The good captain, p.3
The Good Captain, page 3
All new soldiers in airborne units are called “cherries” and must endure rites of passage that had become, over many years, hoary, time-honored rituals. In the 1970s these could be dangerous. Some of us were thrown down stairwells inside wall lockers. Others were hung, upside down, out of third-story windows in our sleeping bags. In my first week, I was approached by three veterans with a demand that I agree to drop off and pick up their laundry each week, on the grounds that “that’s what all cherries do.” I was intimidated but realized instinctively that giving in now would be far more painful later. I refused, and a shoving match ensued that quickly turned into a short but vicious beating. That night, a bunk adapter went under my pillow. I reflected grimly that prison life couldn’t be much different than this.
My first jump in the unit represented another rite of passage. In later years, the 82nd would require all new jumpers to conduct a daylight, “Hollywood” jump (officially called an “admin, non-tactical” jump with no combat equipment) before progressing to more difficult and dangerous airborne operations. In 1976, there were no such considerations. Six of us were mixed into a full planeload of veteran jumpers, at night, wearing our full complement of web gear, a heavy rucksack rigged under the chest-mounted reserve, and a rifle strapped under the left arm in an M1950 weapons case. Like sardines, we were crammed into a C130 Hercules so tightly we could scarcely breathe.
Soon after take-off, most of the oldtimers immediately went to sleep in the dimly lit cabin, but we cherries were terrified. As the engines throbbed, we craned our necks to look around. Directly across from me, our knees touching, the troop first sergeant and my platoon sergeant sat impassively. For what seemed like hours, we flew “nap of the earth” as the aircrews practiced the low-level, terrain-following flight path that might save our lives on a real combat jump. For us, though, the flight was torture and we all quickly became airsick.
Eventually, even the veteran platoon sergeant in front of me began to look green in the gills. Motioning to the Air Force loadmaster, he was handed a “barf” bag, and in due course we saw him vomiting prodigiously into the bag. Calmly, the First Sergeant took the bag from him and, with a wink, drained the contents. Incredulous, all six of us cherries immediately threw up our dinners all over our equipment, wishing profoundly that some soul would come by and put us out of our misery. It was only later that we learned the bag was filled with vegetable soup, an old trick.
Now it was time to jump, but this was nothing like jump school. Barely conscious, we were hauled to our feet as the aircraft bucked and pitched wildly in the air, knocking several jumpers off their feet. In training, we had been coached to carefully maintain an interval between jumpers to avoid entanglements after exiting. All that went out the window here. After the command “Hook up!” the last man in the stick—selected for his size and strength and referred to as the “stick pusher”—leaned into the stick with his full body weight and we were all jammed into the parachute pack tray of the man in front of us. The idea was to empty the plane as fast as possible, and we did. As the green light blazed on, we flooded out the door, hardly pausing to “stand in the door.” I tumbled into the blackness, felt a violent, wrenching opening shock, and immediately found myself smothered in the silk of the jumper in front of me. Fortunately, we drifted apart without entangling. Barely remembering to drop my equipment by its lowering line, I slammed violently to earth and lay stunned. Sick, bruised and stricken, I lay on the ground until a young sergeant came by and kicked me. Snarling, he told me to police up my chute and get to the assembly area, which I did. After that night I learned to confront my fear, a priceless asset for a combat soldier and one reason I always sought to serve with paratroopers.
The Army was changing in that era, but the old ways died hard. We still ran in boots, still wore starched cotton fatigues, and still lined up each payday to be paid in cash. This was a fascinating tradition. Soldiers would put on their dress greens, stand an in-ranks inspection, and then march to an open area between the barracks where a series of field desks had been set up. They would report to the pay officer with a hand salute, sign a roster, and be given their pay in cash (for a private on jump status in 1976, $300). Next, they would be invited to contribute to the Association of the U.S. Army (technically voluntary, but in practice required), followed by the 82nd Airborne Division Association. The first sergeant would then take his cut for the “troop fund,” after which the oldest, meanest troopers would gang up to strongarm the cherries for “loans.”
Many soldiers would take their pay, head downtown to Hay Street (the red light district in Fayetteville), and literally blow it all on prostitutes, booze, and hotel rooms, living the rest of the month in the barracks, eating in the mess hall, and bumming small loans from buddies. Hay Street was a bad place in those days. Topless bar girls could be seen in the club doorways, uniformed military “courtesy” patrols roamed the area, and a dozen paratroopers a year were killed in bar fights or back alley muggings. I went once, and never went back.
All armies in democracies reflect society to a greater or lesser degree, and the U.S. Army in 1976 was no different. One Saturday the squadron commander hosted a picnic at McKellar’s Lodge, the Rod and Gun Club on the edge of the training area. About 1 p.m., the division commander’s wife drove by, returning from Sicily Drop Zone where she’d watched her husband jump. As she sped by McKellar’s she saw a horrifying sight. On the picnic tables cavorted a collection of Hay Street’s finest strippers, surrounded by dozens of inebriated troopers. Inside, one of the troop first sergeants manned a field desk, where in a parody of pay day, troopers would report, lay their money down, and be escorted to a side room for 15 minutes of “jump refresher” with more working girls. Throughout the area, bedlam raged as fights broke out, troopers jumped off tables in formation and cherries did pushups with their feet high up on tree trunks. Free beer flowed like a river.
Thirty minutes later what seemed like the entire 82nd Military Police Company showed up, surrounding the Lodge in their gun jeeps. Our sergeant major, by now too drunk to stand up, was hustled away by a group of NCOs and evaded the dragnet. 1976 was a different time. Every barracks had beer machines. Every brigade had its own NCO club (there were 17 on Fort Bragg), and topless dancers, at the Officers’ Club as well, were a standard feature. In the 1980s, all this would be phased out, and the Army would become much tougher on alcohol abuse.
In those days, in addition to its low enlistment standards, the Army was also broke. Training ammunition was scarce, basic supplies were hard to come by, and gasoline and spare parts closely hoarded. Most troopers bought their own toilet paper, as the latrines were always out, and we walked back from the drop zones after jumps (Sicily DZ, nine miles out, was considered a walk in the park; Rhine-Luzon DZ, 33 miles out, was a death march). On the other hand, there were compensations to being in the “Cav.” In the field, we often flew in our beloved Hueys, with Vietnam-era warrant officer pilots who treated them like fighter planes. There was still room for individuality then. Many pilots sported handlebar moustaches, wore huge “U.S. Cavalry” belt buckles, and gloried in Stetson cowboy hats in the Officers’ Club. Showing up for PT hungover was perfectly acceptable; falling out of the morning run, on the other hand, was not. Formation runs were things of beauty, conducted at a slower pace (because troops wore fatigues and jump boots, not running shoes and shorts), in perfect step (“the airborne shuffle”) and done in cadence. By far the best cadence callers were the Black sergeants, usually from the South, with their deep, sonorous voices and rhythmic delivery:
“C130 rollin’ down the strip, airborne daddy on a one way trip …”
“I know a girl who lives on a hill, she won’t do it but her sister will …”
“When my granny was ninety-one, she’d do PT just for fun …”
As any old paratrooper will tell you, the experience of running on Ardennes Street, through the division area at Fort Bragg, with thousands of fellow paratroopers, all chanting and swaying in time, was almost a religious experience. We felt part of something bigger and more important than all of us. There was much about the Army of that time that was bad, and wrong, and even shameful. But it was an Army that rested on older, deeper, better roots that would not die. You could sense that on Ardennes, on a cool crisp morning, in the company of soldiers.
“I don’t know but I’ve been told, airborne streets are paved with gold …”
Two months after joining the unit we flew to Fort Stewart, Georgia for a major off-post exercise. While our helicopters “self-deployed,” the rest of us conducted an “in-flight rig,” donning our parachutes not on the ground but in the aircraft before jumping into the exercise. For a neophyte this was high adventure, but we managed to get on the ground without major mishap.
The highlight of the exercise was door gunnery, a special treat where we tested our marksmanship on the javelinas (wild pigs) who roamed the aerial gunnery ranges. Most of the time, though, the ARPs humped rockets and other ammo for the chopper pilots, pulled police call along the flight strip, and took on all the other boring and unglamorous tasks. The life of the private, I mused to myself, was not all wine and roses.
On the last day, before return to home station, I stood with my buddies at sunrise at “Tac X,” an aviation stage field far out in the training area. Although dawn was breaking, the field was blanketed in mist and heavy fog. Soon a Cobra appeared, descending slowly to land. The pilot was a portly young captain named Steve Austin, jokingly referred to by the veteran warrant officers as “the Six Dollar Man” (after the hit TV series The Six Million Dollar Man, whose lead character was Colonel Steve Austin). We watched, amazed, as Austin carelessly flew the aircraft into the ground, destroying the helo and almost killing his co-pilot and himself. As we ran to pull the pilots from the wreckage, our company commander, Major Hudson, stood nearby, in tears. He knew it was the end of his career, and he was right.
Soon, I was promoted to Private First Class and began to feel just a bit like a veteran trooper. One morning in late spring, I was told to report to the lieutenant, a short, stocky officer I rarely saw except in the field. With a curt “At ease,” he said, “Hooker, it says here you have high test scores. How’d you like to go to the Prep School?” He was talking about the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School or USMAPS, a one-year course for enlisted soldiers at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. If you survived, you got a shot at West Point. If you survived.
I took a few moments to consider. In the past year, I’d decided I liked much about the military, even with its current problems. The prospect of a really first class education, at a world-famous place like West Point, was exciting. If I didn’t make it, I’d end up back in a unit as a private, no worse off. In little more time than it takes to tell, I made up my mind and said, “Yes, sir, I’ll do it.” And that was that.
In early July of 1976, I signed in at USMAPS as a Cadet Candidate or “CC” along with 320 other prospective cadets. We wore uniforms and marched to class, but other than that the program was not particularly military. From 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. we did math and English, and nothing else. Tests were frequent, and students were sectioned and re-sectioned each week based on their grades. The lowest, the “ejection” section, was greatly feared because it meant almost certain disenrollment. Instructors would frequently come into class, touch someone on the shoulder, and that afternoon they would be seen leaving post, doing the “duffle bag drag.”
On my first math exam, I scored a 12 percent. After that wakeup call, I threw myself into academics like a man possessed. English had never been a problem. I had edited the school newspaper in high school and enjoyed creative writing. Mathematics was different and a constant struggle. By dint of hard work, with help from a number of compassionate instructors and fellow CCs, I managed to hold my own. I started at free safety on the USMAPS football team, which went 7–2 against small college teams, and as a defenseman on the lacrosse team (I had never played, but most of the team hadn’t either; we lost every game but one). By the end of the school year, I was one of three company commanders and had settled comfortably in the top third of the class. By graduation in early June, I was one of 170 survivors, and a month later I reported to West Point for Beast Barracks.
“Beast,” otherwise known as Cadet Basic Training, was feared by all. West Point movies, tall tales by old grads, and a rumor mill stretching back to 1802 made it out to be incredibly Spartan and impossibly demanding. But if you were a prior service soldier the scare wore off quickly. On Day 1—Reception Day or “R Day”—I found myself ordered to report to the Man in the Red Sash. I simply said what I had been told to say: “Sir, New Cadet Hooker reports to the Man in the Red Sash for the first time, as ordered, sir!” When told to drop my bags, I dropped them. Simple. But all around me, kids fresh out of high school were screwing up the reporting format, or setting their bags down instead of dropping them, or committing a dozen other minor infractions which caused the cadet cadres to school about them, yelling, screaming, and terrorizing them. A few quit on the spot. Others broke down in tears. Most struggled through the day in a bewildered state.
Here my enlisted experience paid off handsomely. I could already march, shine my shoes, salute, set up my field gear and execute simple orders. I had already been yelled at by the best. My jump wings set me apart from the rest of my classmates as a “real soldier,” and the cadre often asked me to call cadence during morning runs or help struggling new cadets. But I had weaknesses too. The biggest was an inability to cut desserts in the cadet mess hall into suitably precise and exact portions. This was an apparently essential military activity, designed to instill in us a proper appreciation of the importance of “attention to detail.” I also struggled to remember that on Thursday, if the officer in charge was artillery, my table commandant preferred two ice cubes, not three. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Grant and Lee had also been forced to put up with such nonsense, with no harmful effects.
Some of the minutia of Beast Barracks was actually fun. There were only four acceptable answers for new cadets: “Yes sir,” “No sir,” “Sir, may I ask a question?” and “Sir, I do not understand!” All new cadets were forbidden to use slang of any sort. All were required to memorize reams of traditional West Point doggerel and spit them out on demand. For instance, when asked “How is the cow?” the correct response, delivered rapid fire, was “Sir! She walks, she talks, she’s full of chalk, the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the nth degree, sir!” I loved the history and traditions, the spectacular beauty of the campus and the panoramic Hudson highlands. Passing by from time to time we saw officers in their tailored greens, their campaign ribbons and brass twinkling in the bright sunshine. The lords of Beast, the high ranking “firsties,” or seniors, were even grander in their tall shakoes and ostrich plumes, and their gray, full dress parade uniforms, glittering with brass buttons and a profusion of gold stripes, sabers in hand. Three years seemed an impossibly long time to wait before ascending to such an exalted status, but it was out there, somewhere, if only we could make the grade.
Many of my classmates had come to the academy because of its glamor and prestige. Others came for the free education, or because their fathers had been graduates, or because they had been recruited as athletes. In the beginning, few thought very deeply about West Point’s true purpose. As soon as I could, I slipped away from the cadet area to wander through the West Point cemetery. There I found the headstones of men I had heard of—Winfield Scott, George Custer, John Buford—but also hundreds of names unknown except to families and friends. West Point graduates had served in every war since its founding. Every class had gone to war. As a plebe I didn’t know much. But I knew that. The grandeur and tradition that surrounded me would never wear off. But there was never a day that I didn’t know what lay at the end of it. And it wasn’t football games or dress parades on autumn afternoons.
There was also another, darker side to West Point. It had been there for 175 years. The culture permitted and even encouraged any number of petty cruelties, visited upon new cadets for no real purpose other than to humiliate. Dressed up in platitudes about “learning to perform under stress,” it was little more than the abuse of power by 19-year-olds over 18-year-olds. In past years it had been far more severe. At the turn of the century Congress had investigated West Point hazing rituals that led to the death of several cadets. Only a few years before, “bracing” (the practice of requiring first-year cadets to stand at an exaggerated position of attention, their chins pushed far back) had been banned because it caused spinal deformation. Yet many traditions remained.
Excessive demerits, often assigned to plebes arbitrarily to “build character,” meant hours “walking the area” in dress gray uniform, crossbelts and parade rifle under a burning sun or in near-Arctic winters. New cadets in that era were routinely told to “send out your plate” for imaginary infractions, leading to significant weight loss (I lost 22lbs in the eight weeks of Beast Barracks). Once, forming up for a parade in the sally port, an upperclassman smashed the butt of his M-14 parade rifle as hard as he could into my chest while another braced me from behind. The blow crushed my breastplate, leaving a dark bruise behind. Next, I was ordered to “get those toes in,” while two upperclassmen drove their bayonets into my spit-shined leather dress shoes, ruining them. In later years, these indignities would be remembered, sometimes even fondly, as trials we had all endured as part of the West Point experience. And indeed they were. For me, though, a key lesson was how easily authority can be corrupted, and how thin the line could be between setting tough standards and abusing one’s subordinates, sometimes for no other reason than the sheer fun of it.
