by Si Robertson
Eventually, Scott became a good student and graduated from Paint Rock Valley High School in Princeton, Alabama, in 1996. From the time Scott was a young boy, all he ever wanted to do was join the army. Christine and I tried to talk him out of it and told him he could find a better career, but he wouldn’t listen. Christine even pointed out things about the military he wouldn’t like, such as authority and obeying orders. Even though Scott was a good student, he liked to argue with his teachers. We told him he couldn’t argue with his superior officers in the military.
We never thought the army would accept Scott because of his medical history. When the military recruiters came to Scott’s high school, he talked with representatives of the navy, marine corps, and air force. He didn’t talk to the army. As soon as Scott told the recruiters about his behavioral conditions, they told him he wouldn’t pass the physical exams to join the military. We thought that was the end of it and Scott would find something else to do with his life.
As soon as Scott graduated from high school, he left to visit Trasa in Texas. Scott called his mother about a week later and told her he’d enlisted in the army.
“I have one question,” Christine said. “How did you manage that with your medical history?”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said.
“Scott, that doesn’t apply to your medical history,” she said.
“Well, they didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell them,” he said.
Scott joined the army and went to basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, in November 1997. He completed advanced individual training at Fort Eustis in Virginia. It was the same exact training I had when I joined the army. When Scott tells me things about the army, it’s like I’m reliving my experiences. He even had a superior officer named Doc just like me! I always tell him, “Scott, didn’t you learn anything? I always told you, don’t be like your dad!”
Scott and his wife, Marsha, have four boys—Ethan, twins Connor and Logan, and Wyatt—and live at Fort Eustis. They had Wyatt in July 2013, giving Christine and me eight grandsons. I’ll have my own baseball team if Trasa or Scott has one more child! Ethan was Marsha’s son from her first marriage, but Scott adopted him last year. Ethan was signing his name as Ethan Robertson at school, and his teachers kept telling him he couldn’t do it. “Oh, yes, I can,” Ethan said. “Scott Robertson is my dad.”
One night, Ethan asked Marsha what would happen to him if anything happened to her.
“Well, Connor and Logan will stay with Scott, and Scott would have to go to court to get you,” she said.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Ethan said.
Last Christmas, Scott and Marsha wrapped a birth certificate with Ethan’s name change and a duck call engraved with his new name and put it under the Christmas tree.
Christine and I received another grandson that Christmas, and it was the best present of our lives.
“Work hard, nap hard. Hey, that’s what I always say, Jack!”
Sleepwalking
AFTER SCOTT WAS BORN, we spent four more years at Fort Polk, where I worked with the Fifth Aviation Battalion, which is an air ambulance detachment of helicopters. Hey, I learned that flying a helicopter is really no different than riding a bicycle. It’s just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes. My kids really liked living at Fort Polk, and I was happy to be back in Louisiana. But Christine was never very fond of the place. The base was located in the middle of a swamp and the mosquitoes were bad. When Christine came to pick me up from work on the base one day, there was an alligator sitting in the middle of the road. That might have been the straw that broke the llama’s back. In 1982, the army transferred me to Zweibrucken, Germany. When we boarded a plane to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, Christine told me, “You’ll never get me to live in this state again!” I knew she was serious. I loved being closer to my parents, brothers, and sisters, but Christine was never very close to her siblings. Her family wasn’t as close as mine, so she didn’t realize how important living in Louisiana was for me.
During the first two years we were living back in Germany, Christine became very depressed and was really battling her emotions. Scott was about three years old at the time—before we’d gotten him help—and I think Scott’s problems were weighing on her mind. She felt guilty because she didn’t know how to help him. She was always upset. I didn’t yet understand the gravity of the situation. I don’t think I wanted to accept that my son had serious emotional problems; I wanted him to be like every other kid. But Christine knew something was wrong with Scott, and she wasn’t a very happy person for two years. Finally, I came home from work one day and told her, “Get help or I’m gone. I’m not going to live like this.”
After we both calmed down, Christine told me that whenever she pictured herself being old and gray, she thought of herself sitting in a rocking chair with me sitting next to her. Christine told me she couldn’t see herself living without me, so she agreed to go to a psychiatrist to get help. In order to get the help Christine needed, she had to move back to the United States with our kids.
In 1984, Christine and our kids flew back to the United States and moved in with Christine’s parents in Kentucky. We shipped our furniture back with them, so I lived in the barracks on base. It was like I was in boot camp all over again, living like a bachelor in the military. Christine started seeing a psychiatrist, and thankfully the doctor was able to help her. During their sessions, Christine revealed that a relative had sexually molested her when she was younger. Christine never told her parents about it and internalized the painful memories for many years.
Talking about her past and getting the issues out in the open really helped Christine. It was like a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders, and it helped me understand what she was dealing with. The psychiatrist told Christine that any relationship with God as its center has a better chance of being mended. We each knew we needed one another. As it says in Ecclesiastes 4:9–11, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?”
Christine wasn’t the only one with problems when we were moved to Germany for a second time, although my issues seemed trivial in comparison. I was having a lot of problems at work; one of the colonels in Germany just didn’t like me for whatever reason. For an entire year, I sat behind my desk and did nothing. I did not have a specified job, but I still had to show up for work every day. Somehow, I upset a bunch of my superiors by doing my job, so they took my job away from me. By exiling me to a desk, my superiors thought I would quit, request a transfer, or do something wrong that would enable them to get rid of me.
But what they didn’t know about Silas Merritt Robertson is that I’m perfectly content doing nothing. I showed up every day wearing spit-shined boots, a pressed uniform, and a big smile on my face. I kicked my feet up on my desk and rubbed it in their faces for eight hours a day for twelve months. On most days, I put my head down and slept for a few hours. Hey, I can sleep anywhere. Look here, napping is just like hunting. If I walk through the warehouse when I’m at work, I look over, and there’s the perfect spot. Boom! I’m asleep.
I learned to sleep and ignore my surroundings when I was young. When I got past my bed-wetting stage, I moved into the bedroom with my three brothers. There was always a lot of noise in the bedroom because there were four boys sleeping in the same bed. I never slept with a pillow over my head because I was afraid the fairies would take all of my teeth! Sometimes I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor; I was a human tortilla. I tried to sleep with an electric blanket one time, and I even plugged it into a toaster to make it warmer. But then I kept popping up out of bed all night!
I’ve always loved to sleep. Hey, like I always say: work hard; nap hard. Napping is my favorite thing to do. In fact, I believe it should be our national
pastime. Hey, when I’m napping, I might be dreaming about ducks, beavers, squirrels, Stevie Nicks, or anything else. When I’m asleep, it’s just my mind and me. Everybody should take a nap once a day. It’s a medical fact. Work! Work! Work! Nobody takes time to stop and smell the roses anymore. Hey, doctors have proven that daytime naps improve your memory and help you remember important facts. I guess that’s why my mind is like Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Look, I’ve never had a problem falling asleep or staying asleep. When I was younger, I was asleep in my bed at my parents’ log house. Phil was in the bed with me, and he heard something scurrying outside. Phil grabbed his rifle, opened the window, and laid the rifle across my chest to steady it. He fired a shot at a squirrel and missed. He missed the squirrel two more times, but I never woke up. Phil said I lay there snoring, while he fired three shots out the window!
When I was a little bit older, my sister Judy started dating when she was in high school. One night, Judy came home with her boyfriend, who was a football player at North Caddo High School. When Judy and the boy opened the front door to our house, I was standing in the living room, looking right at them. I was sleepwalking! Then I bolted out the front door and took off running down the road. The boy realized I was asleep, so he took off running after me. He chased me for two miles before he caught me. The next day, the boy came to our house. He told me, “Man, I thought I was fast. But I couldn’t keep up with you!”
It’s amazing what some people can do when they’re sleepwalking. There is a nurse in North Wales who draws and paints works of art while he’s sleeping. A woman in England woke up one night at two A.M. and found her husband mowing the grass while he was naked! Tragically, an electrician in Wisconsin sleepwalked out of his house wearing only his underwear and a shirt and froze to death before he woke up. Hey, I do all sorts of things while I’m sleepwalking. I’ve run marathons, washed the dishes, vacuumed the house, cleaned my rifles, and prepared a big pot of gumbo. Christine never wakes me up when I’m sleepwalking because she says it’s when I’m most productive! Hey, what do you call a sleepwalking nun? A roamin’ Catholic, Jack!
Obviously, it didn’t take the army very long to figure out that I wouldn’t have any problems sleeping through twelve months on the job. Fortunately, I was able to get back into the good graces of Uncle Sam when a new colonel was assigned to our unit. I was transferred back to the U.S. in 1985 and rejoined my family at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Being reunited with Christine and my kids was one of the happiest days of my life.
And I couldn’t wait to climb into my own bed again.
“These boys packed so much stuff, hey, they could survive a zombie nuclear a-poca-liss.”
Serving in the Army for so long allowed me to hunt all over the country and the world. I dropped this buck near Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Mass Murder
ONE OF THE BEST things about being in the military is that I was able to hunt all over the world. I’ve hunted in Germany as well as Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas. Hey, you haven’t hunted until you’ve sat in a deer stand with artillery shells firing over your head! That’s exactly what happened to me at Fort Bragg, and it didn’t take me long to find another deer stand, Jack! Believe me, it’s a sound you’ll never forget!
When I was stationed in Zweibrucken, Germany, I had a buddy who was the hunting instructor for the area. If you were in the American military and wanted to hunt in Germany, you had to go through eight weeks of classes to learn the German traditions and hunting regulations. Until you were certified, you weren’t allowed to hunt there. When my buddy went back to the United States, he talked me into taking over as the hunting instructor. I couldn’t speak German very well, but a lot of the local hunters liked me and allowed me to hunt on their land.
Hunting in Germany was a little different than how we do it in the United States. Most hunting clubs in the U.S. lease land to hunt for ducks, deer, birds, and other game, but in Germany you actually lease the animal rights for a certain piece of property. A lot of the hunters sold what they killed to restaurants to recoup some of the money they were paying to hunt. If an American soldier killed a deer or hog on someone’s property, we had to pay the rights holder money to keep the meat. We hunted for roe deer, wild hogs, foxes, birds, and German hasen, or hares.
German hunts were more like a big party. They were very big events, including an elaborate posthunt meal and, of course, a lot of beer drinking. Sometimes I was in charge of bringing the noon meal. I usually had the mess hall cook a big pot of chili or beef stew, but sometimes I’d cook the Germans barbecued pork or another American dish.
The first year I taught the hunting course, seven Americans were in my class, and I took them hunting when the course was over. On our first hunt, six of the Americans killed a roe deer, which is a lot smaller than the deer we have over here. Roe deer typically weigh between thirty and seventy-five pounds, and they have reddish bodies with short, erect antlers. They’re good to eat, but they’re just not very big. Germany is about the size of Oregon, and they kill over six hundred thousand roe deer every year. They’re everywhere!
One of the great things about hunting in Germany was that it didn’t get dark until about ten o’clock at night. If you went deer hunting, you hunted all day long. On the first hunt, one of the Americans who killed a roe deer wanted to keep the meat, but he wanted me to clean it because he didn’t know how. We paid for the deer and gutted it in the woods. By the time we got back to the apartment complex where I lived, it was close to midnight.
“Well, it’s late and I don’t feel like fooling with it tonight,” I told him. “I’m going to hang it up in the basement.”
I tied a rope around a water pipe and hung the deer from the ceiling. I put a plastic tub under the deer so blood wouldn’t drip all over the floor. It was cold in the basement during the wintertime, so I decided to go to work the next morning and then clean the deer when I came home.
Hey, when I came home from work the next day, there were four military police cars and another five German police cars sitting outside my apartment complex. There was even an emergency medical wagon sitting in the parking lot. “What in the world is going on?” I asked myself.
When I walked up to my apartment, one of my neighbors told me, “Hey, there’s been a mass murder in our apartment building!”
“Get out of here!” I told him. “A mass murder?”
“Hey, I’m serious,” he said. “There’s blood everywhere!”
Immediately, I ran to my apartment to make sure Christine and the kids were okay. They were fine, so I went back downstairs to see what was going on. I saw a German doctor I’d been hunting with the day before.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“Oh, they found a roe deer in the basement,” he said.
“All of this for a roe deer?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“They called me here to determine the cause of death,” he said.
“Well, what did you tell them?” I asked.
“I told them it looked like a thirty-aught-six to me,” he said.
“You’re exactly right,” I said.
Well, a woman in my apartment building had gone down to the basement that afternoon to do her laundry. She saw the deer hanging from the ceiling and freaked out. The crazy woman ran out of the basement screaming, “Mass murder! Mass murder!”
Fortunately, I was able to talk my way out of the predicament. The police even let me keep the evidence.
Hunting roe deer was a lot of fun because they would appear out of nowhere at any time. They’re so small that they love hiding in tall grass. You would be walking through a field and roe deer would start popping up everywhere.
One time when we were hunting, one of my buddies killed the first wild hog on the property in about twelve years. It was near the end of the day, and there were three of us hunting. I put one guy in the stand and told him he couldn’t shoot anything but a fo
x or pig. The other guy and I went down to a different stand to find a deer. The guy with me hadn’t been hunting before, and I kept telling him he was making too much noise.
“Hey, you have to be still,” I told him. “If you’ll be quiet, we’ll kill a deer in about fifteen minutes. I’m listening to the deer eat corn right in front of us. When they’re done eating corn, they’re going to walk out here and eat some grass.”
Well, he never sat still and the deer never walked in front of us. Right before dark, I heard gunfire. Boom! Boom! Then I heard something big fall to the ground.
“Well, either that’s a giant fox or that sucker has killed a pig,” I said.
We climbed out of our stand and walked toward him. He’d killed a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound pig.
“You haven’t gutted him?” I asked.
“No, I was afraid I’d mess it up,” he said.
“Boys, here’s rule number one in hunting: if you’re going to shoot something, you have to learn to clean it,” I said.
I gutted the hog in the woods and we carried it back to my Mitsubishi Montero. We drove to the landowner’s house and knocked on the door. His wife answered and told us he wasn’t there. He was at a guesthouse on the north side of town. When we found the owner, he couldn’t believe we’d killed a pig on his property. Being in Germany, we had to discuss the hunt over a couple of pitchers of beer. The owner kept the hog, but he gave my buddy its teeth as a trophy.
