Tape 13, Side B
[Begin Tape 13, Side B]
So I was just gonna take this slow, you know, I was gonna do it trot and walk, trot and walk, and get through it that way, but I was being cheered on. Some of the other guys were standing on the side: Come on, Conkin! Come on! So I didn’t know I had it in me but I started running, and the rest of the pack—I had already done all the walk-running, you know: trot and walk, trot and walk—and somehow I just gathered myself and I started running, and I could take long strides and I started running and I started passing people up and I won the damn race [laughs].
[Laughing] You did?
Yeah, it went on for minutes and minutes. I said: I can do this. This is great! I was hurtin’ sort of toward the end. I was running funny too, because I was the platoon clown.
You were purposely running funny?
Yeah, I was running [demonstrates, laughing]… I was running real funny, like you’re not supposed to run in the army, but I was running funny, and everybody was [clapping]…
Did you piss people off?
No, everybody was happy. You know they marked it down, marked my time down because I had completed, they checked me off on that. So that was good; I could do me some running.
It was the upper body strength that was the problem.
Yeah, really. Don’t ask me to do some chin-ups: I can’t do one chin-up; I couldn’t even do one chin-up then I’m sure, especially with a full pack. But that was somethin’; that was somethin’. That was interesting.
Did you get another medal or something?
[Laughs] Runner. No, I just escaped embarrassing the company. We all made it through the PT test.
But it was because it was a supply and support unit that...
Yeah, it’s like the catering corps, I mean we didn’t have any, I mean we had communications specialists and we had motor pool specialists but they were just attached in an odd way, and maybe we had some warrant officers. Warrant officers are, they occupy this strange netherland between non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers. Commissioned officers they have little insignia like one gold bar for a second lieutenant and a silver bar for a first lieutenant and two silver bars for a captain and an oak leaf cluster for a major, then there’s a lieutenant colonel and a full bird colonel and generals, and they’ve got stars. And noncommissioned officers are privates or corporals or specialists or sergeants, with more or fewer stripes, and sergeant major, he’s got the most stripes: he’s got three up, three down and a star in the middle. Sergeant majors are something. [sergeant’s voice] Sergeant major! They are really something. But warrant officers, they have this weird—I never could figure it out—this weird complicated little multicolored insignia, so I mean I don’t know how they discriminated amongst themselves, but they were in the middle there, and you weren’t supposed to salute ‘em. They were officers, but they were warrant officers. I never understood what it was.
What does the warrant mean, do you know?
No, I don’t really know how that goes. They weren’t really commissioned officers but they weren’t enlisted personnel either. They were specialists of one kind or another. Along with not firing my weapon anymore I decided I wasn’t gonna salute anybody but warrant officers [laughter].
Did you really do that?
Yes. So yes, every time I saw a warrant officer I would salute him, and they’d just shake their heads; and I wouldn’t salute any other officers.
How did you get away with that?
I don’t know. I don’t know. Nobody cared really, or I didn’t see that many, or they just knew: Oh, it’s that guy; don’t worry about him, because, as I mentioned before, there were other things that we were supposed to do that I didn’t have to do [exaggerated voice] because I was special! I didn’t have to drive. Everybody had to be qualified to drive at least a jeep and some people some other things, but I didn’t have to do that.
Now how did you manage that? Was it just another one of those things where you said: I’m not gonna do this?
Yeah, well plus they didn’t want me to. I was not that reliable. I wasn’t freaking out like I was before but it was clear that I wasn’t that reliable. Nobody wanted to trust me [laughs]; nobody would trust me to be in a convoy or certainly to be in the vehicle with me because I guess they just picked it up somehow that I might goof off, I might do something nuts, and I didn’t want to anyway.
So it was kind of a useful reputation in a way.
Yes, oh yes, and I didn’t have to go out on alerts. Alerts were where they would wake you up at three am and you had to get everything together and go out into the courtyard and assemble up and get up in formation and bring all your shit with you: the communications gear and whatever you had to take with you on alert. And sometimes that would be it, you’d just have to get out there, you know, wait around for a couple hours and you’d go back, they’d call it off. Sometimes you would actually get in your vehicles, everybody would get in their vehicles and go down the road a piece, go down into the city, and then they’d call you back. Sometimes you’d get all the way out into the countryside and then they’d call us back. Sometimes you’d get all the way out into the countryside and have to deploy, you know, get your shelter halfs out and make tents and get out there and set up a field kitchen—then they’d call us back. I didn’t have to do any of that. I got to stay back at the base and man the communication gear. That was supposed to be a communication guy’s job but they let me do it because they didn’t want me to... I didn’t have to. I was just their pet, you know, so I figured out how to do it. I’d say: Sarge, I don’t… I’ll get up at three o’clock and get everything ready. Why can’t I just stay here? Okay. They would let me do stuff. So I found out all you had to do was ask, you know, just try asking and see what would happen. Sometimes it didn’t work out and sometimes… I mean I never talked to the commander that much, who was some little nineteen-year-old punk second lieutenant, you know, just fresh out of OCS, Officers Candidate School, but he had some sense of, I mean the first sergeant was fifty-one years old and he had to report to this punk, you know, and he didn’t really know—that’s the way it is with rookie officers, you know, they’re just kids and they have to deal with the noncommissioned officers who’ve been in the army for a long time, similar to librarians and paraprofessionals [laughs], library assistants. It’s exactly the same as a matter of fact, you know, you could get… Armanda [Barone] could quit and they could hire somebody just out of library school and we’d all have to report to them, all us forty and fifty year old geezers would have to report to some twenty-three year old wet behind the ears, that was the thing. What was the other thing they used to call those little punks? Dick ass lieutenants, no, there’s some other disparaging thing you could say, and they all, you know, you could spot ‘em a mile away even if you didn’t see their bars because they would have their uniforms sent out for starching and creasing, and you weren’t supposed to do that but officers were supposed to do that. And they have their… something about their boot blousing, but they never polished their own shoes, and... Oh, they had their… [laughs] That’s what it was: they’d have their green work uniforms tailored, that’s what it was, that’s how you could spit an off—spot an officer.
So work uniforms were supposed to be casual?
Yeah, they were just green, olive drab pants and shirt, that’s it, maybe a cap. They’d have ‘em tailored and starched because it was important, you know, that was part of an officer’s mentality: everything had to be just right.
They were supposed to starch, but the other guys weren’t?
I think they… no, you weren’t supposed to have your uniform, nobody was supposed to have their uniform tailored, but everybody would fall into this and do it because it became, you know, part of the competition. Maybe some crusty old general would come around some day and see it and tell everybody not to do it, and for a while they wouldn’t do it, you know, they’d look as sloppy as everybody else, but once that… And the generals, they could do anything, they could dress anyway they want to. Eisenhower started that. You know those Eisenhower jackets, you know those little short jackets, as I understand it that wasn’t truly military wear and he made it so.
So they called them Eisenhower jackets because he had invented them?
I don’t think they were in the military list of things: one jacket, comma, Eisenhower [laughs]; you couldn’t get one of those. But they had funny names for all the… we had real names for all the… like one cap, overseas, olive drab. That’s that little hat that looks like an ice-cream cap; cunt cap is what we called ‘em.
[Laughing] That was the official name.
Yeah; you wouldn’t find that written down anywhere. And you know that hat that’s kind of stiff and square around, has a round… it stands up about two or three inches, has a little bill. It’s just a straight little disk; it looks like a pillbox—that’s what it is—it’s a pillbox hat with a bill. They’re called, the official name is: one hat, comma, kepi (K-E-P-I), but in army etymology they were called KP hats because people thought that’s what they were: Give me one of your KP hats. So there were cute little names for everything.
And you knew, you had to know that stuff.
Sure, you had to know that. You wouldn’t want to call that overseas cap an overseas cap, unless there was an officer present. Overseas cap?! Whoa, but that’s all that army lore, all that crazy army lore. I don’t know, I don’t know what else I can say about being in the army in Germany.
Oh, we never did talk about bunk-adapter fights.
Oh yeah well, as a result of all this tension, and I mean one of the things that happened because of this tension, especially among the guys who just couldn’t deal with living on the base on post all the time: they wanted out of there and the army made it easy, they made one door easy to go through and that was: sign up for Vietnam. Anybody could do that any time: if you wanted to go there, you could go there, pretty much, as I understand it; so these guys that just couldn’t stand it on the base all the time and got themselves trapped often enough in the bunk adapter gang wars, they would try to go to Vietnam. The bunk adapter fights, I mean fights would happen between individuals all the time, but sometimes units, whole units got into fights or whole barracks got into fights.
What was it over usually?
I don’t know.
I mean these things about music and…
Yeah, it was that kind of thing, or somebody, you know, some perceived... just like gang stuff anywhere, some perceived slight or somebody ratting on somebody or somebody getting somebody else in trouble, or just, you know, words: one member of one set has words with some member of another set, whatever they are. But we never, in the headquarters company we never got involved in this, but the barracks, we could tell when something like this was happening because there would be a noise and a disturbance, usually at night; and I think my room was on like the second or third floor, so you could hear all this noise and you could see action, so it was not unlike those little dramas I was seeing when I was stoned with all the little people, you know, because you look out the window and you see all this action over there, you know, groups of guys armed with bunk adapters. And bunk adapters are these things that keep the bunks together, there are four of them per bunk. You can stack up a bunk as high as you can go; usually they’re no higher than three, that’s when things are really crowded, but usually there’s just two.
So they lift the bunk off the top and then…
… take off the bunk adapters.
So they’re probably how long?
I’m not sure now, I’m thinking like five inches to a foot, something like that, and they’re very sturdy things. Why bunk adapters? I don’t know. They’re there and everybody can get their hands on one. Weapons were all locked up.
Thank God.
And knives: knives were real serious. You could do that but you know I’d… You’d poke your head out the window and you’d see all these guys going at it and you’d hear the thuds of the bunk adapters on people’s heads: Clunk! ‘cause it would echo throughout this… ‘cause the buildings were in like a semicircle or a circle or something like that, so it would echo back and forth, and then the MPs would come and take them away. So there was stuff happening all the time.
So you observed quite a few of these?
Probably, in the year that I was there, maybe three, three big ones and maybe some just little ones with just a couple of guys. You know when you’re a jet you’re a jet all the way, you’re never alone. But you know individual guys would go nuts too and have to be taken away, but these people were under this kind of pressure, and some of them started responding by: I’m gettin’ out of here. Some of them would run away, you know, AWOLs, but a lot of people would say: I’m gettin’ out of here; and they made it real nice, they made it sweet because two things would happen when you hit Vietnam: one: you would be promoted one rank up, automatically, and two: you’d start collecting hazardous duty pay, and, well, three: sometimes there was a bonus and sometimes to do it you’d have to reenlist and there was a VRB, a variable reenlistment bonus too that you could get; so there were lots of ways that they, you know: Come on, come on.
So if you reenlist though would you be on a four year deal?
Yeah, probably three, another three year hitch that you’d probably have to do.
Were you ever tempted because of the money?
No, never. Oh no, I knew it was gonna be two years.
You didn’t mind being in debt.
Oh no, I was never that much in debt. We got paid once a month, so I was cleared off every month.
But then you’d go into debt every month too, but it always was sort of a static level of debt.
Yeah, it wasn’t too bad, and I could even it out possibly by taking somebody’s KP a couple nights in a row or something like that. I never got assigned KP, because I was special [laughs], but sometimes people really had to get out for some reason or other and I could bargain ‘em up: instead of the usual ten dollars I could go for twenty, so I was okay, I was okay with that. I was trying to think how much they paid us. I can’t remember. It was nothing really. But I understood there for the first time why people could be lifers and how you could dig this life: everything’s taken care of: you’re fed, you’re clothed, you’re told what you can do and what you can’t do; the rules are crystal clear; there is no ambiguity.
So you liked that part of it?
No, no, I understood how, no I didn’t like any…
You knew how to get around…
No, I’m saying I started understanding; you know before that I was just disdainful of anyone who could possibly make this their career, especially when underlying all of this was the fact that you would have to go into combat at some point, you know, I just thought they were all fools, but I started understanding why certain—you know like this first sergeant: this whole life was nice for him and it just suited him perfectly. They all existed within this order, this regimentation, and it made it better for them to do that, plus there it was—as much as I hated to admit it—the whole patriotism and duty, honor, country thing that I didn’t feel but I recognized that other people actually—as hard as it was for me to believe—actually felt that way, not through brainwashing but through conviction; although I would still argue there had to be brainwashing because there’s no such thing as countries [laughs].
So even though they had qualms, they might have had qualms about the war in Vietnam, even some of the real patriotic guys, they might think: well Vietnam is not the right place, but they still felt a strong sense of their duty to their country to be in the military and to do…
You know what, if you have that mindset and you have made that commitment, you can’t go back on it, you know, wherever they… if you’ve made that… for many people in that time, I suppose now too, you still hear ‘em on TV, you know, like Colonel David Hackworth, who’s always on TV as a commentator talking about one thing or another; duty, honor, country, that’s… Ross Perot, he’s always on that too, he’s always looking out for the military man and woman. There’s no other option; if that’s where you’re told to go that’s where you go, that’s how you sign on, and I suppose it’s like the priesthood or something like that: you’ve surrendered consciously that volition.
It may be why it was so easy to send people to Iraq or wherever, you know, Granada or…
Yeah, there’s always an irreducible number of people, especially now that it’s all-volunteer force: how can you argue? You have no basis for argument. If you’ve volunteered to go into that line of work, and it’s more than work because you’re on duty twenty-four hours a day, you have no basis really for disagreeing with policy. You can disagree with the way that it’s carried out or flagrant violations of order, but there’s the military code of justice and it’s supposed to take care of all that: if somebody mistreats you or you are sexually harassing the women under your command, it may take a while for it to come out but when it comes out you’ll have to leave, and then, you know, that’s always a way out. So I understood how people could be lifers, so some of these who wanted to get out, they didn’t want to get out enough that they would do anything illegal or would possibly have them sent to prison, but they might reenlist and get some more money and go to Vietnam and see what they could do there. ‘Cause you know by now we were hearing other stories about Vietnam too: that it’s doper heaven, that depending on where you go you’re not going to be fired upon, and it’s a lovely… and many cities are untouched by the war and if you get sent there you’ll be cool.
And then the people who were being sent for R and R to Thailand and places, and that was supposed to be great.
Yeah, real sweet. So people were willing to take their chances, and I was in a position there to help out a little bit, so what I would do would be, as their paperwork came across into my hand, I would promote them ahead of time so in effect they would be getting two promotions: so that was my little contribution, my little strike back.
Did that mean that when they got to Vietnam they would actually… what would be their rank then?
Well let’s say if a specialist fourth class got promoted to a specialist fifth class, they’d probably be a specialist sixth class when they got there, or a sergeant would get promoted to a master sergeant. They’d have…
Besides the pay increase, would the kind of work they’d be doing be different?
Yeah, possibly, but nobody really… no, it was kind of chaotic I think on that side of things because nobody really knew what was going on and it depended on what was happening when you got there because they were still receiving thousands and thousands of new troops all the time just from the States.
And you were at least then, you could be sure that you were putting money in the pockets of these guys.
I thought so. I thought so. Who knows. They had to do things too, like, you know, make sure they had the right stripes on and everything like that, but that was my little contribution, and it wasn’t as dangerous as selling DD-214s, and I wasn’t benefiting myself.
So people would just talk to you and say… did they know that you were a person to talk to if that was their situation?
I think I was proactive, yeah, I’d go tell them. Not everybody would do it; there wasn’t that, you know, maybe half a dozen actually that I was involved in that, because not everybody who was, only the people in my little area would I get their stuff. Now I could tell somebody at a higher level, like at the brigade level, you know: take care of this guy when his papers come, but I wouldn’t really know what would be the result of that or whether they could do it.
Well so I was gettin’ out there and then, sort of, after I’d been there a few months, I had some leave built up and I guess I had some money: I went to London! swinging London, 1967.
Wow, so was that like, everything was happening: mods and rockers and Carnaby Street…
Sgt. Pepper! The Sgt. Pepper album had just come out and the first Pink Floyd album had just come out, and that’s actually more people seemed to be more interested in that, all that crazy Pink Floyd ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ stuff; it was really British psychedelia, that’s what that was, and you know you could see the gaily attired British hippies on the streets of London.
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown? No, was that later?
That was a little later, yeah. “I am the god of hell fire.” But there was the Screaming Lord Sutch. I don’t know if he was… he used to come around in a coffin or something, I don’t know if he was there then. But yeah, it was kind of like that… there wasn’t—no Hendrix yet. It was mostly dominated by the Sgt. Pepper thing, and maybe some Kinks, some Kinks stuff. But it was real colorful, and they had… I remember picking up the London underground papers and checking out a couple of ‘head shops’ [laughs], but doing other British things too like I think I must have climbed up on, was it the big base of Nelson’s Column there in Trafalgar Square, sitting up there just minding my own business and this bobby comes along, looks up at me and says [cockney accent]: Meditating? He hauled me down from there, you know, he said you’re not supposed to sit up there; I said I didn’t know that. Meditating? Come down from there.
And you would have been wearing military stuff? I mean when you were on leave like that…
No, ‘cause I was on my own.
… did you wear civies?
Yeah, yeah, you were on leave, I wasn’t going anywhere, I mean I wasn’t doing any official... It was a Lufthansa flight I paid for myself, and they kept rolling up the aisle with a huge—I’d never seen anything like this—this tray with all this crazy stuff on it including zaft, which is juice, zaft and pastries and all these lovely little German things and big plump German stewardesses. That was a nice flight back and forth.
How long were you there?
Just a couple of weeks maybe, went with some other… we knew there was a… the Salisbury family had a very nice B and B that some of our other buddies had already gone to over there, so two or three of us chipped in on a room there, so we stayed at the B and B. Oh it’s very lovely, lovely: wake you up in the morning with rashers of bacon and marmalade and toast and coffee, bringing it right in.
Do you remember what part of London it’s in?
I believe it’s Soho. I don’t exactly know. I know that walking out of it and walking onto the main street was a real short trip, probably Tottenham Court Road or something like that, or maybe it was Oxford Street, but yeah, it was in Soho. I’ve tried to go back, I’ve gone back a couple times to see exactly where it was, but I don’t know. A cab took me there.
Were just about at the end of this tape.
Yeah.
[End Tape 13, Side B]
So I was just gonna take this slow, you know, I was gonna do it trot and walk, trot and walk, and get through it that way, but I was being cheered on. Some of the other guys were standing on the side: Come on, Conkin! Come on! So I didn’t know I had it in me but I started running, and the rest of the pack—I had already done all the walk-running, you know: trot and walk, trot and walk—and somehow I just gathered myself and I started running, and I could take long strides and I started running and I started passing people up and I won the damn race [laughs].
[Laughing] You did?
Yeah, it went on for minutes and minutes. I said: I can do this. This is great! I was hurtin’ sort of toward the end. I was running funny too, because I was the platoon clown.
You were purposely running funny?
Yeah, I was running [demonstrates, laughing]… I was running real funny, like you’re not supposed to run in the army, but I was running funny, and everybody was [clapping]…
Did you piss people off?
No, everybody was happy. You know they marked it down, marked my time down because I had completed, they checked me off on that. So that was good; I could do me some running.
It was the upper body strength that was the problem.
Yeah, really. Don’t ask me to do some chin-ups: I can’t do one chin-up; I couldn’t even do one chin-up then I’m sure, especially with a full pack. But that was somethin’; that was somethin’. That was interesting.
Did you get another medal or something?
[Laughs] Runner. No, I just escaped embarrassing the company. We all made it through the PT test.
But it was because it was a supply and support unit that...
Yeah, it’s like the catering corps, I mean we didn’t have any, I mean we had communications specialists and we had motor pool specialists but they were just attached in an odd way, and maybe we had some warrant officers. Warrant officers are, they occupy this strange netherland between non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers. Commissioned officers they have little insignia like one gold bar for a second lieutenant and a silver bar for a first lieutenant and two silver bars for a captain and an oak leaf cluster for a major, then there’s a lieutenant colonel and a full bird colonel and generals, and they’ve got stars. And noncommissioned officers are privates or corporals or specialists or sergeants, with more or fewer stripes, and sergeant major, he’s got the most stripes: he’s got three up, three down and a star in the middle. Sergeant majors are something. [sergeant’s voice] Sergeant major! They are really something. But warrant officers, they have this weird—I never could figure it out—this weird complicated little multicolored insignia, so I mean I don’t know how they discriminated amongst themselves, but they were in the middle there, and you weren’t supposed to salute ‘em. They were officers, but they were warrant officers. I never understood what it was.
What does the warrant mean, do you know?
No, I don’t really know how that goes. They weren’t really commissioned officers but they weren’t enlisted personnel either. They were specialists of one kind or another. Along with not firing my weapon anymore I decided I wasn’t gonna salute anybody but warrant officers [laughter].
Did you really do that?
Yes. So yes, every time I saw a warrant officer I would salute him, and they’d just shake their heads; and I wouldn’t salute any other officers.
How did you get away with that?
I don’t know. I don’t know. Nobody cared really, or I didn’t see that many, or they just knew: Oh, it’s that guy; don’t worry about him, because, as I mentioned before, there were other things that we were supposed to do that I didn’t have to do [exaggerated voice] because I was special! I didn’t have to drive. Everybody had to be qualified to drive at least a jeep and some people some other things, but I didn’t have to do that.
Now how did you manage that? Was it just another one of those things where you said: I’m not gonna do this?
Yeah, well plus they didn’t want me to. I was not that reliable. I wasn’t freaking out like I was before but it was clear that I wasn’t that reliable. Nobody wanted to trust me [laughs]; nobody would trust me to be in a convoy or certainly to be in the vehicle with me because I guess they just picked it up somehow that I might goof off, I might do something nuts, and I didn’t want to anyway.
So it was kind of a useful reputation in a way.
Yes, oh yes, and I didn’t have to go out on alerts. Alerts were where they would wake you up at three am and you had to get everything together and go out into the courtyard and assemble up and get up in formation and bring all your shit with you: the communications gear and whatever you had to take with you on alert. And sometimes that would be it, you’d just have to get out there, you know, wait around for a couple hours and you’d go back, they’d call it off. Sometimes you would actually get in your vehicles, everybody would get in their vehicles and go down the road a piece, go down into the city, and then they’d call you back. Sometimes you’d get all the way out into the countryside and then they’d call us back. Sometimes you’d get all the way out into the countryside and have to deploy, you know, get your shelter halfs out and make tents and get out there and set up a field kitchen—then they’d call us back. I didn’t have to do any of that. I got to stay back at the base and man the communication gear. That was supposed to be a communication guy’s job but they let me do it because they didn’t want me to... I didn’t have to. I was just their pet, you know, so I figured out how to do it. I’d say: Sarge, I don’t… I’ll get up at three o’clock and get everything ready. Why can’t I just stay here? Okay. They would let me do stuff. So I found out all you had to do was ask, you know, just try asking and see what would happen. Sometimes it didn’t work out and sometimes… I mean I never talked to the commander that much, who was some little nineteen-year-old punk second lieutenant, you know, just fresh out of OCS, Officers Candidate School, but he had some sense of, I mean the first sergeant was fifty-one years old and he had to report to this punk, you know, and he didn’t really know—that’s the way it is with rookie officers, you know, they’re just kids and they have to deal with the noncommissioned officers who’ve been in the army for a long time, similar to librarians and paraprofessionals [laughs], library assistants. It’s exactly the same as a matter of fact, you know, you could get… Armanda [Barone] could quit and they could hire somebody just out of library school and we’d all have to report to them, all us forty and fifty year old geezers would have to report to some twenty-three year old wet behind the ears, that was the thing. What was the other thing they used to call those little punks? Dick ass lieutenants, no, there’s some other disparaging thing you could say, and they all, you know, you could spot ‘em a mile away even if you didn’t see their bars because they would have their uniforms sent out for starching and creasing, and you weren’t supposed to do that but officers were supposed to do that. And they have their… something about their boot blousing, but they never polished their own shoes, and... Oh, they had their… [laughs] That’s what it was: they’d have their green work uniforms tailored, that’s what it was, that’s how you could spit an off—spot an officer.
So work uniforms were supposed to be casual?
Yeah, they were just green, olive drab pants and shirt, that’s it, maybe a cap. They’d have ‘em tailored and starched because it was important, you know, that was part of an officer’s mentality: everything had to be just right.
They were supposed to starch, but the other guys weren’t?
I think they… no, you weren’t supposed to have your uniform, nobody was supposed to have their uniform tailored, but everybody would fall into this and do it because it became, you know, part of the competition. Maybe some crusty old general would come around some day and see it and tell everybody not to do it, and for a while they wouldn’t do it, you know, they’d look as sloppy as everybody else, but once that… And the generals, they could do anything, they could dress anyway they want to. Eisenhower started that. You know those Eisenhower jackets, you know those little short jackets, as I understand it that wasn’t truly military wear and he made it so.
So they called them Eisenhower jackets because he had invented them?
I don’t think they were in the military list of things: one jacket, comma, Eisenhower [laughs]; you couldn’t get one of those. But they had funny names for all the… we had real names for all the… like one cap, overseas, olive drab. That’s that little hat that looks like an ice-cream cap; cunt cap is what we called ‘em.
[Laughing] That was the official name.
Yeah; you wouldn’t find that written down anywhere. And you know that hat that’s kind of stiff and square around, has a round… it stands up about two or three inches, has a little bill. It’s just a straight little disk; it looks like a pillbox—that’s what it is—it’s a pillbox hat with a bill. They’re called, the official name is: one hat, comma, kepi (K-E-P-I), but in army etymology they were called KP hats because people thought that’s what they were: Give me one of your KP hats. So there were cute little names for everything.
And you knew, you had to know that stuff.
Sure, you had to know that. You wouldn’t want to call that overseas cap an overseas cap, unless there was an officer present. Overseas cap?! Whoa, but that’s all that army lore, all that crazy army lore. I don’t know, I don’t know what else I can say about being in the army in Germany.
Oh, we never did talk about bunk-adapter fights.
Oh yeah well, as a result of all this tension, and I mean one of the things that happened because of this tension, especially among the guys who just couldn’t deal with living on the base on post all the time: they wanted out of there and the army made it easy, they made one door easy to go through and that was: sign up for Vietnam. Anybody could do that any time: if you wanted to go there, you could go there, pretty much, as I understand it; so these guys that just couldn’t stand it on the base all the time and got themselves trapped often enough in the bunk adapter gang wars, they would try to go to Vietnam. The bunk adapter fights, I mean fights would happen between individuals all the time, but sometimes units, whole units got into fights or whole barracks got into fights.
What was it over usually?
I don’t know.
I mean these things about music and…
Yeah, it was that kind of thing, or somebody, you know, some perceived... just like gang stuff anywhere, some perceived slight or somebody ratting on somebody or somebody getting somebody else in trouble, or just, you know, words: one member of one set has words with some member of another set, whatever they are. But we never, in the headquarters company we never got involved in this, but the barracks, we could tell when something like this was happening because there would be a noise and a disturbance, usually at night; and I think my room was on like the second or third floor, so you could hear all this noise and you could see action, so it was not unlike those little dramas I was seeing when I was stoned with all the little people, you know, because you look out the window and you see all this action over there, you know, groups of guys armed with bunk adapters. And bunk adapters are these things that keep the bunks together, there are four of them per bunk. You can stack up a bunk as high as you can go; usually they’re no higher than three, that’s when things are really crowded, but usually there’s just two.
So they lift the bunk off the top and then…
… take off the bunk adapters.
So they’re probably how long?
I’m not sure now, I’m thinking like five inches to a foot, something like that, and they’re very sturdy things. Why bunk adapters? I don’t know. They’re there and everybody can get their hands on one. Weapons were all locked up.
Thank God.
And knives: knives were real serious. You could do that but you know I’d… You’d poke your head out the window and you’d see all these guys going at it and you’d hear the thuds of the bunk adapters on people’s heads: Clunk! ‘cause it would echo throughout this… ‘cause the buildings were in like a semicircle or a circle or something like that, so it would echo back and forth, and then the MPs would come and take them away. So there was stuff happening all the time.
So you observed quite a few of these?
Probably, in the year that I was there, maybe three, three big ones and maybe some just little ones with just a couple of guys. You know when you’re a jet you’re a jet all the way, you’re never alone. But you know individual guys would go nuts too and have to be taken away, but these people were under this kind of pressure, and some of them started responding by: I’m gettin’ out of here. Some of them would run away, you know, AWOLs, but a lot of people would say: I’m gettin’ out of here; and they made it real nice, they made it sweet because two things would happen when you hit Vietnam: one: you would be promoted one rank up, automatically, and two: you’d start collecting hazardous duty pay, and, well, three: sometimes there was a bonus and sometimes to do it you’d have to reenlist and there was a VRB, a variable reenlistment bonus too that you could get; so there were lots of ways that they, you know: Come on, come on.
So if you reenlist though would you be on a four year deal?
Yeah, probably three, another three year hitch that you’d probably have to do.
Were you ever tempted because of the money?
No, never. Oh no, I knew it was gonna be two years.
You didn’t mind being in debt.
Oh no, I was never that much in debt. We got paid once a month, so I was cleared off every month.
But then you’d go into debt every month too, but it always was sort of a static level of debt.
Yeah, it wasn’t too bad, and I could even it out possibly by taking somebody’s KP a couple nights in a row or something like that. I never got assigned KP, because I was special [laughs], but sometimes people really had to get out for some reason or other and I could bargain ‘em up: instead of the usual ten dollars I could go for twenty, so I was okay, I was okay with that. I was trying to think how much they paid us. I can’t remember. It was nothing really. But I understood there for the first time why people could be lifers and how you could dig this life: everything’s taken care of: you’re fed, you’re clothed, you’re told what you can do and what you can’t do; the rules are crystal clear; there is no ambiguity.
So you liked that part of it?
No, no, I understood how, no I didn’t like any…
You knew how to get around…
No, I’m saying I started understanding; you know before that I was just disdainful of anyone who could possibly make this their career, especially when underlying all of this was the fact that you would have to go into combat at some point, you know, I just thought they were all fools, but I started understanding why certain—you know like this first sergeant: this whole life was nice for him and it just suited him perfectly. They all existed within this order, this regimentation, and it made it better for them to do that, plus there it was—as much as I hated to admit it—the whole patriotism and duty, honor, country thing that I didn’t feel but I recognized that other people actually—as hard as it was for me to believe—actually felt that way, not through brainwashing but through conviction; although I would still argue there had to be brainwashing because there’s no such thing as countries [laughs].
So even though they had qualms, they might have had qualms about the war in Vietnam, even some of the real patriotic guys, they might think: well Vietnam is not the right place, but they still felt a strong sense of their duty to their country to be in the military and to do…
You know what, if you have that mindset and you have made that commitment, you can’t go back on it, you know, wherever they… if you’ve made that… for many people in that time, I suppose now too, you still hear ‘em on TV, you know, like Colonel David Hackworth, who’s always on TV as a commentator talking about one thing or another; duty, honor, country, that’s… Ross Perot, he’s always on that too, he’s always looking out for the military man and woman. There’s no other option; if that’s where you’re told to go that’s where you go, that’s how you sign on, and I suppose it’s like the priesthood or something like that: you’ve surrendered consciously that volition.
It may be why it was so easy to send people to Iraq or wherever, you know, Granada or…
Yeah, there’s always an irreducible number of people, especially now that it’s all-volunteer force: how can you argue? You have no basis for argument. If you’ve volunteered to go into that line of work, and it’s more than work because you’re on duty twenty-four hours a day, you have no basis really for disagreeing with policy. You can disagree with the way that it’s carried out or flagrant violations of order, but there’s the military code of justice and it’s supposed to take care of all that: if somebody mistreats you or you are sexually harassing the women under your command, it may take a while for it to come out but when it comes out you’ll have to leave, and then, you know, that’s always a way out. So I understood how people could be lifers, so some of these who wanted to get out, they didn’t want to get out enough that they would do anything illegal or would possibly have them sent to prison, but they might reenlist and get some more money and go to Vietnam and see what they could do there. ‘Cause you know by now we were hearing other stories about Vietnam too: that it’s doper heaven, that depending on where you go you’re not going to be fired upon, and it’s a lovely… and many cities are untouched by the war and if you get sent there you’ll be cool.
And then the people who were being sent for R and R to Thailand and places, and that was supposed to be great.
Yeah, real sweet. So people were willing to take their chances, and I was in a position there to help out a little bit, so what I would do would be, as their paperwork came across into my hand, I would promote them ahead of time so in effect they would be getting two promotions: so that was my little contribution, my little strike back.
Did that mean that when they got to Vietnam they would actually… what would be their rank then?
Well let’s say if a specialist fourth class got promoted to a specialist fifth class, they’d probably be a specialist sixth class when they got there, or a sergeant would get promoted to a master sergeant. They’d have…
Besides the pay increase, would the kind of work they’d be doing be different?
Yeah, possibly, but nobody really… no, it was kind of chaotic I think on that side of things because nobody really knew what was going on and it depended on what was happening when you got there because they were still receiving thousands and thousands of new troops all the time just from the States.
And you were at least then, you could be sure that you were putting money in the pockets of these guys.
I thought so. I thought so. Who knows. They had to do things too, like, you know, make sure they had the right stripes on and everything like that, but that was my little contribution, and it wasn’t as dangerous as selling DD-214s, and I wasn’t benefiting myself.
So people would just talk to you and say… did they know that you were a person to talk to if that was their situation?
I think I was proactive, yeah, I’d go tell them. Not everybody would do it; there wasn’t that, you know, maybe half a dozen actually that I was involved in that, because not everybody who was, only the people in my little area would I get their stuff. Now I could tell somebody at a higher level, like at the brigade level, you know: take care of this guy when his papers come, but I wouldn’t really know what would be the result of that or whether they could do it.
Well so I was gettin’ out there and then, sort of, after I’d been there a few months, I had some leave built up and I guess I had some money: I went to London! swinging London, 1967.
Wow, so was that like, everything was happening: mods and rockers and Carnaby Street…
Sgt. Pepper! The Sgt. Pepper album had just come out and the first Pink Floyd album had just come out, and that’s actually more people seemed to be more interested in that, all that crazy Pink Floyd ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ stuff; it was really British psychedelia, that’s what that was, and you know you could see the gaily attired British hippies on the streets of London.
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown? No, was that later?
That was a little later, yeah. “I am the god of hell fire.” But there was the Screaming Lord Sutch. I don’t know if he was… he used to come around in a coffin or something, I don’t know if he was there then. But yeah, it was kind of like that… there wasn’t—no Hendrix yet. It was mostly dominated by the Sgt. Pepper thing, and maybe some Kinks, some Kinks stuff. But it was real colorful, and they had… I remember picking up the London underground papers and checking out a couple of ‘head shops’ [laughs], but doing other British things too like I think I must have climbed up on, was it the big base of Nelson’s Column there in Trafalgar Square, sitting up there just minding my own business and this bobby comes along, looks up at me and says [cockney accent]: Meditating? He hauled me down from there, you know, he said you’re not supposed to sit up there; I said I didn’t know that. Meditating? Come down from there.
And you would have been wearing military stuff? I mean when you were on leave like that…
No, ‘cause I was on my own.
… did you wear civies?
Yeah, yeah, you were on leave, I wasn’t going anywhere, I mean I wasn’t doing any official... It was a Lufthansa flight I paid for myself, and they kept rolling up the aisle with a huge—I’d never seen anything like this—this tray with all this crazy stuff on it including zaft, which is juice, zaft and pastries and all these lovely little German things and big plump German stewardesses. That was a nice flight back and forth.
How long were you there?
Just a couple of weeks maybe, went with some other… we knew there was a… the Salisbury family had a very nice B and B that some of our other buddies had already gone to over there, so two or three of us chipped in on a room there, so we stayed at the B and B. Oh it’s very lovely, lovely: wake you up in the morning with rashers of bacon and marmalade and toast and coffee, bringing it right in.
Do you remember what part of London it’s in?
I believe it’s Soho. I don’t exactly know. I know that walking out of it and walking onto the main street was a real short trip, probably Tottenham Court Road or something like that, or maybe it was Oxford Street, but yeah, it was in Soho. I’ve tried to go back, I’ve gone back a couple times to see exactly where it was, but I don’t know. A cab took me there.
Were just about at the end of this tape.
Yeah.
[End Tape 13, Side B]
posted by epikles at 4:17 PM
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