by Doug Bradley
The weird thing was that it was Cannon, the highly-decorated, gung-ho, “grab ‘em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow” soldier who was the most sympathetic to Collins. We don’t know what he said or how he did it, but Cannon helped Collins to deal with the gun thing and to get through that part of basic training. We all can use a guy like Cannon in our corner.
So, here we were, “50 characters without an author” as Doc O’Brien called us (not that any of us knew what he meant by that), waist-deep in weapons familiarization and without Sgt. Cannon or any other assigned drill instructor! I mean, the Army was breaking its own rules by not having someone bunk with us and ride herd, but I guess they were short-handed because we went through the next few weeks—everything from shot grouping to zeroing to hand grenades to initial tactical training—on our own. Sure, the other company DIs kicked our butts when we were training and what have you, but nobody was with us non-stop from reveille to lights out.
We were into the last phase of the Field Exercises, and you just knew the whole fucking schedule was off because of all the rain and mud and Cannon’s leaving and how uptight all the DIs and brass were. They needed more cannon fodder for their fucking war and here we were stuck in the mud in New Jersey!
We’d already completed the 15K foot march after our first trip out to Poorman’s Range, so they decide to take us out and back to TT6 Night Infiltration in cattle cars so we’d get back to the base at a reasonable hour. Jesus, those goddamn cattle cars were just that—and we were the friggin cattle. There we were, 50 wet, muddy, and pissed-off newbies crammed into this large, mobile box on wheels, minus a damn drill sergeant.
You and I first met on one of those cattle cars, remember? Fresh out of reception, we gathered all 70 pounds of the finest Government Issue equipment and hustled on so we wouldn’t get our asses kicked. You didn’t want to be last, or be caught looking lost or sad. I remember there was one guy crying and man did they let that wimp have it!
Yeah, I can still remember them cramming in as many of us as humanely possible and then Senior Drill Sergeant Torres came on board and read us the riot act. All we could do was hang our heads and ride in silence to our new home at Fort Dix.
You figured out right away that we were driving around in circles so that the Army could mess with our heads and let the reality of belonging to them and being in the military sink in. Maybe that’s why we acted up like we did later on and sang the song we sang. All of us, every last one of us, had come to own that sinking feeling of being pushed down, down, down by Uncle Sam.
Anyway, what a fucking sight we were after our inglorious night infiltration. A goddamn cattle car full of Charles Schultz’s Pigpens but without the dust—we were filthy, wet, and muddy. Tired. Pissed. Doomed. Our fucking driver was obviously pissed off, taking the turns on the route back to the barracks at way more than 40 miles an hour. GIs were being tossed from one side of the car to the other; guys were falling on top of each other, screaming, cursing. I was waiting for some fight to break out. I was especially watching for Murphy, because, as you know, he’d had it in for me from day one, threatening he’d stick me when I least expected it. Lucky for me, he was on the bottom of a pile that included Denny “Haystacks” Calhoun and Myron “Bub-ba” Brown. Needless to say, Murphy wasn’t going anywhere.
That’s how things looked from my spot in the middle of the car, where I was hanging on for dear life to Collins who was holding on to one of the poles that ran from floor to ceiling. It was probably worse if you were one of the guys on the bottom of the pile, or if you were wetter and muddier than I was. Remember that line of Thoreau’s you used to always recite to us about most men living lives of quiet desperation? We had it half right. We were desperate, but loud and angry, too.
We all fucking knew that when we got back to the barracks, even as late as it was, we’d be ordered to formation, then made to clean our weapons and return them before we’d get to bed. Christ, it would be two in the fucking morning before we’d get to sleep. You could just sense that every last “swinging dick,” as Sgt. Cannon used to call us when he came through the barracks to wake us in the morning, had had it with the Army and basic training and Vietnam and everything and was about ready to explode.
That was when Doc and the Professor started singing “Yellow Submarine.” I’m not sure why that song or what it had to do with anything. Maybe it was on account of we were all feeling submerged somehow, both by the rain and the mud, and by the Army and Vietnam, too.
Doc began singing the first line, his voice sounding purer and clearer than I ever remember it being any time during basic training. Man, he had some pipes, and he was sounding so, well, so grown-up.
The Professor joined in on the next line of the song, his voice a little deeper and fuller than Doc’s. Funny that it was the two oldest guys in our platoon, and the only two college graduates beside you, who were doing the singing because they’d always kept a low profile.
Suddenly, it got quiet in the cattle car. For all I know we were still careening around corners and banging into one another, but we all started listening to them, as their voices go louder. When they finally got to the chorus, Doc banged the butt of his M-16 on the floor of the cattle car for emphasis. It made a great sound, a perfect thump/clang and, spontaneously, every last one of us was banging our M-16s on the floor to emphasize every “yellow submarine” utterance.
I can’t really describe for you what it was like being caught up in that moment. We all felt alive and somehow liberated, as if we weren’t any longer in the Army or stuck in Fort Dix, New Jersey. Somehow we’d been transported to some other time, some better place, where bands played and people got along and sang songs and had fun.
In our reverie, we’d lost track of just how fast the cattle car was moving and arrived back at our company headquarters, the entire cattle car belting out “Yellow Submarine” at top volume. The guys at headquarters must have known we were coming for miles because we were singing really loud.
Finally, Charles heard the banging on the side door and opened it, only to encounter a very pissed-off Master Sergeant Willie Brown and First Lieutenant Cory Watkins staring him in the face. Oddly, Charles didn’t shout “ten-hut” or anything. He just greeted them warmly and said, “Come right in.”
This nonchalant welcome made Brown and Watkins madder. They ordered us to stop singing, which we did, but we kept banging our M-16s on the floor of the cattle car. It sounded like a minor earthquake. It was hard to hear everything they were saying, but I was able to pick out parts of it. They accused us of being insubordinate, told us we were guilty of gross disciplinary infractions, and that the Army would deal harshly by giving us all an Article 15.
They also called us names, like jerk-offs and douche bags. After a while, their putdowns reminded me of the parents in “Bye, Bye Birdie” who complained about their kids being “disobedient, disrespectful oafs.”
That’s how I started playing their taunts in my head. It was a movie, and they were challenging us for being “noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy loafers.”
“You can talk and talk till your face is blue,” Brown and Watkins seemed to harmonize, “but they still just do what they want to do.”
Yep, I was singing to myself, “why can’t they be like we were/lifers in every way/what’s the matter with draftees today?”
You knew something would have to give and that somebody, us, was going to have to pay for this, but for that one brief moment, we had them by the balls because we’d fucked up their schedule and done something they didn’t expect us to do. Hell, if they would have thought about it for a minute and gotten over being pissed, Brown and Watkins might have realized that they’d accomplished their mission with us—we were acting as a team, not as individuals. We were singing and protesting, but we’d come together as a group which was the whole fucking objective of basic training, no?
They told us our punishment would be three-fold. First, after we got our asses off the cattle car, we
’d stand in formation, at attention, in complete silence, for an hour. Then we’d hand over our M16s without cleaning them and do a forced march back to our barracks.
After that trek, we’d return to reclaim our weapons—and then clean them—at 0400 hours. Meaning, of course, we’d get all of about two hours of sleep before we’d have to pack up and head out for the company’s 10K footmarch to the bivouac site for our final field training exercise.
To top it off, at the upcoming graduation ceremony, as everybody else in the company would be presented their Army insignia and mementos by their Drill Sergeants, we’d be served with our Article 15s. In front of our friends and family, no less.
That’s when it hit all of us that we needed you! You know as much about military law as anyone—you used to repeat that funny Groucho Marx line “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music” —and Collins says you’re planning to go to law school some day. Plus, everybody remembered those late-night “legal seminars” you used to hold, the ones where you told us about Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Part V of the Manual for Courts-Martial. In other words, you woke us all up to the fact that when it came to law and authority, the Army was holding all the cards.
“An Article 15 gives a commanding officer power to punish individuals for minor offenses,” you explained, pointing out that the term “minor offense” was a source for concern in the administration of nonjudical punishments. But, as you reminded us, the final determination as to whether an offense is minor, and I quote (I even wrote this down), “is within the sound discretion of the commanding officer.”
In fact, my brother, you might have taught us too well. Doc claims you opened his eyes to a loophole in the entire process which is why we’re having this debate. According to Doc, “Subsection (a) of Section 815, Article 15 of the Commanding Officer’s Non-judicial Punishment regs states that Article 15s may not be imposed upon any member of the armed forces under this article if the member has, before the imposition of such punishment, demanded trial by court-martial in lieu of such punishment.”
If he’s right, some of us think that if all 50 of us were to choose a court-martial instead of an Article 15, we could really fuck the Army up. Shit, they would have to hold individual court-martial proceedings for each of us, and it would cost them a shitload of time and money.
Of course, the counterargument—and more of the guys are on this side—is that if we even dared to this, the Army would really fuck us over. They’d probably apply a different definition to “minor offense” and try us by general court-martial, meaning we all could receive dishonorable discharges or get locked up. Where the fuck’s Perry Mason when you need him? Probably in his office making time with the lovely Della Street.
Lamont, the guys asked me to write and get your opinion on the Article 15-court-martial question, but I’m guessing it’s too late for that. Regardless of what we decide to do, we know that they’ll throw the book at us. At a minimum we’ll all be made 11 Bravos once this is done. Which means we’ll all be in ‘Nam within four months and some of us won’t be coming home.
But that’s not why I’m writing. Don’t tell the rest of them, but I’m writing because I need you to tell me if any of this makes a goddamn difference. I mean, if we’d raised our voices sooner, and louder, if we’d joined in with other GIs who were, would that have made a difference? Changed anything?
I’m not asking you if we did the right thing with our “Yellow Submarine” stunt, but I’m asking if what we did is really enough? And if it isn’t, what can we do, what choices do we have, if we want to change the way things are going? If we want to save a life, say Sgt. Cannon’s life?
Have we deluded ourselves into thinking that we had any choice at all?
Sorry for the long letter and all the heavy questions. We’re meeting with our defense counsel in a few minutes. Some young JAG officer from Manchester, New Hampshire. Hope he likes the Beatles.
Peace,
Rick
Race Against Time
Once upon a time they called him Aubrey Moore. That was the slave name he inherited, growing up in Val-dosta, Georgia, USA, where he was shown his place and stayed put.
Head down. Eyes lowered.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once won second prize in a high school oratory contest in Valdosta. Aubrey’s English teacher remembered King’s being there, and told Aubrey’s class how the young Reverend’s voice fillied the halls, his words piercing the quiet classrooms like a warrior’s sword.
Now King was dead.
And so was Aubrey Moore.
Malik Hekalu (Translation: King Temple) was who he was, rising from the jungles of Southeast Asia, a mixture of Arabic and Swahili. Muslim and African. King, servant no more.
Malik demonstrated his new station every day in Vietnam by the ritual greeting he gave his brothers. It started with eye contact, then slight hand contact, and suddenly a flurry of rapid gestures—a complicated routine of shakes, slaps, snaps, grips, and bumps familiar only to Malik and his greeter.
Four black hands in constant motion—slapping, snapping, wiggling fingers, mutual knuckle bumps, and ever so slight finger waves.
Black GIs called it dapping. White soldiers said the term DAP was an acronym that stood for “dignity and pride,” mimicking the black power movement back in the world. Malik and his brothers laughed at this and said it was a “blackronym,” an explanation thought up by whites after the fact.
Truth is, if you watched, if you listened, you could actually hear the message in a dap greeting—anything from life is good to shit is fucked up here to you better watch your ass. The pulling of the slightly cupped hands of the greeting participants against each other would send echoes across the base.
Malik Hekalu dapped his way through the rest of his tour in Vietnam. He even taught some of the Vietnamese how to dap. They told Malik that dap sounded like the Vietnamese word for beautiful. The women especially thought he was beautiful.
Which is why he decided to walk away from the Army and hang out with the Vietnamese who referred to him as Midan, or black man.
With them, he was able to be Malik. He loved being Malik. And he always talked with his hands, his strong, swift, black hands.
One day he started telling the story of the scores of African Americans from his hometown of Valdosta—farmers, craftsmen, and cotton pickers—who had left Georgia in the 1850s and 1860s for a better life in Liberia, Africa.
Telling that story to the Vietnamese took Malik a long, long time.
Ticket to Soulville
Dwight Johnson held tightly to his father’s right arm at the elbow. Tethered this way, the two men meandered through a display of photos, letters, and military artifacts. Dwight’s attempt to steer his father through the exhibit served to steady them both. He hadn’t realized until now how skeletal his father’s arm was, that there were fragments of something, maybe bone, floating around underneath his skin at the elbow.
“Pops, slow down,” he said almost sweetly to his father. Reggie Johnson kept right on walking, eyes locked straight ahead. His son quickened his pace to stay with him.
“We need to stay with the rest of the group, Pops.” Dwight was directing his voice to his father’s good ear. He gestured toward a cluster of folks—the tour group they came with—standing at ease behind them, a mix of old and young, large and small, firm and infirm. People of all shades, from beige to brown to black.
A distinguished-looking man with a thick mustache, crisp white shirt, and bright bow tie was pointing to a military jacket that hung behind a plate of glass. Dwight escorted his father back to the group, his arm again pressed at the elbow. He felt his father flinch at the pressure.
“This is a Marine poncho-jacket,” the bow-tied tour guide explained. “It was worn by a decorated Marine named James Anthony who served two Vietnam tours of duty between 1967 and 1969. I want you to notice the personal embroidery over the breast pocket. Can anyone see what it says?”<
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Silence. Until now, they’d only shared whispers, afraid if they raised their voices they might raise the spirits of dead soldiers, or resurrect buried memories.
“No one knows what this brother is talkin’ ‘bout?” The guide’s lapse into vernacular elicited a ripple of laughter. A tall young man in the back, his baseball cap turned backward and his t-shirt sporting an image of the rapper Ludacris, raised his hand.
“It says ‘black and proud.’ It’s a shout out to James Brown’s hit song ‘Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud’ that was huge in the late ‘60s. My granddaddy was in Vietnam around that time. Said he saw James Brown in person!”
“You and your grandpa will have to tell us more about that later,” the guide smiled and signaled the group to move along. “James Brown’s trip to Vietnam comes up several more times in this exhibit.”
“What’d he say?” Reggie asked Dwight, a mixture of frustration and alarm in his voice. “What did Mr. Lewis just say?”
“He was talking about the Marine’s poncho,” he shouted into his father’s right ear, “and about James Brown’s performing for troops in Vietnam.”
“Entertaining,” his father shot back, almost defiantly. “James Brown might have entertained white GIs. He performed for us brothers.”
Before he could ask for clarification, Dwight realized the young man with the Ludacris t-shirt was standing next to them. His two hands rested on the back of a wheelchair where a white-haired man sat, looking intently at his father.
“Ain’t that the truth, brother,” the white-haired gentleman said, his voice raspy. “Hell, if they hadn’t talked James Brown into going to Vietnam, the shit would have really hit the fan.” The old man’s eyes jumped as he spoke, punctuating his sentences. He stretched his hand upward toward Reggie’s.
“Earl Floyd,” he offered, “1968-69.” As Earl’s hand drew near Reggie’s, it began to dip and snap and crack in what looked to Dwight like a sorcerer’s wave.