Chapter 17

Once the pilot I hired to fly me to Tallahassee dropped me at the airport, I was whisked away to the induction center to be administered another physical and the oath.

When I showed up for my mandatory Selective Service physical I took it with a grain of salt. Being a citrus grower and major food provider was a free pass as far as military service was concerned – right up until it wasn’t.

President Johnson started drafting young men so that he could stir up a war that was large enough to enrich his already rich friends in the munitions business. Richard Nixon inherited Johnson’s quagmire and nothing he did seemed to help. Fifty-thousand young men died fighting that pointless war so some billionaires could get richer. My job was to avoid adding to the total.

The draft had stolen the youth of so many young men that I couldn’t live with avoiding it, since I’d lived well over one hundred years by then. At least I knew what it was to love and be loved in return. I had raised children, served as President, and did things no one else could even imagine. It really was once again time to shut up and give something back.

We were marched off to buses and taken for boot camp, which was basically an eight-week crash course in surviving hell on Earth. The sadists running things took enormous pleasure in humiliating and hurting recruits. When you’re inflicting that on seventeen and eighteen year olds, you can get away with it. They were less successful with me.

One hulking, closet homosexual, sadist tried to run that on me and got himself seriously injured. From the first night he chose me to attack, belittle, humiliate and generally abuse me. When he grabbed me by the skin of my neck I dropped him with a wicked right to the sternum. His cohorts dragged me off and tried to make it my fault, but with ten witnesses to the real story, he never got any traction with the Captain.

His fury was such that the Captain suggested that we put on boxing gloves, and

“Work it out like real men, in the ring, for the entertainment of the troops.” I loved that idea and pasted his sorry ass to the canvas before he knew what hit him. The troops cheered until they went horse and we never saw that guy again. For all of the drama caused by the run in with Neanderthal man, boot camp was a short-lived torture chamber, which culminated in a long flight to South East Asia.

All the way to Vietnam I worried that our group was so green that none of us would survive the first day in the jungle. Once the plane disgorged us into the clutches of the Vietnam War, survival became something I prayed for. Don’t let anyone tell you that Vietnam was not a war. They can call it a police action all they want, but the bullets are just as deadly, the enemy just as insane, and the conditions were just as brutal.

It was late in the South Vietnamese afternoon when our flight hit the runway. Potholes made by enemy mortars made our welcome extremely bumpy and for a few seconds I wondered if the plane was going to flip, ground loop, or veer off into the trees. Our pilots got it under control and taxied us to a corner where we were rushed off and hurried inside a large hanger.

Our welcome committee looked like drop outs from an old fifties biker gang. They had long hair, large tattoos and facial hair well in excess of regulation and looked like they’d shoot anyone who challenged them about it. They talked about us like we were girl scouts, instead of infantry, and their irritating chatter caused more than one recruit to talk back.

That was just what they seemed to want.

“Well, who is the maggot that thinks I should shut up?” He screamed.

The screamer was about six-foot two and not any bigger around than I was. He had a huge cigar in his mouth and looked like a very well done drawing of a serial killer. When the offending soldier refused to speak up, the goon decided to pick someone and hurt him to make his point.

The boy he decided to hurt was about half his size and looked scared to death. Rather than let these brain damaged, psychos hurt him; I stepped out and spoke very softly. “Since you deliberately chose the smallest of us, I see what a coward you are.”

His eyes bulged, he bit through his cigar and the scream that came from his mouth was purely primordial. The rage I’d touched off in him would have been impressive if it wasn’t so purely theatrical. He was putting on a show to prove how tough he was and how scary Vietnam was. He wanted to hurt one of us to get our undivided attention. When he sized me up, he knew I wasn’t the least bit intimidated and that made him want to beat some sense into me for everybody’s benefit.

“You THINK you can talk to ME, MAGGOT!!! I ought to rip your pansy, faggot head off and plow your virgin chute right here so everyone can watch you squirm and scream!!!!”

“Well...” I’d heard all I intended to hear and spoke loud enough for everybody to hear. “You’re welcome to try.”

He hurled himself at me with both fists flying. His approach should have taken me by surprise, but I was watching for it and as he closed in, my foot closed in on his balls. The crunch was quite sickening and soldier boy hit the hard packed floor hard enough to leave a hole in it.

Without a split second to spare, I spun and dropped contestant number two with a flurry of blows that split his lip, loosened four teeth and blackened both eyes. As he sagged to the ground the last one of his compatriots made his old school try and got a broken nose and four fractured fingers for his trouble.

To make my point, I knelt near the ear of the one with four broken fingers and squeezed his index finger so hard he screamed like a little girl, and said, “Don’t ever try that on us again, or I promise you this will feel like a butterfly kiss compared to what you get.” When I released my hold on his hair, he dropped to the floor without complaint.

The hangar was silent except for the hard breathing and wet sounding gasps of the three stooges. None of us knew what to do next, so we waited like good soldiers in this man’s Army. Pretty soon a Major strutted in and demanded an explanation. Hearing none, he started to berate us for lacking military bearing and being too stupid to recognize our squad leaders when we met them.

Nobody took him up on his demand for information and when the three dorks shook off the effects of their whipping, they were quite reluctant to discuss their state of dishabille. Eventually the Major stormed off to abuse someone else, leaving the three amigos where they were, bloody and humiliated.

The big one tried to intimidate me as he dragged his beat up body off the floor. “Listen up, boy...” That was as far as he got.

“You listen up, punk. I’ve heard all I want to hear from your coward, bullying ass. Shut the hell up and stay out of my face, unless you’d like a little rematch. I haven’t had so much fun since I shot two kidnappers in an orange grove. So save your pig headed BS for someone who might actually believe you. In the meantime get lost and don’t come back.”

He shook off the effects of his beating and helped his cohorts out of our sight. That was not the best way to begin my time as an infantryman in metropolitan, downtown, Vietnam.

The entire squad stayed in the hangar until a lowly Lieutenant found us and escorted us to the mess for supper. We ate, got some more shots, were issued various and sundry items necessary for long strolls through rice paddies, and got some sleep. From then on it was a non-stop race to see who could live through our summer vacation deep in the anus of the universe.