The Boo (5 page)

During one of the last parades of the year, when the adjutant was reading a list of tactical officers who would not be returning to The Citadel the following year,
The Boo
walked through second battalion checking for cadets who skipped parade. As he walked up the third division, he heard the adjutant’s voice booming through the loudspeakers across the length and breadth of the campus. “Colonel Smith is leaving. Major Samuel is leaving. Captain Adams is leaving,” when a loud and vigorous “Bull—” rang out from a room not thirty feet away from him. Poor Cadet Cludd smiled weakly and accepted the timing of the fates when
The Boo
peeked in the door and asked gently, “Pardon me, Bubba, but what’s your I.D. number?”

Young George Durk played the military game well and kept his name free from the debris of excess demerits. He walked no tours and served few confinements, so it was no surprise he died many times when he was driving back to The Citadel wearing civilian clothes and noticed Colonel Courvoisie’s green Comet in his rear view mirror. He slumped as low into his seat as humanly possible, peering through the steering wheel, and suffering unspeakable agony as the Comet continued to follow him.
The Boo
did not see him, but Durk later told him that the moment was the nearest thing to coronary failure he experienced while at The Citadel. Durk became a doctor and practiced in Charleston.
The Boo
was his patient years later at the Veterans Hospital. In an act of immaculate revenge or pleasant duty, Durk administered three doses of purgative medicine and three enemas to the stricken Colonel.
The Boo
always thought the smiling doctor was getting him back.

The Boo
broke into a full-fledged oyster roast being conducted professionally by Frank Carter Herst. Herst used garbage can tops to heat them up and was chewing on a succulent oyster when
The Boo
dropped by to say, “Hello.”

Romanticism lived in the gilded, nineteenth century heart of Neal Brady, Commander of Company “G.” His girl friend, a dripping, drawling, honey-voiced young maiden from Charlestori, merited some special celebration or act of adoration when he pinned her at the moss-darkened corner of White Point Gardens. So Brady hid all the freshmen of his company around the garden. As the gallant, young Brady pinned his blushing sweetheart, the chorus of silver-throated knobs broke into a chorus of “I Love You Truly.” Ah, yes! Old Neal, the last of a dying breed.

In 1959 F. P. Canowski’s picture graced The Citadel yearbook for the first time. Seven years later it was pictured in the yearbook for the last time. When F. P. finally graduated, an era in Citadel academics, a saga that may well never be repeated and a record that may never be equalled, was over.

Life was a serious affair for A. Coplis. The boy smiled infrequently, frowned often, and discarded humor as a relevant part of his life. He walked into
Boo’s
office with his trunk one day. To go along with his dark-cloud view of the world, some cadet who did not take life seriously as hell, crapped in poor Coplis’ trunk. Coplis demanded
The Boo
do something.
Boo
did. He emptied it.

Caldwell Brown did not freely embrace the vow of poverty. While other cadets suffered in the humidity and heat of summer-school in Charleston, Caldwell, in the spirit of rugged individualism, walked out to his air-conditioned car and slept in supreme comfort.

Though mammas might deny it with vehemence, the cadet away from campus and free from the bondage of The Citadel’s iron gates is one part alcoholic and one part animal. Whether a weekend leave or an organized exodus in support of the football team, the gentlemanly qualities of cadet training die a rapid death whenever cadets pass through the portals of The Citadel. In 1961 The Citadel football team won the Southern Conference Championship and received a subsequent invitation to play in the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida. On the memorable day itself, as the teams lined up for the kickoff, and the cadet cheering section roared encouragement, and the Summerall Guards stood rigidly presenting arms,
The Boo
saw one of the guardsmen weaving precariously back and forth, back and forth. The debauchery of the night before had proven too much for Cadet Slocum, and even the glint of the sun off his silver bayonet blade and pride inherent in belonging to the Guards could not stem the wave of nausea or impending unconsciousness from crossing over him.
Boo
inched up behind him and whispered in his sweet, death-like voice, “Mr. Slocum, if you have any hope of living to see tomorrow’s sunrise—any hope at all, Mr. Slocum—then you will straighten up and pretend to be a model cadet of the school you represent. And Slocum, I’ll be watching you.” Almost instantly Slocum became as rigid as a cigar store Indian. The weaving ceased and was quickly replaced by something akin to nervous perspiration. Mr. Slocum is now an Army major with a silver star to his credit.

Sam Montgomery, witty and corpulent porkchop from “R” Company, threw his laundry bag off the second division and to the surprise of all observers, went right along with it. Sam was a little shaken, but escaped serious injury.

Mac Coreland used to jump off the second division into the Company pile of laundry bags just for kicks. Mac seemed a little bored with life and this seemed like the most logical way to put spice and variety into an otherwise dull existence.

Tommy Farris came to
The Boo’s
office with tears streaming down his face. He discovered that a good friend of his was stealing from other cadets’ rooms. He turned in the boy’s name to Colonel Courvoisie, saluted, and walked out of the office, still sobbing.

Three senior privates of slovenly vintage took exquisite pride in their wool pants which, according to legend, had been passed down from a sloppy senior to sloppy junior in an unbroken line for 12 years. These pants covered the limbs of Clammy Sadler, Seymour Farrell, and C. T. Curds, all of whom claimed the pants had never been pressed or cleaned. The legend goes on to claim that somewhere in the nether regions of The Citadel these same pants wander the galleries at night in search of some phantom senior privates who might, with unabashed pride, wear them again.

One senior, an acknowledged slob, Zak Sklar, had 95 demerits at Christmas time, which was a hell of a lot of demerits to have, even for an acknowledged slob.
The Boo
warned him that the gods of discipline would show him the way to the front gates if he passed the yearly quota.
Boo
advised Sklar to resign. This would mean Sklar could return to The Citadel the following September. If a cadet is booted for excess demerits, his arse never darkens a sallyport again. Sklar decided to stick it out, became conscious of the shined shoe and the glittering brass, counted demerits like a fat man counts calories, and graduated with his class in June.

Joe Sanfort had to walk tours up to Friday of graduation week.
The Boo
was patrolling outside Padgett-Thomas Barracks when a pretty little girl shyly approached him and asked if she might speak with Joe Sanfort. “Honey, Cadet Sanfort is walking tours right now.” “I know, Colonel, but we’re getting married Saturday and I just wanted to make final arrangements.” “O. K. Honey, I’ll get him for you.”

Raffles flourish in the barracks throughout the year: rifles, liquor, tape recorders, and tickets to rock festivals have been given away as prizes time after time. Raffles make money and most upperclassmen (especially those in Business Administration) know that, psychologically, it is almost impossible for a freshman to refuse to buy anything from an upperclassman. One senior paid for his flight ticket home simply by going to every freshman’s room in the battalion and asking for a contribution. A freshman will do almost anything for a friend.

In the history of raffles at The Citadel, and it’s a distinguished history, filled with the stories of cadets who made a fortune through the use of their wits, Chuck Haffly rates some type of special mention for creativity and imagination. Every cadet and his mother knows that if you get into your car at The Citadel, drive across the Cooper River Bridge, and head north up Route 17, before you hit the North Carolina line, you will pass the most famous or infamous house of prostitution in this part of the country. The sun does not set on this venerable institution without a stream of soberly dressed businessmen, double-jowled policemen, or lusty-eyed college youths stopping to sample some of the fleshly pleasures offered here. The portly matron who greets you at the door claims that her girls are free from germ or bug, and are inspected weekly by a doctor whose main concern is the prevention of disease and the propagation of cleanliness. At the risk of offending any Citadel mother who reads this book, it is not entirely unheard of for a cadet or a group of cadets to venture northward in search of these forbidden fruits. Cadet Haffly, whose understanding of the cadet psyche must have been considerable, decided to raffle off a night of pleasure to some cadet smiled upon by the spirits. Nor was his a small time venture. Each ticket cost ten dollars, making his raffle the most expensive and ambitious in Citadel history. He found willing contributors to his cause: lonely freshmen who just received “Dear John” letters from their high school sweethearts, sad-faced physics majors whose thoughts turned from formulas to the hard complexions of women of the night, and depressed boys who needed some glimmer of excitement to lift them from advanced cases of The Citadel willies. Old Chuck made a fortune. Unfortunately, the winner was a Catholic freshman whose moralistic background and refined sense of guilt took him over the brink and caused him to report the whole affair to the Commandant’s Department. Enter
The Boo.

Allen Carlson took no crap from any living man, but dished it out in mountainous heaps to anyone who came under his jurisdiction. Tough and hard-nosed, he worked his way up to become company commander of Foxtrot his senior year. He was hell on knobs. They lined the walls outside his room at night and he would walk before them, a muscled symbol of leadership formed by the rigors of the plebe system. Carlson not only liked to rack knobs, but also had one other idiosyncrasy not usually found in God-fearing, law-abiding college seniors: he enjoyed poaching alligators. On dark, moonless nights in a small motor boat, he would venture out among the marshes, amidst the deafening chorus of insects, and sweep a flashlight across the black waters, until he spotted the two red eyes of a bull ’gator flashing like burning embers in the swamp. A blast of a .410 shotgun and Carlson had spending money to court the bashful maidens of Charleston the following week.
The Boo
found out about Carlson and the alligators fairly early in Carlson’s career, but found nothing in college regulations against it. In fact, everyone knew Carlson poached ’gators.

When Carlson appeared at
Boo’s
office one afternoon, his face an ashen pallor and his hand trembling perceptibly when he saluted,
The Boo
knew something of more than general concern was eating Cadet Carlson.

“Colonel, I need your help bad.” “What’s the problem, Bubba?” “They’re gonna get me,” Carlson answered, visibly perturbed. “Settle down, Mr. Carlson, and tell me about it.” Instead of answering, Carlson handed
The Boo
a letter from the State Wildlife Commission. The letter stated that agents of the commission had caught an alligator poacher in Georgetown, and several stubs in his checkbook had Carlson’s name on them. The commission was sending a man to The Citadel to question Carlson about his possible involvement with animal poaching in the state. “What in the hell am I going to do, Colonel?” “Pray, Bubba, just pray real hard.” As
The Boo
looked at the letter, he stared at the name of the wildlife commissioner whose name appeared on the masthead of the letter. He took a book from his shelf which listed all the government officials in South Carolina. The commissioner’s name that appeared on the letter had been out of office for two years. “Anybody hate you, Carlson?” the Colonel asked. “What do you mean, Sir?” “Someone has pulled one over on you. You can’t tell me the wildlife commission uses stationery two years old to write official letters to crooks like you. I know they have more money than that.” “It’s that goddamn knob.” “Pardon me, lamb.” “I know who did it, Colonel. This damn little knob in my company knows some people in the state department. I bet he got that stationery and wrote the letter.” They say that Carlson, an extraordinary racker of freshmen on ordinary occasions, conducted a sweat party of inhuman dimensions that night for a plebe more creative than most.

One of the first bits of propaganda fed to the cadet, pablum-style, his first year, is the relationship between the soldier and his rifle. The soldier treats his rifle as gingerly as a mother treats her crippled child and shows it the same respect a parish priest gives a visiting bishop. In The Citadel’s entire history, only one cadet, B. M. Schein, has ever walked into the Commandant’s Office and said, “I will not be turning in my rifle. I can’t find it.” Poor B. M. had lost the weapon, simple as that. He could not find the damn thing and he had searched the entire campus. Since the loss of an Ml and matricide are roughly comparable at The Citadel, B. M. looked at Citadel walls for six long months and his feet burned second battalion for 120 tours.

Larry Orb was a cadet of questionable nobility. A cadet accused Orb of an honor violation. He was tried and found innocent because of some technicality involved in the case. Orb beat up the cadet who made the accusation the day after the trial and then received 10/120 tours.

The Boo
calls Carl Mazzarelli the nearest thing to a full-fledged gangster The Citadel ever welcomed to her gates. He once went to the company bulletin board, saw his name mentioned prominently on the demerit list, flew into an uncontrollable rage, ripped the whole bulletin board off the wall and hurled it to the quadrangle twenty feet below him. On another occasion,
The Boo
saw a figure dart from a line of cars, after taps, near third battalion.
Boo
did not give chase. One lesson he learned early was that old hearts do not function as well as young hearts during foot races. He merely went down the line of cars until he came to one whose engine was warm. He took the number off the car’s sticker, checked the records in his office, and made an extremely cordial phone call to Cadet Mazzarelli the next day.