We Are Not Saints

by David M

  When the doctor sat down next to my bed the next day his look was grave, almost angry.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not going to beat around the bush. If you’re trying to kill yourself, you’re doing a good job.”

  “Relax Doc,” I said. “I had too much to drink and I passed out. I’m having a rough time right now. I’ll be fine”

  “Don’t give me a line of shit,” he said. “I’ve seen this a thousand times, and to be honest; I’m sick of it. You’re rum-soaked and malnourished, and from the looks of you this has been going on for years. Last night your heart nearly gave out. For Christ sake, your twenty three years old.”

  “So what do I have to do,” I asked.

  “For starters, you need to eat. Then you need to get some exercise to start rebuilding some of the muscle you’ve drank away. But above all you need to stop drinking. I don’t mean cut back, I mean stop all together.”

  “And if I don’t,” I asked.

  “If you don’t,” he said, “you are going to die, and sooner rather than later.”

  As I walked out of the hospital later that day I knew I had to make a change. Never drinking again was not an option, but the alternative wasn’t very appealing either. I just wanted to run, but to where?

  Chapter Five:

  I spent a lot of time thinking, and drinking, after leaving the hospital. The doctor had given me a lot of literature about AA, and even recommended rehab.

  AA was out of the question. I couldn’t face the thought of never drinking again. Rehab also seemed out of the question. I was broke and didn’t have any insurance. Besides, wouldn’t rehab lead right to AA, and that would mean never drinking again. I was 23-years old, so never was a long damn time.

  As Arlo Guthrie said, “Then it come to me like a flash, like a vision burnt across the clouds.” I would join the Army.

  I decided the Army was my best choice for several reasons. I knew from watching movies they would feed me and make me exercise. I also believed everyone in the Army drank, so they wouldn’t try to force me to quit. I hoped they might even teach me to drink responsibly.

  I had tried to enlist in the Army once before when I was seventeen-years old, but my police record was too extensive. The recruiter recommended that I wait until I turned eighteen, stay out of trouble for a few weeks and try again.

  The logic behind this idea was that in the early ‘90s juvenile police records were sealed, even from the Army. If I waited until I was eighteen, all I would have had to do was sign a waiver stating that I had been arrested prior to the age of eighteen, and that I had reformed myself since then.

  I didn’t go back to the recruiter when I turned eighteen, but by the age of twenty three I couldn’t think of any other options, so in October of ’92 I was on my way to basic training.

  By the end of basic training it seemed my plan was coming together. I had gained almost forty pounds in thirteen weeks of training, and was in the best shape of my life. On top of that, I hadn’t had a drink since the night before I shipped out, almost three months prior. My God I felt good.

  After Airborne School I was sent to the 5/87th Infantry at Fort Davis, Panama. President Clinton’s kinder, gentler new Army policies didn’t seem to extend to this part of the world. This was the old Army, where Soldiers drank hard but trained harder. I was not hardened yet.

  I drank every night the first week I was in Panama, and by the end of that week I had lost fifteen pounds. That didn’t seem to matter to my squad leader though. He had identified me as a problem and made it his mission to fix me.

  He was smart enough to know that taking the bottle from me would make me a discipline problem rather than just weak, and it’s easier to fix weakness than a bad attitude. His goal was to push me so hard during the day that I would be too tired to drink myself into a stupor every night. The plan worked, but not as he had intended.

  I began to push myself harder than I ever thought possible. I ran before and after work, did forced road marches in my spare time and even volunteered to help train other units in the field in my time off. Rather than being too tired to drink though, I now had a counter balance. I was drinking more than ever before and rarely ran out of steam. I had found my new cocaine and she was the infantry.

  After about six months in Panama, I was truly the best I could be. I was leading PT runs in the morning, training new soldiers and taking point in the Jungle. My job performance and physical stamina were nothing short of amazing, but it was my off duty antics that my reputation was built on.

  Panama City was nearly fifty miles away. It was a fairly nice city but simply too far away for a night out. Colon was a shit-hole, but it was close. Besides, after being raised in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, shit-holes were right up my alley.

  The only bars in Colon that were not blacklisted by the Army were the brothels. The brothels themselves were off limits but the barrooms in the brothels were fair game. These were generally safe places, but the beer was expensive and the whiskey was watered down. I preferred the bars on the blacklist.

  My favorite place was The Miami Bar. If you looked like trouble you were let into the bar by the bouncer with little more than a glance. If you looked like a tourist, or as they liked to call it, “a victim” you were thoroughly patted down. The philosophy was that if the victim was unarmed he would put up less of a fight, which in turn meant less damage to bar property. Buy the way, women were strictly prohibited at The Miami Bar, they were just too much trouble.

  On my first visit to the bar I ordered a bottle of beer and a shot of whiskey. The bartender ushered me to a table in the corner and brought me a quart of dark beer with ice on the bottle, a shot glass and a bottle of Irish whiskey.

  With what seemed like genuine concern, the bartender leaned close to my ear and said, “Sir, it may not be safe for you here.”

  I don’t remember my exact response, but I believe it had something to do with burning the fucking bar to the ground if anyone even looked at me funny. Whatever I said seemed to do the trick, because no one looked at me at all.

  Several weeks after my first visit to the bar a fight broke out and a man was shot. No one paid much attention until the police showed up. They threw the body in the back of a pickup truck and it seemed like it was all over, but when they tried to question the shooter a second gunfight broke out.

  Several of my friends heard there was trouble at The Miami Bar and rushed over to make sure I was alright. They knocked the bouncer on his ass and turned over a table as they entered the bar. These guys sure as hell knew how to make an entrance.

  I waved them over to the table and bought a round. I told them everything was fine and that I’d join them later. Then I bought a round for the entire bar as my friends took off back down the street. I was now Miami Bar royalty.

  I had become good friends with three sisters in colon and, for lack of a better term, I dated the oldest sister for about a year. The bars in town never closed but soldiers had a curfew. We were not allowed to be out on the streets after two in the morning. Around one-thirty I would go to a street vender and buy a shopping bag full of fried bread and chicken. Then I would pick up a case of Atlas Beer and a bottle of cheap gin, then make my way to the sister’s room.

  At first, the three of us would sit up drinking on weekends until the sun came up, and then sleep away half of the next day. But after a time I began to lose track of days. I would wake up in the morning as one or more of the sisters tried to drag me into a waiting taxi. Some mornings I barely made it back to the barracks before first-call.

  One night I had gotten so drunk at The Miami Bar that I couldn’t make it the short distance from the liquor store to the sister’s room. I woke up on the sidewalk with a military police officer standing over me. My wallet and watch were gone. Had it not been for my dog tags I would have woke up in a Panamanian jail.

  I was driven back to the barracks and presented to the Sergeant on duty in handcuffs. This was starting to become a regular thing.

/>   Things were just about to take a drastic downturn when the Cubans stepped in. It was around Christmas of ’94 when the riots broke out at one of the four refugee camps we had set up to house Cubans the U.S. military had fished out of the sea.

  The Soldiers of Bravo Company were in the barracks when we were called to formation. We were told there was trouble at one of the refugee camps, but that we had been ordered to stand down. We took this to mean the party wasn’t canceled

  We returned to our rooms and continued drinking as though nothing had happened. But later that night, it did happen. The sergeant in charge of the barracks ran down the hall yelling for everyone to get ready to move out. Our squad leader counted heads and checked our gear, and within the hour we were waiting at the pickup zone behind the barracks for the helicopters to land.

  We were flown to the site of the refugee camps and briefed by the first sergeant. The riots were worse than we had expected and we had taken substantial casualties. Bravo Company was going in at first light.

  Now, I had seen the old movies where Roman armies lined up against their opponents with swords and shields, and I always thought this would be a great way to fight. I changed my mind when the first volleys of rocks were hurled in our direction. They darkened the sky, and for a moment I imagined it was a wall of arrows launched by an invading army’s archers.

  I was abruptly brought back to reality as the rocks crashed into the lines of advancing Soldiers, shattering riot-shields, breaking bones and knocking bloody teeth to the dirt. The hand-to-hand fighting lasted for several hours that morning, and by noon we had sustained 228 casualties. I was number seventy-nine.

  For me, this was an even better reason to drink. I couldn’t shake the images of men I had come to idolize being carried off on stretchers. These men were stronger and smarter than anyone I had ever come across. They were the men movies were written about; and now they lay bloody and broken in the dirt.

  The remainder of my time in Panama was spent drinking with a new vengeance. I vaguely recall several times I which I drank to the point that I lost the ability to speak. My mind would choose the right words, but the air passing over my vocal cords would only produce a hiss.

  I can remember standing in the shower one morning with tears running down my face, asking God to help me before I drank myself to death. But by the end of the workday I was already on my way to another lost weekend.

  Finally, my transfer orders came in. I was being sent to the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. I would get a new start in a new place. This was an alcoholic’s dream. As it turns out though, my new chain of command would be much less forgiving of my alcoholism.

  Chapter six:

  One of the first things I noticed about my new unit in Hawaii was that people drank like I did, but only on the weekends. There were a handful of guys who drank every night, so naturally they were the ones I levitated toward.

  I was standing in formation at 6am one morning, about a week after I got to Hawaii, when my team leader informed me that I smelled like a brewery.

  “No shit,” I said. “It’s six in the morning and I was up drinking until three. What the hell do you think I should smell like?”

  “I don’t know what your last unit was like,” he said. “But that’s not the way we operate here.”

  “Are you screwing with me,” I asked.

  “No, and if you do it again I’ll nail your ass to the wall,” he replied.

  This was something completely new for me. Up until this point I honestly believed that physical training was done first thing in the morning to get the alcohol out of your system. When our platoon ran in Panama, the stench of alcohol pouring out of everyone was so bad it made your eyes water. Apparently I had transferred to Clinton’s Army, and I didn’t like it.

  I knew I should try to control my drinking at this point, but I began to become very aware for the first time in my life, that I couldn’t. Instead, I began to set my alarm for an hour before first call so I could get a shower, brush my teeth, gargle a few mouthfuls of mouthwash and drink a half pot of coffee.

  This seemed to do the trick for a while, but again my off duty antics were catching up with me. One of the first incidents which propelled me into infamy was the jet-ski accident.

  A friend and I were out drinking one Saturday and decided it would be fun to rent jet-skis. Neither of us had ever been on one, so we took a quick lesson from the guy we were renting them from and then raced for open water.

  We were instructed to stay within the seawalls, but never had any intention of complying. The waves were out further and that’s where we were headed. We could hear the guy yelling at us with a bullhorn from shore, but we just laughed and kept going.

  There were six-foot waves coming in, and we were hitting them at full throttle. The ski would launch ten to fifteen feet in the air going one way, and we would go the other. We would splash down and then watch our skis crash into the water in all sorts of awkward positions. We could hear the guy on the shore barking at us but we were having too much fun to care.

  But just like the drinks before the beach, I pushed it a little too far. My friend had had enough, and we were about to head for the shore when a set of killer waves rolled in. My friend gave me a look that said “Don’t do it Dave,” but it was too late. I was already on the throttle.

  I hit what must have been an eight-foot wave at full tilt, but rather than let go of the ski, I held on and I hit the next wave in the set head on. It was like hitting a car on a motorcycle. I knew immediately that I had broken at least two toes, bruised my thigh and cracked a couple of ribs, but the best part was yet to come.

  One of the first things I was told when I got to Hawaii was to never turn my back on the sea. What I wasn’t told, but should have been, was to never turn my back to a jet-ski adrift on the sea.

  I heard the engine and spun around to see my own jet-ski coming straight for me. I didn’t have much time to react, but figured I would simply duck below the surface of the water a moment before it reached me. I dove, but only bobbed on the surface. I forgot I was wearing a life vest. Son of a bitch! That was all that crossed my mind as the jet-ski crossed my face.

  I got the stitches out a week later, but for at least a month I was known, far and wide, as the idiot who ran over himself with a jet-ski. How the hell do you run over yourself with a jet-ski; and how the hell do you not see a cornfield.

  As funny as the jet-ski episode is in retrospect, there were many other incidents which were not as funny. One of the biggest problems I had was driving in blackouts.

  There were many nights I would regain consciousness, for lack of a better description, with a car behind me at a red light blasting their horn. I would be startled out of my blackout and have no clue where I was.

  I woke up one morning on the hood of my car. I was parked on a beach, which I was pretty sure was illegal, and had no idea where I was or what day it was. I couldn’t remember anything about the night before and had no idea if I was absent without leave.

  The car was buried in the sand to the front bumper, so I wasn’t going anywhere. I was sitting on my hood trying to come up with excuses (black ice, a deer ran out in front of me), when a friend pulled up in a pickup truck. Apparently, I had called in the middle of the night and left a message with the sergeant on duty. I have no idea where I called from; the nearest phone must have been miles away.

  I was later told that I had simply vanished from a party in the barracks Saturday night. I had called in at around 4am the next morning. It was only Sunday. I had dodged another bullet, but I had not escaped notice. Once again I was called in front of my First Sergeant to receive a stern warning about my drinking.

  I began trying different methods to avoid drinking and driving. Unfortunately, none of them involved not drinking. I would often pass my keys off to a friend if I felt a bender coming on, but would later ask for them back when the alcohol ran low. Most of these friends would hand me back my keys rather tha
n risk a fight.

  On one of these occasions, I went out driving in a blackout. I don’t know where I went or why. The next morning I went out to the parking lot and everything looked fine. I would often find my car at an angle in a parking spot, in the grass, or in one case bumper-to-dumpster. This wasn’t one of those mornings. I figured I must have done alright the night before.

  I got in the car and started it up; so far, so good. But when I went to pull out of the parking spot I heard a terrible scraping. I assumed I had damaged the exhaust somehow, and it was dragging on the ground, but when I looked under the car I nearly shit myself. There was a stop-sign wedged under my car with about three feet of the pole still attached.

  I walked around to the back of the car where I could clearly see a gouge in the macadam. I followed the gouge across the lot to the entrance and down to the first stop sign. Well, it was still standing. I followed it around to the main street leading off post past the security gate. How in the hell had I gotten the car on post like this.

  I went back to the car and managed to kick the sign free from under the car. I threw it in the dumpster, the one with my bumper scuffs on it, and covered it with a bit of trash. Then I moved my car to a parking lot down the street in case anyone came looking for their stop-sign.

  What terrified me most about the stop-sign under the car was that about a week beforehand a man on a bicycle had been hit by, what was assumed to be, a drunk driver. I knew I wasn’t the one who hit the man on the bike. I had been in the field that night, nowhere near a drink or a car. But, what about the next time?

  I kept picturing myself looking under my car to find a bicycle, or even worse, a tricycle. Could I live with myself if I took the life of an innocent man, woman or child? Could I do something to stop it? I knew I needed help, but as it turned out that help came in the form of a new platoon sergeant.