Don't know what they were thinking of when I was made part of a speed trap. I was actually pulling real MP duty that day with a partner. We were driving around in a pickup truck copmobile. My partner was a Spec. 5. Had the Army trusted him he'd have been a Sergeant. Same pay but a Spec. 5 wasn't an NCO and couldn't issue an order.
Don't know what it is about some men. All subjects brought up eventually turn toward sex and mostly toward their personal escapades. How the women love 'em even though they look like amphibians. You'd be talkin' about how hard it was to get back in the swing of goin' back to college by reviewin' a calculus text book and they'd say something like, "You think that's tough, I once knew this one eyed prostitute who had a goat for a pet...." Then go on a ten minute rant about the satisfying three-way it turned out to be.
When the subject turns that direction I've got nothing to say. So, as we drove around, it was a one sided conversation. Me, I'm counting the minutes 'til I'm off duty.
Come lunch time we were given orders to join up with three other patrols and put the kibosh on a trend that was threatening to destroy the very fabric of military discipline, marginal speeders. Not my idea of fun. Nothing about harassing drivers appealed to me. I'd been pulled over a couple of times in civilian life and had no fondness for watchin' the man with the gun sauntering up the road shoulder on his way to making my day a little unhappier.
Like I've said about a thousand times in the past, all I wanted out of my two years in the Army was for it to be over. And go as smoothly as possible on the way. Vietnam had been misery enough. Ruinin' somebody's day just 'cause they were doin' twenty-nine in a twenty-five mile per hour zone didn't seem to warrant any kind of punishment. 'Specially when, at the same time, we were overseas killin' people by the thousands.
You see, the fine for speeding in Schofield Barracks was ten dollars for every mile per hour you were doin' over the speed limit. That seemed pretty excessive to a PFC like me who was knockin' down a hundred, thirty-three a month. And that didn't include any extra punishment meted out by the offender's Commanding Officer. Yeah, the Provost Marshall's Office, that's who I worked for, didn't handle the enforcement of the fine. That was dealt with on a Company level for most troops. If you had a total s.o.b for a Captain, it could amount to a fine, extra duty and confinement to the company area for a week or two. That sucked.
Aside: I look back on those Army years and then think about the life I've led since. Gets me to wondering what the connection is, 'cause there's gotta be a connection. Same person with a couple of changes of body cells.
In Vietnam I seemed to at least function like a soldier. What we were doing was all soldiery even though it wasn't much of a cause worth fighting for. We gained and lost ground at about the same rate as we walked. But we were soldiers. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
At Schofield it was a whole new ball game. A pretend game that made even less sense. Hell, we knew we weren't goin' anywhere. James Jones called it the Pineapple Army. Biding time, drinking beer. Puttin' up with shit. Sure not a spot for an actual soldier.
In the years since, my mindset has been more a soldier's than what was called for at Schofield. A one man, weaponless army in training for a future with nothing in the offing. But don't do reunions, American Legion, VFW or any other beer-gut, rememberin' the good old days when we were settin' the world straight, and other kinds of bullshit. If you have any idea what kind of left-handed stuff is in the back of my mind motivatin' me, send me a post card.
Seemed like I was fated to draw the offending PFCs and Spec. 4s. Maybe they didn't have rich enough blood for the big boys up front. Up front the Sergeants and my Spec. 5 were having themselves a fine time. Writin' up tickets and upbraiding the offenders like they were at an ancient ritual and snappin' down on the bones of sacrificial babies.
As much as I was supposed to, I just couldn't bring myself to be that way. I'd stroll up to the driver's side window and give my usual speech of:
"We clocked you doing twenty-nine in a twenty-five zone. I'm gonna write you a ticket 'cause I have to. There's three parts to the ticket. One copy goes to you, one to the Provost Marshall's office and the other to your Company Commander.
What I'm gonna do is hand you your copy and put the other two in my pocket. At the end of my shift I'll throw those two away. Do me a favor and don't speed on post any more. Next time you might get one of the other MPs writing your ticket."
And that's what I did. Whether I'd do the same today I can't say for sure. Probably I would and most likely I wouldn't sweat the bullets about it that I did back then.
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