Last Man Out

by James E. Parker, Jr.

  At sunrise the following morning I stood under the oak tree and smoked as the men fell out for reveille. Captain Woolley, tall and tan, was already on the scene. At breakfast, Pete pointed out some of the men in my platoon—they looked sloppy, undisciplined. My platoon sergeant was an old World War II veteran who was sleepwalking, according to Pete, and rarely spent time with the platoon. Pete thought that, in all, there were only about a dozen sick, lame, or lazy men in my platoon. All the able-bodied soldiers had already been pulled out for the 2d Brigade. Not much of a first command, I thought, disappointed.

  I met the other platoon leaders over breakfast. Duckett was a large black second lieutenant from Philadelphia who had driven a cab to pay his college tuition. He was quiet but not shy, and had a toughness to his manner that was unfamiliar to me. Ray Ernst was a small, deliberate South Dakotan. He was, surprisingly, a natural companion to Duckett. They just went together, like a longtime married couple.

  Captain Woolley joined us at the head of the table and easily, naturally, assumed the leader role. He expected deference to his rank and position, but he listened when we spoke and had a reassuring confidence about himself. A friendly, articulate man who led through the strength of his personality, I immediately felt privileged to be under his command.

  After breakfast, as I walked down to the 3d Platoon’s barracks, I went over my introduction speech. I had added, since seeing some of my men at breakfast, that I did not tolerate sloppy attitudes and expected close attention to military deportment. We faced the prospect of imminent deployment to a theater of war; beginning this morning we were going to shape up.

  I took a deep breath on the barracks steps. Another benchmark in my life, I thought, as I went in to “meet my men.” Tough but fair was the image I wanted. I walked in with a stern expression on my face.

  Loud music coming from a radio in the latrine competed with another radio on another station to the rear of the bay area. Nine men were lounging around. A few turned and gazed disinterestedly at me. A fat private got off a bunk to my right and called attention, but it produced little response from the others. One soldier lying on a bunk with the mattress folded back closed his eyes and made snoring sounds. Another, cigarette dangling from his hand, continued to lean on a broom. A Latino wearing a towel and combing his hair came out of the latrine, looked at me and then around at the other men.

  “My name is Lieutenant Parker,” I began, “your new platoon leader.”

  “Who’s this guy?” asked the Latino.

  “Shut up, everybody,” from the fat guy.

  I turned to him. “You want to wake that guy up down there and go turn off those radios?”

  He walked away, shaking the snorer first, then headed to the radio at the rear. I heard someone say, “Touch my radio and I cut your fat ass.”

  The Latino said, “Can I get dressed before you start talking, siirrr?”

  It wasn’t starting out the way I had in mind, but Manuel, the fat guy, eventually turned off the radios, the Latino got dressed, the snorer got to his feet, and the man with the broom put it down and finished his cigarette. I asked them something about themselves. Each had a reason for not being sent to the 2d Brigade. Some were finishing their enlistments and leaving service within a month or so, others were awaiting court-martial, some were sick and lame, or claimed to be. Manuel was fat.

  I had a speech ready, so I let it go, but it was lost on this audience, except for Manuel. I ended by saying, “No one skates anymore in this platoon, even if you have only a week left in the army. Until you receive your orders, you belong to me.” As I turned to leave, someone turned on a radio.

  I told Pete that my group couldn’t fight a cold.

  THREE

  Marshaling for War

  Troops from U.S. Army units in Germany and Korea arrived at Fort Riley. The misfits in my platoon and throughout the battalion were sent to a holding company at the hospital. Sgt. Cecil W. Bratcher arrived and was assigned to my platoon as 1st Squad leader. Slightly stoop shouldered, he had a facial tic that tensed the muscles in his neck and jerked his jaw to the right. He reminded me of Cottonpicker, however, when he walked up closer to me than necessary, saluted, smiled, and introduced himself. Within days I had Woolley transfer my original, timid platoon sergeant to company headquarters so that Bratcher could take over the job.

  One morning after a load of new replacements arrived, Woolley called me to his office.

  “Got a new rifleman here that I’m going to assign to your platoon, but, ah, he, ah, he’s, I’m not sure how long he’s going to be around.” Woolley continued to look down at a paper on his desk as he talked. Not yet completely comfortable around the company commander, I stood awkwardly in front of his desk.

  “He’s scheduled for a dishonorable discharge. Just got out of the brig for shooting a man—apparently he was dorking this man’s wife and got caught. He’s an ex–M.P. Sergeant E-5 before his court-martial. He’s here, best I can tell, because of some administrative mistake—all the bodies being moved around, he got out of a line to get kicked out of the service into a line of replacements for the 1st Division. His name is Private Wiler Beck. Keep an eye on him until we decide what to do with him.”

  I called Beck off to the side shortly after Woolley assigned him to my platoon to tell him that he probably would not be around long, that as far as I knew his dishonorable discharge was still being processed. A big, burly man in his mid-twenties, he stood as tall as he could and with a stoic, implacable look on his face, said, “Sir, I bribed my way here from the holding company at Fort Leavenworth. I don’t want a DD. I want to go to Vietnam with the 1st Division. I won’t let you down.”

  Beck was, in fact, a very good soldier, though he was assertive by nature and tended to be the first and the loudest with an opinion—a private with a sergeant’s attitude. He carried an M-79 grenade launcher like a war club.

  A month after I arrived the battalion was at full strength. President Johnson gave another televised talk beginning with “My fellow Americans.” Pete and I were at our favorite bar in Junction City that night and didn’t hear the broadcast live. When we got back to the BOQ around midnight, people gathered in the dayroom were talking excitingly.

  “We’re going to Vietnam,” someone told us as we walked in. He was excited to be telling someone who didn’t know.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The whole damn 1st Infantry Division. President Johnson just said so. We’re going to join the 1st Cav. We going to war, boy.” With his close-cut hair and flushed face, the young officer looked a little zingy. Pete looked at me and said, smiling, “War!”

  I repeated it, “Waarrrr!!”

  The day after that announcement the battalion left for a planned cavalry exercise with the armored personnel carriers (APCs) assigned to the battalion. It was great fun racing across Kansas prairies kicking up a rooster tail of dust. Peterson peered out of the turrets of an APC on my left, and Ernst and Duckett were on my right. We were all yelling “Yahoo!” as the tracks took dips and then bounded over the tops of rises. Vietnam in an APC wasn’t a bad proposition, I thought. On our return to garrison, however, the APCs were turned in. We were going to Vietnam as “straight leg” infantry, not as a mechanized infantry battalion.

  Robert M. Dunn from Portland, Oregon, and George McCoy from Munster, Indiana, other platoon leaders in the battalion, teamed with Pete and me on our nights out in Junction City and at the various officers clubs on base. McCoy was quiet but funny. He was a good listener and, true to his midwestern roots, a man of his word, the type of person you wanted at your side in combat.

  Dunn was also good to have around. His loud laugh could burst streetlights. He had a quick wit, but he was also quick to fight. His father had played pro football for the Green Bay Packers, so Dunn probably came by his physical nature honestly. Orphaned when he was thirteen years old, he went to live with an older brother who was also a minor. That arrangement actually worked out pretty well and gave D
unn a certain freedom in growing up that most other kids his age envied. While he was in the tenth grade, however, he ran afoul of the law for selling false IDs. That led the social service people to place him with an older married sister, who insisted on more responsible behavior, and he eventually graduated Seattle University ROTC. Because of his loud wit and the fact that he did not bluff, nothing was calm when he was on the scene. Though he probably would never hit one of his men, if a fellow officer irritated him he’d hit the officer flush in the nose. He’d do it without a second’s thought, and that came across in his manner. We didn’t mess with Dunn.

  One night in a remote club, I went outside to pee and then staggered across the Kansas plains, more to keep my balance than to see the countryside. I ended up at a stable. When I turned around I could see the officers club behind me in the distance. Several horses were in their stalls. No one was around, so I got a saddle and bridle from the tack room and had opened the door to the first stall when a strong right arm landed on my shoulder. A friendly, mustached sergeant told me not to mess with Chief, he was the Army’s last cavalry horse, a local institution. “Ah, Chief,” I said, having no idea that this was the most famous horse in the Army.

  “Chief,” the sergeant repeated. “I’ll take you back to the O club.”

  In the club parking lot, Dunn was pushing someone around in the middle of a ring of young officers. I broke through the crowd and tried to separate the two. One of them hit me square upside the head, and I fell to my knees. Dunn and the other man continued slugging each other above me. One of their blows came down on my crown like a club, and I fell forward, face-down in the parking lot.

  McCoy helped me to his car. When Peterson and Dunn joined us, Dunn looked none the worse for wear. I told him that sometimes it sure hurt having fun with our crowd.

  More staff and equipment arrived every day. Our platoon received two very heavy antitank guns, which we assumed would be turned in with the APCs. Incredibly, we learned that we would take them to Vietnam, although we hadn’t heard much about Viet Cong tanks. Bratcher said that if we were taking the guns to Vietnam, they would be good for something. You’ve got to believe in the Army, he said, plus something about those heavy guns made him think they were going to be valuable.

  Dunn left for Oregon to marry Linda Lowe, the daughter of a dentist. On weekends Pete and I raced each other north to his home in Lincoln, Nebraska. He pushed his Alfa Romeo faster than I wanted to drive my Mercedes, and he’d often go out of sight in front to wait for me, sitting high on top of a ridge ready to race down and pass me again.

  Back at Fort Riley, training intensified. I was pleased to see that most of my men were good marksmen, whether they came from the city or the country. A fair shot myself, I challenged the high scorer from the platoon for a shoot-off at the end of rifle practice. Sometimes I won, but usually the marksman of the day beat me.

  We also marched across the Kansas prairies on field exercises. As we walked along I had a chance to talk with the men in the platoon. Sergeant Bratcher’s father in Tennessee had a business fixing jukeboxes, a business he planned to join when he retired from the Army. Jo Ann, his wife, had recently broken both her arms, but was moving the family from their last post back to Tennessee.

  “She’s a good woman,” he said. “Good soldiers have good wives. I see it all the time.”

  The majority of the NCOs in my platoon were black. On average the riflemen were eighteen years old. Most had bad teeth, many had tattoos, and few had graduated high school.

  Sgt. Miguel Castro-Carrosquillo from Puerto Rico was one of the platoon clowns. PFC Gilbert P. Spencer was a tall black man from an urban ghetto who led the “Angry Negro Coalition.” Pvt. Antonio De Leon, a college graduate, had been sitting out a year to make money for graduate school when he was drafted. PFC J. V. Patrick was a lanky Texan who had gone through a series of civilian jobs before joining the Army. Sgt. Roosevelt S. Rome was a burly squad leader who rarely spoke. Pvt. Harold G. Ayers was a large, barely literate eighteen year old from the Midwest. Sgt. Ray E. King was a redheaded noncom who led the 3d Squad. Pvt. Warren J. Manuel, who carried a machine gun, had been in the platoon longer than anyone. He was the fat guy who was in the platoon when I arrived. PFC James E. Newsome carried my PRC-25 radio. Pvt. John J. (Jack) Lyons Jr. from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was a draftee, Pvt. Beck’s best friend. Together, Lyons and Beck formed an alliance that was seldom challenged in the platoon.

  Most of the men had personal situations to settle prior to departure, and most requested leave to go home, except Ayers. Pay allotments had to be taken out, wives and families settled, cars sold, and personal equipment sent home or thrown away.

  We received movement orders in mid-August. Our battalion was going by train to the west coast and by ship across the Pacific. Departure was tentatively set a month away, mid-September. Training activities increased. Lt. Col. Robert Haldane, a West Point graduate, was battalion commander. He had an intelligent, educated manner, spoke in a low, resonant voice, and had that intangible quality usually referred to as “presence.” By reputation, he was the finest battalion commander in the 1st Division. With his sidekick, Sergeant Major Bainbridge, he often led the entire battalion on PT runs in the morning.

  Men continued to arrive, and most of them immediately went on leave to take care of personal business. Once a day, it seemed, I was called to the orderly room for a telephone call to exclaim, “You have to do what?” or “You’re where?” It was hard to believe some of the twisted situations in which the men—boys mostly—of my platoon had found themselves. Some returned from leave with broken noses, or drunk or broke, in taxis, on buses, thumbing, with pregnant girlfriends or dogs, with chest colds or venereal disease.

  “Is there something about going to Vietnam that makes people crazy?” I asked Bratcher.

  “Yep,” he said, “there is some of that, but most of these guys are crazy anyway.” Bratcher smiled, and the muscles in his neck tightened and his head jerked to the right.

  The platoon was unanimous in its disapproval of war protesters. The men talked about them as we marched out to the rifle range.

  “They don’t have anything to complain about,” Beck said. “Hell, we’re the ones going to get shot at. What are they protesting about? Soldiers are real men, dope-smoking hippies are slime.”

  But De Leon said, “That may be true, but those hippie girls do it with the lights on, sometimes in groups.”

  Lyons said, “Hippies are pinko Commies.”

  “They protest about this fucked-up society, man,” Spencer said.

  “Shut up, Spencer,” Beck responded quickly. “I get tired of your whining. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Ain’t you ever been satisfied, man?”

  “Yeah,” Spencer replied, “with your sister.”

  Beck shifted his M-79 and slowed his gait as he glared at Spencer.

  “Tell you what,” Bratcher quipped as he walked up near Beck, “if I hear any more bickering, I’m going to take your young asses out there and tan ’em. I’m looking for about ten minutes of quiet here. Don’t nobody say nothing. No body. Shut the fuck up.”

  Even I was quiet, which I didn’t particularly like. Bratcher had a way of taking over—he was very strong-willed. He had the respect of the men because he was tougher than they were. My problem was that platoon sergeants often usurped the authority of young officers and turned them into mascots. They had the network of sergeants in the platoon on their side. If it came down to a popularity contest, the platoon sergeant won. During those first few weeks, as we prepared to go overseas into God knows what, Bratcher and I had been sizing each other up. I liked the Tennessee sergeant, though. He reminded me of Cottonpicker, and I believed that we could develop an effective division of labor in leading the platoon. But we kept an eye on each other.

  Out of nowhere I received orders to Little Creek, Virginia, for loadmaster training, to help the battalion liaise with the Navy during sea travel.

  I had decided to leave
my car with Pete’s dad. The weekend before I left for Virginia, Pete and I raced over the Kansas/Nebraska line to Lincoln. I opened up the Mercedes and for miles on miles we raced side by side, bumper to bumper.

  While we were in Lincoln, Pete suggested that we visit one of his high school classmates, now an insurance agent. Each of us bought a ten-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. The agent said we could not name each other as beneficiaries because initially, in drafting the policy, the beneficiary had to be a family member. We could take out the policies with our mothers as beneficiaries, and after a period of time, say a month, we could change our beneficiary to each other. Fine, we said, that’s the plan. We paid a nominal amount for the first premium, got receipts and change-of-beneficiary forms, and went to a bar to discuss what we had done. In a back booth at the Diamond Bar and Grill, I said, “If anything happens to you, Pete, I will be surely sorry. I want you to know that I will be sad like I have never been sad before. But this ten-thousand-dollar policy, I think, will almost make it all right.”

  “You know, Parker,” Pete said, “you could have saved money on your premium, ’cause I would have been happy with a buck fifty if something happened to you.”

  After attending the ten-day naval training class, I flew to North Carolina to say good-bye to my parents. While I was there I took my old 12-gauge shotgun out of the broom closet and carried it to the back porch. As I had done years before when preparing to go hunting with Cottonpicker, I checked to see if any shells were in the chamber. Then I bounced it in my hands, feeling for its center of balance. It felt comfortable. I brought it to my shoulder quickly and laid in on a distant tree. Dead center. No wasted movement. The gun knew where to go, like the ’03 Springfield I had used at Oak Ridge.

  A good weapon is important in a war. The shotgun and that ’03 were the best that I had ever had in my hands. The shotgun was an extension of my body. I had been firing it since I was a kid. If I had a way of taking it to Vietnam, I would. And I suddenly remembered the antitank weapons. I could pack my shotgun with them. Bratcher was right. Those weapons were going to be useful for something—to carry my very own shotgun to Vietnam. I disassembled it and put it in my duffel bag without telling my parents.