Last Man Out (4 page)

Along with many other recruits, Van Pelt and I put in for Officer Candidate School (OCS) during the last week of basic training. We were together in AIT and, during a slow training session, began exchanging notes. In one convoluted, pseudointellectual analogy, I took the position of a weed in life, ugly by urban standards but durable and adaptive. Van Pelt claimed that if I was a weed, he was a flower, cultured and beautiful—a more attractive standard. Our notes were crazy, surreal flights of fantasy, and we worried occasionally what our drill sergeants might think if they read them, especially when I found out my friend’s entire given name and began addressing him as “Miss Elmer Lee Van Pelt the Third, the Flower Child.”

Within weeks of starting AIT, people in our company began to get rejection notices on their OCS applications. The notices were form letters sent regular mail. This made mail call after retreat at night very tense. I looked forward to letters from home, but hated to hear my name called for fear it would be the rejection notice. It was like Russian roulette.

One night after supper I went over to Van Pelt’s barracks. He was sitting on his bed writing a letter. As usual, he smiled broadly as we talked about our planned weekend together in Augusta, Georgia, home of the Masters and blue-eyed southern belles who “luved” skinhead GIs from Fort Gordon. I was leaving when he said, “Hey, weed, this came in the mail to me tonight.” He tossed his OCS rejection notice on the bunk. He went back to writing as I read the form letter. He looked up after a while and shrugged his shoulders. I left without a word.

When AIT training was completed, Van Pelt received his orders to an infantry unit. I did not see him when he came to my barracks to say good-bye; I had been sent on detail across post. When I returned the following note was on my bunk:

After AIT almost eighty of us were still awaiting disposition of our OCS applications. We were assigned to two barracks near my AIT training company. I was given temporary corporal rank, which I wore on a band around my upper-right sleeve, and assigned to a basic training company as an assistant DI (drill instructor) or “gofer,” as in commands from the regular DIs, “Hey, shithead! Go for this, or go for that.”

Almost every day, someone in our group received a rejection notice from OCS. When we came in at night another mattress would be folded back and the bed coverings gone—like tombstones of the departed.

Five weeks after I graduated from AIT we heard that someone across post in another holding company had been accepted to OCS for the November 1964 class. Following that first acceptance, we all had new hope, but then came a spate of rejection notices. Our eighty-man group was reduced to twenty. One barracks was closed, and we finally moved down to a single floor. Every night another mattress was turned down. We continued to hear of other candidates being accepted, but no one in our group had been selected.

I came in one night from a long march with the basic training company and found a notice to see the first sergeant at our holding-company headquarters. He and I had had a run-in during the previous week over the weekend duty roster, and he had threatened to put a reprimand in my OCS application folder. He was an unlikable, crass individual and I knew the message to see him was related to extra duty that weekend. He was in the company commander’s office when I entered the orderly room. The door was open and the commander caught my eye and motioned
me into his office. I was sweaty and dirty from the road march and regretted not cleaning up before answering the first sergeant’s summons, but I walked in and saluted. The commander stuck out his hand and said, “Congratulations.” I had been accepted for the November OCS class.

  TWO  

On November 15, 1964, after home leave, I drove my uncle’s maroon 1949 Ford from Southern Pines to the Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Parked across the street from the three-story barracks of the OCS company I was to join, I sat silently smoking as I watched new OCS candidates arrive. Immediately, they were set upon and summarily hazed by both the senior candidates in blue helmet liners and the more lethal commissioned officers assigned to the school as instructors. The officers, referred to as “Tac officers,” were cool predators, hanging back in the shadows until they decided on a new candidate to attack. They walked up to a new man, called him to attention over some slight, got close to him and talked angrily—sometimes fast but sometimes, for effect, very slowly. Even from where I sat it was apparent that the comments of the Tac officers were hard-hitting, as they evoked painful grimaces from the candidates.

I resolved to ignore them—that had been Cottonpicker’s advice. Show no emotion, take nothing personal, find out what you are expected to do, and do it. “It’s not a personality contest,” he had said. “OCS is a six-month test to find the fuckups. That’s it. Don’t fuck up. You got it more’n half licked getting to the school. That’s the hard part. Don’t fuck up. Don’t try too hard. They’ll try to break you down, you’re going to get tired and sometimes you’re going to want to quit, just keep on. Don’t show emotion. Keep on. Don’t fuck up.”

I put out my cigarette, got my duffel bag out of the trunk, and walked across the street. As I expected, I was immediately attacked by blue-helmeted upperclassmen. I stood at attention and
responded to their loud orders to get my chin in, suck in my gut, straighten up my back, get my gig line straight.

“I saw you sitting in the car across the street, candidate.”

Someone had come up to my right side and was talking into my ear. His voice was lower but clearer than those of the upperclassmen yelling in my face about my shave and haircut. I could feel the man’s breath.

“I do not know why you were sitting in your car for so long, but I do not like it.”

The man moved in front of me, his nose a couple of inches from mine. The blue-helmeted upperclassmen moved aside, as if getting out of the way so the big dog could eat.

“I do not like sneaky people. The Army wants its officers to be upright. Men of character.” He continued to speak in a low, soft voice. “You, I am going to watch very closely. This is no joke, candidate. I don’t like you. I am going to get you out of here. You are finished before you start because you’re a sneak. You’re finished, I guarantee it. I’m going to kick your sniveling little young ass out. I’m gonna do it. I promise.”

I looked straight ahead into the distance and did not focus on the Tac officer in front of me. I tried to show no emotion. He stepped back.

“Look at me. Look at my face. Look at my name. I am Tactical Officer Lieutenant Taylor. Every time you see me for the next week—every time you see me—drop down and give me twenty push-ups. You understand? It’s going to be my way of telling you to get out.”

“Yes, sir,” I shouted.

“Drop now, and count them out loud.”

I did the push-ups. When I got back to my feet beside my duffel bag, Taylor was gone.

Eventually I made my way into the orderly room and was assigned to the fourth platoon on the third floor. As I tried to go up the stairs I was constantly assaulted by blue-helmeted upperclassmen yelling, “Up against the wall, candidate,” or “Give me ten, candidate.”

Later that first day we were called out to formation, and the ever-yelling upperclassmen arranged us alphabetically, by platoon. Standing as still as possible to avoid harassment, I could
see from their name tags that a Nesse was on my right and a Particelli on my left. I did not know or care to know the names of anyone else in the platoon.

After a time, the blue-helmeted men moved behind us and a slight, serious-looking young officer moved in front of the platoon.

“My name is Lieutenant Joseph C. Hailey,” he said in a conversational tone. “I am the 4th Platoon tactical officer. The U.S. Army has asked me to find out who among you isn’t qualified to be an officer. And you know what, most of you aren’t. Not,” he said, with emphasis, “because you aren’t smart. You are all smart. Not,” he said, again with emphasis, “because you don’t want to be officers. You all do. No, most of you are not qualified because of,” he paused for emphasis, “need. The U.S. Army just doesn’t have much room in the officer corps right now. It doesn’t matter if you are all relatives of MacArthur or Eisenhower, the Army doesn’t need us to manufacture many second lieutenants. They’re going to take the West Pointers and the ROTC grads first, and this year there’re plenty. So there are not many openings. Sorry,” he said. “It’s just the way it is. Most of you are going to be weeded out.”

At the end of the first week we were introduced to the most insidious aspect of the weeding-out process—the infamous “bayonet” sheets, in which everyone ranked everyone else in the platoon. Every Friday each member of the platoon submitted, on a single sheet of notebook paper, names of all the other men in the platoon listed in order, according to the way we judged their individual officer potential. The man we thought would make the best officer was number one, the man we thought was least qualified was last. The “bayonet” sheet got its name because of the knife job that one could do on his contemporaries. With thirty-five people in the platoon submitting a bayonet sheet every week for eleven weeks, a lot of evaluation was developed. The total process, called peer or student rating, counted for much in assessing the overall officer potential of each candidate.

There were exacting, almost impossible, housekeeping standards in OCS, certainly more demanding than anything I had known in military school, basic training, or AIT. We lived in two-man rooms. My roommate, an older, former noncommissioned
officer, and I spent our first weekend shining every square of our linoleum tile floor with hard wax and spit. We cut cardboard within a fraction of an inch to fit inside our clothes on display in our wall locker and chest of drawers. We used a ruler to get our boots lined up properly under our beds and to get the right distance between items of clothing in the closet. We Brassoed the door hinges, washed the windows, polished our desks, and cleaned every piece of our equipment.

On Monday morning, Tac Officer Taylor came in and dumped our stuff in the middle of the floor. Despite myself, I pursed my lips and said “Shit” under my breath. Taylor whipped around.

“What did you say, candidate? Did I hear you say something? This candidate cursed me, I do believe. I will see you in formation.”

There, he called me out of ranks and ordered me to run around the company as it marched toward Building No. 4, where we had most of our classes. This was not easy, especially when I had to cut across the front of the marching company. Taylor called me back into the rear ranks of the fourth platoon before we reached the building. When we stopped, one of the candidates near me said, “I think that man out there likes you.”

“You want an introduction?” I responded.

“Nope,” he half-whispered back, “I don’t want him to know my name.”

When we received the order to fall out to class, I looked at the candidate who had spoken. His name was Larry (Pete) Peterson, and I learned later that he was from Lincoln, Nebraska. Before coming to OCS he had been the PFC driver for the commander of a medical battalion at the Fort Benning hospital. Of medium build, he was wholesome looking, straightforward, and he cackled when he laughed.

Tac Officer Taylor’s attentions continued. Pete thought it was because Taylor sensed—right or wrong—that I had a cocky attitude. Pete worked with me on appearing humble, but finally gave up. “You’re just an asshole, I reckon, and Taylor seems to know that.”