I could whine on and on about my miseries in uniform. But I won't. Instead I'll spit out a few illustrations that go a long way toward shedding light on my shortcomings. At the time I didn't think of them so much as negatives. Fact is, I didn't think a lot about what I was doing when I was doing it. Had I been more awake I might have done other than I did. You'll see what I mean and how close I continually came to gettin' my sorry self in trouble again and again.
More often than not us field MPs didn't do real cop work. Didn't investigate crimes. Didn't intervene in domestic disputes. We just did the grunt work. Gate guards, foot patrols, keepin' watch on the officer's kids when they shot off their fireworks on the 4th of July (the little pricks were restricted to a single parking lot) and my personal favorite, bein' a patrol boy when school let out. I liked that 'cause I got to wear my traffic control, white gloves. Made me feel like a prom queen.
Of all the gate posts my favorite was the Main Gate. They don't use that one as the Main Gate anymore even though the art-deco concrete work complete with nasty lookin' eagles is a military joy to behold. When I was there, one lane was goin' out, one in and a little guard shack sat between. Everyone entering had to slow down and couldn't pass 'til they were waved 'em by. You see, each car had to have a sticker on the bumper that showed the car was registered on post. No sticker, no entry, more ore less. The colors bordering the stickers denoted rank. Don't remember the color of an enlisted man's sticker. Might have been red. An officer's was gold and a general officer's was gold with a red border. We had to salute a general's sticker. As for the rest, we simply waved 'em in.
If the car didn't have a sticker, we were to turn them away after giving a polite explanation as to why. Unless of course it was a convertible full of hookers out on a joy ride. They'd smile as they slowed a bit. They'd wave, I'd wave. A block down the boulevard they'd turn around. They'd wave as they left and I'd wave back. Nice ladies and a military necessity.
Military security didn't seem all that high on my list. Used to say that if Maozedong (we didn't spell his name that way back in '70 mostly 'cause he was runnin' the Red Menace Show at the time and I suppose we were doin' what we could to piss him off, even if that was only misspellin' his name, without givin' him 'cause to send the North Vietnamese any more than the third of a million troops he was already sendin') and the entire Red Chinese Army were to come through on rickshaws, I'd just wave 'em by. That might have been an exaggeration but they never came by so we'll never know.
Anyhow, there was this one time, a Sunday as I recall, towards evening ( Shh. Listen. You can almost hear the ukeleles in the background), a car with an officer's sticker pulled up to a stop alongside my spit-shined boots and let me know that the car behind him had been weavin' its way all over the road since it turned onto the highway back at the first Wahiawa entrance. Seemed the officer was of the opinion that whoever was driving was at least two sheets to the wind. And bein' drunk wasn't setting the fine upstanding example of mature manhood that all members of the U.S. Army should set. He suggested I pull them over, check them out and maybe have them thrown in the hoosegow.
Not wanting to create any waves, or unnecessary paperwork, I thanked the man politely and assured him I'd deal with the inebriates in a proper military manner. Firm and fair.
At the moment I had no plan at all as to what I was gonna do, beyond asking the next car, which happened to have an enlisted man's sticker on the bumper, of young GIs to pull over to the side where I could talk with them at my leisure. Which I did.
There were four of them as I recall. And not a one of them looked a day over twenty. No doubt they were all draftees. Just like me. In the Army 'cause they weren't smart enough to not be. Just like me. Could have gone to jail or run to Canada but didn't. Just like me. Long story not quite so long, from my point of view they had a lot goin' for them as I marched up to the driver's side window.
I don't recall that I gave them a chance to say a word. Most likely the driver wasn't all that keen about sayin' anything that would let the cat out of the bottle and let me know he'd been drinking. Like I said, I had no plan other than maybe making this potential mess go away and not ruin my otherwise peaceful evening. What came out of my mouth went something like this:
"You see that car up ahead? There's an officer inside it who said you've been weaving your way up from Wahiawa and might even have been drinking. What I want you to do is wait here while I lean on your door like a tough MP and do my best to look like I'm reamin' you out. We'll do that until the car turns the corner and is out of sight. We'll wait a couple of seconds more, then you can go. Have a nice day."
I figured he got the message that he'd been lucky and let off the hook. I Figured that probably wouldn't stop him from drinking and driving. But it might. As for me I didn't much care one way or the other. All I knew for sure was there was one draftee on the post who could've ended up in the stockade and didn't. Made me feel good. And a little nervous for stepping outside the envelope. Can't say as how I'd advise anyone to live life the way I've lived it. Had I been paying attention I might not have lived it that way myself.
