Something About a Soldier - Charles Willeford

by Charles Willeford

  It is embarrassing to me now that I told the recruiting corporal in L.A. that I was a poet. I wanted to be a poet, true, but I actually wanted to be a novelist, like Dostoevsky. When I was thirteen I read Crime and Punishment, and what I wanted to be someday was a novelist like him.

  But I knew that I had neither the skill nor the experience to become a novelist, so I started writing poetry instead. Poetry was much easier to write, I thought. After I had read a few poetry anthologies available in the Junipero Serra branch library, I thought I could do as well as some of these poets if I worked at it. But once I got into writing poetry, I discovered that it wasn't as easy as it looked. There was a lot to learn, and a good many technical aspects to pick up besides—things like assonance, half-rhymes, enjambments, and so on. But the library had books on prosody, and I could learn what this stuff meant by reading about it. All the same, I threw away most of the poems I wrote, seeing how clumsy and awkward they were. But I got a poem published in the John Adams Junior High School newspaper, and another poem I wrote, about what a person could see in the stands at the Coliseum after a football game, came out fairly well. I showed the Coliseum poem to the branch librarian, and she typed it for me and put it on the bulletin board by the library entrance. I hung around the bulletin board periodically, hoping to see someone read the poem and comment on it, but no one ever did, at least not while I was there. But I also counted that poem as a publication, and that's why I had told the corporal I was a poet. Perhaps if I had told the corporal that I was a professional manual laborer he might have signed me up for the 33rd Infantry in Panama, and my Army experiences would have been different.

  But here I am writing about the road I took.

  After a dull year at March Field, driving a truck, I asked for a transfer to the Philippines. To my surprise, it came through. I was given a short discharge and re-enlisted for three more years. I wouldn't have to stay for three full years; I would be discharged again when my two-year tour in P.I. was over, but they signed me up for three more years to make certain that I would have two full years in the Philippines. I then sailed for the Philippines on the U.S.S. Ulysses S. Grant, an army transport, which left from San Francisco.

  In the Army, just like in civilian life, friendships are formed by chance and propinquity. I shared a tier of bunks with a coast artilleryman named Tullio Micaloni and an older soldier named Henderson who was assigned to the 31st Infantry in Manila. Micaloni and I spent more time together because we were both detailed to clean the forward head each morning after breakfast, and we usually spent our mornings and afternoons on the forward deck shooting the breeze and playing Monopoly. But I learned much more about how the Army worked from Henderson than I learned from Tullio, even though he was on his second hitch.

  Henderson was on his third enlistment and he had served in Panama as well as in the 30th Infantry at the Presidio of San Francisco. (He also confirmed for me that a man could indeed get a blow job and a shoeshine at the same time in Colon.) I was in the bunk below Henderson's, and when I got seasick, the first night out from San Francisco, he bought me a box of soda crackers at the ship's canteen. I ate the crackers and got over being seasick. And because Henderson had been on army transports before, I listened to him and followed his advice.

  On the third day out, two days before Honolulu, my name appeared on the bulletin board for K.P. the next morning. K.P. aboard ship was a miserable twelve-hour shift below decks, where it was hot and steamy, and a brutal day's work washing pots and pans and utensils in steam boilers.

  "You don't want to pull K.P., Will," Henderson said.

  "I know I don't," I said, "but there's no way to get out of it."

  "You're wrong. There is a way. How many men are on the ship?"

  "The ship's paper said eight hundred."

  "Use your head, then. If there are eight hundred aboard, and you don't count the N.C.O.'s and the other guys who're excused from K.P., there still must be at least seven hundred eligible. And out of seven hundred men, there are bound to be three or four with the name of Williams. Right?"

  "Smith and Jones, too. There're a lot of them."

  "Too many. So they'll watch the roster pretty close.

  Chances are, all the Smiths'll be on the same day. Williams is much better. What you do after lights out at ten P.M. is cross your name off the list and then write in Williams."

  "I can't do that."

  "Why not? Do you want to pull K.P.?"

  "No, but I might get caught."

  "Not a chance. No one knows anyone else aboard. The noncoms are all acting, so there'll be no problem."

  The acting sergeant we had was in charge of about three hundred men, so I decided to take the chance. That night I crossed out my name and wrote "Williams" above it.

  The next morning, at five A.M., the charge of quarters woke Williams for K.P. Williams complained, saying he hadn't noticed the roster change, but went ahead and pulled the K.P. The next day when Williams' regular turn came, and his name was put up on the bulletin board, he protested that he had already pulled K.P., but it wasn't on the acting sergeant's duty roster so he sent him to the kitchen.

  That was the first thing I ever did that I didn't know I was capable of doing. The second thing was worse. After we left Guam, my name appeared on the K.P. roster again.

  "This time," I told Henderson, "I guess I'll have to pull the fucking K.P."

  "Why?" he said. "Just wait till tonight, and then write in Williams again."

  "Jesus, that's an awful thing to do to the guy."

  "So? It was just as awful the first time. But do you want to pull K.P. now that we're in the tropics? It was hot before we hit Honolulu, but how hot do you think it'll be down there now? If you don't want to pull it, write in Williams. It worked before, and it'll work again."

  So once again that night I wrote in Williams. The next morning Williams protested like a crazy man when he was awakened for K.P. And when his regular turn came up, he screamed with genuine anguish. But the upshot of all this is that Williams pulled four K.P.'s on the boat, and I didn't do any at all.

  Henderson, incidentally, didn't pull any K.P.'s either. The first day aboard ship he had gone to the chaplain's office and volunteered his services as a runner. They gave him an arm band, and he delivered messages for the chaplain. When he went upstairs to first class, where thé officers and their families were quartered, he bought chocolate milkshakes at the officers' canteen. The enlisted men's canteen did not, of course, serve milkshakes. But Henderson, with his official arm band, had the run of the ship. One night he brought me a wonderful sandwich, with thick slices of ham, tomatoes, mayonnaise, and lettuce, that he had made in the crew's mess.

  I learned a great deal from Henderson. I resolved, when I ate that sandwich, that I would be the first man in the chaplain's office when the ship left Manila two years later for the retum voyage.

  I also avoided Private Williams. He was a big, lumbering coast artilleryman who was going to Corregidor, out in the middle of Manila Bay. If he had known that I was responsible for the two extra K.P.'s, he would have crushed me into a pulpy ball and thrown me overboard. I overheard Williams complain bitterly a few times about the great injustice that had been done to him, but no one gave him any sympathy. There were a few recruits aboard, and some romantic young men who were assigned to the 15th Infantry in China, but the majority of the soldiers aboard had at least a year of service. And any man who has spent at least one year in the service knows that injustice is the norm, not the exception. In the Army date of rank, not ability, always determines who will be in charge. If the men are all privates, then the man with the most service is put in charge. So these rules ensure that the best man will not always be in charge of any particular division, regiment, battalion, squadron, company, platoon, squad, or casual two-man detail. The acting sergeants aboard ship were all privates, but because they had been privates longer than any of the other privates aboard they were appointed as acting non-coms. A man who has been
a private for fifteen or twenty years is not necessarily the right man to be placed in charge of two or three hundred men. If an experienced first sergeant had been in charge, instead of a buck private acting as a sergeant, I wouldn't have gotten away with my deception. There were a few sergeants aboard, staff, technical, and master sergeants, but they had their own private quarters and were excused from duty for the entire voyage.

  There's one more thing to tell you about Henderson, and then I'll move on. Henderson was the only man in the Army who had an official "Charming" character rating on his honorable discharge certificate. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it.

  On the line on the discharge that says Character the commanding officer must write in a rating. Usually the rating is "Excellent," but he can write in "Very Good," "Good," "Satisfactory," or "Unsatisfactory." Those are the only ratings he is allowed to use. If a _man gets a "Satisfactory" or an "Unsatisfactory" character rating when he's discharged, he will have a difficult time re-enlisting. Even "Good" will give him some trouble, and the chances are that he'll need a waiver of some kind before he's allowed to re-enlist. But Henderson had "Charming" written in after Character on his honorable discharge.

  He had been the house orderly, or the house dog robber, for the colonel's wife in the 30th Infantry at the Presidio of San Francisco. Ordinarily a full colonel has two enlisted servants: one man looks after his personal needs—a kind of valet—and the other man takes care of his house—a houseboy, or male "maid." The house orderly's job was Henderson's assignment. He had to cook breakfast for the colonel and his wife, do the shopping (with the colonel's lady), clean the house, and sometimes, if the colonel threw a cocktail party, serve as a bartender. He was relieved of all other company duties, and the colonel paid him fifteen dollars a month out of his own pocket. Fifteen dollars a month added to a private's twenty-one dollars is a tidy sum, and for some men, a house orderly's job is desired highly.

  When Henderson was offered the job he took it because he thought it would be a good deal, but after a few weeks he wanted out. The job was much too confining, and he only got one day off a week. The work was simple enough, but it takes a special kind of man to hang around a house all day, washing and ironing, moving furniture around at a woman's whim, hanging curtains, and going shopping every day to the commissary with the same woman.

  Enlisted men are required to talk to officers in the third person; The rule is a good one, and the Army also thinks so or it wouldn't have the rule. It keeps officers and enlisted men well separated socially, and the more distance between them the better it is for both of them. But when the courtesy of the third person must be extended to the colonel's wife, as Henderson was required to address this woman, he resented it, Henderson said he carried this indirect form of address to ridiculous lengths, but the woman was too dense to catch on. He didn't re-enlist in the 30th Infantry, as he had wanted to, because the colonel's lady would have kept him as a house orderly indefinitely. But when he was discharged, and re-enlisted for the Philippines, the colonel's wife made the colonel write "Charming" for Henderson's character on his discharge.

  I accepted Henderson's explanation for the "characterization," but I marveled at the discharge, with the unique reference that guaranteed that as long as Henderson remained in the Army no other officer would ever want him assigned to his home where Henderson would be alone with his wife.

  We had a good time in Honolulu, but we were searched when we came back so that no one would smuggle any liquor aboard ship. They let Henderson keep his green coconut, however, and the next morning Henderson brought out his coconut, which he had filled with rum, and sold eye-openers to the men on deck with hangovers at fifty cents a shot. Henderson was truly a soldier's soldier.

  ***

  THERE WAS AN OVERNIGHT LAYOVER IN GUAM, WHERE we stopped after ten days at sea, and although we were. allowed four hours' shore leave, I returned to the ship within an hour. The place was just too depressing to stay any longer.

  Guam was primarily a naval station for sailors and marines, but four Signal Corps soldiers disembarked for a two-year tour on Guam. I never felt sorrier for anyone in my life than I did for those poor bastards, because Guam was the armpit of the Pacific Ocean. Although beautiful as viewed from the ship, an island like Guam was a depressing port, and the natives were uglier than home-made sin. The men who were stationed there felt as though they were assigned to Devil's Island. The naval commanding oflicer's primary job was to reduce the suicide rate. To accomplish this he had to run a highly disciplined command, rigidly enforcing minor infractions, which made life there even more miserable.

  I remember talking with Tullio Micaloni on the afterdeck about the horrors of Guam. I am bringing this up now because Tullio and I became good buddies on board the Grant. When we got our turn at the Monopoly game, we always played partners. Tullio was a good strategist at Monopoly, and I liked to play with him because the winners of the game got to play again. Ordinarily Monopoly isn't played with partners, but because there were only a few of the board games available, that's the way we played it on the afterwell deck. We also played the fast game, not the long game, by shufhing all the street cards and dealing them out, and every time I played as Tullio's partner we managed to get Park Place dealt to us.

  Tullio had spent his first enlistment in the coast artillery at San Pedro, California. He had then re-enlisted for the Philippines, where he would be assigned to Corregidor, the tall rocky island in the middle of Manila Bay. For coast I artillerymen Corregidor was considered as a good duty station. There are three parts to Corregidor: Topside, Middleside, and Bottomside. There are P.X.'s, beer parlors, and theaters for all three "sides,"and many other recreational facilities, including a beach for enlisted men and a beach for officers.

  Tullio was a happy young guy who liked to laugh and I kid around. He had white sidewalls, but his curly black hair was in coin curls in front, in little coils on his forehead. Tullio Micaloni was a guy I would have liked to pal around with in P.I., but I didn't see him again until the return voyage. When we sat on the afterwell deck with our jackets off, soaking up the sun while we waited our turn at the Monopoly game, Tullio told me some funny stories about moving back and forth between the barracks and the house of a sailor in San Pedro. When the Navy sailed out of San Pedro for a few weeks, enlisted men from the coast artillery moved in with the sailors' wives, and returned to the barracks when the fleet returned. Tullio had had some narrow escapes, and he related them in a humorous way.

  Although I didn't expect to see much of Tullio in P.I., I knew that I'd see him again on the boat coming back. But at the time I didn't look that far ahead. After we left Guam, we only had four more days to go before we docked in Manila.

  FOUR

  I REMEMBER EVERY DETAIL ABOUT MY FIRST DAY IN I the Philippines. Manila was exotic enough to excite any seventeen-year-old. Hundreds of melancholy Filipinos met the ship at the dock, many of them women looking for soldiers who had promised them that they "would be back on the next boat." Several of these anxious young women were holding up mestizo babies. But they looked in vain for the fathers.

  We were separated on deck according to branches of service. Then noncoms from the various outfits to which we were to be assigned came aboard and called out our names. We disembarked with all our gear, in batches by branches. All of this activity took some time, but there was a system to it and no one got lost.

  There were thirty—some-odd Air Corps men. Most of these men were assigned to Nichols Field, but I was put into a truck, together with seven other men, for Clark Field. I knew two of these men slightly, having seen them around at March Field. There was another young guy, about twenty, I didn't know. He sat across from me in the truck, and I took an instant dislike to him for no reason at all. He had spiky blond hair, a rat face, and a bad case of acne. Yellow pustules, almost ready to burst, polluted his cheeks and forehead. He was truly repulsive, and I resented riding in the same truck with him. His name was Owens, and by c
hance, when we got to Clark Field he was assigned to the bunk next to mine. Owens, for similiar unknown reasons, disliked me as much as I disliked him. For the full two years we spent together in the Philippines, we never said a single word to each other. He had a few friends, and I had some of the same friends, and we were drunk at the same party together on a couple of occasions, but even then we didn't talk to each other. Owens was ambitious, and had enlisted in the Air Corps because he thought it would be easier to get into West Point from the Army than it would be to get an appointment from his congressman in Pennsylvania. Twice during the two-year tour he took written exams for West Point, and he failed abysmally both times. I rejoiced at his failure, although I had hoped, in a way, that he would pass his exam and then be rejected for being too ugly. But that was one of the good points about being in the Army. You had to live with a man in close quarters, but you didn't have to like or speak with him. No one invaded the small space to which you were assigned, either. A man's bunk and footlocker and wall locker were sacred. No one ever sat on your bunk or footlocker without first asking for permission. Even a close buddy wouldn't sit on your bunk unless he was invited to do so. Despite our proximity, Owens never bothered me. He was a clerk in the parts department in the morning work periods, and he spent his afternoons studying various books from the library in his futile efforts to get into the U.S. Military Academy. I noticed some of the texts he was reading. They were at the junior high school level. I suspected before he took the test the first time that he wouldn't pass it. I had disliked, and even hated, a few people before, but always for definite reasons. Owens, however, is the only man I ever detested for no reason at all. I have often wondered about this, but even now, when I think about Owens, I can feel myself getting angry. There are some questions in life that have no answers.