to be shipped back home. The process of overhauling our civilian identities had begun.

Chapter 4

Bugout in Training

The barber pressed his clippers up my neck and over my head, forcibly tugging my scalp back and forth as if invited by the bored NCOs watching on the fringe to make this ritual of initiation into the Army a crude reminder of the indifferent power it now held over us. Expecting the NCOs to wear sadistic smiles during the process, I was surprised to see that they were relaxed and mellow instead, and attributed this to the fact that we were between wars and they were in the middle of a prolonged break.

Okay, said the barber.

Smarting from several mino5r abrasions, I got up from the chair and stared at the end results in the wall mirror.

Nice job, I said, unconcerned over catching flak from a civilian. Fail out of barber college?

The barber regarded me with an uncertain grin. I turned and followed Williams outside and across the street where we sat on the wooden steps of our barracks tenderly feeling our ravaged scalps. The barbers had been allotted only twenty seconds per head. The result in each case was a patchy effect with razed sideburns and hasty lacerations.

As four other recruits joined us on our barracks steps, Williams said, Them jackasses spend their days hatin their shitty job cuttin peoples’ hair, and probably wishin they could rip half of ‘em bald. Then the Army hires ‘em to do just that. They go at it like they been waitin their whole lives for this moment, rippin them electric shears all over your head like they was shearin sheep. He shook his head and grinned sourly. Buncha dipshits.

It occurred to me that this ritual hazing was the first step in the process of smacking the civilian softness out of us and preparing our tender psyches for the rigors of Basic Training, at the same time casually informing us that the Army and its minions cared little about our personal feelings and identities beyond our new designation as detail fodder.

While Williams was gingerly patting his head, the voice of Sgt Kremsmo, our Filipino barracks NCO, sailed out of the barracks. Hey oud dare! I nid fife ov ju guys vor detail. Cam een hare!

No translation was needed. The word detail, signifying unwanted exertion and sweat, released a jolt of adrenaline and our civilian instincts took over. Bolting from the porch, the six of us took off in different directions. While the others dashed for the nearest barracks to hide behind, Williams and I angled for the orderly room about forty yards away in the opposite direction. Laughing in surprise at this spontaneously brash and mutinous act on our first day in uniform, we sprinted gleefully up the sloping block. At the Orderly Room we swung around the corner out of view and slammed against the side of the building and traded grins.

Peering out we saw Sgt Kremsmo standing on the porch we had recently vacated, looking toward the neighboring barracks. Bending down he could see the legs of our fellow miscreants beneath the foundations of the buildings resting on two-foot concrete pillars. He sauntered down the stairs toward the nearest barracks. The two hiding there had a hurried consultation and went tiptoeing exaggeratedly along the building, apparently intending to duck past the far end and work back down the row of barracks. Which is where Sgt Kremsmo, having strolled ahead of them, stood with hands on hips waiting for them. He hooked his index finger at them without showing any irritation and rounded the others up in the same fashion.

Watching them trudge back to the barracks, Williams said, Left him holdin up his britches, huh!

Following lunch we recruits filed into the basketball gym across the street and seated ourselves at utility tables covering one-half of the gym. Booklets and pencils lay before us. A number of NCOs were stationed around the perimeter and two more sat facing us at a table. One of them stood and raised his hand for silence.

"Men, lying before each of you is a test booklet.