V1 N. 13 Transitioning from Peace Corps to the Army or FTA (Fug The Army), Baseball and Burials

 

From this:  June, 1967

                                                                     On Kilimanjaro 

To This:   June, 1968

 Setting the Stage

I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and attended the U. of Oklahoma from  1961-65 on a track and field scholarship.  My father and a number of uncles were WWII veterans, but  I had heard very little of their stories of war.  Since the U. of Oklahoma was a land grant school male students were obliged to do two years of Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC).  It consisted of two hours each week of classroom time and two hours of marching around a parking lot.  This would help me to get through Army basic training  years later.  I learned to march, break down and reassemble an M 1 rifle and know that you saluted officers and called them ‘sir’.  However I could never figure out where on the maps to place my machine guns.  I got two hours of D in that first semester.   Figured I would get a lot of people killed as an officer and did not go into advanced ROTC to become one.  A bit of chagrin for my dad, but I absorbed it and he did too.  He had been a non-commissioned officer (NCO) but always told me as an officer I would have it better in the military.  When I graduated in June, 1965 there were not many options for a single male with no physical defects other than being drafted into the Army.  Well, there was one option, the Peace Corps was there,  and I jumped for it thinking the Viet Nam war would be over within two years.  So I went to Tanzania, and taught business subjects at the Tanzania Cooperative College on the south slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  We were tremendously overstaffed, and I only taught about 6 classes a week and was bored with the work, but on weekends I climbed the mountain from various trails on all sides and played rugby and drank a lot with all the ex-pats in town.  We travelled to Nairobi some weekends to play rugby up there.   After a year of debauchery, I learned that there was an opening for an instructor at the Outward Bound Mountain School of East Africa on the north side of the mountain in Loitokitok, Kenya.  I applied for the job, was accepted, and the Peace Corps okayed my transfer.  It was a wonderful second year although there was almost no social life like there had been on the south side of the mountain.  Hardly anyone lived in Loitokitok.  Two out of every three weeks, I was on the mountain, and the third week I was on the plains below trekking between Tsavo  and Amboseli parks with our students trying to keep them alive and not too lost.    It was from this life that I would go home to be in the US Army.  I got my draft notice while still in Kenya and asked for a few months extension to travel home after my PC termination.  I arrived back in Ohio in January, 1968 and was inducted into the army on April 18, 1968.  Everyone remembers their induction date for some reason.  

 How Not to Beat the Draft

Thinking I could 'beat' the draft, I volunteered but had to  spend three years in the service instead of two, but the kicker was by enlisting I could choose my training.  The word 'thinking'  in the first sentence is the giveaway to my stupidity.    Later I found there were better ways to beat the draft but I was a slow learner. *See better ways below.  I asked for French, German, or Spanish language training.  My wife to be was a French Canadian, and I thought that choice would smooth the cultural bumps.  Instead I got German, and instead of going to the Army Language School in Monterrey, CA,  I was sent to a newer school in Arlington, VA, the loss  a cozy seaside setting to an armpit on the East Coast.   We had to memorize twenty lines of  German dialog every day, but it really helped us to learn the language.  I still remember a few of those lines.  Zwei Viertel Schinken bitte, aber scheiden Sie nicht zu dick, meine Schwiegermutter macht ein Besuch heute Abend.   

*Better ways to beat the draft.

1. Later I learned from a well known distance runner that he beat the draft by running twenty miles just before his scheduled Army physical.  That way, he had so much blood in his urine, that he flunked the exam.

2. Another acquaintance told me his brother was going to inform them at the induction physical that he was gay in order not to be inducted.  Not true but it should work.  His brother advised him,  "Why don't you just tell them the truth, that you are a heroin addict?"

3. The Quakers could avoid military service by being members of that faith.  But the alternative service might have been  two years working in a mental institution.  The Army would provide you with that milieu. Some Quakers in WWII were still taken in and trained to be medics and put on the front lines.  Not so good.  

4. Refusing to be sworn in might have meant some prison time.  Not good.  Muhammed Ali took this route and only lost his world heavyweight championship.  But he won it back. No jail time.  

5. Fleeing to Canada, the path that  many of my current neighbors in British Columbia took.

That First Night in the Army

That first night in the Army was memorable.   We were inducted ie. sworn in to defend the country, in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio.  In my history books, no one had ever attacked Cincinnati.   I was to be sent to Ft. Jackson South Carolina for Basic Training where for 8 weeks the army would teach me to be a soldier before sending me to the language school.   But we could not make it out of Cincy that day, so we were told we would be put up in the Netherlands Hilton Hotel in the center of town.  Wow, not bad for your first night away from home.  The venerable Hilton was the top hotel in town.  Not so if you're an army recruit.  Because I was a bit older than the other recruits and I'd been to college, I was put in charge of five or six kids just out of high school.  They were from Hamilton, Ohio and it turned out they had been students of one of my high school classmates in her first year of teaching.  We walked over to the Netherlands Hilton.  I won't say I made them march.  We didn't even have uniforms yet.  I wasn't about to humiliate them right away.  We strolled into the lobby and the doorman said in a rather gruff tone,  "Over there," pointing to the registration desk like he had been expecting us.  They told us we would be sleeping in the grand ballroom on the top floor.  Nothing like travelling in style when you're soon going to be living on $55 a month in an army barracks.   Up we went on the elevator and such a sight when the door opened.  It looked like a barn from across the Ohio River in Kentucky.  Only thing missing were cows to be milked and chickens to be plucked.  It was the unfinished attic of the hotel.  There were about twenty chain link bunks scattered about the dusty room.  Old dirty sheets and blankets that  had been slept in more than once were strewn around the room.  It could have been a homeless shelter in today's world.  Only one thing to do.......

And that was......Find a bar and start drinking and then go to see the Cincinnati Reds play the St. Louis Cardinals that night.   That's how I spent my first night in the army.  The Reds won that game 4-3 in 12 innings.  Pete Rose went 2 for 5 and drove in 2 runs.  Interestingly, ironically if I might, a youngster for the Cardinals, Tim McCarver pinch hit but did not get on base that night.  Three years earlier, Mr. McCarver had sat in the row ahead of me in a management class at the U. of Oklahoma.  He had come to the university after catching Bob Gibson in the 1964 World Series. He was there because he had a girlfriend attending the same university. The Series ended on October 16 that year, so he was at least six weeks late when he came into the class, but the prof welcomed him with open arms.  I never had the nerve to speak to him during that term.  He had a couple of frat buddies on either side of him in the class, and I was a GDI (God Damned Independent).  In other words, I had no connections, money, or interest in joining a fraternity.   After the game I didn't have a chance to go down on the field and ask Tim what grade he'd gotten after that late arrival to the management class.  And I needed to get back to my 'suite' at the Netherlands Hilton.  Tim McCarver went on to a long career behind the plate and as a broadcaster.  In  that 1964 series at the age of 22 he hit for an average of .471 and had a game winning homer in the 12th inning of game five.  Looking up his record, there is no indication that he ever went to college, but I swear on all that is sacred, he was in that management class.

 The next day, a bit hung over we found our way to the Cincinnati airport across that Ohio River and into Kentucky, and we were on our way to Ft. Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina to become soldiers.  

Welcome to Ft. Jackson

We were warmly greeted by a polite sergeant at the base.  He was very nice and introduced himself to us.  "My name is Buck and I don't give a fuck."   Actually he was very cordial, because he was going to be through with us in a matter of hours.  He led us to a barbershop and we coughed up a dollar or so while a 'barber' buzzed our heads.  They said this was necessary so the drill sergeants would not be prejudiced toward guys who had been long haired hippies a few minutes prior.   

Then we were led through a series of rooms where we were measured for and issued uniforms by a bunch of South Carolina civilians who were marginal at best in South Carolina society.  They definitely were bottom feeders judged by the way they dressed and talked about things like who had been banned from the base.  

On to Our Barracks

We were now 'marched' over to our barracks and chose our bunks. We were fifty men/boys in double bunks downstairs and the same upstairs.   A sergeant had a private room at the end of each floor.  On each support pillar in the room where we were to sleep, a red tin bucket was hung.  It held water.  It was a butt can where cigarettes were to be disposed.  That was about it for decorating.  The latrine at the end of the great room had eight or nine toilets, no walls around them.  About ten feet in front of the toilets, a row of sinks and mirrors lined the opposite wall.  There was no allowance for privacy in the system.  

And Into the Fold

 For the next eight weeks, I had it pretty easy thanks to the ROTC training I had done in college.  I was made a platoon guide fairly quickly, and got out of a lot of Guard Duty and Kitchen Police (KP) duty except for one time.  We were a mixed race company, primarily white drill instructors (DI's).  Some were good, but one North Carolina redneck was pretty bad.  He was not a Viet Nam veteran, so maybe he felt he had to exceed the levels of personal humiliation that the other DI's perpetrated on the recruits.  He also was not very literate, and at mail call if he could not pronounce a poly-syllabic last name of a recruit he would just say 'alphabet' and hope the guy asked for his mail.  He really had trouble with Italian names.  There was some racist taunting but not much that was evident every day.  

The black recruits were mainly East Coast, NYC area.  The biggest and seemingly toughest was mad at me because of my exemption from KP, I think.  It was known by all, and when we had the pugil stick training, the DI's had him pitted against me. Pugil sticks looked like a broom handle with a boxing glove on each end.   Somehow we both managed to defend ourselves.  I was in pure survival mode and couldn't really strike a blow, just fend off his wild assaults.  The whole company was watching.  At the end, he was pissed, and I was relieved.  In his frustration he cried out that he wanted to see a social worker.  Another black recruit who was very personable with everyone, had been a groom at Belmont Park race track near Baltimore.  He was making money hand over fist phoning in bets to the bookies at the track.  He had the inside dope, from his community of peers, on most of the races.   

In an adjoining company, a former high school classmate, Jim Dooley, like me,  an overaged recruit was doing quite well financially  teaching the youngsters how to play poker.  Jim would serve as a cook in the army based on his Kentucky Fried Chicken experience and move up in the KFC world after his military service.  

 I Screw Up

One of my first of several major mistakes was volunteering to drive a two and a half ton truck around the battalion and collect the soda acid fire extinguishers from the barracks and take them to a fire station to be recharged.  You set the extinguisher into action by turning it upside down causing the soda and acid in it to mix and create a chemical reaction that would shoot water or a mix of chemicals out at high pressure and put out a fire. It looked like foam on the top of a draft beer.  One problem.  The truck I was driving had airbrakes.  Never having driven a vehicle with airbrakes I wasn't aware how fast they would stop it you tapped the brake pedal with a bit of force.  Well, we loaded up the back of the truck with about 100 extinguishers and I backed it out of its parking place and tapped the brakes.  The sudden stop knocked over those extinguishers and set them off.  It was an incredibly beautiful site very reminiscent of Niagara Falls as all that gunk came flying out of the bed of that truck.  It was right in front of Battalion HQ.  Nice going, Pvt. Brose.  I don't recall being severely reprimanded, but we eventually hosed off the truck and let the foam find its way to a drainage ditch.  And off we went to the fire station for recharging.  I felt if I could get away with that I could get away with almost anything in this system.

Dining Out

Our First Sergeant was African American.  Sgt. Lucky.  The one day I was on KP was a Sunday, and at lunch all the meals had been served when First Sgt. Lucky came into the mess hall  knowing steaks were on the menu.  Normally the recruits were pushed through the dining area being told to put the meal in their mouths and to chew it outside.   All the left over food was then dumped in the trash after each meal.  There was no cold storage in those kitchens.  The cook told me to go out in the dumpster and retrieve one of those steaks.  May, South Carolina,  it was steaming hot and humid.   I went out back, climbed in the dumpster and found a fresh steak.  The Springtime heat was more than oppressive that Sunday afternoon.  I swatted the flies off the steak and brought it into the kitchen.  It was seared by the cook and served rare as ordered, and First Sgt Lucky enjoyed his dinner and even complimented the chef.

 Running With Nowhere to Go

The rest of my basic training was fairly routine.  (I'll have another story about grenade throwing later.)  After that second year of Peace Corps climbing the mountain and living in the bush, I actually got out of shape in Basic training.  Having been a miler in college track, I lapped the field in the mile run. We wore our fatigues and combat boots to run that mile, but I still ran it just under five minutes.   When I finished, the DI's thought I had only done three laps, not the required four, so they made me run a fifth lap.    A running acquaintance of mine had a similar experience, but his captain recognized his talent and the two of them made a lot of money by running match races against the best runners in neighboring training companies.  His Capitan  would set up the race, make the bets, and my friend would sandbag and just barely win the race, and no one realized they were getting hosed by those two guys.  

A Soldier's Burial

 The saddest day for me was the day seven of us were told that we would be on a burial detail of a soldier who had died in Viet Nam.  The seven of us would provide the 21 gun salute to the fallen soldier.  For a day we were drilled in the routine.  Each of us would fire three rounds in unison.  It was important that we didn't screw it up.  We were packed into a van and driven up to Darlington, South Carolina about two hours away from Ft. Jackson.  We arrived at a church and soon realized it was a Black congregation.  We were an integrated team of two black soldiers and five white.   Remember this was May of 1968.  It was the deep South.  The civil rights movement was heavy in the minds of everyone.  Martin Luther King had been assassinated on April 4, 1968.  Bobby Kennedy was also assassinated in this time, leaving his son to grow up without a father to guide him.  My hometown Dayton was on fire with riots as was Detroit and other cities.  And the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City were being held just after the Mexican army had killed hundreds of protesters, and the Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia.   American soldiers' bodies were being stuffed with Vietnamese heroin and shipped home where the heroin was removed for distribution in the ghettoes.  The Tet Offensive had been in January and February of 1968 followed by a Mini Tet in May.  This soldier had probably been killed in that Mini Tet.  When I looked into the open casket in the church I saw there was a wound on his neck. I also remember he was a staff sergeant.   Through research I've determined that he was one of only three black non-commissioned officers from South Carolina who had been killed in that period.  Only one of them had been a staff sergeant, but I will not disclose his name in this writing.  The firing drill went off perfectly, taps was played, the flag was folded and presented to his family and we marched off immediately.  We missed dinner when we got back to base and chose not to be fed with any 'left overs' on my advice.  

On My Way to Washington, D.C.

After Basic, I rode a Greyhound with a couple of New York City guys, Dan Fryda and Romero Medina, from Ft. Jackson to Washington, DC, arriving there on July 3, my 25th birthday.  Man, I was an old recruit.  I think that is also what made it easy for me in Basic.  I knew what was expected and what you could and couldn't do without serious recrimination.  In Washington, I would spend eight months studying German.  I met at least two other ex Peace Corps Volunteers while there.  One had been raising chickens in India and the other doing community development work in Turkey.  The Turk and I ended up in the same unit in Boeblingen,Germany with the 5^th  Psychological Operations Battalion (5PSYOPS).  Together we learned the meaning of ‘FTA’l (Fuck the Army).  We had a lot of good times there and a lot of good stories to tell.  You will hear more of them in the weeks coming.

 

George Brose

Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Comments:

Found this fascinating.  I am envious because the further down life's road I travel, the more I realize I took the wrong path after high school.  The military would have shaped my lazy, irresponsible ass up, teaching skills that I still haven't mastered.  Try as I may, I still can't make my bed sheets so tight that I can bounce a quarter off them.  I didn't have the potential military skill you had but the rest of my life would have flowed more easily simply because of the discipline I would have gained.

On the other hand, you took the ball and ran with it, with one opportunity opening the door to another.  Thoroughly enjoyed this posting and am looking forward to getting another.  Roy

Hi, I was a PCV in Ethiopia (1962-64) after being in the Air National Guard (Training in San Diego)...I have  written and published a few books, now up to 27, fiction and nonfiction, and just finished my Peace Corps story, that I am self publishing. 

When is your book coming out? Who is publishing it? Great focus. 

John

Hi, George,

I just read your recent blog.  

I remember the times in DC or Arlington when Catherine and I visited you or vice versa, and I had forgotten your varied PCV experiences.

Re: your 5 ways to avoid the draft.  You’ll recall I was a CO (Conscientious Objector) even though I was not a Quaker.  I was, in fact drafted, as all COs were, but I was lucky to be accepted in the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) program.  In those days, when one declared one’s objection, one could claim objection to war in general or just to killing.  Those opposed just to killing were classified 1AO as opposed to 1O, and the 1AOs were often assigned as battlefield medics.

My road to being classified 1O wasn’t easy.  I had to write what amounted to essays to describe my position with regard to a “Supreme Being”, and I had to jump through many hoops, meeting deadlines- a lot for a 21-yr-old who’d just flunked out of college b/c he couldn’t make it to class.  I was also sincere that I would have gone to prison for 2 yrs rather than the military.

In the end, it was an experience that probably made an adult out of me.  Getting married and having a kid while a Tanzanian volunteer had a lot to do with it too.   Tom V.