Glory Road (2 page)

$35 a month did not fill the hole I put in their groceries and it was understood that when I graduated I would root for myself. By doing my military time, no doubt—but I had my own plan; I played football and finished senior year season with the California Central Valley secondary school record for yards gained and a broken nose—and started in at the local State College the next fall with a job “sweeping the gym” at $10 more a month than that pension, plus fees.

I couldn’t see the end but my plan was clear: Hang on, teeth and toenails, and get an engineering degree. Avoid the draft and marriage. On graduation get a deferred-status job. Save money and pick up a law degree,
too
—because, back in Homestead, Florida, a teacher had pointed out that, while engineers made money, the big money and boss jobs went to lawyers. So I was going to beat the game, yes, sir! Be a Horatio Alger hero. I would have headed straight for that law degree but for the fact that the college did not offer law.

At the end of the season my sophomore year they deemphasized football.

We had had a perfect season—no wins. “Flash” Gordon (that’s me—in the sports write-ups) stood one in yardage and points; nevertheless Coach and I were out of jobs. Oh, I “swept the gym” the rest of that year on basketball, fencing, and track, but the alumnus who picked up the tab wasn’t interested in a basketball player who was only six feet one. I spent that summer pushing an idiot stick and trying to line up a deal elsewhere. I turned twenty-one that summer, which chopped that $35/month, too. Shortly after Labor Day I fell back on a previously prepared position, i.e., I made that phone call to my draft board.

I had in mind a year in the air force, then win a competitive appointment to the air force academy—be an astronaut and famous, instead of rich.

Well, we can’t all be astronauts. The air force had its quota or something. I was in the army so fast I hardly had time to pack.

So I set out to be the best chaplain’s clerk in the army; I made sure that “typing” was listed as one of my skills. If I had anything to say about it, I was going to do my time at Fort Carson, typing neat copies while going to night school on the side.

I didn’t have anything to say about it.

Ever been in Southeast Asia? It makes Florida look like a desert. Wherever you step it
squishes
. Instead of tractors they use water buffaloes. The bushes are filled with insects and natives who shoot at you. It wasn’t a war—not even a “Police Action.” We were “Military Advisers.” But a Military Adviser who has been dead four days in that heat smells the same way a corpse does in a real war.

I was promoted to corporal. I was promoted seven times. To corporal.

I didn’t have the right attitude. So my company commander said. My daddy had been a marine and my stepfather was air force; my only army ambition had been to be a chaplain’s clerk Stateside. I didn’t like the army. My company commander didn’t like the army either; he was a first lieutenant who hadn’t made captain and every time he got to brooding, Corporal Gordon lost his stripes.

I lost them the last time for telling him that I was writing to my Congressman to find out why I was the only man in Southeast Asia who was going to be retired for old age instead of going home when his time was up—and that made him so mad he not only busted me but went out and was a hero, and then he was dead. And that’s how I got this scar across my broken nose because I was a hero, too, and should have received the Medal of Honor, only nobody was looking.

While I was recovering, they decided to send me home.

Major Ian Hay, back in the “War to End War,” described the structure of military organizations: Regardless of T.O., all military bureaucracies consist of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Joke Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department. The first two process most matters as the third is very small; the Fairy Godmother Department is one elderly female GS-5 clerk usually out on sick leave.

But when she is at her desk, she sometimes puts down her knitting and picks a name passing across her desk and does something nice. You have seen how I was whipsawed by the Surprise Party and Practical Joke Departments; this time the Fairy Godmother Department picked Pfc. Gordon.

Like this—When I knew that I was going home as soon as my face healed (little brown brother hadn’t sterilized his bolo), I put in a request to be discharged in Wiesbaden, where my family was, rather than California, home of record. I am not criticizing little brown brother; he hadn’t intended me to heal at all—and he would have managed it if he hadn’t been killing my company commander and too hurried to do a good job on me. I hadn’t sterilized my bayonet but he didn’t complain, he just sighed and came apart, like a doll with its sawdust cut. I felt grateful to him; he not only had rigged the dice so that I got out of the Army, he also gave me a great idea.

He and the ward surgeon—the Surgeon had said, “You’re going to get well, son. But you’ll be scarred like a Heidelberg student.”

Which got me thinking—you couldn’t get a decent job without a degree, any more than you could be a plasterer without being a son or nephew of somebody in the plasterers’ union. But there are degrees and degrees. Sir Isaac Newton, with a degree from a cow college such as mine, would wash bottles for Joe Thumbfingers—if Joe had a degree from a European university.

Why not Heidelberg? I intended to milk my G.I. benefits; I had that in mind when I put in that too hasty call to my draft board.

According to my mother everything was cheaper in Germany. Maybe I could stretch those benefits into a doctor’s degree. Herr Doktor Gordon, mit scars on der face from Heidelberg yet!—that would rate an extra $3,000 a year from any missile firm.

Hell, I would fight a couple of student duels and add real Heidelberg scars to back up the dandy I had. Fencing was a sport I really enjoyed (though the one that counted least toward “sweeping the gym”). Some people cannot stand knives, swords, bayonets, anything sharp; psychiatrists have a word for it: aichmophobia. Idiots who drive cars a hundred miles an hour on fifty-mile-an-hour roads will nevertheless panic at the sight of a bare blade.

I’ve never been bothered that way and that’s why I’m alive and one reason why I kept being bucked back to corporal. A “Military Adviser” can’t afford to be afraid of knives, bayonets, and such; he must cope with them. I’ve never been afraid of them because I’m always sure I can do unto another what he is planning to do unto me.

I’ve always been right, except that time I made the mistake of being a hero, and that wasn’t too bad a mistake. If I had tried to bug out instead of staying to disembowel him, he would have chopped my spine in two. As it was, he never got a proper swing at me; his jungle cutter just slashed my face as he came apart—leaving me with a nasty wound that was infected long before the helicopters came. But I never felt it. Presently I got dizzy and sat down in the mud and when I woke up, a medic was giving me plasma.

I rather looked forward to trying a Heidelberg duel. They pad your body and arm and neck and put a steel guard on your eyes and nose and across your ears—this is not like encountering a pragmatic Marxist in the jungle. I once handled one of those swords they use in Heidelberg; it was a light, straight saber, sharp on the edge, sharp a few inches on the back—but a
blunt
point! A toy, suited only to make pretty scars for girls to admire.

I got a map and whaddayuh know!—Heidelberg is just down the road from Wiesbaden. So I requested my discharge in Wiesbaden.

The ward surgeon said, “You’re an optimist, son,” but initialed it. The medical sergeant in charge of paperwork said, “Out of the question, Soldier.” I won’t say money changed hands but the endorsement the hospital’s C.O. signed read F
ORWARDED
. The ward agreed that I was bucking for a psycho; Uncle Sugar does not give free trips around the world to Pfcs.

I was already so far around that I was as close to Hoboken as to San Francisco—and closer to Wiesbaden. However, policy called for shipping returnees back via the Pacific. Military policy is like cancer: Nobody knows where it comes from but it can’t be ignored.

The Fairy Godmother Department woke up and touched me with its wand.

I was about to climb aboard a bucket called the
General Jones
bound for Manila, Taipei, Yokohama, Pearl, and Seattle when a dispatch came granting my every whim and then some. I was ordered to HQ USAREUR, Heidelberg, Germany, by available military transportation, for discharge, at own request see reference foxtrot. Accumulated leave could be taken or paid, see reference bravo. Subject man was authorized to return to Zone Interior (the States) any time within twelve months of separation, via available military transportation at no further expense to the government. Unquote.

The paper-work sergeant called me in and showed me this, his face glowing with innocent glee. “Only there ain’t no ‘available transportation,’ Soldier—so haul ass aboard the
General Jones
. You’re going to Seattle, like I said.”

I knew what he meant: The only transport going west in a long, long time had sailed for Singapore thirty-six hours earlier. I stared at that dispatch, thinking about boiling oil and wondering if he had held it back just long enough to keep me from sailing under it.

I shook my head. “I’m going to catch the
General Smith
in Singapore. Be a real human type, Sarge, and cut me a set of orders for it.”

“Your orders are cut. For the
Jones
. For Seattle.”

“Gosh,” I said thoughtfully. “I guess I had better go cry on the chaplain.” I faded out fast but I didn’t see the chaplain; I went to the airfield. It took five minutes to find that no commercial nor U.S. military flight was headed for Singapore in time to do me any good.

But there was an Australian military transport headed for Singapore that night. Aussies weren’t even “military advisers” out often were around, as “military observers.” I found the plane’s skipper, a flight leftenant, and put the situation to him. He grinned and said, “Always room for one more bloke. Wheels up shortly after tea, likely. If the old girl will fly.”

I knew it would fly; it was a Gooney Bird, a C-47, mostly patches and God knows how many millions of miles. It would get to Singapore on one engine if asked. I knew my luck was in as soon as I saw that grand old collection of masking tape and glue sitting on the field.

Four hours later I was in her and wheels up.

I checked in aboard USMTS
General Smith
the next morning, rather wet—the
Pride of Tasmania
had flown through storms the night before and a Gooney Birds one weakness is that they leak. But who minds clean rain after jungle mud? The ship was sailing that evening which was grand news.

Singapore is like Hong Kong only flat; one afternoon was enough. I had a drink in the old Raffles, another in the Adelphi, got rained on in the Great World amusement peak walked through Change Alley with a hand on my money and the other on my orders—and bought an Irish Sweepstakes ticket.

I don’t gamble, if you will concede that poker is a game of skill. However this was a tribute to the goddess of fortune, thanks for a long run of luck. If she chose to answer with $140,000 US, I wouldn’t throw it in her face. If she didn’t…well, the ticket’s face value was one pound, $2.80 US; I paid $9.00 Singapore, or $3.00 US—a small gesture from a man who had just won a free trip around the world—not to mention coming out of the jungle still breathing.

But I got my $3 worth at once, as I fled out of Change Alley to avoid two dozen other walking banks anxious to sell me more tickets, Singapore dollars, any sort of money—or my hat if I let go of it—reached the street, hailed a cab, and told the driver to take me to the boat landing. This was a victory of spirit over flesh because I had been debating whether to snatch the chance to ease enormous biological back pressure. Good old Scarface Gordon had been an Eagle Scout awfully long and Singapore is one of the Seven Sinful Cities where
anything
may be had.

I am not implying that I had remained faithful to the Girl Next Door. The young lady back home who had taught me most about the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, with an amazing send-off the night before I was inducted, had “Dear-Johnned” me in basic training; I felt gratitude but no loyalty. She got married soon after, now has two children, neither of them mine.

The real cause of my biological unease was geographical. Those little brown brothers I had been fitting, with and against, all had little brown sisters, many of whom could be had for a price, or even
pour l’amour ou pour le sport
.

But that had been all the local talent for a long time. Nurses? Nurses are officers—and the rare USO entertainer who got that far from Stateside was even more thoroughly blocked off than were nurses.

I did not object to little brown sisters because they were brown. I was as brown as they were, in my face, except for a long pink scar. I drew the line because they were
little
.

I was a hundred and ninety pounds of muscle and no fat, and I could never convince myself that a female four feet ten inches tall and weighing less than ninety pounds and looking twelve years old is in fact a freely consenting adult. To me it felt like a grim sort of statutory rape and produced psychic impotence.

Singapore looked like the place to find a big girl. But when I escaped from Change Alley, I suddenly didn’t like people, big or little, male or female, and headed for the ship—and probably saved myself from pox, Cupid’s catarrh, soft chancre, Chinese rot, saltwater itch, and athlete’s foot—the wisest decision I had made since, at fourteen, I had declined to wrestle a medium-sized alligator.

I told the driver in English what landing I wanted, repeated it in memorized Cantonese (not too well; its a nine-toned language, and French and German are all I had in school), and showed him a map with the landing marked and its name printed in English and drawn in Chinese.

Everybody who left the ship was given one of these maps. In Asia every cab driver speaks enough English to take you to the Red Light district and to shops where you buy “bargains.” But be is never able to find your dock or boat landing.