Chapter 4

On the night that Steve and I graduated from the Special Forces Qualification course, we took our women out to celebrate. Roxanne was in charge of the evening, and insisted that we dress up. So I put on my all purpose, wedding, funeral and baptismal J C Penney suit. Megan, however, broke out a brand new ‘Little Black Dress’ that showed a hint of delicious cleavage and ended just above her knees. She also wore smoky silk hose and a pair of three inch patent leather pumps. She had her hair in a sophisticated French braid and a little make up to highlight her beautiful eyes. Snuggled just at the top of her cleavage was the gold heart locket I gave her the night of our senior prom.

“Wow!” Mister Eloquent exclaimed when she walked into the living room.

Megan giggled and took my arm in hers.

“It’s a special night, Jody, so Roxie helped me pick out a new outfit for it.”

Roxanne’s dress was similar to Megan’s, except it was green and lower cut. Of course the low cut thing might have been just a result of her large breasts stretching the fabric. Roxie wore green often, because it matched her eyes and set off her flaming red hair. Steve was wearing an obviously custom tailored Brooks Brother’s suit. I felt like the ugly duckling in my three year old ‘Jacques Penne’ off-the-rack special.

We piled into Roxanne’s snazzy new wine-colored Bonneville and headed out. We were like teenagers in that car. Steve was driving with Roxie sitting as close to him as she could get, his arm slung casually over her shoulder. Megan and I were in the back; close enough together that a sheet of newspaper wouldn’t fit between us. We had been on the road for about five minutes when Megan giggled and pointed to Steve’s arm. I chuckled myself when I saw his elbow moving, it was patently obvious what was going on up front. With a devilish grin, Megan took my hand and put it on her thigh. I squeezed her supple flesh and tried to torment Steve.

“You loose something up there, Buddy?” I asked.

Roxie giggled and answered for him.

“Yeah, but he found it again, already.”

With Roxanne in charge of the evening, I wasn’t that surprised when we pulled up in front of a swanky country club. The place even had valet parking. The only other place I’d been where someone parked your car was the Valdosta Memorial Funeral Home.

The place was even fancier on the inside, with gilded trim, fragile looking French furniture and crystal chandeliers. The dining room was just as impressive as the lobby I noticed, as the snooty Maître d’ with the fake British accent led us to our table. I guess I looked a little pale when I saw the prices on the wine list, because Roxanne gave me a smile and patted my hand.

“The evening is taken care of, Jody. It’s my graduation present to all of us.”

The sommelier, (I learned the word that night) brought out a bottle of chateau something or other that was fifty bucks a pop according to the wine list. He poured us all a glass, but before we could pick them up, Steve slid off his chair, took a knee and grabbed Roxie’s hand.

“Roxanne Fuller, will you marry me?” he said smooth as silk.

Roxie didn’t look a bit surprised as she nodded her head yes. When Steve started to slide the ring on her finger, she stopped him.

“You know how I am about you Steven, if you put that on me, I’ll kill you before I give it back,” she said, her tone as serious as a heart attack.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Steve replied as he slipped the ring onto her finger.

There was some applause from the surrounding tables as Steve hopped back into his chair and kissed his future wife. I stood up and proposed a toast.

“May you two be as happy as us,” I said as I looked at my smiling wife.

We clinked glasses, took a sip, and I sat down. To my surprise, Megan stood up and held up her glass.

“I have a toast of my own,” she said.

I looked at her in confusion as she and Roxie exchanged grins.

“I toast my husband’s timely promotion...”

When she paused, we all raised our glasses. I was blushing at being called out in public, when she continued.

“ ... because we are going to need the money next April when I have this baby,” she finished.

I swear that my vision blurred around the edges as the blood rushed out of my head. I think I blacked out for a second, because suddenly Megan grabbed my arm.

“Easy Honey, here ... take a sip of your drink.”

I nodded dumbly and took a sip of champagne. My head cleared quickly and I set down the glass and just looked at Megan in awe. She giggled, leaned forward and kissed me.

“I told you it was a special occasion, Hubby Bear. I just didn’t tell you all the reasons it was special,” she said.

Steve cleared his throat as I was grinning goofily and staring into Meggie’s big blue peepers. He was smirking when I looked over at him.

“I wish I had my camera, because you looked like you’d just got poleaxed,” he said.

I could only nod my head, because that was exactly how I felt.

Roxie immediately wiped the smirk off his face when she said, “Don’t look so smug, Big Boy; because you’re in the same boat, and twins run in my family.”

Needless to say, it turned out to be a hell of a celebration ... and it was all cooked up by my ‘innocent’ little wifey.

Steve had confided to me that he was going to propose to Roxanne as soon as we graduated. I passed that tidbit along to Megan, and swore her to secrecy. Two days later, a tearful Roxanne told Megan that she was pregnant. Roxanne and Steve didn’t use any protection, because Roxie thought she was barren, now she was scared to tell Steve about her condition, because she didn’t want him to feel trapped into marrying her. Megan quickly told a very relieved Roxanne about Steve’s forthcoming proposal, that’s why she hadn’t been that surprised by it.

A week later, Megan, who neglected to tell me that she had stopped taking her birth control pills, found out she was also in a family way. She relayed the good news to Roxie, and then she cooked up our evening of surprises.

I was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group for the next fourteen months. I ended up on Operational Detachment A-331 when the team’s only weapons man retired. It was some serious stroke of luck that I ended up on that team. I lucked out because I was the youngest of the seven enlisted men and one officer on A-331. All of the other enlisted men were long serving senior NCOs either waiting to retire or hoping for a promotion. The first lieutenant who served as the team leader was a Reservist recently called up from the Individual Ready Reserve. The lieutenant was unhappy about being back on active duty, so our team sergeant didn’t have to do much convincing for the man to find other things to do rather than train with us.

My teammates were about the greatest — but craziest — bunch of guys I’d ever met. As soon as I arrived on the team, they took me under their collective wing and made me part of the craziness. The ringleader of the bunch of Loony Tunes of which I was now a part, was one ‘Lyin’ Ryan’ Ragan. Master Sergeant Ragan was our team sergeant, and the biggest bullshit artist to ever don a green beret. Lyin’ Ryan could talk his way out of (or into) anything.

MSG Ragan had five kids scattered among three ex-wives. All three of his exes lived in or around Fayetteville, and all three claimed that they still loved him, they just couldn’t live with him. I know from personal experience that if he called one of them, they dropped what they were doing, happy to be at his beck and call.

The way he worked people was some sort of weird magic. I mean he’d sit down and start talking and you plainly knew that every word out of his mouth was a complete fabrication. Then suddenly you aren’t so sure he is lying, and your head starts nodding up and down. By the time he stands up, you have your wallet out, giving him your last twenty dollars so one of his kids can have open heart surgery.

As good as Ryan was with tweaking us guys, he was twice as effective with women. He could walk into a bar and within half an hour leave with the prettiest woman there. That might have been explainable if he was handsome to go along with his gift of gab, but the truth was that he was an average looking guy with thinning hair. He also wore black framed army issue glasses with lenses as thick as the bottom of a coke bottle. If he looked directly at the sun, those lenses would burn a hole through the back of his head.

We had another character on our team named Jerry Smeltzer, who everyone called Squirrel. SFC Smeltzer was a demo man who spent three years in Vietnam at some remote A-Camp. Undoubtedly that assignment had been a mind altering event, because Smeltzer was absolutely, certifiably insane, which is how he earned his nickname. I liked the hell out of Squirrel, but at the same time, he scared the shit out of me. Squirrel did not even go to the latrine without a pistol and knife, and he played around with explosives as if they were Play-Doh. Squirrel was a bachelor and lived in a mobile home out in Spring Lake, a small town on the opposite side of Bragg from Fayetteville. I only visited his trailer one time. I never went back after he proudly showed me a bedroom packed from floor to ceiling with explosives he’d smuggled off the demolition range. Jesus, he must have had a ton of C-4, composition B and TNT stashed in there.

Like I said, the older guys on the team took me under their wings and taught me what being a Special Forces soldier was really all about. At the same time, their spouses latched on to Megan. I learned from those guys what it really meant to be part of a team. We did everything together, whether it was cleaning the latrine of our team house or conducting morning sick call at the Shangri-La Bar in Fayetteville.

We did sick call at the Shangri-La at least twice a week.

Our normal work day started with first call at 0630. After our accountability formation, we took PT then headed over to the mess hall for breakfast. After breakfast, we’d mosey over to the team room to shower and change into our duty uniforms. At 0830, we stood work call formation outside the Company orderly room. After the sergeant major passed out any information he had, he released us to our team sergeants. The team sergeants then conducted the activities listed on the weekly training schedule they made. If our training schedule listed ‘area studies’ from 0900-1200, we were headed for the Shangri-La, which conveniently opened at 0900. To cover his ass if someone wanted to check our training, he typed ‘Team Roam’ instead of ‘Team Room’ for the class location. Ryan was as slick as snot on a door knob.

We frequented the Shangri-La, because the widow who owned the joint was lobbying for the position as the next Missus Ryan Ragan. The owner was a robust German woman named Greta, whose Special Forces husband had died when his parachute cigarette rolled on him during a routine proficiency jump. Proficiency jump was the official title for what we called a pay jump. Every soldier drawing jump pay had to stay ‘proficient’ by jumping every three months. Jump pay was fifty-five dollars a month.

The fellows and I would shoot pool, drink twenty-five cent beer, and bullshit while Greta dragged Ryan back to her office. The weird thing about all this was we actually did do area studies while we were at the Shangri-La. Here’s how that worked.

Every Special Forces Group has a geographical part of the world as their operational area. The operational area of the 3rd Special Forces Group was Africa. The group’s operational area was carved up and each team specialized in a slice. ODA-331’s slice was the country of Liberia. Our team had about a dozen thick three-ring binders full of information about Liberia, two of them were classified, but all the rest were from open sources collected over the last five years. We never went to the Shangri-La without one of the unclassified binders.

While Ryan was fostering German-American cultural relations with the zaftig Greta, Preacher Hinson read aloud from the binder as country music floated out of the big Wurlitzer jukebox and pool balls caromed off each other. Preacher then quizzed the rest of us about what he had read. It was probably the most effective training environment ever devised, because I can still regurgitate facts about the country that would impress a native Liberian.