My first day in the U.S. Army, at Fort Knox, Kentucky, during the spring of 1973.
As new recruits, we were instructed to avoid the Patton Club, a nightclub on the base for enlisted men, named after the famous general. But one of my new friends and I opted to go despite the restriction—and we promptly got pulled into a fight. Black/white tensions ran higher in the club than they did on the base. I had offered to buy a beer for an African-American soldier, but the offer was not viewed kindly, and my buddy and I retreated to another part of the club. Things continued to go downhill as a white solider was attacked after he asked an African-American soldier to stop groping his wife.
My buddy and I decided to leave before we got hauled in by military police. But we couldn’t get out the door before soldiers from another training company exchanged words with the two of us. Though it wasn’t racial in nature this time, it was still a wild and verbal free-for-all. Minutes later the MPs arrived, and soldiers scattered in all directions.
Break time during training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, during the summer of 1973.
The next stop for me, along with hundreds of other trainees, was Fort Polk, Louisiana, and we were “lucky” enough to be there in the middle of a Southern summer. It was ridiculously fucking hot and humid. The base, which covers almost two hundred thousand acres, is about 10 miles east of Leesville, Louisiana, and some 17 miles north of De Ridder, in Beauregard Parish. We boarded buses and headed for Tiger Land, deep in the heart of old Dixie. “Fort Puke Lousyana,” as we called it, boasted wooden barracks dating back to World War II, snakes and some of the world’s largest cockroaches.
For some reason, I got there a couple of days before most of the other recruits. I was given a bunk in an ancient shack-like dorm with the most immaculately shined wooden floor. Two steps down, in the rear of the building, was a primitive latrine and shower area, with no walls or partitions between any of the stalls. Worse still, there were two inches of green and smelly water covering the floor. There was no way to avoid the green flood when you were using the john; you just had to deal with it.
When the training company was finally at full strength, equipment was drawn and we waited for what we were sure would be two very hot and challenging months of training, starting at the end of June and continuing through the end of August. The men were a diverse lot from all parts of the country, roughly 60 percent Hispanic and black, and 40 percent white.
I look back at those two months in Southern hell as some of the happiest days of my life. We were being trained for combat in hot places, and the conditions could not have been more realistic. We speed marched, patrolled, shot every conceivable weapon, rarely slept and became razor-sharp. My 225-pound weight dropped by more than 40 pounds, leaving me hardened steel at 182 pounds. Before you could even eat chow, you needed to complete a circuit on a rusty set of parallel bars. This was the army I had dreamt of: hard-core and run by combat veterans who commanded respect by their every action.
In retrospect, “Fort Puke” training seems a real no-bullshit time in my army career. We were learning the craft of light infantry tactics and survival, setting up L-shaped ambushes and navigating by topographical map and compass by night—all while removing the chiggers that burrowed into our feet and ankles, and avoiding the venomous snakes and scorpions.
When the training ended in late August, we were dispersed and given 10 days’ leave before heading to the bases we’d been assigned to. My parents were set to pick me up at Newark Airport. I patiently watched them meander through the crowd in my direction. My mother headed right toward me, then walked by as if I wasn’t even there. Though I’d been gone only five months, I was lean and tanned and 182 pounds, and she couldn’t even recognize her own son.
The 10 days’ leave was a blur. My friends seemed dull, and in my mind I was headed for great adventure. They were headed for boring white-collar jobs in the suburbs, the next generation of Ward and June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver. I never expressed it, but I felt an odd sense of contempt for my friends. They were working, making money and learning trades. They had girlfriends and seemed to have purposeful futures. I, on the other hand, was leaving behind everything I knew. I didn’t expect to ever even come back to New Jersey, except maybe to visit, and I liked the soldiering. The spit-and-polish barracks stuff sucked, but creeping around a forest at night, hunting a dangerous enemy—that rocked. It seemed like a perfect kicking-off point for whatever the rest of my life had in store.
Two sets of papers arrived for me during my leave—the first promoted me to private first class, and the second assigned me to Mechanized Infantry, First Infantry Division Forward, Cooke Barracks, in Göppingen, West Germany.
Soon I was hopping on another plane out of Newark, this time headed about eight hours east to Frankfurt for processing, and then on a train south to my new “home” in Göppingen (pronounced Gerpinggen), some 20 or 30 miles east of Stuttgart. As I rode south on the train, I was struck by the orderly, green countryside. Göppingen seemed clean and inviting, though Cooke Barracks wasn’t much of a step up from Fort Polk.
Soon after I arrived, Specialist Fourth Rondell “Rodney” Black introduced me to the Old Man, Captain Harry Timpson. Timpson looked more like your local pharmacist than someone whose troops may have to fight against a Russian rifle company. But his looks were deceiving, and he was a tough guy worthy of our respect—just like most of the other officers in the company. Platoon Lieutenant Edgar was six foot six, wiry and muscular, a West Point graduate and as tough, intelligent and fair as anyone I have ever met. The other platoon lieutenants were comparable to him and equally capable. But my platoon sergeant, Max Koncha, was one of the most interesting men in the U.S. Army. He was respected by all the men, for all the right reasons.
Koncha didn’t talk about himself all that much, and none of us had a clue where he was born. There was speculation that he was from either Germany or the USSR. What I quickly learned from my new buddies was that he’d fought in World War II on both sides of the Eastern Front. He was with the Russians at Kursk for the largest tank battle in history of warfare. He was in Indochina with the French Foreign Legion long before the region was called Vietnam, and then he was with the U.S. Army Infantry during the Vietnam War. Sergeant Koncha, the mad Russian.
The drab light-brown building housing our company would have fit quite well into any run-down urban tenement block. The three-story structure held four platoons, each cordoned off by chest-high dividers like those found between office cubicles. Six-foot-tall gray steel lockers and steel-framed cots were laid out in rows. The lockers contained everything we owned—clothes, personal belongings, books and boots. Behind the barracks was our low, rectangular mess hall.
The rank-and-file soldiers were compartmentalized—not by the officers but by societal peer pressure. Many of those in the unit were returning veterans from Vietnam who brought their drug- and alcohol-abuse problems with them. Some of the veterans were hardened men who’d served time in the country’s rice paddies and jungles. The rest were mostly young men who’d joined the army under threat of incarceration from local police. There were a few, like me, who thought that the army was a route to excitement and adventure. Again, Hispanic and African-American soldiers outnumbered whites. Until I went to Germany, I never even knew what a Chicano was. Many of the Puerto Ricans were from New York City. Over time, I came to respect the Hispanics. With few exceptions, they were loyal to each other, tough as nails and never backed down from a fight, even if their opponent was much bigger. Unlike the African-Americans, the Hispanics weren’t under any pressure from their peers to avoid contact with white soldiers.
Many of my fellow white recruits were drug-heads, heavy users of hashish, speed and heroin. Some, from the South, were derogatorily labeled as rednecks, goat ropers or hicks. Other whites were labeled either as “white boys” or “rabbits,” meaning those who were cowards and did not like to fight whenever the odds were less tha
n advantageous. Mostly, the guys within these groups had each other’s backs. Since I did not fit any of these groups, my back was exposed.
Not surprisingly, the showers and toilets at Cooke Barracks were quite basic. Sometimes they were violent places as well. There were several open toilet stalls, which offered no privacy, and a handful of closed stalls. The shower room had about eight spigots, reminiscent of those found in a high school locker room. Since each group of soldiers had its own musical preferences, battling boom boxes were the order of the day. Control over the music was usually settled by a good beat-down from whichever group outnumbered the others. Soul music won out most often.
My second night in the barracks, I was awakened by someone trying to break into my locker. It was Toby Jeffries, a meek white soldier. When I grabbed him and shouted at him to stop pulling at my lock, he babbled almost incoherently that I should let him go because he was looking for his girlfriend. Ultimately, Jeffries collapsed onto his bunk. The next day, I asked one of the other guys what was going on with Jeffries.
“Take a look at his hand,” he said.
I quickly realized that Jeffries was missing the trigger finger on his right hand. From what I could learn, the soldier had cut off his own finger with a buck knife, hoping to get a medical discharge. But his plan failed miserably; he was given an Article 15 disciplinary proceeding for destruction of government property and ordered to shoot with his middle finger.
How the fuck, I wondered, could this guy deal with the pain of self-amputation? Guys in my platoon explained that he’d bought the strong barbiturate methaqualone, which was sold in Germany as Mandrax. The drug is both a sedative and hypnotic; it acts as a central nervous system depressant. Mixed with beer, it turns you into a staggering zombie, oblivious to pain. Jeffries simply popped a couple of pills, downed a couple of beers and chopped off his finger. The other men did nothing to stop the guy, of course, because they wanted to see if he was going to go through with it.
Jeffries was far from the only Mandrax zombie prowling around Cooke Barracks; he was just one of the more colorful ones. Eventually, he was cashiered out on a dishonorable discharge for drug use.
I wondered how such a situation could be allowed to continue. How could credible and experienced officers allow this festering situation to go seemingly unnoticed, especially when they knew they’d have to depend on soldiers like Jeffries in the field? For one thing, the senior NCOs and officers weren’t around the barracks at night; they retired to their more comfortable and quieter housing. Sure, there was an NCO stationed at the entrance to the barracks—the “charge of quarters,” or CQ, who was theoretically responsible for our welfare. Officers tended to come by a couple of times a night to check on the CQ. It all sounded like an ideal system that would keep everyone safe.
But there were roving gangs of inebriated soldiers, some of whom had reputations for “fragging,” or rolling grenades in the direction of their superior officers. Others were known for serious brutality. Either case could render a CQ deaf, dumb and blind—at least for the length of his shift. No one wanted to be publicly associated with incidents of racial violence or drunken behavior, because it could mean disciplinary action or worse. So people hid the problems and did their best to ensure that others didn’t see them as well.
My promotion to private first class had pushed my pay to more than $300 a month. But the promotion came at a price. Since I didn’t mix with any of the white groups on the base, and I obviously wasn’t black or Hispanic, I had to be a rat, an informant to the Criminal Investigative Division, or CID. At least, that was the fiction created by one of my squad mates who was trying to find a way to bolster his own credibility. The guy claimed that he found a piece of paper from CID that had fallen out of my pocket. The fictional piece of paper “got lost,” but other guys in the platoon still believed his story, and I was seriously frozen out. In a way, it didn’t bother me, since I just wanted to be a soldier anyway. Still, I was always wary of being ambushed by men who worried about me ratting them out.
Each morning, we had our Physical Training (PT) calisthenics and a four-mile run, followed by breakfast. Then the entire company gathered on a grassy open area adjacent to the barracks. The First Sergeant—whom we referred to simply as “Top”—oversaw muster and delivered the orders of the day. He typically ended the formation by naming those individuals who had to report for urinalysis or drug-related issues. This did not affect those whose alcohol problems were so severe (sadly, most NCOs) that they looked like they were one step ahead of downing a Sterno can by the railroad tracks. Most of the white NCOs had faces severely lined by years of alcohol abuse, thin, stick-like arms, and paunches. When PT ended, they huffed cigarettes and looked very close to death. The African-American and Hispanic NCOs seemed to fare better, but some were classic drunks as well. Three things quickly became evident: alcohol abuse was not a sin, drug use was and there was a hell of a lot of both.
Although the African-American and Hispanic soldiers had their share of drug burnouts, alcohol was clearly the drug of choice. That it tended to make violence more palatable seemed all the better. A large percentage of the white soldiers, however, were totally immersed in the drug culture. They were not even trying to play the game. They had tuned in, turned on and dropped out. They were obvious in their preference, and fell out to formation, to use one First Sergeant’s words, dressed like “Joe Shit the Rag Man.”
José Presca was a Mexican-American drug dealer and gangbanger who joined the army to escape a jail sentence. He was large in build, usually high as a kite, and very clever and calculating. His buck knife was said to have found its way into many a rival dealer’s stomach. He knew I was no informant. And since I actually liked soldiering, I was beyond suspicion in terms of drug involvement.
“Let’s go do a mission,” Presca said one evening, using code to signal his desire to go somewhere to smoke hash.
“Yeah, man, okay,” I said, wondering what would happen next.
“These people here think you a lifer,” he said. “But I know better, homes. You should come with me one weekend. I have this problem, you see. The Man knows I am doing business, so when I come in from off post they look at me. But I am not stupid. I can still bring in what I need. But these eyes are always looking at me, homes. They would never look at you. I am telling you, homes, they all thinking you a lifer. I can take you to meet my people, there are lots of women too. You can make bookoo [beaucoup] money. No one would fuck with you, if I put out the word you are my P.” P was short for partner.
“Man, I don’t know …”
“What’s not to know? You way smarter than these people here. I know how to keep these things very cool. You would have to be way-out loco you turn this down, P.”
“What are we talking about moving here, José?”
“P, it is not cool to talk of this if you are not in. But if you were in? Dope, homes. Could be some morphine, some gray and brown,” Presca said, referring to heroin or smack. “You know, P, small, easy to hide. But bookoo bucks.”
“You respect I got to think on this, right, José?”
“Yeah, I respect that. Just don’t be thinking too long.”
Presca and I walked side by side in the dark. “Yo, homes, let me tell you about me and my Ps back in the world. Some of the shit we did, homes.”
“Where, L.A.?” I asked.
“East L.A.,” he said.
“Don’t know nothin’ about that place, P.”
“I know that,” Presca continued. “You don’t know nothin’ about nothin’, homes. So me and my Ps, we see this fine-looking bitch coming off the bus. She was going to walk to another bus. We surround her, P. We tellin’ her she got to give it up to the group. P, we talkin’ some fine pussy here. She starts cryin’ and shit, she pregnant and all that.”
“What the fuck, P. Man, this shit’s heavy,” I protested.
“We settle for h
er blowin’ all of us. Part as friends, like,” Presca said. “After she got on it, it was looking like she diggin’ it, P.”
“Sweet Mary’s ass, man, I can’t go there, no way. No disrespect to you, P.”
“It’s cool, P. It’s just a thing, homes, just a thing,” Presca said as we continued walking.
José Presca was one of the biggest dealers on the base and wanted me to move heroin and morphine. I realized that turning him down carried risks every bit as large as the ones facing me if I carried the dope. In some ways, it was a very tempting offer. Presca was a likable guy—if you could somehow compartmentalize and ignore the violence that was part of his life. There’d be no more worries of people targeting me on the base, and drugs and women would be plentiful. But was I ready to become a heroin trafficker? I had just gotten to this base a few weeks earlier, and already this crazy shit was happening. Would I get carved up like a Christmas turkey if I refused?
In time, I turned Presca’s offer down. I was very concerned about the potential danger I was putting myself in, but still couldn’t convince myself to become a drug trafficker. When he realized I wasn’t interested, Presca simply smiled and explained that he could never understand why anyone would walk away from such an offer.
Presca wasn’t the only dangerous character in my platoon. Big T, also known as “Troubleman,” was easily the most feared man on the base. Terrence Williams stood six foot five and weighed 280. He was so nasty that his superiors had refused to promote him year after year; amazingly, he was still a private first class at age 28. Williams had done hard time prior to the army and was known to have fragged his Second Lieutenant in Vietnam. He was said to have a loaded .45-caliber pistol; soldiers weren’t allowed to carry loaded weapons when they weren’t doing specific types of weapon-related training.
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