by W.H. Harrod
~Do You Speak English?
One of the first things Heywood learned when he arrived in Germany was that the thousands of mostly drunk and belligerent GIs who had swarmed over the country in the couple of decades following WWII were no longer thought of as those brave yanks who saved the world from Nazism. The warm glow derived from no longer being on the verge of extinction, thanks to the efforts of a megalomaniacal Austrian corporal sporting the most ridiculous mustache ever displayed, who had obviously overdosed on Nietzsche’s penchant for all things nihilistic, had long ago succumbed to an attitude of open resentment towards their saviors from the West.
Just how many times can one say thank you to a horde of fatigue clad inebriates who thought they owned the country or at least the part of it that had not been obliterated by carpet bombing?
Heywood found out real quick when an irate German bus driver tasked to haul the group of GIs, just arrived in country, to various military posts located in and around Nuremburg, stopped the vehicle alongside the road and told the soldiers to get off and wait there for another vehicle to come along and take them to their respective units.
About three hours later, the lone officer in the increasingly irate group decided to take some initiative and find out what had happened to their promised ride. Less than an hour later he was back with instructions for the group to pack up and hike the mile and a half to the Bahnhof (train station) where the irritated German driver was supposed to have taken them in the first place. This was not going to be an easy task as everyone had duffle bags and suitcases to deal with.
Sometime later the irate group of profusely sweating U.S. Army troops made their entrance into a cavernous structure identified as the local train station. Practically every member of the group was on the lookout for the driver who dumped them.
It wasn’t all bad though as the train station, it turned out, was loaded with restaurants and beer dispensing outlets. If you’ve never had a mug of beer in Germany, well then you will be in for a pleasant surprise. Their mugs, or steins as they refer to them, are as big as buckets. It goes without saying that all was soon well again in the little group. A couple of buckets of brew and the world once more made sense; they forgot all about the disgruntled driver.
Within a short space of time, several of the group including Heywood, split off and hopped a train headed for Munich while the other guys were forced to stay in place having to put up with all that horrible beer and food until their trains arrived.
Heywood felt tired. He plopped down in the first seat he came to. He looked forward to the ride as he was feeling a might weary from the long journey. About the time Heywood sat back in his seat, a stout-looking elderly German lady sat down in the seat straight across from him. Heywood nodded politely as the lady arranged herself for the approximately two hour ride.
Within minutes of their departure, he laid his head back and was just about to drop off into dreamland when an icy cold burst of air hit him square in the face. He opened his eyes and discovered that the lady across from him had opened the large push down window allowing the icy cold wind unimpeded access to his person.
Not once did the lady look up to see how perturbed he was. So after another minute of being ignored, he got up and slammed the window shut just to make a point of his extreme displeasure. Still, the old lady gave no indication of any interest in the matter.
Heywood disliked having to be stern with people, especially, elderly folks. But the lady needed to get the message that exposing him or anyone else to the freezing cold was not acceptable.
Within minutes, the railroad car felt nice and toasty again. Just forget about it, he told himself. Soon Heywood was drifting away to la la land. His aching bones were starting to remind him that it was time for a rest. He’d traveled a very long way. But she did it again. Once more a gale force gust of ice cold wind smashed into Heywood’s face. All the while he was shivering in his boots the old lady never looked up, not even once.
Now he was mad. He would give this rather inhospitable lady with no comprehension of civil behavior a piece of his mind.
“Hey…I said hey!” repeated Heywood again as the old woman ignored him.
“It’s freezing cold. I’m freezing here. I need to close the window. Do you understand English?”
“Dummkopf,” Heywood thought he heard her say.
“What do you expect me to do? Just sit here and freeze?” Heywood asked.
Heywood was getting desperate. He really didn’t want to get into a fight with a very rude German lady, but he was freezing.
“Sprechen Sie English?” he asked as his lips felt as they would probably be the first part of his anatomy to actually freeze up and fall off.
Still he got no response from the old woman. So once more, he decided to shut the window before parts of his anatomy actually did freeze up and start to fall off. Right as he began to make his move, a figure appeared beside him and hastened to slam the window shut.
“Thank you,” Heywood whispered as the icy cold air stopped beating him in the face.
Looking up to see who his savior was, Heywood saw a very stern-faced conductor who appeared not at all pleased with the situation. What followed was a quick minute of heated exchange between the conductor and the extremely perturbed woman. Heywood couldn’t make out what was actually being said, but he could tell that she was getting her butt chewed out.
For the remainder of the journey, Heywood sat basking in the warmness. On those few occasions when the still perturbed former Hitler Youth member looked up with a scowl, he gave her his biggest smile. But behind that smile was the realization he might very well have to put up with the lesser part of two more years of Attila the Hun’s relatives’ behavior.
So began Heywood’s European adventure. He arrived late at night at one of the many former Wehrmacht Kasernes located in and around the beautiful city of Munich. The facilities were huge. Entire brigades of troops, including tanks, artillery, etc. were housed amid the residential neighborhoods of the city. Heywood couldn’t believe it when sometime later his unit was notified to form up and proceed to a preplanned location in preparation for assuming a simulated war posture. All that noisy, destructive equipment was simply driven right through the towns and villages with no one appearing particularly put out or surprised to see tanks in the rearview mirror while on their way to work. It was also nice that a soldier merely had to walk out the gate and hop on a street car to get to the largest beer halls in the world, within minutes.
Despite the damp and dreary weather, Heywood soon came to the conclusion that this was not going to be at all bad. There were millions of Warsaw bloc soldiers only miles away with weapons just as destructive as the United States had. Surely both sides would have to be insane to use them, he figured. So as far as Heywood was concerned, let the good times roll.
Munich was full of the largest beer halls in the world. And the German girls? As far as Heywood was concerned, they were all blonde and beautiful, except for one fat lady that Heywood made some apparently unseemly remarks to late one night in a local tavern. Everyone knows the old saying about how all the girls get pretty around closing time. Well, it was closing time and Heywood must have been loaded and desperate because he suggested to her that he might consider allowing her to accompany him to some low rent hotel where she could have the honor of partaking in some of that famous Heywood love.
The lady did take a swing at him, and fortunately for Heywood, she missed. Of course, the prejudiced proprietor sided with Olga and kicked him out. All the way back to the Kaserne, Heywood lamented the fact that most likely he had come on a little too strong. Maybe those young women who had at one time or another refused his crude late night overtures weren’t all wrong. He made a mental note to be less like the arrogant prick one cute girl described him as being only a few months back. But then, as a few more days went by, he came to his senses and decided it couldn’t possibly be him. It was them.
A few months afterwards, the whole issu
e became moot as Heywood and his fellow soldiers received some very surprising information. They were all going back to the states. The Department of Defense, desperate for money to continue their prosecution of that little spat in Southeast Asia, had decided that the United States could still fulfill their NATO obligations while keeping the troops located closer to home, like for instance, right smack in the middle of the United States.
The Pentagon’s brilliant idea was to store all the fighting machinery at well-guarded installations in Germany. Then, if the shooting started up again, the United States would simply load all the troops, stationed much less expensively in the states, onto planes and fly them back to Europe where they could then go to the big NATO parking lot, pick up a tank or cannon, and head off to the front. That is, unless the Warsaw bloc forces hadn’t already whooped up on the reduced forces remaining there to guard the equipment. In that case, Heywood expected the Army would have to get out all those old films showing the invasion of Normandy beach back in WWII to see how to go about winning Western Europe back again.
Sometimes Heywood just couldn’t help but ask who the hell was running this thing? The United States already had all the war they needed right then in Vietnam. He figured they might just want to concentrate on winning that one first. From what he was told things weren’t going well over there. Stateside they were hearing about some costly battles going on with the VC and North Vietnamese forces who were running around the jungle in sandals and living on rice. If they were having trouble with a bunch of shoeless peasants, then what the hell could they expect to accomplish if the whole Warsaw Pact came running at them from out of Eastern Europe behind ten thousand tanks?
Heywood had also heard the rumors that by bringing all the troops back to the states it would give the Army more men to draw from to refill the ranks of current units in Vietnam who were losing hundreds of dead and wounded men every week.
After but a few months in Germany, where he had determined that with all the pretty German frauleins available he could learn to like the place, he was told to pack up and go somewhere else and play Army. Only this time, the Army told a whole division to pack up and go back to the states. It made no matter, though. All it meant was that Heywood was going to have to go to the U.S.A. and play army while hoping he could keep from actually having to go to war. It wasn’t as if he didn’t like the Army, it was okay. What he didn’t like was the possibility of getting shot and killed for no particularly good reason. From what he was hearing and reading, if that was his main purpose, then he needed to stay the hell out of Vietnam.
After a couple of months of going all out balls to the wall, getting their equipment cleaned and ready for storage in a number of locations across West Germany, Heywood found himself sitting on another very large airplane heading back to the states. To be more specific, to a place in Kansas called Fort Riley.
Heywood had never been to Kansas, and he had never heard of Fort Riley. But hey, it still wasn’t a place where little bitty people in short pants were shooting at you on a daily basis. So mission number one was still on course. Plus, there had to be girls and beer somewhere out there on that flat Kansas prairie he heard people talk about. One burley guy said that on a good day you could see all the way to Canada. Heywood asked the guy how one accomplished that taking into consideration the curvature of the earth. The guy told Heywood he better shut up!
Two events in particular, occurring during that period where Heywood along with thousands of soldiers were uprooted and sent so unceremoniously back to the states, took up lodging in his long term memory bank. Both events transpired within weeks of one another, and they both were painful in their own particular way.
The first event started even before Heywood left Germany. He and a couple of his Army beer drinking pals decided to hit a few nightspots in Munich the night before they were to leave. Everything was going swimmingly until the hour got late and everyone was fairly loaded with that wonderful Bavarian brew. One of Heywood’s buddies decided to celebrate their departure by diving into a pool of water located in the middle of a theater-size night spot. Then the other guy did the same thing. Heywood, inebriated but not at all thrilled about getting wet, was goaded by his pals into doing the same thing.
They were all immediately thrown out of the place onto the street where they had to pay a cab driver double to take three soaking wet and inebriated GIs back to the Kaserne. Although arriving back to the barracks wet and drunk did cause something of a slight problem, it was another of Heywood’s personal problems that caused his life to be absolutely miserable for the next couple of days.
Unlike the other two inebriates, Heywood was not a good diver. Heywood, it turned out, dove into the shallower end of the pool. It should not surprise someone to hear that since Heywood’s head bounced off of the pool’s bottom, his teeth smashed together splitting one of the big chewing teeth in the rear of his mouth straight in half. The tooth was still there, but now it was two teeth where there had been one.
With the booze having an effect on his pain sensing receptors, Heywood had no idea of the pain level he would have to endure in but a few hours. When he did begin to feel the full brunt of his latest stupid stunt, he was thirty thousand feet in the air out over the Atlantic Ocean heading to a place called Kansas. Later, he would describe the pain as if someone placed your finger in a vise smashing it incessantly while also applying a blow torch to it.
The trip to Kansas consumed about sixteen hours of flying and refueling time. Not for one second during that time did the tooth pain lessen. By the time Heywood got off the plane late in the day in Kansas, his brain was numb with pain. He was told to hold on, that they were within an hour of medical help at the fort.
One could only imagine the relief that came with finally arriving at a medical facility that had to have pain medication. He had no thoughts about what to do with the half of a tooth remaining in his mouth. He only wanted the pain to go away.
When Heywood heard some nerdy looking little medic inform him that he would have to make an appointment, Heywood had to be restrained from punching the little prick in the nose right then and there. He did reach over the counter and grab the guy’s shirt and pull him forward so he could get a much closer look at his little problem.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed the guy once he saw close up that only half of a still oozing blood tooth remained in Heywood’s jaw. “Wait right here while I see if there is someone around to help you."
That was the first time Heywood felt hopeful in the last twenty-four miserable hours. Help showed up about an hour later in the form of an irate captain who had been called in on his day off to deal with some crybaby’s chipped tooth.
Heywood said not a word all the time the disgruntled dentist got him situated in one of those highly uncomfortable dental chairs with the little table attached to the side.
“Holy shit! How did you do this? Boy, that’s got to hurt! Doesn’t this hurt?” asked the by then semi-amused officer.
The guy’s attitude was just a hint too gleeful, if you had asked Heywood. What came out of Heywood’s mouth in response was more like the dying grunts of a wounded animal than a cogent reply to an individual who was taking a certain amount of pleasure in someone else’s discomfort.
The unintelligible noises coming forth from Heywood’s mouth must have satisfied his intended assailant because the guy’s mood became down right cheerful.
“Okay then, let’s just get this thing numbed so we can get you up, outta here, and back to work.”
Within a short period, Heywood began to experience some blessed relief. For all he cared, he would be satisfied just to stay right where he was. Just keep more of that wonderful medication close by. This whole experience was causing him to agree more and more with that “Better living through chemistry,” slogan he recalled from some years back.
What happened next took no time at all. Once Captain Happy finished removing what was left of one of Heywood’s main chewing molars, he admonished
Heywood not to bump his head again and then left the building. That left only for Heywood to make sure the orderly gave him sufficient amounts of pain medication, and he would be out of there. As far as Heywood was concerned there was entirely too much pain in the building already. Practically the entire building, including the halls, was stuffed with wounded survivors from Vietnam.
Heywood stopped for a minute to talk with one kid who looked to be all of sixteen years of age laying on one of those gurneys used to transport patients back and forth for X-rays. The reason he stopped was because the kid, laying there with what looked to be a long charred piece of wood attached to his body right where you would expect to see an arm, smiled at him like he was one of the happiest guys in the world.
“What happened to you?” Heywood blurted out.
The young soldier went on a five minute spiel about how his infantry unit had been lured into an area where a battalion size VC ambush was waiting for them. Many GIs were killed and hundreds were wounded. He said over fifteen choppers were also lost.
Heywood was struck by the relief, if not downright glee, that was apparent in the kid’s attitude. Laying there with a chard stump for an arm, he acted as if he’d just won the lottery. But he was alive! Maybe he would leave the place with but one arm, but he would be alive, and he would leave. Unlike so many of his fellow grunts who left everything they had, including their lives, in some pile of crap jungle clearing 10,000 miles from home.
Heywood was almost all the way back to the battery area before he realized he hadn’t even thought about his tooth problem since talking to the kid at the hospital. And once again, he determined that he would do everything he could, short of deserting, to stay out of that mess in SE Asia.
The second event that left a neuro-trace on the surface of Heywood’s soft brain tissue came about rather innocently after he was safely settled into his new home on the Kansas prairie. Tales had been trickling back to the units relating to the limited recreational opportunities afforded the troops in the nearby communities. None of them were good either. Still, Heywood and his buddies were inclined to be open-minded until they took a look for themselves.
When they did go into town, they did it in style. One of Heywood’s new friends had ended up in Germany for the same reason he had. His cushy missile job had, likewise, been given to some reserve unit. The first thing the young man did when he could get a few days leave was go east and bring back his four hundred horsepower plus, kick butt, street rod. They intended to go about using it, to go anywhere they could to find beer and young women.
That Saturday afternoon the four, starved for beer and pretty girls, GIs headed to town in their civvies looking for action. The general mood amongst them was one of guarded optimism. They all agreed to maintain an open-minded attitude until sufficient evidence proved that all the horrible tales and rumors about the place being basically bereft of any of the usual social amenities required to keep the average, usually bored and sexually deprived, soldier happy were indeed correct.
Optimism prevailed as they rode along the several mile stretch of flat road between the fort and the nearest local state university town. Universities were basically the same everywhere, weren’t they? Young people trying to make the most out of the few remaining years left to them until adulthood, along with its requisite responsibilities, cast a suffocating pall on the remainder of their lives.
Heywood was leading the pack in positive thinking. He absolutely reeked of optimism regarding their proposed adventure into the local college community. “Colleges are usually places where it doesn’t matter how and where you intend to end up later in life. Rich or poor, happy or sad, all everyone wants is to get laid and have some fun,” he told his pals.
“This is an academic community,” he added. “Academic communities are populated with liberal-minded, educated individuals who aren’t afraid to have a good time. You can count on it.”
Heywood could see right off that he had gotten through to his pals. They actually seemed to be warming more and more to Heywood’s claims that the town they were heading for was populated with a whole lot of educated people who most certainly would enjoy having a good time drinking some beer and participating in learned discussions of world affairs. There was also all that lewd and licentious behavior stuff, too.
Possibly it was that comment about “educated people” his fellow passengers would recall later, just after a local radio personality went to great lengths to explain to his loyal listeners that he had one heck of a deal for them.
The great deal involved a pet dog, one genuine, pure blood, house trained, Chihuahua. “Yes sir, ladies and gentlemen, this pure bred Cha Hooa Hooa can be yours for the ridiculous low price of just twenty dollars. Call in real quick because the Cha Hooa Hooas usually go real fast.”
Oh damn! Heywood thought, after he realized what the idiot on the radio had just announced to the world.
In concert, every guy in the car turned to look at Heywood to see how he reconciled his this is an educated community where lots of young people like to have a good time spiel with the mush mouth nonsense they had just been exposed to on the car radio.
It took all of about eleven minutes to cruise the entire community, including the college campus where all the long hair, mostly draft dodging, war protesting, dope smoking students strolled around the campus seemingly without a care in the world. A few blocks away sat a collection of buildings that served as what the local folk referred to as the business/shopping district and out along the highways leading into and out of this plain’s metropolis was where most of the bars were located. That’s where they went first.
It took all of about five seconds to distinguish between the locals and the GIs dressed in their civvies. All one had to do was look at the heads. The GIs had practically no hair except on the tops of their heads, and then damn little, while the civilians usually had hair everywhere. They had it coming out of their ears, hanging over their ears, and tied up in pony tails. Several could not be identified as males until they turned around to show their face. More than one drunken GI came back to the base with stories of having tapped a girl on the shoulder only to find out the face that turned around to confront him had a beard.
Heywood fell into that trap, but fortunately he was not that drunk and quickly asked the puzzled hippie if he knew where a guy could score some weed. The guy said he did. Heywood then told the guy he was just checking and maybe would get back to him later. Heywood promised himself he would never do something so stupid again. It was just so embarrassing to have to come back to a group of laughing inebriates who would certainly tell everyone back at the fort all about “Mr. Cool” getting shot down by a midget bearded hippie with beautiful long hair.
It should come as no surprise that Heywood and his fellow GIs did not score that night, nor did they on the next couple of outings. They had not gotten anywhere close to the mother lode of cute coeds occupying those huge dorms at the university. There usually was a positive correlation in the amount of beer the horny GIs consumed and how butt ugly the girls were that they woke up with. But to be fair, the poor girls could probably make the same argument.
Fortunately for Heywood, who lived to fight another day, euphemistically speaking of course, things gradually got better, meaning he finally changed his mode of operation. As his main business had always involved booze and girls, he simply changed the order in which they were acquired. The results were immediately impressive, if not amazing, and it was all so simple. He started getting the girls before he started drinking. Never again did he wake up in a cheap motel with some unfortunate female, who had most likely lost most of her teeth in a bar fight and had more hair on her legs than he did, lying beside him
But alas, Heywood’s adventures in the U.S. Army were not yet finished by a long shot. There was to be one final trip overseas, to a place he’d labored long and hard to never have to visit. That place, of course, was Vietnam. Heywood’s luck ran out. The Army must have been running out of liv
e bodies, and he still had a year left to serve. So, it was, “Here’s your orders, Sergeant. Good luck.”