Last Man Out (6 page)

Sitting in the auditorium as if I were alone, I thought, “Yeap, I’m your man. I’ll take the risks. I’ll do the job.”

Later, Dad pinned second-lieutenant bars on my shoulders. The words of General Heintges still ringing in my ears, I stood tall and felt a tremendous sense of self-worth and dedication.

As a graduation present, Daddy and Mother gave me two thousand dollars. When I returned to Southern Pines on two weeks’ home leave before jump training, I went out in search of a 190SL Mercedes convertible. Pete was a sports car enthusiast, had an Alfa Romeo, and had made the case a thousand times that dollar for dollar, pound for pound, the 190SL was the best sports car on the road.

So I looked for a 190SL. A used-car dealer in Raleigh had heard of one on a small lot in South Carolina, and I drove down in one of Daddy’s trucks that afternoon.

I came around a curve on the country road. There on the edge of a field ahead was a 1957 190SL Mercedes convertible. It was love at first sight. Graceful, continental—what was it doing on a South Carolina dirt farm? The farmer/dealer said he had bought it at an auction and did not know its history. I bought it for fifteen hundred dollars, pulled it back to Southern Pines that afternoon, and was racing along country roads near home late that night with the top down and a beer between my legs.

I went out most nights during my leave and usually didn’t return home until early in the morning, sometime after the sun had come up, but I hung around Mom and Dad and my sisters during the day. I took Mom shopping in the Mercedes. She squealed as we scooted along the streets and occasionally waved at the townspeople.

Returning to Fort Benning for jump training, I checked into the bachelor officers quarters (BOQ) at the school and played poker that night with some of the newly commissioned officers from my OCS company. We were now making the unheard-of amount of $242.42 per month. Some of the new officers lost a whole month’s pay in the poker game. The following morning when we started airborne PT training, my former classmates and I realized that we were in better shape than anyone else. We ran the last leg of an endurance run backward and the jump instructors criticized us, but we found it was hard to be humble and intimidated after a half year of OCS training.

We did become humble, however, when we started tower training prior to our first airborne jump. We became even more humble the first time out of a plane. I was in the middle of the “stick” of men along one side of the plane for my first jump. I ran out the door and do not remember anything until my chute opened, jerking me back to my senses. The ground came up so quickly that I froze and landed with a bone-jarring thud. The next time out I had a sense of doom as I jumped. I felt little relief when my canopy opened, because I knew that I still had the thud ahead.

The third time, unfortunately, I was the stick leader. As we
neared the drop zone, the jump master went through the jump commands. When he reached “Stand in the door,” I stood with my hands outside the door frame, helmet hitched tight, loaded with parachute main and reserve plus combat gear, one foot slightly in front of the other, head up to watch the red light under the wing outside, ready to jump when it turned green, and I waited and waited. I looked down and the sky was filled with chutes as jumpers from other planes were descending to the ground, and then I looked back to the light, but it stayed red and the jump master yelled that we were too far over the jump zone and had to come around again. I stood in the door as we flew over trees and a lone country blacktop road and some houses. My legs, tense from standing at the ready, began to ache and then started to shake, so I relaxed them and continued to look down. I began to lose the feeling that anything could stop me from falling out of the door to the ground below, and I suddenly lost all enthusiasm for jumping. I stood there paralyzed with fear and the drop zone came into view and the jump master yelled for me to get ready, but my grip on the door remained loose and I swayed back and forth. The light turned green, the jump master yelled “Go!” and I just stood there, and the jump master yelled again “Go! Go!” and something hit me squarely on the butt. I was out the door, tumbling, then jerked up when the canopy opened, and the ground rushed up and I landed with the most jarring thud yet. I hit so hard that my teeth hurt. Mercifully, no one ever mentioned my hesitation. Cottonpicker would not have been proud.

The Saturday after our third jump I was at the bar in the main officers club when President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a speech to the nation. Sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, he began by saying, “My fellow Americans, we have been called on to stem the tide of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. I have today ordered the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division at Fort Benning, Georgia, to Vietnam.”

Some officers in the bar cheered. A colonel bought a round of drinks, and the bar buzzed with excitement. Men came in from the dining room and were told the news. Some scurried out to make telephone calls; others, especially those from the 1st Cavalry (Cav), left for their units.

I tried to call Pete at Fort Riley to find out if the 1st Infantry Division was on alert, but couldn’t get through. The next day Fort Benning was alive with troop movements. Tanks moved through areas they had never been in before. Truck convoys clogged the streets.

Monday started our last week at jump school. We had two more jumps to make, one at night, but they were anticlimactic. The real interest was in the buildup of the 1st Cav for deployment to South Vietnam. The base was on a war footing. There was a sense of breathless anticipation.

We made the last two jumps. Neither of mine was noted for artistic performance. Both hurt when I landed. I was proud to get my wings, but I was sure that I had developed a fear of heights and had no interest in making future jumps. Graduation was on a Friday afternoon. By nightfall I was on my way to Fort Riley and assignment to the 1st Infantry Division.

I went over again and again what I planned to say to the men of my platoon at our first meeting. Though we had had numbing hours of lectures on leadership at OCS, I thought back to conversations with Dad and Cottonpicker, and remembered lines I had heard in movies and read at college. As I developed phrases that seemed appropriately firm and yet reasonable, I remembered General Heintges’s comments at OCS graduation and felt a sense of destiny.

I drove with the top down most of the way and the radio turned up. Occasionally I would just howl with joy and pump my fist at the moon.

Arriving at Fort Riley late Saturday night, I got Pete’s BOQ room number from the post locator and woke him up. We went to a seedy after-hours beer joint in nearby Junction City, Kansas, and talked. Pete said that the entire division was on alert, although most of the able-bodied men had been grouped into the 2d Brigade, which was being readied as the first for deployment to Vietnam. Pete was in the 1st Brigade and had asked an old enlisted friend who worked in division personnel to have me assigned to his battalion.

Early Monday morning I was not surprised to learn at 1st Division headquarters that I had, in fact, been assigned to Pete’s battalion, and by mid-morning I was checking in with battalion
Sgt. Maj. William (Bill) G. Bainbridge. Friendly but firm, his look clearly said, “Second lieutenants do not outrank me, so mind your manners.” Respectfully, I asked him for a platoon beside Pete. The sergeant major looked at me for a long moment, shrugged, nodded his head yes, and within minutes I was walking down to Company A, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division—Capt. John (Jack) E. Woolley, Commanding.

The buildings in the company area were built during World War II. Four barracks, two stories each, on the right of the company street, orderly room and mess hall on the left. An old oak tree provided shade for the orderly room. Woolley was behind his desk when I walked into his office and saluted. He greeted me warmly and said that I had the 3d Platoon, Peterson had the 4th, Joseph L. Duckett the 1st, and Ray A. Ernst the 2d.

At sunrise the following morning I stood under the oak tree and smoked as the men fell out for reveille. Captain Woolley, tall and tan, was already on the scene. At breakfast, Pete pointed out some of the men in my platoon—they looked sloppy, undisciplined. My platoon sergeant was an old World War II veteran who was sleepwalking, according to Pete, and rarely spent time with the platoon. Pete thought that, in all, there were only about a dozen sick, lame, or lazy men in my platoon. All the able-bodied soldiers had already been pulled out for the 2d Brigade. Not much of a first command, I thought, disappointed.

I met the other platoon leaders over breakfast. Duckett was a large black second lieutenant from Philadelphia who had driven a cab to pay his college tuition. He was quiet but not shy, and had a toughness to his manner that was unfamiliar to me. Ray Ernst was a small, deliberate South Dakotan. He was, surprisingly, a natural companion to Duckett. They just went together, like a longtime married couple.

Captain Woolley joined us at the head of the table and easily, naturally, assumed the leader role. He expected deference to his rank and position, but he listened when we spoke and had a reassuring confidence about himself. A friendly, articulate man who led through the strength of his personality, I immediately felt privileged to be under his command.

After breakfast, as I walked down to the 3d Platoon’s barracks, I went over my introduction speech. I had added, since seeing some of my men at breakfast, that I did not tolerate sloppy attitudes and expected close attention to military deportment. We faced the prospect of imminent deployment to a theater of war; beginning this morning we were going to shape up.

I took a deep breath on the barracks steps. Another benchmark in my life, I thought, as I went in to “meet my men.” Tough but fair was the image I wanted. I walked in with a stern expression on my face.

Loud music coming from a radio in the latrine competed with another radio on another station to the rear of the bay area. Nine men were lounging around. A few turned and gazed disinterestedly at me. A fat private got off a bunk to my right and called attention, but it produced little response from the others. One soldier lying on a bunk with the mattress folded back closed his eyes and made snoring sounds. Another, cigarette dangling from his hand, continued to lean on a broom. A Latino wearing a towel and combing his hair came out of the latrine, looked at me and then around at the other men.

“My name is Lieutenant Parker,” I began, “your new platoon leader.”

“Who’s this guy?” asked the Latino.

“Shut up, everybody,” from the fat guy.

I turned to him. “You want to wake that guy up down there and go turn off those radios?”

He walked away, shaking the snorer first, then headed to the radio at the rear. I heard someone say, “Touch my radio and I cut your fat ass.”

The Latino said, “Can I get dressed before you start talking, siirrr?”

It wasn’t starting out the way I had in mind, but Manuel, the fat guy, eventually turned off the radios, the Latino got dressed, the snorer got to his feet, and the man with the broom put it down and finished his cigarette. I asked them something about themselves. Each had a reason for not being sent to the 2d Brigade. Some were finishing their enlistments and leaving service within a month or so, others were awaiting court-martial, some were sick and lame, or claimed to be. Manuel was fat.

I had a speech ready, so I let it go, but it was lost on this audience, except for Manuel. I ended by saying, “No one skates anymore in this platoon, even if you have only a week left in the army. Until you receive your orders, you belong to me.” As I turned to leave, someone turned on a radio.

I told Pete that my group couldn’t fight a cold.

  THREE  

Troops from U.S. Army units in Germany and Korea arrived at Fort Riley. The misfits in my platoon and throughout the battalion were sent to a holding company at the hospital. Sgt. Cecil W. Bratcher arrived and was assigned to my platoon as 1st Squad leader. Slightly stoop shouldered, he had a facial tic that tensed the muscles in his neck and jerked his jaw to the right. He reminded me of Cottonpicker, however, when he walked up closer to me than necessary, saluted, smiled, and introduced himself. Within days I had Woolley transfer my original, timid platoon sergeant to company headquarters so that Bratcher could take over the job.