Tales from the Trails of a Rock ’n’ Roll Bus Driver

by Jerry Fitzpatrick

  The bases in Vietnam he had been on had mortar attacks, and he told me how scared everyone would get when the Viet Cong shelled their facilities or when the Vietnamese snipers were firing at them, all the time running to find cover. I finally could see a side of my father that I had never seen before. This man was a serious man, and the time he spent over there had left impressions that changed him forever. He had changed from the father that had rescued me in the summers before he went to Vietnam.

  There were hundreds of kids on our base. Many of their fathers went to Vietnam, and Dad talking about it made me realize what it meant for all of these kids. I was one of them, but I never realized it until then.

  Christmas time came and went. The house was peaceful for the most part. I had to wait a few extra days before I could get into the processing group at MEPS. The recruiters came to the house and picked me up one morning to take me to the bus station for the trip to Milwaukee. Dad had bid me farewell that morning and had gone to work. I had a couple of changes of clothes in a small bag. I was wearing bell-bottoms and military style boots. My hair had grown down to the middle of my back, and I had a pierced ear with a dangling cross in it. The Marines who put me on the bus knew I was about to go through a transformation. Let the teasing commence. I didn’t even consider their humor or advice. All I could think about was the fact that I was getting away. I was going to be my own person, a Marine; no one was going to fuck with me. I would manage my life the way I saw fit, and there wasn’t going to be anymore physical abuse from my dad and certainly not from my mother whom I had little contact with since I left home.

  I wasn’t afraid to be going to Milwaukee by myself, and I was actually excited about going to San Diego. Finally, a place that was warm! The bus ride to Milwaukee was uneventful, as it traveled down Highway 41 to Gladstone, stopping to let passengers on and off. I didn’t have any time to visit the people I had known, so I hung out at the bus station until it left again. Traveling on south through Escanaba and through Green Bay to Milwaukee, the trip took about eight hours to cover the little more than 300 miles with all the stops along the way.

  When I arrived at the bus station, I was instructed to walk a few blocks to a hotel where they had a room for me. As I entered the hotel, the bar was jumping with all kinds of people. I went to my room for a minute, felt alone and headed back to the bar. I wasn’t old enough to drink, but someone bought me a beer. Just about everyone was there to be processed into all branches of the service the next day. That kind of sat with me for a while. There were people joining all branches of the service.

  Everyone was whooping it up. “Our last night of freedom!” I struck up a conversation with a young girl who was going into the Navy. We got drunk, went back to my room and spent the night. She was a beautiful girl with long straight hair. She confided in me some of her life’s story, and I told her mine.

  The next morning, we were up early, and I headed over to the processing building. Line after line after line. All day long filling out paperwork, disrobing, getting poked and prodded on all parts of our bodies. It was damn cold standing in the room with 80 or 90 other naked men. After the first day, I spent the night again with the same girl. I had a good time hanging out with her. We shared the same ideas about life. She related to my troubles, having endured similar hard times, and maybe it was why we connected. Maybe it was the fact that we might not ever see each other again.

  The next morning we were up early again and back for more paperwork, medical records and all the other required crap one goes through to join the military. This included raising our right hands and taking our oaths. When we had finished the processing, I was put on a bus, taken to the airport and sent to San Diego. It was around three or four in the afternoon when the jet took off. I was excited about what the future had in store for me and was feeling a bit like a big wig.

  When the plane landed, I was walking through the airport taking my time, telling myself I better enjoy my last few moments. I sat down on a bench and lit a cigarette. I kept hearing a man yell every couple of minutes or so at the end of the hall, but he was far enough away that I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I finished, got up and as I rounded a corner, a Marine was standing in the middle of the foyer. Just when I looked up and noticed him, he screamed at me to hit the door and get in the bus. How did he know to scream at me? When I got on the bus, I realized that most of the people already there looked like me: young, most having long hair, and we all had this scared look on our faces.

  It was around 10 p.m. when I entered the bus. A Marine was in the driver’s seat and a corporal was sitting in the first seat with a ton of paper work beside him. I gave him mine, and then he yelled at me to sit down. We sat there for over an hour as people straggled into the bus just like I had done. It was just about full when the first guy who had yelled at me entered the bus.

  “Welcome, ladies!”

  I smiled. This is the way Chuck and the recruiter had told me they would refer to us in the first few days. The drill instructor told the driver to drive, and he started giving us a speech about what life was about to become. The distance was short from the San Diego Airport to Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) and he didn’t stop screaming the entire time. He walked up and down the aisle lecturing and yelling until we pulled through the gate and up to a building with yellow lines on the ground leading inside. By this time, the instructor had worked his way to the back of the bus, and when it stopped he was starting in again.

  “Get off ladies! Get off my bus!”

  He was grabbing people by the arms and necks, pushing them toward the door, telling everyone to follow a line. Several other instructors joined in yelling and screaming and telling us what to do. It seemed ridiculous at the time, all the confusion they were stirring.

  I was hustled into a room where everyone was standing in a line to go through a door to get their hair cut. Everyone was dead silent, and I waited my turn. The line was moving fast with the three or four barber chairs filling up as soon as someone got up. Everyone was in the chair and out in a matter of a couple of minutes each. I made it to the chair and felt the razor skin my head in about four or five swipes, and as I started to get up, a black drill instructor grabbed me by the arm. As he swung me up against the wall, he grabbed my earring that was dangling from my ear lobe.

  “Come here, faggot!” He screamed for everyone to hear.

  He put his forearm against my throat, lifting me up slightly with the pressure he was putting. He started cutting off my air. At the same time he was pulling down on the earring and screaming only a couple of inches away from my face. I could see inside his mouth he was so close. He pulled down on the earring so hard that it started to bleed. He just laughed.

  “You’re the first faggot in this group to bleed!” He screamed and spit at me.

  I couldn’t breathe, and I certainly couldn’t speak, but that didn’t stop him. He was firing off question after question about why I was wearing an earring. I couldn’t think of a reason at that time. It looked cool maybe? I don’t think he would have appreciated that response. Maybe it was better that I couldn’t breathe.

  Just when I started thinking I was going to jail or something, he screamed, “You better get this damn thing out of your ear before I yank it out!”

  I couldn’t reach up to touch it. The pressure on my throat and my ear was almost unbearable, and when he finally let me go, I fell to the floor gasping for air. I immediately removed the earring and tossed it in a trashcan in the corner. I got up with his kick to my tail, and that was it. Problem solved.

  I was sent to the next room where everyone was sitting in front of red bins being filled up with military clothes and boots and supplies that would be used in boot camp. We were instructed to sit cross-legged in front of these red boxes while we went through the night getting gear and fulfilling all the requirements. Everything went into a large green duffel bag similar to the dozens my dad had at home. Around four in the morning, the instructors put us in
a barracks with rows of bunk beds where we hung our bags and went to sleep. I couldn’t sleep. On first impression, this crap wasn’t as fun as Chuck had made it out to be.

  Chapter 44 Getting It Together

  I was in a state between sleep and awake at 5:30 a.m. when a bunch of new drill instructors barged in grabbing empty waste cans, tossing them between the bunks, kicking them and screaming just like everyone before.

  “GET UP LADIES! GET UP LADIES! GET THE FUCK UP!”

  Right on time. I’m thanking Chuck as I hit the floor and attempt to stand at attention at the end of my bunk. We were given a bunch of shit to do including push-ups because a few guys were slow in getting up. When one doesn’t do well, we all paid the price, one of the drill instructors yelled. I dropped and started my punishment with the others.

  Out the door bopping and hopping in a group to the mess hall in four unorganized lines, we crossed the parade deck. Right away I noticed the other platoon ranks. Dozens of platoons were around us. They were around us coming and going in different directions, and I saw how polished some of them were right away. Their legs and arms were all swinging in the same motion, and there was one distinctive clump on the ground from their boots as they went along. I thought it was neat as shit with the yells of the drill instructors echoing throughout the area singing Cadence just after daylight. Our group didn’t look like that at all.

  We were heading to breakfast and as we got closer to the mess hall, one of the platoons marching to the chow hall had turned and marched right into our group like we weren’t even there. I was a quarter of the way down the line, but as soon as they entered our group, they started to shove and push our guys and after only a few had gone to the ground, our platoon – or whatever you wanted to call it – started to fight back. Yelling and screaming ensued, and guys were shoving and pushing. The drill instructors separated everyone and got everybody in their proper lines. The other platoon went on, and our instructor chewed our asses out.

  “NO ONE!” He paused for effect. “NO ONE PASSES THROUGH OUR RANKS! If anybody ever does that again, and you pussies let them, I will kill each and every one of you!”

  We were a mess, a sloppy group of misfits, street thugs and farm boys from all backgrounds. It’s a grueling process the drill instructors put you through to make you a lean, mean, killing, marching machine.

  Over the next 11 weeks, we were put through the camp, and after only a couple of weeks, I could see the changes being made to every individual in the platoon, including myself. There were a few guys who didn’t make it. They seemed to just disappear, and by the fifth week, the platoon had settled into a groove. Of course there were the daily fuck-ups, and I got yelled at more than once, but for the most part, I made progress and learned the skills required of Marines.

  I was chosen to march on the color guard at our graduation. Marching was something I could do. I enjoyed it and always thought it was cool when we marched or ran as a group and sang songs. I had a problem with keeping my head up when I was first learning to march. These guys in the Marines were sticklers about marching. Staff Sergeant Black, our lead drill instructor, had a passion to sing out Cadence during marches, and he did it like no other. A couple of times he yelled at me as we were marching to keep my head up.

  “A left, right-ta left, right-ta left. Fitzpatrick get that head up! Right-ta left,” he would chant. I always focused straight ahead as required, but my chin would eventually drop almost to my chest as I concentrated.

  One day we were marching on the parade deck when Black stopped. “Hippity hop mob stop,” he yelled.

  I could see him coming toward the area where I stood. I was doing everything right, I thought, and I wasn’t thinking he was coming for me. As he got into my face, he grabbed me by the throat and then the stock on my rifle resting on my right shoulder. He then walloped me with it on the right side of my head. Hard! I almost fell down and as he screamed at me a couple of inches away from my face he kept hitting me with the rifle. I don’t think I ever dropped my head after that. At least I didn’t get caught doing it.

  When we had first arrived, the drill instructors explained that if we tried to run away, we would be caught and placed in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. We were told a story of a recruit who one winter ran off and jumped the fence at the San Diego airport next door. Apparently, he had climbed into the wheel well of a departing airplane. When the plane arrived at its destination, the recruit had frozen to death, and when the landing gear doors had opened, he fell out. DOA.

  I hadn’t planned on running away, not from this anyway. By the fourth or fifth day, I told myself that I was going to do my best in the Marines. I was going to be as squared away Marine as I could be. One my dad would be proud of. After 11 weeks our platoon, Platoon 1009, graduated on 11 April 1975. I was so proud of my accomplishments, and I was telling myself that I was going to make it at something finally and leave much of my personal failure behind. I was so proud to be a Marine. My admiration for the drill instructors and all Marines has stayed with me forever.

  My mother had flown to San Diego and attended my graduation. This would be the first day I had seen my mom since my dad came to get me to live in Michigan with him. After I had received my orders, I had a couple of weeks of leave so I flew home with her for the time off. I had a good time seeing old friends and seeing the shock on their faces when they saw me in my uniform. My mother made it a point to get me over to a Davis clan function, and I saw many friends from the neighborhood before I flew back out to California and on to my first duty station. The ten days at home were good... different... but they mainly reminded me of the many things I was trying to forget in my life.

  Chapter 45 Fubar In Hawaii

  When I, a proud new Marine, arrived at Camp Pendleton and was sent to a transit barracks to await final orders and travel papers, I was a little disappointed. The fact was I wouldn’t be working in the Air Wing of the Corps. My recruiter had all but guaranteed that I would be working on jets, but when I received my military occupational title it was 0811-Field Artillery Cannoneer. My desired skill had been something to do with airframe maintenance or engineering. I talked to my instructor who sent me to a career counselor. He explained that if I wanted Air Wing I would have to be regular Corps first, improve my education and work my way in. When he went over what I would be doing as a cannoneer, he made it sound interesting, and he mentioned that once I was in the regular Corps, I could put in for a different occupational skill. I committed to doing well and trying to be a good Marine.

  Air Wing ground training would have been in Memphis, Tennessee, so I was a little disappointed that I was on my way to a base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Kaneohe, Hawaii. I was going to be trapped on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and that wasn’t appealing to me at all. While awaiting my orders, I was placed in a transit barracks at Camp Pendleton and ordered to march the perimeter around a tent city that had been set up on base where Vietnamese people were being brought to America as South Vietnam was collapsing into the hands of Communists. Since I was a private, I got the late shifts between midnight and 7 a.m. I marched around the perimeter and never had to give a “HALT! Who goes there?” to anyone. I think they were just happy to have cots to sleep on and three hot meals a day. It was the first time I carried live ammunition while on duty in the Corps. I was 17 and didn’t understand what the war in Vietnam was all about. Even through all my troubles, I remained loyal to following the news of the day. I remember feeling compassion for these people being brought to America but also feeling some concern at other times that they were relocating to our country.

  After nearly two weeks at Camp Pendleton, I was put on a flight to Hawaii, heading to my final destination – Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe. After a week of orientation, I was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division, 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, Kilo Battery. A 155 Howitzer unit, our job was to back up the 105mm guns that were backing the grunts in the field. The 175mm guns and so on backed us. The 1st Battalion,
12th Marines had a long history since being commissioned 1942. They’re known for their valiant efforts in several campaigns around the world, including the battles of Guam and Iwo Jima. Kilo was a new unit that was forming when I arrived, and many of the men that were being placed in the unit had seen service in Vietnam. There were many quality Marines coming into the unit and quite a few young Marines who had just gotten out of Boot Camp in San Diego and Camp Lajune, North Carolina.

  There also were a few of the guys that didn’t have that Marine Corps spit and polish attitude that had been instilled in us at boot camp. “Slackers,” they were being called. “Shitbirds” by many. Some were just waiting on their rotation to get out and go home, so they didn’t care much about anything. Their experiences in Vietnam had affected their attitudes about life, and a few were just downright crazy. Unfortunately, a small number were stone cold drug addicts hooked on heroin. Some were alcoholics and many had depression issues from the war. There were the casual drug users since there were no piss tests during those times. I lived on the second floor of an open barracks with 50 or more other men. Tall lockers were used to separate the barracks into cubicles for minimum privacy. Almost all of the squared away Marines had spots in the front of the barracks where you entered the floor and close to the bathroom that everyone shared.

  As you walked through the barracks, the further you went toward the back of the large room, the more people’s attitude about being a Marine was less exciting, and most of the bad Marines were all the way in the back of the room. My area was in the middle of the room, and I fixed it up like a kid might do with a stereo, lots of music tapes and posters.

  In order to operate military equipment, you have to get a license for each vehicle you drive. I got mine to drive a Jeep then stepped up to a deuce and a half, then a five-ton license. A five-ton truck was used to pull a howitzer. I was assigned to Sergeant Williams’ howitzer, and in training I learned every job on the weapon. I went to school to learn all the aspects of the weapon and made plans to get nuclear clearance since a 155 howitzer was the smallest gun to shoot a nuclear shell at the time.