Last Man Out (2 page)

After graduating from Oak Ridge, I enrolled in UNC. During my sophomore year, a couple of friends and I dropped out of school and drove a beat-up 1950 Willys Jeep through Central America to Nicaragua. We were looking for jobs there when we ran afoul of what would become the Sandinistas, and we had to get out. We flew to Miami, where I worked on the beach until the next semester of college began at Chapel Hill.

I still dreamed about “getting out there,” living in faraway places. Hell, knocking around was a family tradition—my father should realize that, I thought. His father had never settled down. Grandpa had been a rural mail carrier but somewhat irregular in his work habits. Once during World War I, he was supposed to be on his delivery route but was holed up, drinking moonshine. Someone bet him that he couldn’t drive his Harley motorbike up a nearby tree that was half bent over. He got up most of the way before he fell off. The motorbike was torn up pretty bad, plus the mail blew away and he lost his job. He and the family went back to Grandma’s place and he tried to farm the forty acres they were given, but he just wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. Every once in a while he left the farm and traveled around. He worked at odd jobs, once selling Fuller brushes in the eastern part of the state. Living in rooming houses and sometimes under bridges, he was different from all the rest but happy in his own way.

That’s my heritage, I thought. I had heard genius skipped a generation, and I figured that held true as well for wanderlust. Maybe, like Grandpa, I was meant to be out there knocking around. It was my destiny.

I shook my head to clear away those thoughts, looked down at my book, and tried to study. Then I thought about Cuba again—that fight when two drunk sailors slammed into one another, knocking out teeth, breaking each other’s nose, throwing blood over a group of whores standing nearby. The girls screamed and moved farther back, but no one tried to break up the fight. I looked back at my open, unread sociology book and yawned.

I didn’t take many of my finals that January 1964. Midway through the exam period I packed all my clothes, left without saying good-bye to anyone, and drove my old junker station wagon back toward Southern Pines. In Sanford, I stopped at the Army recruiting office and signed up for three years in the infantry.

At home, I went into the kitchen and told Mother what I had done. When Daddy came in from the office, he stood in the doorway and smiled. Then he caught Mother’s dour look and his smile froze. “I’ve joined the Army, Dad.” I tried to sound upbeat, but my voice broke.

Dad walked over and slumped into his chair. The last rays of
sunlight coming through the half-drawn blinds did little to brighten the gloom. Finally he said, “That’s dumb.” After a pause, he said, “Dealing with you is like trying to push a rope.” Then he just stared out the window as if a great calamity had befallen the family.

On February 4, 1964, Mother and Daddy took me to Little’s Gulf service station on the edge of town and we waited in the car for a bus to take me to the induction center in Raleigh, the state capital. They both cried. I told them everything was going to be okay, wondering as I said it why the bus was taking so long.

It finally arrived, coming to a stop in front of our car with a hiss of its air brakes. I kissed Mother on the cheek and reached over the seat and shook Daddy’s hand. After boarding the bus, I looked out the window and saw the car parked off to the side of the service station. Mother was in the front and Daddy in the back, a sad, out of the ordinary sight. As the bus pulled out, Mother waved good-bye and I could see her smile. Daddy had his head down.

Grandpa’s departures were probably just as melancholy.

The boys and young men sitting around the U.S. Army induction center in Raleigh looked like they belonged in the lost and found. I spent the afternoon mindlessly leafing through crumpled sports magazines that lay on tables by the worn Naugahyde couches. Eventually I was called to a desk where I signed my official enlistment papers. Later, everyone went into another room. An Air Force captain with a tired voice asked us to raise our right hand and officially swore us into military service. He then wished us good luck and added that he thought most of us would need it.

The next morning we went by train and bus to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where we were processed into the Army. On the morning of the tenth day there—sheared to the skull, tested, vaccinated, wearing new ill-fitting fatigues, scared—my group fell into formation in front of the barracks with our duffel bags and boarded Army buses for basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. No longer “INductees,” as we had been called at the processing center, we were off to become “boots.”

At Fort Gordon the bus convoy pulled in front of our training
company headquarters. “Company C” was painted on a brick-and-concrete sign out front. The doors to the bus opened, and I saw a “Smokey Bear” drill sergeant hat above a square-jawed black face rise over the two boys in the front row. Standing almost at attention beside the bus driver, the man slowly moved his eyes over the interior of the bus. Outside we heard the shrill shouts of other noncommissioned officers (NCOs) as they rushed recruits off the buses. There was a tense pause as the sergeant continued to look around. Finally he spoke in a low, smooth, and slow southern voice, “Welcome to Fort Gordon, Georgia, boys and girls. Ma name is Staff Sergeant Willie O. McGee. I am ya drill instructor. I’m going to make ya soldiers or ya’ll find ya ugly asses run clean into this red Georgia dirt. Everyone stand up.”

Everyone tried to push things aside and get to their feet. “Stand up, goddammit!” The voice suddenly became loud and frightfully mean. “Stand ya worthless civilian asses up, get off dis fucking bus, and form four ranks in da company street.”

The recruits in front tried to get off quickly, but Sergeant McGee was blocking their way as he climbed slowly off the bus. As he moved aside, we fought one another to get out and into formation.

Standing before us, Staff Sergeant McGee was an impressive figure. Ramrod straight and deathly still, he moved only his eyes. His voice carried easily to the back ranks. He advised us to respond quickly as he “learned” us how to soldier. The Army “weren’t” patient, didn’t cater to individuals. The “onliest” way to act was to do exactly what he told us to—no more, no less. He picked one of the largest men, by the name of McDiarmid, to be the recruit platoon leader and four other large men to be squad leaders, and positioned them to the right.

He said he would not attempt anything silly yet, like trying to make us march or even fall out of formation in a military manner. He said, “Pick up ya duffel bags and go into da barracks behind ya, squads one and two on one side, squads three and four on da other and try to do hit without falling down.”

Sergeant McGee followed us inside and paced the aisle while we claimed either a top or bottom bunk bed. Calling us to line up at attention at the end of our bunks, he walked by and corrected
the stances of most of us. I stared off into the distance when he stopped briefly in front of me.

Finished, he told us that he graduated the best soldiers in the company, possibly in the whole training command. “Nobody skates,” he said, “not no greasy Puerto Ricans,” as he bent down close to one of the Puerto Ricans, “not no angry Negroes,” as he put his nose close to the face of a very large black man, and “not no educated molly-wolly shithead,” as he moved farther down the line past me and bent in close to a skinny country boy from Tennessee.

“I think I have made myself clear about what I expect, but I knows from experience dat some of ya ain’t understood me, gonn’a be slow, won’t follow orders, gonn’a want’a fall out. But listen here. Dis is my platoon. I own ya ass. You’ll learn to do it right or I will get rid of ya.” He turned to leave and then turned back. “Oh, and one more thing. I do not like ya, any of ya, and I don’t want ya for a friend, any of ya. Don’t try to be nice to me. Stay away. Do not talk with me. Do not come close to me unless ya have to. I do not want to know ya first names. I do not want to know about’sa dog or ya Momma or dat ya girlfriend’s pregnant. Stay away from me. See the chaplain if ya want to talk with someone nice. I am Drill Sergeant Willie O. McGee. Stay da fuck away.”

The recruit across from me made eye contact and bounced his eyebrows as Sergeant McGee left. I did not acknowledge him but turned to the task of making my bed.

Throughout that day and the next, McGee was with us constantly. Up and down the lines, shouting, cussing, correcting us in our dress and our drill. I stayed in the middle of the platoon, safely out of his way.

The second night, I was brushing my teeth in the latrine when the recruit who bunked across the aisle, the one who had bounced his eyebrows at me, came up to the next sink and started washing his face. “McGee is a rather persuasive fellow,” he said. “Direct. I like that in a man.”

I turned and smiled, possibly for the first time since I had arrived at the induction center in Raleigh. He said his name was Van Pelt and that he had signed on because he had lost interest in college. He was from Cape Canaveral, Florida, where his father
worked as an engineer. He said he was doing fine in school until he got a little sports car and then something happened—all those beach parties and hangovers. He forgot to go to class one semester, so he joined the Army. But, finding the experience rather boorish, he was considering asking for the papers he had signed to see if there was an escape clause. Possibly there was a legitimate breach of contract here. He sought a more casual routine.

Coming into the latrine about the same time was a large black man named Tate [an alias], whom McGee had jumped on that morning for being too slow in reciting his serial number. Another black man going out the door bumped into him and Tate shoved him away, growling. Tate went in the shower room mumbling to himself. Several others came out of the shower quickly, some still lathered with soap, rather than stay in there with that very large, very black, very intimidating man.

The third day we were issued field web gear that we had to display over our lockers—packs, canteens, ammo pouches, canteen belts, and suspenders. We also received helmets, along with their protective steel outer shells called “steel pots.” I noticed that one man was having difficulty putting his gear together properly and watched him for several minutes. Even with his GI haircut it was apparent that he was balding. He had a large head, a skinny neck, no shoulders, a pudgy middle, big butt, and short legs. He kept pushing his thick glasses up his nose as he tried to adjust his gear. I resisted an impulse to help him. The chore was so simple, and the fellow seemed so helpless. I decided he was exactly the reason why Cottonpicker had told me to mind my own business during basic training. Van Pelt went over later and arranged the man’s web gear for him. He also helped adjust the webbing inside the helmet liner, and with the steel pot encasement in place, Van Pelt put the helmet on the man’s head to check the fit. It fit too low and the man looked silly. His big glasses barely showed underneath, plus his neck was so skinny he had trouble holding his head up under the weight of his steel pot. His head wobbling from side to side, he looked like a turkey. Van Pelt continued to make adjustments until he got the helmet to fit properly. The man sat silently as Van Pelt worked. Van Pelt finally left and, after going to his bunk for a moment, came over to my bunk. Looking
the other way, he said that he thought the “Professor,” a draftee, was out of his element. He said the man smelt a trifle rank, too.

Later we were told to put on our web gear and fall out into formation outside—falling into and out of formation being a large part of our first few days. I noticed that the Professor had his web suspenders twisted in the back. They were the least of his worries, however, because he was having considerable problems as he tried to hold up his head under the steel pot.

Sergeant McGee came up to the formation from the rear and spotted the Professor’s twisted suspenders. He walked up to the man and said, “How do ya feel, Molly-Wolly? Don’t shake ya head at me, recruit. Do ya hear me, quit shaking ya frigging head!” McGee’s face was contorted in anger. “I said goddammit quit shaking ya frigging head.” I could see McGee’s face soften after a while. “Is ya hat too heavy for ya, Molly-Wolly? Are ya so fucking weak dat ya can’t wear a steel pot? Okay, I can understand dat. I can understand.” McGee stood there for a moment and looked the Professor in the eye. “But ya know ya look like a smart young fellow to me. I gotta question for ya. How come ya fucking suspenders are twisted? Dat don’t take no goddamned strength. Ya got to think, Molly-Wolly, think.”

The Professor turned his head to one side, still wobbling from the weight of the steel pot, and I could see tears welling up in his eyes. McGee continued to look into the Professor’s face, and he too saw the tears. I quickly turned my gaze to the front as McGee looked around to see who else was watching the man cry.

“Go inside now, double time, and get ya suspenders fixed, soldier, and come back out shere. Now, move out. Now. Go.”

My first thought was that McGee was maybe a nice guy. A nasty individual, of the kind he had pretended to be, would have embarrassed the Professor about the tears. McGee told the squad leaders to check each member of their squads to make sure the equipment was on right, and he went into the barracks. The Professor soon came out and regained his place in the formation.

That night at retreat, the Professor fell out of the barracks with his shirttail out of his pants. McGee hesitated as he saw the man awkwardly run by to get in formation, but when he saw the Professor fall in without tucking in his shirt, McGee walked up to him. He told him that he was a disgrace to the platoon, the U.S.
Army, and the human race and, because of that, he was number one on McGee’s list of people to watch.

Before lights out that night Van Pelt sat on my bunk and polished his shoes. He said, “Life’s relative, you know. It’s a proven scientific theory—the theory of relativity. You are judged against your peers. Like, for example, two men in the woods, surprised by a bear, were running away, the bear at their heels, and one man said he sure hoped he was faster than that bear and the other man said, ‘I only hope I’m faster’n you.’ That guy understood the theory. Wasn’t necessary to be the fastest man in the universe there, only the faster of the two of them. The bear got the slow one. You see what I mean, things are relative. Life’s relative to the situation. Here at Fort Gordon, it don’t help if you’re smart or rich, look like a movie star, or got the greatest little sports car in the world back home. Not relative. Takes primitive instincts here. Semideveloped playground skills and the muscle tone of a marathon runner don’t hurt either. Don’t think the Professor, relatively speaking, is packing the right gear here. He ain’t playground material.”