We were given seventeen days leave after AIT. Normal was a full month at home before shipping off to Vietnam. However, we'd already had twenty-one days after Basic Training because Christmas had interrupted the flow of things. Between then and New Year's Day the stateside Army went into hibernation.
This tradition became standard among Western armies during the Crusades when the Christians would stop battling Islam on December 25 to celebrate the spirit of love and peace that went with the season. It was on a Christmas day that Richard the Lion-Hearted gave Saladin a figgy pudding, along with the recipe for Mrs. Saladin. Saladin, in exchange, gave Richard seventeen concubines, who, in turn gave the English king a dose of the clap which he brought home to share with everyone.
Seeing as how we were battling the twentieth century version of godless heathens in Vietnam, our stateside Army would cease operations long enough for troops to get stinking drunk and then sober up enough to stomach the mess hall's version of figgy pudding. That's why my Basic Training cycle was cut to eight weeks and why we were given leave before returning in early January in order to learn how to kill a man nine different ways. Love and peace baby, they make the world go round.
Lois picked me up at the airport and we spent most of the leave together. The plan had been a marriage before I shipped out but that plan ended before I knew it existed. Something about a talk with her dad, who was a wounded medic in WWII, made her see that being married to a potential body bag didn't make much sense. The idea of being a potential body bag held no appeal for me either but I understood her dad's logic.
Looking back on that leave tells me it was one of the best seventeen day stretches in my life. Each day was savored like a fine meal. Seemed I was building a cocoon around myself. Cutting out the unnecessary. Paring my world down to a few relatives, Lois, and putting the next year behind me. Focus on the important. And the important ain't that many things. As the saying went back then, "They can have my body but not my mind."
In truth, I never figured on dying or being maimed. Doubt any of us who fought in Vietnam went with the idea of never coming back. I knew it was a real possibility, just like I knew Pluto was the farthest planet from the sun. But death was no more than a fact out there somewhere, not something a person ever laid their hands on, nothing more than a concept.
And believe me, I never figured on being a hero. That was for the John Wayne's of Hollywood fighting on the backlots of California. Over the years it has grown to be acceptable and proper to be grateful for the sacrifices made by veterans. Treat us all like we were heroes.
As far as I'm concerned, all I want is to be left alone about my time in the Army. I'm somebody who put himself in an intolerable position and saw two years in the Army as the only way out. That I briefly ended up as a grunt in a war zone was my own fault. It wasn't so much a sacrifice on my part as it was stupidity. But that doesn't exonerate the idiots who got us into that mess.
Said this before, most of the problems in my life were self-caused. Same goes for society. Especially one with as many assets as ours.
Time to get off the box. Seventeen days turned into twenty. Guess going to Vietnam held less appeal than staying home. Hard to believe. Now I was an AWOL. But I didn't think of it that way. In my mind an AWOL was running away never to return and I wasn't. Instead, I was taking my time, getting used to the water of combat. No sweat, the Army and the war would still be there even if I was a little tardy.
On the downside, I figured the Army might see my late arrival differently. And they did. At least the Lieutenant in charge of something or other at Oakland Army Base did. In our one-to-one chat he said if it had been up to him I'd have been given a cigarette, a blindfold, and a place of honor against the wall of shame. But seeing as how I'd no doubt die in Vietnam from a bullet in the back as I ran away, crying like a baby from my first fire fight, instead he dumped an Article 15 on me. Extra duty, confined to the area, and forfeiture of a week's pay. He could have busted me back to Private E-1 but it would have done no good. Army policy would immediately promote me to PFC as soon as I stepped off the plane in Bien Hoa. Had I been wearing chevrons I think he'd have busted me just so he could tear them off. Oh the shame.
Looking back on that leave tells me it was one of the best seventeen day stretches in my life. Each day was savored like a fine meal. Seemed I was building a cocoon around myself. Cutting out the unnecessary. Paring my world down to a few relatives, Lois, and putting the next year behind me. Focus on the important. And the important ain't that many things. As the saying went back then, "They can have my body but not my mind."
In truth, I never figured on dying or being maimed. Doubt any of us who fought in Vietnam went with the idea of never coming back. I knew it was a real possibility, just like I knew Pluto was the farthest planet from the sun. But death was no more than a fact out there somewhere, not something a person ever laid their hands on, nothing more than a concept.
And believe me, I never figured on being a hero. That was for the John Wayne's of Hollywood fighting on the backlots of California. Over the years it has grown to be acceptable and proper to be grateful for the sacrifices made by veterans. Treat us all like we were heroes.
As far as I'm concerned, all I want is to be left alone about my time in the Army. I'm somebody who put himself in an intolerable position and saw two years in the Army as the only way out. That I briefly ended up as a grunt in a war zone was my own fault. It wasn't so much a sacrifice on my part as it was stupidity. But that doesn't exonerate the idiots who got us into that mess.
Said this before, most of the problems in my life were self-caused. Same goes for society. Especially one with as many assets as ours.
Time to get off the box. Seventeen days turned into twenty. Guess going to Vietnam held less appeal than staying home. Hard to believe. Now I was an AWOL. But I didn't think of it that way. In my mind an AWOL was running away never to return and I wasn't. Instead, I was taking my time, getting used to the water of combat. No sweat, the Army and the war would still be there even if I was a little tardy.
On the downside, I figured the Army might see my late arrival differently. And they did. At least the Lieutenant in charge of something or other at Oakland Army Base did. In our one-to-one chat he said if it had been up to him I'd have been given a cigarette, a blindfold, and a place of honor against the wall of shame. But seeing as how I'd no doubt die in Vietnam from a bullet in the back as I ran away, crying like a baby from my first fire fight, instead he dumped an Article 15 on me. Extra duty, confined to the area, and forfeiture of a week's pay. He could have busted me back to Private E-1 but it would have done no good. Army policy would immediately promote me to PFC as soon as I stepped off the plane in Bien Hoa. Had I been wearing chevrons I think he'd have busted me just so he could tear them off. Oh the shame.
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