When I arrived at O’Brien Barracks, I was tired. I hadn’t slept on the plane from JFK to Rhein-Main or on the bus from Rhein-Main to Schwabach, my low-quarters were scuffed and my dress greens were wrinkled and stunk from the travel. There were five of us ‘cruits and when we got off the bus in the middle of the dirt parade ground in front of the barracks for the 1/1 Cavalry Squadron, there were catcalls of ‘fresh booty’ and whistles and threats, ‘get back on that bus ‘cruit ‘fore I beat your ass’ and we stood there, in the September sun with our duffel bags at our feet, all of us privates E-deuce fresh out of Basic and AIT, and we wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into. It was 1975.
The story circulating in our new unit as we shuffled our feet in the gravel and dust waiting for what we didn’t know, was that a guy had been court martialed and given a jail sentence and a dishonorable discharge for pedaling dope. The guy who’d narced him out, Spec-4 Jimmy James, Jim Jim they called him, Jesus-freak and likely Army lifer, was jammed into his own wall locker and thrown out the third-story window of his barracks room. A noteworthy event, even for the Cav.
The Army is gossip driven and Jim Jim’s demise was, if nothing else, good gossip. The story with its oddly specific details was told over and over for weeks. There were discrepancies and inconsistencies between tellers, but overall the story hung together. And because of those details, it seemed to me more likely true than not. Even though it would take a several guys to do the thing described; even though they were complicit in murder; even though there had to be absolute trust amongst conspirators as Jim Jim’s roommates, platoon members, friends, NCOs and officers, were called into the MP station and questioned, no one was ever charged with Jim Jim’s death by broken neck.
The details were explicit, consistent and horrifying such that I imagined them for myself; yanked from dreamless sleep, a sock jammed into my throat; the crunch and blinding pain of my nose cartilage smashed flat by gloved knuckles, the salt-taste of blood, the whispered curses in the sleeping quiet, voices I knew from the mess hall, the EM club, local gasthofs; my blankets tangling around me as I twist and kick, trapped in a stockade of hard-muscle as the blows don’t stop; gloved hands grabbing my legs, my shoulders, my arms; fighting for air through the blood in my nose and throat and the sock and the leathered hand crushing my neck; my locker door banging as I struggle and kick and beg without voice as they wrestle me to it, and limb by limb force me inside, my dress greens and overcoat and khakis cascading from their wire hangers around me; the darkness, the darkness, the hideous fear, the hollow sound of my grunts and voiceless pleas echoing around me and the locker doors slam shut. As I kick and push against the sheet metal walls and the flimsy shelves give and buckle around me, my locker is tipped on its side, hoisted and balanced by whispered curses and moved in shuffling steps and then no longer balanced and starting to slide with me head down and the horrifying realization; and the long, long, forever long fall.
I don’t know whether my imagined story is what happened or not. What I do know is that it doesn’t matter, because it could have happened. In 1975, three years after they were pulled out of Viet Nam, soldiers of the 1/1 Cav were still in shock that they had been ground down and thrown out by barefoot farmers. For combat units, and the Cav was that, it was particularly humiliating. It destroyed for us the legacy left by our fathers and uncles; we were no longer the unbeatable force for good. It was personal. It was emotional. It was something felt and not talked about. It was PTSD before PTSD was a thing. That disorder, that humiliation, that 7.62mm headshot to morale had left the Cav badly wounded. And throughout the ranks, troops were drinking and taking drugs and talking to Jesus to ease the pain. And so we learned, we ‘cruits.
There are a lot of ways to die in a peacetime army. The Jeep, the ubiquitous M151, canvas top, no seatbelts, no roll bar, was notorious for rolling over and killing driver and passenger, usually an officer, not that its reputation slowed us down; being mostly teenagers, we’d wind up that gutless 4-cylinder engine, bang out the clutch and drive those little trucks as fast as they would go. POL drivers, a lot of them teenagers, too, would race five-ton trucks through mountains and villages on thin German roads in the dark of early morning, a pair of 650-gallon fuel pods behind them sloshing full. Stoned on hash and crank and awake for days, they rolled those trucks off the road, ran them into barns and other trucks and tracks and civilian vehicles and whatever else that didn’t get out of their way. They died, too. A Sheridan driver going fast down hill can’t make a curve on a mountain road and the little tank plunges fifty feet to land upside down in a creek, the TC standing in the turret crushed and dead, the driver drunk and court-martialed. Tank gunnery at Graf, guys sleeping on cots in Tent City, an artillery round lands on their tent and kills them all. The arty guys said it was a short round. Didn’t matter, eight guys dead and Jesus nowhere to be found.
And we killed each other, too.
In the mess hall, two guys arguing, a dozen of us not watching over coffee dregs and cold scrambled eggs, getting late, time for formation. I knew them both, not well but well enough to know their names and nod in passing, Snow and Hook. Brought up on a dirt farm in Alabama, Hook was getting out, he was in the final days of clearing post, signoffs from S1, S2, S3, the Arms Room, the Mailroom, Supply, the Reenlistment NCO, and the rest. He was going home, back to “the world.” Four days to go.
As “fuck you” and “motherfucker” and “n****r” got louder, Snow and Hook stood up from their mess trays and faced off. And then we were all standing and the shouted hard-consonant whispers to “kick his ass,” “beat that motherfucker,” “slap that bitch” engulfed us. And from the circle of starchless fatigues and stubbled cheeks and unshined boots, no call to stop, to think, to shut the fuck up and sit down. I share that shame.
Hook shoved Snow, two hands on his chest, and Snow followed up with a wide, slow roundhouse that banged into Hook’s cheek. Hook looked surprised, like the punch hurt his feelings more than it hurt his face. He stared at Snow like this wasn’t part of the story, as though the punch had taken the narrative in a direction he hadn’t expected. Then, as though at just that moment an idea occurred to him, Hook groped for his belt and unsnapped the sheath and pulled out his knife, a 4” folding Buck, the same knife that was on my belt, the same knife on display in the lighted glass counter at the PX. Snow watched with the rest of us. He looked surprised, too.
The stabbing was overhand and clumsy. Snow never raised his hands to fend it off, never backed up, never looked away, as though he never believed that his friend would cut him. But cut him Hook did, striking down and hard into his chest. Snow stepped back, a sad, maybe disappointed look on his face; he never said a word, just stared at his friend and then he stumbled back another step and collapsed on his side halfway under one of the mess hall tables and there was silence and the blood pooled on the floor and we who’d stood and watched turned in our trays at the dishwasher window and hurried out to morning formation while the Mess Sergeant called the medics and the MPs. And so Hook didn’t ETS or go back to the world and marry Margaret or Mary Sue or buy a new Chevrolet or a Kenwood stereo or eat mom’s cooking or go to college on the GI Bill. Instead, he went to Mannheim, the Army prison in Europe, for twenty years. I testified at his court-martial.
And Snow, Snow was dead.
