The year was 1970, and I remember that year to this day for two reasons. The first reason is in February of that year I DEROS'd from a thirteen-month assignment with an air defense unit in South Korea. Most readers will wonder why I didn't spend a year in Vietnam like a lot of guys in the Army at that time, and the answer is I have no idea. Only the US Army can answer that question, and I doubt they know either.
I was drafted in August of 1969 and fully expected to end up in Vietnam and up to my ass in little guys in black pajamas shooting at me. That was what all the drill instructors in basic told us, that we'd all end up in 'Nam and a lot of us would come back in aluminum coffins if we didn't keep our shit together.
When you're eighteen, the little gear in your brain that recognizes danger and tells you about it doesn't work yet. All the young guys in my company spent a lot of time joking about how they'd fare in combat. They'd be the best there was and would come home after a year with medals on their chest. Maybe they would get shot, but it would be just a minor interruption in their quest to kill more Charlies than anyone else.
When you're twenty-three, like I was at the time, that little gear spins about a million RPM when you hear that stuff. I'd spent four years in college, had a degree in mechanical engineering, and my whole life ahead of me. Hearing that I probably wouldn't live more than another year sent chills down my spine and kept me awake some nights.
I know now that all that talk was just to get us used to the idea that some of us would be hit and some would die. That way, when one of us got shot or killed, it wouldn't be such a shock to the others and they'd keep on fighting the war. I think it worked on the younger guys, at least until the first firefight, but it didn't work on me.
The day after graduation, we all gathered in the day room to get our AIT assignments. I kept hearing a name and then "eleven bravo, Infantry". Eleven-bravo was the MOS for combat infantry. Once in a while, I'd hear "o-five bravo, Radio Operator". I figured that was a safe MOS until the drill sergeant laughed after he read the name and MOS.
"They're gonna drop your sorry ass in 'Nam with a twenty pound radio on your back besides another eighty pounds of gear and ammo. Radio operators make good targets because the antenna makes it easy to see where they are".
When my name was called, I held my breath. I was hoping for something that would use at least a little of my education. Instead, I heard, "Houston, William H. -- sixteen echo, HAWK fire control crewman".
I didn't know what that was, but figured it would probably be better than walking through the jungle with a rifle and a hundred-pound pack. I didn't really understand until I got to Fort Bliss, Texas and went through the orientation.
A "HAWK" was a surface to air missile, and a fire control crewman tracked targets on a radar screen and determined when and which missile battery should fire if the target didn't respond to the IFF signal sent. The instructor said they'd tried HAWK missiles in Vietnam, but they didn't work because the radar couldn't see through the trees. When he told us we'd probably end up in Florida, Hawaii, or Germany, I was pretty happy. I envisioned sitting on a beach or taking in a few beer gardens when I wasn't on duty.
Like in Basic Training, we received the orders for our next duty station on the last day, and I realized what I'd heard before was true. There is absolutely no way to understand how the US Army assigns soldiers to duty stations. Out of my whole company, the two dumbest guys in the company, the guys who barely made it through school, got duty in Hawaii. The two guys who were actually from Hawaii got assigned to Germany. The rest of us got orders for South Korea.
I got there and expected to go to my duty assignment, but in addition to not being logical, the US Army proved once again that no matter what, they were slow. I was stuck in replacement barracks for a week before I was bused to the headquarters of the Second Battalion, 38th ADA just outside Seoul. It took another two days before I got an actual duty assignment, and that duty assignment once again proved the US Army works in mysterious ways.
I was sitting across the desk from a Spec. 4 and he was reading my personnel file. He looked up and said, "It says here you can touch type. Can you?"
I nodded.
He smiled then.
"I have a clerk at Charlie battery who's going to DEROS in a week and I don't have a replacement for him yet. You're going to be that replacement. Get your ass and your gear in front of the orderly room by two so you can catch the courier when it leaves this afternoon. I'll make sure the driver knows you're coming."
Well, that was an interesting thirteen months. There were good things about being a battery clerk. I basically had a seven to five job in the orderly room, and I didn't have to stand formations every morning. I was warm in winter and relatively cool in summer compared to the guys manning the tactical site.
The bad part was I could never go anywhere. The guys manning the tactical site were on duty for twenty-four hours, on stand-by on the site for twenty-four hours, and then off for twenty-four hours. I was off duty from noon on Saturday and all day Sunday, and that limited my time to see the country. I did manage to get to Seoul a few times though, and learned a lot about how great the US really is. I also managed to get promoted from Specialist Four to Sergeant.
When I got back to Fort Lewis after my thirteen-month tour, I still had about six months of service remaining. I politely declined to re-enlist so I could pick my duty station. By then, I trusted the Army almost as much as I trusted a rattlesnake. I could see some personnel clerk thinking to himself, "Gee, I got a buck sergeant who just re-enlisted. I can send him to command school and then send him Vietnam." I figured I'd gotten lucky once and I didn't want to push it.
After another two days of sitting on my ass in a barracks, I got my orders. I was going back to Fort Bliss for duty as a clerk. It was a job that would normally be filled by someone of lesser rank, but it was a place the Army could stick me for the next six months without having to train me to do something else. I was pretty pleased with that assignment. I already knew the area, and I already knew how to do the job.
Part of any US Army school is a little task laughingly called "guard duty". It's supposed to prepare soldiers for guard duty at their actual duty station. What happens is a training company gets the assignment to guard a particular installation or installations on the base where they're going to school.
What that entails is walking around with a rifle for two hours at a time and making sure nobody tries to blow up the motor pool or the mess hall or whatever else you're guarding. You have no ammunition, so you really can't do anything if such an event was to happen. All you do have is a telephone booth somewhere close. The orders are to call the "Sergeant of the Guard" as soon as you're posted, and if you see anything suspicious, you are to call the Sergeant of the Guard again, report the incident, and wait for further instructions.
The "Sergeant of the Guard" is duty that normally falls to the drill instructors, but since I was a sergeant too, I ended up with that duty about once a month. Other than having to stay up all night, the duty wasn't really bad. The Sergeant of the Guard has the responsibility to get his soldiers to their guard posts on time and to investigate anything a guard might phone in. Since nothing ever happened, I didn't do much.
A little after midnight that night, Private Henderson called in to say he had a situation he needed help with. He sounded pretty excited on the phone.
"Sergeant Houston, I have a car sitting in front of the mess hall and there's a woman in the car. What should I do?"
It didn't sound to me like the woman was going to do anything dangerous. I didn't know why she'd be there at midnight, but sometimes people do things that don't make sense.
"Private, go tell her she has to leave."
He sounded even more excited then.
"Sergeant Houston, I was going to do that but...but...she's naked."
"Naked? You sure? Maybe she's just wearing something you can't see."
"No, Sergeant Houston. I looked. She's not wearing anything at all."
Well, that was strange.
"Private, you get the license number of her car in case she decides to leave. I'll be there in about ten minutes."
When I pulled up to the mess hall, there was one car sitting in the drive where the trucks unloaded food and other supplies. It was a light blue Chevy Malibu. Private Henderson was standing about ten feet from the driver's side door with his M-16 pointed at it.
I got out of my Jeep and walked up to Private Henderson.
"This the same car, Private?"
