Chapter 1

Every person has a story, I reckon, and each of those stories have a starting point. My name is Jody Jamison, this is my story, and here is where I choose to start.

I am a country boy, born and raised in South Georgia. I lived with my paternal grandmother, Alice Jamison, because my mother died when I was seven and my father couldn’t, or wouldn’t, raise me. Instead he moved out to California to work in an aircraft factory and he started another family. Five years later, just after my twelfth birthday, he invited me to join his new wife and two daughters. I flat out refused to go live with them because I wasn’t about to leave my grandmother. My father was Granny’s only son and she really loved him. I know she cried some because she had grandchildren she’d never met and a son who treated her so cavalierly.

I firmly believed Granny was about the finest person who ever drew a breath. Most everyone who ever met her felt the same way. Granny was a widow. Her husband died in a work accident 1957. My grandfather was a brakeman for the Georgia Southern Railroad. He worked at the big rail yard in Valdosta. He was killed in a freak accident when incorrectly secured thousand pound reels of telephone cable tumbled off a flat car and onto him as he operated a rail switch.

Granny and I survived on her widow’s pension and a few dollars she earned making quilts and taking in sewing for folks. We raised some chickens and Granny and I planted and tended a nice sized side lot garden. Granny had a green thumb so we always had fresh or canned vegetables year round. When I turned thirteen I started working during the summer on a couple of neighboring tobacco farms. If you ever want to know what hot was really like, spend an August day cropping tobacco in the South Georgia sun.

Time marched on and soon enough I was sixteen, almost seventeen, and a senior in high school. I was only in high school because my grandmother insisted on it. If I had my way I’d be working a full time job so Granny’s life would be better. I got passing grades in school. I wasn’t stupid, just apathetic. If a subject interested me, I did okay in it, if not, I did just enough to squeak by. I was the classic underachiever; never living up to my potential. I don’t think I ever received a report card that didn’t include: ‘Jody is capable of doing much better work.’ None of that bothered me much.

Then a couple of weeks into the school year Megan Stedman sat down next to me in the lunchroom. I was just as shocked as the rest of the Robert E. Lee High School’s student body. Megan was pretty and popular. She was the sweet “girl-next-door.” She taught Sunday school and sang in the church choir. At school, she was on the pep squad and the A-B honor roll. Everyone loved her. Unsure of her intent, I sat there like a lump, pretending my bologna sandwich was the focus of my universe.

“Ignoring me is not going to work, Jody Jamison,” she said primly.

“I’m not ignoring you Megan Stedman, I just don’t have anything to say. But how can I help you?” I asked curtly.

She regarded me steadily with those indescribably deep blue eyes for a second, then smiled warmly.

“That’s better. Do you realize that we’ve been in the same English class for three weeks, and those are the first words you’ve ever said to me? That’s okay, though, because we’re talking now.”

Well, actually Megan was doing all the talking, but I was suddenly focused on her every word. It took me months to actually believe that Megan really was attracted to me, but it only took me a few seconds to fall in love with her. Megan’s story, to anyone who wants to hear it, is that when she saw me sitting there that day, something told her that I was someone she’d like to know better. Since she knew it was unlikely I’d ever approach her, she took matters in her own hands.

We ended up becoming high school sweethearts, and we were the couple that no one could understand being together. Megan didn’t try to change me, but her presence in my life did move me more toward what people considered normal. Our relationship worked then, and works now, because Megan keeps us on the right path. I don’t mean that she runs my life or anything like that. I just have enough common sense to leave anything requiring interpersonal skills up to her. I can’t think of a single thing she ever suggested that wasn’t good for me in the long run.

Megan’s parents weren’t as convinced of my potential as Megan was. Still, they trusted their daughter and let us date. I liked her folks, although her father intimidated the crap out of me. Looking back on it, I figured out that was his intent. Megan’s dad was a Georgia State Police captain. Every time I walked in the Stedmans’ front door, the first thing I saw was the captain’s Sam Brown belt hanging on the coat rack. Tucked in the holster of his belt was this huge stainless steel Colt Python 357 Magnum revolver. Stedman would always make a point of glancing at that pistol when he briefed me on when to have Megan home, or what he considered good conduct on my part. He never had a problem making his point to me.

Granny loved Megan from the first time I introduced them. The two of them seem to have some ESP connection when it comes to me. Granny would pick out a shirt for me, saying that Megan would like it, and Megan would rave about the shirt when I wore it. Things like that happened too often to be a coincidence. Megan’s parents even treated me better after they met Granny Alice.

With my girlfriend and my grandmother on the case I gradually started interacting with people instead of having my nose stuck in a science fiction novel. I even went to the prom and danced if you can believe that. I could dance at the prom because over Easter break my cousin Sharon came down from Warner Robbins with her folks to spend Easter with Granny. Sharon’s mama was my father’s sister. As a surprise for Megan, Granny asked Sharon to teach my clumsy butt to dance. Sharon was the person for the job because she was good enough to dance on American Bandstand.

We graduated from high school in June of 1963, but we had to wait until I turned eighteen in November before we could marry. By then, I was working for the Georgia Power Company as an apprentice lineman. I scored high on the power company’s aptitude test and Megan’s dad put in a good word for me so they hired me, even though I was only seventeen. With a steady job I was able to relieve Granny of some of her financial burden even though she insisted she didn’t need the help.

On our wedding night, Megan Claire and Jody Lee Jamison invented making love. Oh sure, folks before us were doing something like it, but it was impossible for anyone to have ever done anything that felt as good or was as intense as when we did it. We were virgins when we tumbled into bed in our motel room in Palmdale, Florida, but thanks to a lot of reading and fooling around, we had a very good idea of what it took to remedy that. Had it not been for the very sweet woman who owned the small beach-front motel worrying about us, we probably would have stayed in our room making love until we starved to death.

The January after our wedding, Megan started college at Valdosta State. I had promised her parents that I would not prevent her from going to college, since they were willing to pay her tuition. We rented a little place in town and settled into married bliss. I worked, she went to school, and we were incredibly happy.

Megan excelled in college, attended class year round and graduated in December of 1966. At about the same time, I completed the apprenticeship program with 600 hours of classroom instruction plus 6000 hours of work experience, and received my journeyman’s card from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Instead of an apprentice lineman, I was now a full fledged transmission line electrician and making good money. I wasn’t crazy about my job, but I worked hard at it to put food on the table, a roof over my wife’s pretty brunette head and to help out my grandmother. Megan’s degree was in Early Childhood Education. There was a shortage of teachers then, so she had job offers even before she graduated.

We had the world by the tail and our lives looked set. We were even talking about starting a family, when a little thing named Vietnam reared its ugly head. In July, my draft status changed and I lost my marriage exemption. The Selective Service Board switched to war time criteria so that married men were now eligible for the draft. My number in the December, 1966 draft lottery was 33, so it was only a matter of time before I received my induction notice.

After a long heart to heart talk with my wife, and with some advice from my father-in-law, I visited the Army Recruiting Station and signed up. Because of my responsibilities, the recruiter pushed my enlistment date out six weeks. My reasons for enlisting were more practical than patriotic, as I felt that by enlisting, I’d have a better chance of controlling the duty I ended up with. I was not trying to avoid combat duty, but if I ended up in a front line unit, I wanted to be something besides cannon fodder. I chose the Army because the sergeant at the recruiting station was honest and straight forward, and that impressed the hell out of me. I realize that’s not the greatest of reasons for a decision that big, but it was reason enough for me.

I told my employer I’d enlisted and gave my notice on the day after I enlisted. He offered to waive the two week notice requirement in our union contract but I didn’t take him up on it because Megan’s school didn’t break for summer for fifteen more days. The business agent down at the union hall told me I would continue to earn seniority while I was in the Army, as long as I kept my dues current. I doubted I would but I didn’t tell him that.

For the four weeks between enlisting and shipping out, Megan and I spent every moment together. The situation made our relationship stronger instead of putting stress on it. That’s mostly Megan’s fault, because she refused to have any negative thoughts about what I was doing. When it came to backing her man, Megan Jamison was Grizzly Bear fierce. As for me, there wasn’t a hound dog in South Georgia half as loyal.

Megan and Granny drove me down to the Greyhound station at noon on July fifth. All of us trying to be brave for each other. Megan and I clung together desperately as the bus’s driver and passengers waited patiently for me to board.

Four hours later I was in Jacksonville. I spent the night at a contract hotel and at six the following morning, I was on a dark blue Navy bus headed to the Military Enlistment Processing Station. I spent the early morning taking the vocational aptitude test. In the afternoon, it was the physical exam, followed by a session with the guidance counselor. The guidance sergeant looked at the results of the tests and glanced up at me.

“These are some of the highest ASVAB scores I’ve seen in quite a while, Jamison. You are qualified for any job in the Army. A month ago, I could have offered you a choice of twenty different career fields, but today that’s down to three. So what’ll it be, Jody ... Infantry, Artillery, or Armor?”

The sergeant handed me a job description of all three and I quickly eliminated humping cannon shells or being cooped up in a tank.

’So much for enlisting to get a better job,’ I thought, as I signed on the dotted line for a three year hitch as a light weapons infantryman.

I took the oath of enlistment and was herded with about fifty other guys out to a waiting Continental Trailways chartered bus. A sergeant took roll call and when he was satisfied everyone was on board, we hit the road in a cloud of black diesel smoke. We stopped at a road side HoJos in Waycross, Georgia, for supper, then motored through the night westward to Fort Benning, Georgia.

I made acquaintance with a few of the men on the bus as we rolled through the Georgia night. We were a Heinz 57 group of blacks, whites, rich, poor, volunteers and draftees. Most of the fellows on that bus ended up in the same basic training company as me. About a quarter of them were in my platoon.