Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford

by Charles Willeford

  Something About A Soldier

  Charles Willeford

  1986

  For John Stephen Hooker

  The authors work, no matter how intelligent,

  elaborate (Proust) or rich and vigorous in imagination,

  always turns out to constitute a justification for some

  particular set of values, a making out a case against

  something or other in favor of something else, a

  melodrama in which, even if the hero is actually l

  defeated, he is morally triumphant-and the hero may

  not be a person or persons but merely certain qualities

  or tendencies.

  —Edmund Wilson, The Twenties

  Many of the true names, places, and incidents in this book have been altered. The names of such well known public figures as Manuel Quezon, Bobby Jones, Jane Wyatt, et al., as well as most locations, have not been changed. —-C.W.

  Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

  ONE

  The trooper died,

  And by his side

  They placed a wreath,

  He tried to get the button

  In the sheath.

  --CW

  IF YOU ARE LIKE ME, PROBABLY EITHER YOU SKIP THE epigraph above a chapter, or else you read it and forget

  about it once you get into the narrative. This time, however, if you haven't read the epigraph, please do so now.

  Okay? You have read it and now you have one or two questions, right? What is a sheath? What is a button? That is the purpose of this book, to answer questions like these, but I'm not writing as a mature individual looking back at his youth. My intention here is to recapture past events as they happened, and to report how I reacted to and felt about these incidents at the time.

  This little poem, or epigraph, just came to me one day in March or April 1939. I was standing outside the horseshoeing shack at the Machine Gun Troop stables (11th U.S. Cavalry), rolling a cigarette and watching a wedge of little white fishing boats spreading out gradually as they left Monterey Bay on their way out to sea to net some sardines.

  It was a clear, crisp, beautiful day. The wind was blowing up the hill way, and the smell of the canneries was stronger than usual. When the wind was right, and it was almost always right, the salty, iodine-laced odor made a man's nose tingle.

  Somehow, high on the Presidio of Monterey, the fishy odor that came from the canneries seemed to be stronger than when you were down on Cannery Row itself. When the canneries were all working, as they were that month, about the only place you could escape the smell of these little dead fishes was on the other side of Pacific Grove, or else well out into the Dunes, east of Monterey. Some guys got used to the smell, or so they claimed, but I never did. I also associated the odor with the whores on Cannery Row. I thought about women a good deal, so I don't suppose it was unnatural for me to think of whores, sardines, the women packing them in, and the canneries all at the same time.

  I lit my cigarette and untied Old Raz from the line. Sergeant Bellows, the stable sergeant, had tied the horse on the line that morning. I assumed that Old Raz was to be shod next, because he was the next horse on our short picket line behind the horseshoeing shack.

  Old Raz was nineteen years old, the same age as me. His real name was just plain Raz, and his Preston brand was 136E, but he was called Old Raz because his entire head had turned white. A horse's color is determined by his muzzle, and Old Raz was really a bay, but his head, including his muzzle, was white now with age. Old Raz was also an incorrigible cribber. He was cribbing now, as I untied him from the line, biting down on the knot of the halter shank with his long yellow teeth and forcing big round batches of sour air up from his lungs in long groaning belches. His eyes were filmed over, too. If the vet had removed these scummy films with a scalpel, Old Raz would have been able to see better. But that operation was unlikely because there was a great big I.C. painted on the horse's near side in red paint. The I.C. meant that the animal had been inspected and condemned. So if Old Raz had been I.C.'d, why were we putting new shoes on him?

  As I untied Old Raz, he spread his back legs a little, extended his sheath about two feet, and urinated for about a minute. I waited for him, of course, which gave me time to finish my cigarette and to think up my little poem about the button and the sheath. No one would ever get another button from Old Raz's sheath. Once the vet has condemned him, a horse won't be around much longer. All of these things in common——death, sheath, button, fishy smell, white boats going out to kill more sardines, and a vague remembrance of a whore at La Ida's on Cannery Row—all clicked together, and the little poem came to me.

  Just like that.

  If you have ever read Edgar Allan Poe's explanation about how he came to write "The Raven," you probably shook your head in disbelief as I did when I read it, Poe was a bullshit artist, and his long-winded exposition simply doesn't ring true, but my explanation will, as I get into it a little deeper.

  I led Old Raz into the shed, and Socky looked up from the forge and scowled. The scowl was no clue as to how he felt because Socky—short for Sokoloski—was always scowling about something or other. He was chief horseshoer for Machine Gun Troop, with a rating of private first class, third class specialist, and I was more than a little afraid of him. He was bigger than me, much bigger, with the sloping shoulders of a professional fighter. His arms were almost too long in proportion to the rest of his body, and when he made a muscle, his biceps was twenty-one inches in circumference. I wasn't physically afraid of Socky, because if he ever came after me I knew I could outrun him, but I dreaded his scorn, his disgust, and his surly silences. Under Socky's inept tutelage I was having a hell of a hard time leaming how to shoe horses. He couldn't explain things verbally; he could only show you what to do, and then, if you didn't do it exactly as he had shown you, he shook his head in disgust, pushed you away, and finished it himself.

  "What're you doing with Old Raz‘?" Socky said.

  "He's next on the line."

  "Can't you read?" Socky pointed to the red letters on Old Raz's barrel,

  I shrugged. "Sergeant Bellows tied him on our line this morning."

  "Jesus, Willeford, nobody's ridden Old Raz for at least two years."

  Wild Horse Halkins, the second horseshoer, who was using the rasp on Party Crasher's left rear hoof, turned his head then. "I think the stable sergeant's hiding him out from the knackers. There's supposed to be a semi-load of sick horses going out to Giglin this aftemoon, and Sergeant Bellows is gonna sneak him on the truck."

  I nodded and retied Old Raz on the outside line, feeling good for the first time that month. There was an enormous pasturage out at the Giglin Military Reservation, where Camp Ord was located, and sick horses, run—down horses, or horses with a bad cannon or something that needed time to rest and heal were taken out there and left. They ate brown grass and ran around loose in the hills. Once a day a truckload of hay was taken out there, dumped, and

  broken open. The horses would come crowding around and would fill up on hay. They didn't get any oats, of course, because they weren't working. But a month or so out on the range brought most of them up to snuff again, and they could be rounded up and trucked back to the Presidio for duty. If Sergeant Bellows could smuggle Old Raz out there, the condemned horse would be safe from the knackers, and he could run around—or stumble around—in the hills for months before he was discovered again.

  There were five I.C.'d horses already tied on the troop picket line west of the stables, as they had been tied every day for almost a week now, and today was the
day the knackers were supposed to come for them. The knackers were civilians, and they had a truck with an A—frame mounted on the back. One of them would take a piece of blue chalk, draw an X from a horse's ears to his eyes, and shoot him in the head where the X met in the middle. Then they winched the dead horse onto the truck. I had watched them once before when they had killed three horses and took them away. None of the horses moved as the man went along the line shooting them in the head. The horses made no association with the report of the pistol and their own deaths. They didn't even jerk in surprise as the .45 was fired into the head of the horse standing next to them. That was because cavalry horses were conditioned

  to the sound of gunfire.

  It didn't seem right to me to kill for dog food a horse that had served honorably fourteen or fifteen years, but the knackers had to pay the government something for the I.C.'d animals, and that money went toward buying new horses for the cavalry.

  The remount system worked very well. The government gave-—or lent—a Thoroughbred stud free to a civilian horse breeder, and the breeder bred the Thoroughbred stud to one of his cold-blooded mares. Then the government men came around and had first choice of all the colts that were thrown. They paid the breeder a flat $145 per horse and shipped the colts to remount stations in either Montana or Oklahoma. The horses spent three years at the remount station and were halter-broken. Any horse the government didn't buy, the breeder got to keep for himself. The remount buyers were looking for good all-around troopers' mounts, and the best cavalry horse is half Thoroughbred and half cold-blooded. I don't know whether the breeder gelded the colts or whether it was done later at the remount stations, but we didn't have any stallions. We had mares, but not as many mares as plain horses (as geldings were called) because mares have bad tempers and cause fights in the corral, especially when they are in heat.

  I untied Misplace, the smallest horse in our troop (we had 160 altogether), and took him into the shed. Misplace only weighed 750 pounds and was much too small for a machine gun troop. He would have been better used in a line troop. He was also a miserable ride. He jigged all the time instead of walking, and the platoon sergeant would growl at the unfortunate rider for letting him jig, even though it was impossible to make him walk. But he was too small to use as a pack horse, so someone usually had I to ride him.

  I pulled off his shoes and threw them into the used shoe barrel.

  Mike Brasely, our first sergeant, came into the horseshoeing shed. The troop was still out at horse exercise, so he had ridden back early.

  "Where's Sergeant Bellows?" he asked Socky.

  Sergeant Brasely was barely five four, and he didn't weigh more than I25 pounds. His five stripes, with the diamond in the middle, took up almost all of the space on the upper arms of his tailor-made gabardine sleeves, but he was a hard man, as small men often are when they get some authority, and he ran the troop in every respect. We all feared him, and some men hated him, but we respected him. He didn't let anything get by him, from a major goof-off to an unbuttoned shirt button. He lashed out at every single discrepancy. He was so unlike the first sergeants I had known in the Air Corps, I couldn't get used to him, but then, the cavalry was nothing like the Air Corps.

  "He went home," Socky said. "His kid was sick, he said."

  "That's the trouble with married men," Sergeant Brasely said. "They've always got a sick kid at home. He tell you what to do with Old Raz?"

  "I've got him tied on our line. I know he's supposed to go out to Giglin, but that's all."

  When Sergeant Bellows wasn't around, Socky, as the next highest ranking member of the stable gang, was in charge, but it was obvious that Sergeant Bellows hadn't told him what to do with Old Raz.

  Brasely looked at me with his tiny black eyes and lifted his chin, but spoke to Socky as if I weren't there. "How's Willeford coming along?"

  "All right." Socky didn't commit himself.

  "Have Willeford take Old Raz down to the Headquarters Troop stables. We don't have any sick horses going to Giglin, but headquarters has two. Then tell the semi driver to load Old Raz first so no one'll spot the I.C."

  "You get all that, Will?" Socky said to me.

  I nodded and started to leave the shed.

  "Where you going?" Brasely said, stopping me.

  "To take Old Raz down to Headquarters' stables."

  "Like that?"

  I didn't know what he was talking about. I shuffled my feet in the doorway.

  "Take off your apron and put on your fatigue jacket and hat."

  "Right." I unbuckled my apron and put it on the peg.

  I took off my leather gloves before I put on my jacket and campaign hat, making sure that the chin strap was precisely on the point of my chin. The first sergeant was a fanatic on chin straps, and anytime he caught a man with the strap behind his head, instead of under his chin, the culprit was given extra duty.

  "What else you gonna do, Willeford, after you deliver Old Raz to the truck driver?"

  I thought for a moment, knowing that the first soldier was testing me in some way, but if there was a trick to the question I couldn't figure it out.

  "Come back and go to work?"

  "Before that." `

  My hands began to perspire. "I tell the driver to load Old Raz on the truck first?"

  "And then?"

  I shrugged.

  Sergeant Brasely shook his head in disgust. "Remove the halter and halter shank, and bring 'em back with you. We aren't giving Headquarters Troop free halters and shanks. Old Raz won't need a halter out on the range, and we need our shanks. Think, man." He turned to Socky.

  "Why didn't you tell him to bring back the halter and shank?" `

  "I thought he knew," Socky said sullenly.

  "Never take anything for granted, Socky. When Sergeant Bellows retires someday, you're liable to be the next stable sergeant, you know, so you'd better start thinking like one."

  "That'll be the fucking day," Socky said. "My job's right here, shoeing horses. I've got enough problems without adding two more stripes on my arm."

  "I've heard that shit before, Socky. But when the time comes, a responsible man always takes the stripes. Don't just stand there, Willeford. Move out!"

  I took Old Raz down the hill to Headquarters' stables, found the truck driver, and stuck around to help him load Old Raz into the covered semitrailer. I remembered to get the halter, and I brought the halter and the shank back with me when I returned to the horseshoeing shack. The first sergeant had gone to the orderly room by then, and Socky and Halkins had finished putting new shoes on Misplace.

  "Get another horse off the line," Socky told me. "We can finish one more before early chow."

  I led Misplace out of the shed. He was stepping high, as they all do when they first get new shoes, and until they get used to the new weight. Then I turned him loose in the corral before I brought Chesty into the shed. Chesty was my assigned horse, and I wondered when I would .get another chance to ride him. It was also the first time for me to put new shoes on him, and I was going to give him special attention. Chesty was not a problem, being a quiet animal, and we finished shoeing him in plenty of time for early chow.

  As we walked across the gully to the mess hall, after washing up at the faucet by the water trough, I asked Halkins if it was really possible to sneak Old Raz out to the range at Giglin without our troop commander or the post vet finding out about it.

  He looked at me in surprise.

  "Find out?" He spat out a stream of Copenhagen juice and shook his head. "Hell, it was their idea."

  When Halkins told me that, I realized that it was something I should have been able to figure out for myself, but it hadn't occurred to me because the cavalry was still all too new to me. I was on my second enlistment, with nearly six months in Machine Gun Troop, but I had spent my first enlistment in the Army Air Corps-—one year at March Field, in Riverside, California, and then the next two years in the Philippines.

  The reason I didn'
t like the Air Corps was because I didn't feel like a soldier and I didn't like the menial work they gave me.

  During the three years and twelve days I spent in the Air Corps I only had one personal conversation with an officer. That brief conversation was with Major Bums, my squadron commander in the Philippines.

  I had been on guard duty the night before, and I shot Major Bums's dog, a boxer named Skippy. I was on post number one, the midnight to six A.M. shift, and I had to patrol the alley behind the homes on officers' row. I then circled the barracks and called in to the corporal of the guard every twenty minutes from either the squadron day-room or the phone in the garage at the last house on the officers' row. I patrolled back and forth, making my call every twenty minutes, and there was plenty of time to walk the post. One of the special orders on post number one was to shoot any dogs that were running loose. This order was in effect because a lot of the dogs that came over to the post from the barrios were diseased, with big red patches

  instead of hair on their bodies.

  The squadron commander's dog Skippy was always tied in the backyard of the major's house, but he had gotten loose. I was carrying a riot gun, armed with five double-aught shotgun shells, and when the dog came bounding up to me out of the dark in the alley I shot him and took half of his head off. When I took a closer look after switching on my flashlight, I recognized Skippy. I called in right away, reporting the shot to Corporal Haas, who was corporal of the guard that night. When I told Haas that I had shot Skippy he got hysterical, told me to stay there, and came up to take a look for himself. We dragged Skippy's body back to the major's yard, and Haas made his report to the officer of the day.

  The next morning the first sergeant told me to report to Major Burns, the squadron commander. I was still in uniform, having just been relieved from duty at eight A.M. I was blinking to stay awake and trying not to yawn. All I wanted was a late breakfast and a nap.

  "Why," the major asked me, "did you shoot my dog?"