I love and miss you very much.
Love, Andrew
Monday, Sept. 16, 1968
Dear Janice:
Today one of our drill instructors talked to some of us about his experiences in Vietnam. I asked him why we’re over there. He looked at me squinty-eyed.
“We’re fighting communism.”
“But why in Vietnam?” I asked. “Aren’t they fighting a civil war there? Do we have any business getting involved in another country’s civil war? What if another country stepped in and messed in our civil war?”
He got in my face and said, “France and England and even some of the Indians fought in our Civil War. Besides, that’s where our leaders want us to fight, and we do what we’re told, and you will, too.”
I do not belong here. Blindly following orders goes against everything I believe in. Maybe I should have gone to Canada. I don’t know. The only thing I’m sure of is that I love you, and I should be at home with you
Love, Andrew
I AM A MAN
“Stop grazing and sit down!”
The cold authority in Lieutenant Kilmore’s command ended our search for a spot near our buddies. We dropped to the grass and sat cross-legged around a knee-high wooden platform the length and width of a small stage.
Kilmore stood at the center of the platform, his hands on his hips and his legs spread apart. He was a symbol of everything the Army wanted us to be.
His shoulders were wide and his back was straight. His broad chest narrowed to a flat stomach and a thin waist without a ripple in his shirt from his chest to his polished buckle and razor-creased starched pants. A glossy black shoulder holster held his nickel-plated .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol. Black dots centered his cobalt blue eyes like the eyes of a wolf, and when he smiled, his lips curled in a snarl.
Kilmore waited until we were all seated before he removed his helmet and shoulder holster. He picked up a rifle in one hand and a bayonet in the other. He pointed with the bayonet at a black trainee seated near me. The trainee was large, physically intimidating.
“What’s your name and hometown, trainee?”
The man yelled, “Private Jason Tilson from Atlanta, Georgia, Sir.”
“I know people from Georgia who aren’t as ugly as you are, Private Tilson, so it can’t be where you’re from that makes you so ugly.” Kilmore cradled the rifle in his left arm and with his right hand he tossed the bayonet in the air, end over end, and caught it while staring at Tilson.
“Maybe ugliness runs in your family. Can you tell us why you’re so ugly?”
“I don’t know, Sir.” Tilson chuckled. “God made me this way, Sir.”
We chuckled, too, thinking Kilmore was doing an edgy joke on Tilson. But he followed up with another question.
“Private Tilson, are you as slow as you are big?”
“No, Sir. I can net a ball while I’m in the air catching it, Sir.”
A few men cheered, but Kilmore’s eyes were cold. “When I asked if you were slow, Tilson, I didn’t mean physically.”
Tilson re-crossed his legs. A muscle near his left eye started twitching.
Tilson’s buddy, Cunningham, sat behind him and loudly whispered, “Hey, man, he jivin’ you. Be cool, man, be cool.”
“Sir? I don’t get your meaning, Sir.”
Kilmore snorted and looked at the rest of us as though we were in on the joke. “I’m not surprised you didn’t get my meaning, Private.”
Tilson nodded and leaned forward, his thick lips pursed, his dark brown eyes squeezed thin for understanding.
“But now I’m wondering.” Kilmore smirked and shook his head. “Are you a coward as well as being big, ugly, and stupid?” He attached the bayonet to the end of the rifle with a metallic click. “Are you a pussy, Private Tilson?”
Barely audible, Tilson replied, “I’m a man, Sir.” He slid his palms up and down his thighs.
The Lieutenant laid the bayoneted rifle on the platform in front of Tilson and walked to the opposite end of the stage. “Private Tilson, are you smart enough to realize I’ve been insulting your dumb ass in front of your fellow trainees?”
Perspiration beaded on Tilson’s face. In a hoarse voice he answered, “Yes, Sir.”
“Well, if you’re not a pussy,” Kilmore called, “I want you to come up here and kill me with that bayonet for insulting you in front of your friends.”
“Why you want me to do that, Sir?” Tilson turned and looked in puzzlement at the rest of us.
“Because I’d like to see you dance like a girl with that bayoneted rifle.”
Speechless, Tilson got on his knees.
“You can’t get in trouble, Tilson. Two platoons heard me insult you and order you to attack me. If you’re not a coward, get up here and give it a try.”
“No, Sir, I don’t play no game like that, Sir.”
“I’m not playing a game! I want you to come up here, you dumb ox, and kill me with that bayonet!”
“Sorry Sir, but I don’t want nothin’ to do with no killin’ an officer like yourself, Sir.”
“Well, Private,” Kilmore smiled his curled smile at the rest of us, but we didn’t smile back. “Maybe you’d rather suck me than stab me. Is that what you want?”
Cunningham, behind Tilson, let out a low growl and stood up. He was bigger than Tilson. Much bigger.
Cunningham walked to the stage and picked up the bayoneted rifle. It looked small in the hands of a man at least six feet three and bulging with muscle he’d sculpted in prison, or so I’d heard.
“May’ Tilson won’t kill you,” he said quietly, his voice getting louder as he spoke, “but ah be happy to cut you a new asshole you honka muthafucka!”
Cunningham glared at the lieutenant, bowed his head, and charged, the bayonet aimed at Kilmore’s chest.
Kilmore hooked his thumbs on his belt, squarely faced the charging trainee, and stared him in the eyes. The bayonet was no more than a foot from Kilmore’s chest when he knocked the bayonet off target with an up-swing of his left forearm, swiveled his body sideways like a matador, and swung his right elbow against the side of the passing man’s head. We all heard the hollow conk of elbow against skull.
Cunningham fell forward, off the platform, and rolled among the scattering trainees. The bayoneted rifle, impaled in the ground next to the stage, swung like a metronome. Holding his head, Cunningham curled into a giant fetus.
“Private Cunningham showed genuine courage,” Kilmore announced. “He’s my kind of man. Anybody fucks with Cunningham fucks with me. But Cunningham is dead meat in Vietnam unless he learns what an unarmed man can do when properly trained.
“During the next several days, I’ll teach you how to defend yourself and do to your attacker what I did to Cunningham. But instead of pulling your punch like I did, you can bust his skull like a melon.”
Kilmore looked down at the curled trainee. “You okay? Or should we chalk you up as a casualty of Basic Training?”
Cunningham didn’t answer.
The lieutenant waved to Tilson. “Get over here and assist your fellow soldier. You owe him one.”
Tilson walked over and helped his buddy stand up and guided him to his seat.
As Cunningham staggered past me, I heard him say, “Ah’ma gonna cut tha muthafucka fi’ differn’ way.”
****
Tuesday, Sept. 24, 1968
Dear Janice:
We practiced with Pugil Sticks today. They’re as long as a rifle with a bayonet attached and they’re padded at each end. For protection, we put on football helmets with face protectors, padded gloves, and a groin cup. Then two Pugil Fighters jump to the “On Guard” position and try to jab bayonet thrusts to the upper body of the opponent or beat the opponent’s brains out with the butt of the rifle (i.e., the Pugil Stick).
We laugh and strut around like tough guys if we beat the other guy to the ground. It’s not a game, of course, but it’s hard to remember that when we’re laughing and yelling at ou
r buddies, “Kill, kill, kill.”
I miss you so very much.
Love, Andrew
Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 28-29, 1968
Dear Janice:
I started this letter Saturday night. Now it’s Sunday.
I have free time all afternoon and I have so many things to tell you. First let me tell you about my experience with tear gas. Nasty stuff!
Thursday we started training on the CBN range (chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons). After a class about the use of gas masks and different kinds of gas we might encounter, we practiced putting on a gas mask—which is tricky because the mask has to be airtight. Then with our masks on, twelve of us at a time were led into a small, one-room brick building filled with tear gas. Six of us lined up on one side of the room and six on the other side, facing each other.
The tear gas in the building was not cloudy like I thought it would be. It was almost clear. We stood there until the drill instructors (wearing gas masks) were sure our masks were working properly. Then they ordered us to remove our masks, put them back in our mask-pouches, stand at attention, and repeat our names and serial numbers until the drill instructors were sure we'd gotten a full dose of tear gas.
The gas burned my lungs, my face felt like it was on fire, and my nose oozed mucus over my lips and chin. I wanted to run anywhere to get out of that room, but I stayed, and I didn’t plead to be released outside like several other guys did.
In fact, I haven’t backed down or run away from anything I’ve encountered or been ordered to do. I’ve followed orders and accepted every challenge. And that brings me to something I wanted to tell you.
I appreciate your words of support and I know that you sympathize with my dislike of the Army. I appreciate that you understand how difficult this is for me, but I’ve taken on everything they’ve dished out so far, and I can take on anything they dish out in the future … or die trying.
Basic Training isn’t really ill treatment. They’re preparing us for war. I know it sounds dumb or obvious, but that fact finally dawned on me in the tear gas chamber. I realized I had better know how to put on my gas mask. I had better learn the most effective use of these weapons. I had better learn how to fight, to be an effective soldier for my buddies. If I’m going to war, I know now I have to learn to be a warrior. We’re not playing games.
And maybe this sounds like I’m bragging, but I’m doing things I didn’t know I could do. It’s like Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. A man discovers what he’s made of by being stretched to his limits. Well, I’m being stretched and I’m not breaking. I’m not doing some of this stuff well, but I’m damn near killing myself trying.
For instance, I’m a disaster when trying to scale a wall on the obstacle course. I keep running at it and banging flat into it. I can’t seem to get my leg up high enough to pole-vault up the wall like we’re supposed to do. Sometimes I get over it with help from other trainees pulling and pushing me up the wall, which is terribly embarrassing. The drill instructors finally let them help me after I tried it again and again without success while they laughed their butts off. A couple of the DIs call me “lard ass.” But I’ve done well enough to pass the PT test (or I’ve shown enough persistence and determination that they’re letting me pass).
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could do some of the things I’ve done here or shown such resolve about doing things better than I thought was my best. For example—this is going to sound silly to you—if I decide to grab hold of something and not let it go, no matter what, then that’s what I’ll do. Somebody could rip it out of my hands, but I’ll still be gripping it while the ripping is going on. If I decide to run until my heart bursts or I collapse from heat exhaustion, then that’s what I’ll do. You can stop me physically, but nobody can keep me from trying until I succeed or drop dead. I can’t tell you how important that is to me, that I know this about myself.
Another man might jump a broader chasm than I can, but if we need to jump, then I’ll jump. And if I’m not sure I can reach the other side, then to hell with it, I’ll jump anyway.
Or if a man tries to kill me or hurt me or hurt someone I love, then he better make sure I’m dead, because as long as I have life in me, I can will myself to run, walk, or crawl until I reach him and do whatever I will myself to do to him using whatever strength I have left … or he kills me. Nothing short of that.
I didn’t know I was capable of anything like that. I didn’t know I had that kind of willpower or that kind of control over my body or my mind. Nor did I know I would ever take pride in having it. I’ve heard other men talk about this kind of thing, but I dismissed it as macho bravado. But that’s not what it is at all. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It gives me a sense of dignity and confidence and quiet power I never felt before.
So please don’t feel sorry for me. Not everything happening here is bad.
Love, Andrew
Wednesday, Oct. 8, 1968
Dear Janice:
Most of our training yesterday and part of today was devoted to medical care for exposure to poison gases and treatment of wounds.
It was sobering.
The most important part of our training was working with manikins—human-sized dolls with heavy rubber heads and arms and legs—that weighed almost as much as a real person. We practiced, on these manikins, applying bandages for bullet and shrapnel wounds—head, neck, arms, shoulders, torso, legs, feet—and splints for broken or wounded limbs.
One wound we learned to treat was, for me, the most unexpected and frightening of them all. I’ve never heard of it before. They call it “a sucking chest wound.”
If a bullet travels through your chest and punctures a lung, then when you inhale, some of the air will suck through the new hole; and when you exhale, some of the air will blow out the new hole and create little bubbles of blood on your chest and/or back. That’s how you discover a wounded man has a “sucking chest wound.” The bubbles and the sucking sound. We’re supposed to apply a thick wad of bandages over the hole(s) so the air can’t go in and out there.
You’d think damage from poisonous gas or being blinded or a head wound would be more frightening, but somehow—maybe because I’ve never thought about this kind of wound before—a “sucking chest wound” horrifies me. Makes me want a nice arm or leg wound … if I’m going to be wounded.
Enough of this. Hope you’re having a good day.
Love, Andrew
KENTUCKY DIRT
“How are you getting out of it, Carson?” Beavers turned his pudgy face to me and then back to Carson. “You planning on getting sick?” Beavers’ fingers fluttered over his protruding stomach like butterflies.
“I ain’t gettin’ sick,” Carson answered, “and I ain’t crawling on no dusty Kentucky field.”
Carson and I had chummed together since the third week of basic training. He was a lean, hard-muscled farm boy from Tennessee with a bent beak for a nose and alert blue eyes that tracked the movement of what he watched while his head was still as a stone. It was no surprise to any of us to learn he hunted possum and squirrel “an’ anythin’ else I kin eat. Raccoon, too.”
We were standing on a gravel road waiting our turns to jump on the back of a canvas-covered transport truck that would take us to the infiltration course. Carson handed his M14 up to another trainee and hiked himself over the rear edge of the truck. He looked down at Beavers. “An’ ain’t nobody gonna make me do it.”
Carson grabbed my rifle I held up to him, and he reached down and helped pull me up on the truck. We found two empty seats on the side bench on our right.
Grunting and groaning, Beavers struggled up onto the truck bed by himself and found a seat on the side bench opposite ours. Beavers yelled above the commotion of the other trainees, “You scared those machine guns gonna nail your ass, Carson?”
Trainees kept crowding in. The side benches filled. Men knelt on the floor. Others held their rifles at their sides and grabbed the overhead wooden bars su
pporting the canvas cover.
“I ain’t scared o’ nothin’,” Carson yelled.
Geason, who had big ears and a pimply face was seated next to Beavers. He yelled over the truck’s engine revving up for our trip to the infiltration course, “Either you’ll crawl like the rest of us or you’ll chicken shit out, one way or the other.”
Carson sprang head first between the men in the middle of the truck and hit Geason stiff-armed, slamming him back against the side-board. Carson grabbed Geason’s shirt as Carson fell backward—knocking men aside—and pulled Geason over onto Carson’s curled-up knees. He held Geason balanced in the air, face to face, Carson holding Geason’s shirt in his clenched fists.
Men shouted. Some applauded. Others called for Carson to beat the shit out of Geason.
“Fuck him up, Carson!”
“Goddamn it! You made me drop my rifle!”
“Let go of me,” Geason screamed.
“Hey, come on, assholes!”
“Stop horsing around!”
“Take back calling me chicken shit,” Carson yelled. He shook Geason so hard Greason's head flopped up and down like he had a rubber neck.
The truck suddenly lurched forward, bouncing us like loose stones in the bed of an empty pick-up. Men braced themselves against other men. Others grabbed the overhead bars and held tight against the men falling against them.
“O-okay, I-I take it b-back,” Geason yelled.
Carson shoved Geason off and crawled to his seat. I handed him his rifle. Somebody passed him his helmet. We all settled down while Carson sat glaring at everybody.
I nudged Carson with my elbow. “You thought this through? You have to do the infiltration course same as the rest of us.”
“I ain’t crawlin’ no Kentucky field.”
“What’s your alternative?”
“They’re aimin’ to humiliate us.”
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