A Cold War Soldier's Story

By; Jack Edward Davis
SSG, Retired
United States Army National Guard

This is a summary of my career in the US Army and the Georgia Army National Guard between June 1971 and November 1992. This document contains some profanity. It was the way my peers and I thought and talked, in the Army of the 1970's and 1980's. I will not apologize for its use in this document. It was the tongue of the realm. Some words have been blanked out at the suggestion of my friends. I hated to remove people's names that I served with. But. I was told that I would only be asking for trouble if I left them in. With the exception of one person, all the men I served with were fine soldiers and decent people. May God bless all. I first started this synopsis of my career back about 2001. I have been working on it for six years now. If anyone has any doubt about what is written down here, I can assure you that I kept better records than the unit clerks that had kept mine. I also have a set of orders for every change of station the military had me to do. It would take me a month to catalog the hundreds of pictures I have in my old footlocker out in the barn. After all these were the best years of my life.

Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has got one. Everybody also has a story to tell. For those who are interested, this is mine. I am as much a soldier today as I was a soldier then. I was neither an extremely good soldier nor an extremely bad soldier. I simply did the best I could and I am proud of my service to the citizens of the United States of America. I have no doubt that some civilians reading this will never understand some of my attitudes and beliefs.

That's tough.

I guess you had to be there.

                                                                       Jack Edward Davis

Basic Training June 18th through August 21st 1971

"B" Company  7th Training Bn  2nd Brigade

Ft. Jackson, S.C.

Advanced Individual Training August 22nd through December 10th 1971

"E" Battery  4th Training Bn

Ft. Sill, Ok.

As my Diabetes gets worse and I find it harder to get any restful sleep at night, I think back to those years when I was in the Army. I have always felt that those were, without doubt, the most intense years of my life. Over these last few years, I often think back to that time in my life when I could run three miles without breaking a sweat or go without sleep, sometimes as long as seventy-two hours and not be really tired.

I believe the best thing the Army ever offered to its troops, was three good meals a day (some of the time) and adequate health care and a reasonable physical training program that would develop your stamina. This is not to say there was not a lot wrong with the Army in those years, the early nineteen-seventies and believe me there was, but some things that the Army did do, they did do right.

I was in the active Army from June 1971 until January 1981 and then I was in the Army National Guard, here in Georgia, until I retired as a Staff Sergeant, in 1992. I had finished school at Heard High School in early June 1971 and less than two weeks later; I was in basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

I had decided at an early age, that I was going to go into the Army, because if I did not, there was a good chance that I would never see anything, except Western Georgia and Eastern Alabama. All my older brothers had served in the Army, either by joining or by receiving an invitation, to spend at least two years in the service courtesy of the local draft board.

JW was the first of us to go to the service, when he had joined in late 1956. Bubba as we called him, had worn out his welcome at home with Daddy and had also come to the attention of the local law enforcement as being a drinker and a general hell-raiser. He had found it to be to his advantage to join the Army and just maybe, get out of town for a while. J.W. would be stationed in Korea, Alaska and at several different post in the states, before leaving the Army in 1966, shortly after Daddy passed away. He served nine years and two months on active duty.

Eli, our oldest brother, had been drafted in 1960 and had a rather interesting two years working with leftover nuclear and chemical waste. Eli hated the "------- Army" as he called it, but served his time with no problems, because that was what you were taught to do when you had grown up in the South.

Paul was drafted in late 1965 and had spent a year in Vietnam shortly after Daddy died in 1966 and he had left there in the late fall of 1967, just shortly before the great Tet Offensive of 1968. I have no doubt that Paul's tour in Vietnam was also the longest year of our Mother's life. Some nights Mom would not be able to sleep, because she was so worried about Paul and she would get up and read her Bible, to calm herself.

It was a long year for all of us in the family.

When I was in my junior year of high school, I worked the second shift in extrusion at the aluminum plant. My knee had come out of joint in an accident at the plant and had torn up a lot of muscle tissue in my left leg. According to Dr ---- up at ------ -------- in Carrollton, it could have left me with a permanent limp for the rest of my life. I had a cast, on my left leg for almost 6 months and then it took another six more months of serious exercising, to finally get rid of that limp.

Dr - ---- ------ had told me he was going to fill out a form that would keep me from being drafted, because of my knee. He was somewhat taken aback when I vigorously objected to him doing that because I had told him I was planning on going into the service as soon as I finished high school.

I think he then suspected I also had mental problems. The Vietnam war had been on the TV every night on the news.

By then it had been going on for years.

Dr ---- had said, when they saw the scar tissue on my kneecap, he doubted they would take me. This was in 1969. By 1971, when the Army was really getting desperate for recruits, when I had my induction physical in Atlanta, the doctors were not about to let something like a little scar tissue on my knee stop an otherwise healthy body from being kept out of the "green machine."

I had finished high school, around the beginning of June 1971 and just the next day I had received a letter from the USMC, saying, when I received my draft notice that "they" would be waiting for me. *My birth date was number thirteen, in that years draft lottery and as soon as I finished high school, I no longer had a student deferment. I was reasonably intelligent enough by then, to have watched enough of the news, to know who usually got the short end of the stick of all of the service branches. The US Marines were the red-haired stepchild, of the US Navy. I had already planned on going into the Army.

* [ I had been told this by my school counselor. Whether it was true or not I have no idea.]

A day or so, after I received that letter and after some serious thinking, I walked into the recruiting office in Lagrange, Georgia and there was a Staff Sergeant named -----, who was the Army recruiter at the time. I had shown him the letter and told him that all my older brothers had served in the Army and that I would rather serve there than in the Corps. He looked at me and shook his head and had asked me, how soon could I leave?

I asked how soon, did I need to leave?

He said tomorrow afternoon at the latest and he would try to get me to Fort Jackson before the Marines knew what was going on. He said he wanted to make it clear to me that my chances of going to Vietnam were just as good in the Army, as they were in the Corp.

The next afternoon I was at the recruiters office about four o'clock in the afternoon and SSG ----- gave me a packet of paper work and put me on the bus at the old Greyhound station in Lagrange and from there I went to the Greyhound station in Atlanta.

In 1971 the Greyhound bus station in Atlanta was a filthy, drafty place where there were always pick-pockets and other assorted thieves and deviates, whose whole purpose in life was to rip off "country bumpkins," like I was and all the other "hayseeds," that did not know any better.

Several of us who had came in on the same bus walked over to the sign that said "Service Inductees Report Here" An employee of Greyhound told us that our pick-up would be in about thirty minutes and for us to sit on a bench in the corner, close to his desk.

All of us had that look on our face that said we were all from some small town, in either Georgia or Alabama and had probably never been away from home before in our lives. I noticed two sleazy looking guys, had started a conversation with a couple of the guys, sitting at the end of the bench near the door and it looked like they were showing something to those guys, while trying to conceal it beneath there coat. I heard a loud whistle and turned and saw that the Greyhound representative was waving his arm and I looked around and saw a pot-bellied Atlanta Cop, waddling across the floor of the bus station, pulling his nightstick from his belt. The two sleazy looking guys looked up and saw the cop and started running toward the door at high-speed. I found out later that they were trying to sell watches that they had stolen from some other hayseeds, earlier in the day.

About then a SP/4 (Specialist, 4th class) in fatigues (green work uniform) walked in and said for us to give him our packets and to load up in the van, outside the door. From there we went to the Induction Facility on Tenth Street and since it was too late in the evening to be processed, they gave us a chit for a hotel room and another chit for supper, in the small restaurant there.

We left there and we were taken to the Georgian Terrace Hotel. It had a lobby like the hotels in the movies I had seen and it had a bellhop and also a doorman. The floor was covered in carpet, that was beginning to show some wear and though the place had a kind of "seedy look," it was still impressive, at least to me. The room we were given was on the second floor, just above the entrance to the hotel and had four beds in it. We dumped our bags and of course promptly took up a collection for a bottle of liquor, from the liquor store, just across the street.

After we had gone down to eat, we had come back up to the room and we noticed that our windows opened right out onto the "porch," or marquee, above the entrance. It was a warm summer night, so we eased out on the roof, watched and listened, to the sounds of the big city. We sat down and drank bourbon and coke, until we finished the bottle among the four of us and we went back inside and went to sleep about ten o'clock. I remember when we first arrived at the desk, the night man had said he would knock on our door promptly at five o'clock and we would need to be downstairs at five thirty in the morning, to catch our ride to the induction facility.

The next thing I knew, someone was shaking my shoulder and saying wake up. I looked at my watch and it said seven thirty and I noticed every body "busting ass," to get dressed and packed up. We ran downstairs and the deskman said they had knocked on our door and that no one had answered, so they thought we had already left for the induction center. We ran outside and jumped into a taxi. We were worried about being in trouble with the military and we had not even got in it yet. The taxi driver laughed and said not to worry about it, because there were hundreds of men to be processed and he doubted anyone would notice. He was right.

We simply walked in and handed our papers to the guy at the desk and he just told us where to go to start processing. For the next twelve hours, I along with several dozen other guys, was poked with needles, looked at, tested and interviewed. It was eight o'clock that same night, when I was told that I had been accepted, as fit for service, in the United States Army. At about eight thirty I recited the oath of allegiance for the US Army with ten other guys and as we were leaving the swearing-in room, I saw four guys walk in with a Marine officer to take their oath. One of the guys was crying.

I went over to a desk where a SP/4 was sitting and he said I would immediately leave for Fort Jackson S.C. and Basic Training. From there I would proceed to Fort Sill Ok. for Forward Observer and Fire Direction Control, Advanced Individual Training.

Fifteen minutes later we were on an old raggedy-assed chartered bus and headed out of Atlanta for Columbia, S.C. and Basic Training. We arrived in Columbia at about one thirty in the morning and the driver asked us to have a copy of our orders in hand when we got to the Reception Station. The driver at that time had announced we were less than two blocks from the Main Gate of Ft. Jackson.

We had stopped for the red light just across from the front gate, when two long haired guys had jumped up and opened the back door, jumped out and ran off back down the street from the direction we had came from. The driver said that was the stupidest thing, they could possibly do. It turned out they were draftees who had made up their mind that they were not ready to go into the Army.

Two days later as we were getting ready to have our hair cut, a Military Police Car showed up at the barbershop and those two gentlemen were escorted to the head of the line, to be the first new troops to receive the traditional bald haircut. I remember how we laughed and snickered, as their long hair was shorn off. When we were marched from the barbershop to clothing issue, those two guys stayed with our platoon. One thing I will always remember, is that before we had gotten our haircuts, we all had a distinctive look and personality. When we left the barbershop we all looked the same, even though we were still in our civilian clothes.

This first week of the Army was called "zero week" back then, because it was not part of basic training and was mostly more "in processing " and this was when you drew your TA-50 (field gear) and your "basic issue" of clothing and uniforms. We had Non-Commissioned Officers or NCOs as we called them, to march us everywhere we needed to go.

Let me make one thing clear. These Sergeants were not "Drill Sergeants." We would not meet our drill sergeant until "week one," which was the first actual week of basic training. I will never forget the change we went through, when we left our air conditioned brick building, at the Reception Center and rode the bus to our Basic Training Company for Basic Combat Training (BCT). The buses turned down a long narrow street with wooden barracks, that ran parallel to other narrow streets with wooden barracks, that ran parallel to other narrow streets etc.....

It was a hot South Carolina afternoon and when the bus stopped a Sergeant in a WWI campaign hat (Smokey bear hat) and sunglasses climbed onto the bus. He had said, and I quote "You simple sob's have thirty seconds from now to be off this ------- bus and over there facing this direction." unquote. He immediately stepped off of the bus and stood to the side looking at his wristwatch. About a minute or so later the last one of us finally dropped his bag and stood at attention, while the Drill Sergeant just looked at us and sadly shook his head. He looked at us for about fifteen seconds more and finally said. "Stand at Ease! That means a relaxed form of parade rest, you ------- fools." I knew then that things were about to get interesting. The next thing we were told, was how to answer and address, the Drill Sergeant. It was "Yes, Drill Sergeant" or "No, Drill Sergeant" or whatever the hell you say, Drill Sergeant.

In June 1971, I was five feet, six inches tall and weighed one hundred seventy pounds and was not in the best of shape for an eighteen-year-old. I was not alone. The sun was hot, to say the least. The Drill Sergeant then spent the rest of the afternoon, running us up and down the company street, screaming at us until we would pass out from heat exhaustion and had us thinking we were going to die.

But of course, we didn't.

As each week went by we got tougher and tougher. That was one hot and humid, summer in South Carolina and I know I did at least two or maybe three thousand push-ups, in those eight weeks. One thing they could never do was to run me into the ground. Because of all the time I had spent with Mr ----- ------, training his bloodhounds and running cross-country while they tracked me, I had developed some good wind and also strong legs. While a lot of people could run faster than I, there were very few who could out distance me in basic training and I never fell out of a run, even in full field gear.

Every morning before breakfast we would go through a course that consisted of the run, dodge and jump. We had to do the "inverted crawl" and also the "monkey bars." There were about fifty bars about twenty inches apart and you would swing from one to the other, until you went from the beginning to the end, where you would swing around and come back the same way. I hated those things. By the end of the second week my hands were blistered and the blisters had burst and had become infected and were full of gray pus. That stuff would leak out of my hands onto the bars and the other troops were complaining about having to follow me and get my pus, on their hands.

One morning the Drill Sergeant called me to the side and looked at my hands and said I needed to go on "sick call." I went to the local dispensary and a medic cleaned and dressed my hands and wrote a "profile" excusing me from the bars as part of my exercise. The Drill Sergeant took one look at that and said, "---- that," and also said, "either do the bars or be recycled." That meant I would have to wait until my hands were healed and start basic training over again.

No way! Drill Sergeant.

He told me to come to his room at the end of the barracks every morning before breakfast and he would wrap my hands with tape, so I could get through the bars. After I had completed that, I would remove the tape and get on with my training. After about another week my hands were healed and were building up a good callus.

My other major malfunction was that I was constantly passing out in the chow line while standing at parade rest. My drill sergeant had told me it was because of all the useless fat I had lost in that short amount of time. At his suggestion I bought a bag of hard candy and would eat a piece every morning before PT (physical training) and that cut back on my dizzy spells.

Another soldier in my squad was not so lucky. He had fractured both ankles in training and had already been told he was being sent to the reception station where he would stay until he healed enough to start basic all over again.

The one thing I learned from that was that even though the Drill Sergeants made everything as hard as they could, if you were trying, they would help and I never saw any troop fail basic training that tried as hard as he could.

We were sometimes punished as a group. When a member of our platoon, could not keep up in the runs, had trouble with training or cleaning a rifle, we would all catch hell. I have seen a lot of movies over the years about so-called "blanket parties," in which troops were beaten by their squad or platoon members. That is just plain "bullshit." That was nothing more than an Army urban legend. The truth was, by this time, the Inspector General (IG) was breathing down the neck of all the basic training battalions and they would no longer allow the Drill Sergeants to encourage the troops to self discipline their fellow soldiers.

The Basic Training Company next door to us had a Drill Sergeant to save the life of a troop who dropped his hand grenade in the throwing pit. He grabbed it up and tossed it over the wall and knocked the troop to the ground just a second before it exploded. He later received the Army Life Saving Medal. We each threw two live grenades in basic training.

I will never forget the first time I had to report for pay. We all lined up behind the rifle range we were shooting on that day and a lieutenant with a pay box and two sergeants carrying loaded M-16's, as guards, had us stop in front of a little table. We would then salute and report for pay and then he would count out our money and we would sign a receipt and salute again and then another troop would step forward, to have his turn. I remember I received the princely sum of ninety six dollars, for my first month in the service as a private E-1. My older brother JW had told me that his first months pay in 1956, had been sixty one dollars.

One afternoon after returning from the rifle ranges, while we were cleaning our M-16 rifles for turn in; I went into the barracks to get some patches we had stored inside. When I came back out, I noticed everyone in the squad had gotten quiet and that the Drill Sergeant was standing over next to the corner, looking off into the distance. I eased back over to where I had left my rifle lying disassembled in parts, while I cleaned it. I promptly inventoried the parts and noticed a spring was missing. (I had been warned about this one, by at least two of my older brothers)

I turned and looked where the Drill Sergeant was standing and said that a part of my weapon was missing. He turned around looking pissed off and walked over and saying nothing, laid the missing part down and walked away.

I had waited until he had gotten out of sight and had turned to the guy next to me. I said that the next time someone took a piece of my rifle while I had left him to watch it, I was going to take my rifle and beat the hell out of him or whoever was guarding it at that time. I had also said they could do the same to me. We had to look out for each other. The secret to a successful basic training was to keep a low profile. It was better to not be noticed. That way you don't draw fire.

Of course when I had turned around and there was our Drill Sergeant leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, smiling his cold little smile. He stood up straight and casually walked away down the Company Street. After that incident he pretty much ignored our squad which was a blessing. That crap still went on in the other squads in the platoon, but it no longer went on in ours.

I can remember some runs from the rifle ranges that were four miles are further from our barracks. These runs were made in a steel pot, (what we had called our helmet.), M-16, full web gear and a rolled poncho and those miserable excuse for combat boots we had then. By the time we would stop in front of the barracks and would do a left facing movement, we would be so hot and exhausted, the Drill Sergeants would not even harass us for standing at attention and wobbling like a bunch of drunks.

I would have dreams at night that we were running, except instead of a Drill Sergeant up front, running and carrying our unit guidon (unit flag), we would be chasing a water fountain. In 1998 when I was in the hospital and deathly sick and the nurses would allow me no water, I would have that same dream.

When I was in my fourth week of basic training, I had just finished cleaning my M-16 and had turned it in, when I was told to immediately report to the First Sergeant in the orderly room. My Drill Sergeant was waiting outside with a pissed off "what have you done shithead?" look on his face and instructed me in the proper form of reporting to the First Sergeant and then said that Top would instruct me on reporting to the Company Commander (CO). He was a young Captain, newly returned from Vietnam.

I remember thinking "Oh Shit, what's wrong!" After seeing Top, I went into the CO's office and stopped in front of his desk and saluted and reported as instructed. He returned my salute and promptly informed me that my mother was on the phone and she would like to speak to me. (I remember wondering, what in God's name is going on?) I picked up the phone he handed me and it really was Mom on the phone. She said there were two Marines, one a lieutenant and one a sergeant, who were present with her in the living room, who had come to arrest me for failing to show up that week for induction into the Marine corps.

They wanted to know if I was interested in leaving the Army and transferring to Parris Island, South Carolina and starting over as a Marine candidate in their Boot Camp. (I could not believe what I was hearing.) My Mom said that the Lieutenant had said all it would take was a phone call and they would be over there to pick me up in the morning.

I had told my Mom, I absolutely loved the (-------) US Army and it would be a cold day in hell, before they would get me on Parris Island. (To start all this crap all over again, ten times worse? My Drill Sergeants were crazy and dangerous enough, without me looking for more trouble.)

All my love and goodbye, Mom.

The CO told me to go on back to the barracks and not to worry any about any jarheads. I saluted, did an about face and got out of there.

My CO was right, I never did hear from them again. I asked Mom about it later and she said she could not believe it, when they had driven up and told her they were there to arrest me. She said I had been in the US Army over a month and what the hell were they talking about?

She had gotten my draft notice in the mail, the week prior, and JW had told her to ignore it and to throw it away.

It was there turn then to look stupid and she said, she had really not wanted to call me but that little idiot Marine officer, had insisted on it.

About then, Mom had said JW had gotten home, about half lit and when he heard what they had Mom to do, he told them to get the hell out of there and leave his mother and brother alone.

Mom said they could not wait to get out of the house then.

As with most Heard County residents of my era who could shoot a rifle before they could read, I had very little trouble adjusting to the M-16 rifle. By the time we had to qualify at the end of basic, I ended up firing for five other people that day. I was not given a choice. Each time I would put on their shirt and report to the line and the testers would check that name off and issue a record card in that name and then I would go shoot for that person and qualify them. If you think this was uncommon then, you are wrong. This was quite common and just about every unit did it back then. By this time Basic Training had shrunk from sixteen weeks, to twelve weeks to the eight weeks it had become, when my company B-7-2, went through in 1971. A lot of people who do not have a back ground in weapons, find it hard to fire and hit with civilian rifles and it is five times as hard to train a person on military battle sights.

If they were going on to an infantry Advanced Individual Training, they would spend ten times as much time on the range as we did, in basic. The three grades, were "Expert", then "Sharpshooter" and the lowest was "Marksman." By the time I had qualified for five other people, getting them sharpshooter, I was so tired and shaky, the best I could do for myself, was marksman.

The point was that I knew how to sight and fire the M-16, so I never let it bother me. Over the years I was in the Army, I would sometimes qualify expert and sometimes when I had been issued a really half-assed rifle, I would not qualify at all, till I could get a good rifle. Some of the M-16 rifles were nothing but junk. They came out of the factory box almost useless. These were not the Colt rifles, but the ones made by other sub-contractors in the years following Vietnam.

I developed a love for the smell of ammunition. No kidding. When we would open a new can of ammo bandoleers, the smell of ether ( which is a major component in the powder) would boil up into our faces. I was extremely happy during basic because I got to shoot about all the ammo I wanted. They did not like to go through turn-in inspections with leftover ammo back then. Therefore when they had an idiot like Pvt. Davis, who would have slept on the rifle range if they had let him, they would have him to expend any leftover bandoleers of ammo. The biggest thrill of all was that no one expected me to pay for those bullets. I hand load my rifle ammo today and when I open a can of ether based rifle powder, the smell takes me back to those days on the rifle range. All of basic trainings trials and tribulations were worth it for the simple reason that I had loved to shoot.

In my sixth week of BCT, God came to visit us at Ft. Jackson, in the form of a man named General William Westmoreland, who had been the "Overall Commander" in Vietnam and who was now the Army Chief of Staff. At least we thought that. I will never forget the way all the officers and non-com's were acting. The preparation for his visit was astounding. It was the ultimate "dog and pony show." I got a glimpse of the great man, when he and his cortege, stood at the back of the range we were on and watched the relay before mine practice firing.

He had just looked like some ones, silver haired grandpa to me. But our Drill Sergeant made it clear, that, was as close to God, as most of us would ever get.

The author, July 1971.

It had rained every afternoon, for five weeks, during our basic training. Every afternoon, as we would start our march or run from the rifle range or wherever back to the barracks, huge thunderstorms would fill the sky and we would have some of the heaviest rain I have seen till this day. They would rival the monsoon rains, I would later see in Korea.

They would march us into large open fields, have us sit cross-legged on the ground, five yards apart and lay our rifle and steel helmet, across our laps. We would put our ponchos on then and pray we would not get hit by the lightning or that it would not become a hailstorm or a tornado.

The Drill Sergeants would just stand there, like nothing unusual was going on (Like green lightning rods.) and we would sit in the pouring rain until the storms blew over. We were taught that it does not rain in the Army. It simply rains on the Army. Get used to it.

I swear, one afternoon it rained so hard and so fast, that we ended up sitting in water in a big field that covered over our laps and all our gear. It was at least ten inches deep. The next day our Drill Sergeant allowed us to look at a newspaper, that had pictures of Columbia neighborhoods, that were completely flooded out from the same storm, just a few miles away.

Every class we had, while in Basic Training in 1971 always started with this statement. "When you get to Vietnam, blah, blah, blah, etc.....

I can remember few classes that we attended, that did not start any other way.

Of all the things that I have discovered over the years, that staying awake on a hot summers day, while listening to some drag-assed sergeant who loved the sound of his own voice, teach some boring class is one of the hardest things in the world to do. Our Drill Sergeant would wait until about eight or nine of us were comatose and then he would ease around behind the bleachers and throw a hand grenade simulator underneath the bleachers. The thing would explode and usually around fifteen people would rise up as one unit into the air and believe me, by the time our ass hit the seats, we would be wide-awake and then some.

One day while listening to some lame-assed JAG lieutenant, give a class on the Geneva Convention, which the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, we had been told, either did not know about or care about. About twenty of maybe fifty of us (two platoons) were about half-asleep, when another platoon's Drill Sergeant threw an artillery simulator under the bleachers. Those damn things are incredibly loud and powerful. It went off and fifty assholes, shot up into the air and came back down except this time, the old weak bleachers collapsed also. The poor Lt. was so pissed off; he could barely speak as he chewed out the Drill Sergeant for interrupting his class. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Our Drill Sergeant told us before he released us that evening, that if there was such a thing as a perfect cluster ----, that we should go down on record as having been involved in one that day.

The only other thing of note I feel that should be mentioned here was when our assistant Drill Sergeant, had gotten our whole platoon of thirty-two troops, into a Dempster Dumpster as the refuse containers were called behind the mess hall at that time. If that record was ever broken, I have never seen any documentation stating it. This was just one of many of the exciting and unique new experiences, I was exposed to when I started my Army Career.

One morning we were having bayonet drill and we were practicing spinning and lunging with a sheathed bayonet, on our M-16's. As one of our troops spun around, his bayonet caught one of our company drill sergeants against the side of his head, knocking him on his ass, out cold and it also damn near tore off his left ear. We had to send for help.

While we were waiting, several of us helped hold compresses to the side of his head, till another sergeant came running up. The guy who had hit the drill sergeant was scared "absolutely shitless" and just knew he was going to jail.

We were all scared.

They hauled the Drill Sergeant off to the dispensary and an hour later he walked up, head bandaged and never said anything to anyone and we continued training as normal. One week later the guy who had hit him, was promoted up to PV/2. The Drill Sergeant he had hit had recommended him for the promotion. He had not let the incident go against the private.

One Saturday after they had completed the scheduled training they had marched our whole company over to main post to a theater and we got to watch Special Services put on a show for us. They had a band made up of soldiers who played rock and roll music. This band played all the songs that the rock group "Chicago" played. We were stunned. These guys sounded just as good as the songs sounded on the radio. They even had a brass section and the singers and guitar players sounded as if they were the actual band members. The next day on Sunday, they had marched us back over there to watch them perform again. We had loved it because for a couple of hours, we were allowed to escape the almost constant harassment of basic training.

I never really got homesick. A lot of the troops did. I believe that they knew we had a lot of people having trouble coping with the sudden change of lifestyle. Little things like that Special Service's Show, was to let us know that eventually basic training would be over and we would be allowed to rejoin the real world.

We were told that every one of our Drill Sergeants had been to Vietnam at least twice and all had served in combat units and all of them had a "real" Combat Infantryman's Badge. Every one of them in our company had a Purple Heart (from being wounded in battle) and at least a Bronze Star for valor on their dress green uniforms. All of them were Airborne qualified and some were Rangers. We were told the Drill Sergeant course was at that time, one of the most difficult courses in the Army to complete. We were told only the best became Drill Sergeants.

Every night our Drill Sergeant would come back to the company at about nine o'clock from the NCO Club in a taxi, drunk on his ass, sometimes completely unconscious. We would have to unload him and carry him through the barracks to his room and lay him out on his bunk and close his door. It would thoroughly amaze me that at four thirty the next morning, he would be wide awake in starched fatigue uniform with creases pressed just perfect and then he would run us three miles and he would not even break a sweat.

There was one line you never crossed, when you were in Basic Training. You absolutely never made fun of a Drill Sergeant, No Matter What! One night as myself and the fireguard, were carrying our Drill Sergeant to his bunk, some of the platoon that lived upstairs were down visiting some of the people in the squad across the "great divide." They were looking at our Drill Sergeant and had started clucking like chickens and all of a sudden I heard someone yell out "Attention." The Drill Sergeant for the platoon next door had looked in to see what was going on and had heard those four idiots making the clucking sound. He had told the fireguard and I to "carry on." We continued on carrying the Drill Sergeant, to the Drill Sergeants room.

This Drill Sergeant told everyone else, except for the dumb sob's who had screwed up, to get out of the barracks and to wait outside in formation. After we had put our Drill Sergeant into his room, we stood around the corner and listened, as that Drill Sergeant put the fear of God into those four assholes.

As best as I can remember he said " That soldier has been in more combat and killed more gooks, than you sorry m----- ------s, could imagine. He survived a two-day battle in which his whole company lost fifty percent of its members. Every man in his squad was killed except for him and me and we damned near died from our wounds. I ought to beat the shit out of all you sorry m----- ------s right now. I tell you what! If you simple ----s can whip my ass, not a thing will happen to you. I hope you stupid ----s try it, because I am going to beat you sob's to death." He was in their faces and screaming at them and two of them were crying and they were all scared to death.

About then the back barracks door opened behind me and the CO eased in holding his finger to his mouth, so we would not yell "attention," like we had been trained to do. The fireguard and I stayed frozen, as he eased around the corner and moved down to where the confrontation was taking place. He eased up to where the Drill Sergeant could see him and quietly told the Drill Sergeant to go on about his business and that he was going to take a personal interest, in what happened to them sorry ----s.

The Drill Sergeant looked at the CO and then looked back at the four men who were shaking like leaves and now had the look of frightened children. He suddenly shook his head and turned and walked out of the barracks. The CO told the four men to go to their bunks and gather up all their gear and to report to the orderly room.

The next time I saw those dumb asses, they were in the STC or special training company. Over there they had a game called toss the telephone pole. Only people who screwed up really bad, were put into the STC. I believe they only stayed there a couple of days before going to another BCT unit to finish their basic training.

I always suspected that assholes that went out of their way to piss off a Drill Sergeant were not overly intelligent. I felt that some of the Drill Sergeants we had were dangerous people, who may or may not, have been playing with a full deck.

We had one troop from Puerto Rico, in my platoon, whom tried to play crazy. He would cry and scream and pitch a fit, just like a child. He was well educated, had said he came from a privileged family and had been drafted. I guess he thought if he acted crazy enough he would be sent home. In those days the Army had zero tolerance for shitheads and he had ended up in the STC also.

Another sorry, sob, in our company was a French-Canadian guy who had "come south," to join the American Army. The only word to describe that guy was the word "sorry." This guy had acted and talked like an animal. He had said he was from the back woods of Northern Quebec province. This guy made the worse red neck I had ever seen, look like a Rhodes Scholar. He was in a different platoon from ours and one day I heard some troops from that platoon talking about him being sent to STC, because they caught him stealing from their lockers. Later on in the cycle, we heard he had tried to rape another soldier in STC and had been remanded to the stockade pending a general courts martial.

In those days it was still possible to join the Army to try to start over, if you had really messed your life up at home. A lot of soldiers I served with had been advised to join the Army, or else they could join a chain gang and even Vietnam had sounded better than a state work camp. Some of these troops turned out to be excellent career soldiers, while others who could not conform to the service or who would get into even more trouble, would end up spending months in the stockade or even years in Fort Leavenworth's Disciplinary Barracks. The US Army had no patience for thieves and recidivist in those days.

Basic Training for the most part was equal opportunity. Blacks caught hell, just as often as whites did. PR's as Puerto Rican's were called, were treated the same. Our Drill Sergeants were Black, White and Hispanic. They gave everyone hell!

At the end of our third week of Basic our Drill Sergeant who liked to party every night at the NCO Club, came walking through the barracks carrying his gear and had said "so long assholes," walked out the door and we never saw him again. The next morning all our Drill Sergeants had been replaced by NCO's wearing shiny black helmet liners. They, were Army Reservist. They were going to run our company for a week.

It was like a vacation in hell. We skated, left and right. We got over, big-time. For a week we half-stepped.

My Drill Sergeant for the last four weeks of Basic Training was a black man from Columbus, Ga. named Drill Sergeant M----- and he was such a good comedian, he would have us falling out from laughing.

I will never forget when SSG M----- came into the barracks at the end of that week with the Army Reservist and said "O.K. assholes, vacations over. Fall out for formation! Now!"

He then put us in formation at the position of attention and began telling jokes. He was good. We would fight it, but eventually we would start laughing (we could not help it) and then he would scream at us, "who the hell are you ------- stump-jumpers laughing at?" We would then do maybe fifty pushups and then he would call our exhausted asses back to attention and tell more jokes and here we would go again. We caught up on all, the PT that we had not done with the Army Reservist, in those couple of hours. When he had finished with us that afternoon, we had crawled back into the barracks.

He was also the only one of the Drill Sergeants, who seemed to really know what was going on. One day, toward the end of Basic Training, he had marched our platoon over under some shady pine trees and quietly announced to us that even though most of us had orders for Vietnam, after we had completed AIT, we really had nothing to worry about. He said it was about over, over there. I noticed a lot less tension around the platoon, after he gave out that bit of knowledge. But they did not slack off one bit on the training.

I can remember seeing our company executive officer walking through the company area looking all pissed off. I heard one of the Drill Sergeants tell another that they had canceled the XO's orders to Vietnam. In those days having a combat patch and experience, might make the difference in whether or not an officer was promoted, later in his career.

One of Drill Sergeant M-----'s front teeth was outlined with gold and it had a white star in the middle. He was at least fifty years old and his hair was mostly gray. He had a small beer gut. He had decorations from the Korean War and Vietnam also. His combat patch had been the Indian Head of the 2nd Infantry Division. He had fought with them in Korea. He had told us that he served and fought with the 82nd Airborne Division in Vietnam. He had more decorations on his dress greens than all the other NCO's. He had well over twenty years in the Army, had told us he was retiring soon and he had seen it all. His favorite disciplinary tool was the "gorilla stomp." We would have to beat our chest as hard as we could, as we screamed at the top of our lungs and at the same time, run in place. Do that for about 5 minutes, but only if you are young and have a strong heart.

He never told us his first name and we damn well knew better than to ask!

In my basic training company, there were three RA's, as regular army people were called. It meant those stupid enough to join. (Like me) There were about one hundred US's, as the draftees were called. Who we had the most of was NG's, as the National Guard soldiers were called. I was also told that the NG stood for "not going" to Vietnam, as a lot of us were under orders to.

One day three other men and myself were detailed to clean around some abandoned barracks, on "Tank Hill." When we got over there, we had an enormous black guy put in charge of us. We eventually got into a conversation about our companies and that was when I found out, that not all basic training was equal. It turned out this humongous dude, was a pro-football player and that they had a special company, all their own, where they had their basic training.

He said it was made up of other pro-athletes and they put up with very little of the bullshit, that we were dished out. They just mostly did physical training and then loafed, the rest of the time. When they left Ft. Jackson, they either went home and piddled around with a local national guard or reserve unit, or if they had been stupid enough to be drafted, they ended up working somewhere, in Special Services, which was the morale and entertainment branch, of the Army. Very few of them ended up in field units or visited Vietnam. He was "matter of fact" about telling us this and I believe to this day, he was telling us the truth.

I can remember when two other NG's and I had to go on a detail on main post. For about two hours we pulled crab grass out of the lawn in front of the post headquarters building. It was a hot-assed miserable afternoon. They had assigned a SP/4 from some office there to supervise us. He would squat in the hot sun and would just watch us as we worked. He had on sunglasses and we could not see his eyes. He had a Vietnam combat patch on his shoulder, a really dark tan and I don't believe I ever saw him sweat a drop. He never spoke to us after telling us what to do. He just squatted over to the side and gazed off into the distance as we had worked. He had given me the "willies." After we had worked for a couple of hours, he had told us to load up in a van and he had taken us back to the company area. When he had driven away, I had remarked about his strange behavior. One of the National Guard troops had looked at me and laughed and had told me there had been nothing wrong with the guy, with the exception that he had been stoned out of his gourd. At that time I was so naive, I had no idea what he was talking about. I had absolutely no experience with either drugs or the drug culture.

As we were about two weeks away from graduation from basic training, we saw some soldiers and civilians, all around our area surveying and someone finally got up enough nerve to ask what was going on? We were told we would be the last cycle of basic trainees, to live in these old WWII wooden barracks and that new brick barracks would soon replace these.

Down the hill, just below the end of our company street, the Over Sea's Station was located. All troops going to duty stations in Europe or Turkey would either process overseas, here at Fort Jackson S.C. or at Fort Dix, N. J.

All troops returning from Europe or Turkey, would complete their Estimated Time of Separation (ETS) out-processing, at the same places, depending on their Home of Record. Later, after President Nixon stopped all troop movements to Vietnam, I would eventually process through there onto my first tour, in West Berlin.

On the day we finished basic training, I had my height and weight checked. I was now exactly five feet, eight inches tall and weighed one hundred forty four pounds. Quite a change in eight weeks time (from five feet, six inches and one hundred seventy pounds.)

Later at Fort Sill OK, after two different AIT's, (advanced individual training), I would measure five feet, ten inches tall and would weigh one hundred forty seven pounds. I had to exchange all my uniforms for new ones, because of my height increase. Like I said, some things the Army could do right.

After completing Basic Training I would spend several months at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. I trained as a forward observer (FO) and also as a member of Fire Direction Control (FDC) MOS ( Military Occupation Specialty ) 13E. I finally asked if I could take regular artillery training and I was also allowed to drop FDC training and take 13A MOS training. That is a cannoneer.

The reason I did this was because FDC training was nothing but a continuing struggle for me because of my piss-poor education. Later when I improved my education, I would go to the US Army Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare School, at Fort McClellan AL.

Ft. Sill, Oklahoma was the most windy and dusty place, I had ever seen. We would bust our ass to clean the barracks every morning, but when we returned in the evening, there would be a layer of dust on the floors and on our bunks. When cold weather came to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, it was with a wind that blew at least twenty knots. We were told the only thing between us and the Arctic Circle was about five or six barbed wire fences. We had believed that. Several of the people in our battery were from Los Angeles, California and when it snowed, you would have thought that a UFO had landed on the parade field. It was the first snow they had ever seen and they went wild. I was amazed at the way they had acted.

I was still having problems with getting faint and falling out in formation or in the damn chow line in the morning. We did not have near as much PT at Ft. Sill as in basic, but I was still having those aggravating spells. They had been mostly embarrassing, if anything.

I had gone back to eating a candy every morning, before we did PT. The spells stopped. My platoon Sgt had said it was happening because I was locking my knees, at the position of attention and also at parade rest and it was cutting off my circulation.

One day at Ft. Sill, they took eight of us to the grenade range and gave us each an M-79 grenade launcher and a case of HE grenades and said have at it. For two hours all we did was pop off grenades at some old wrecked vehicles, about two hundred meters downrange. There were several large mud holes down range and if your grenade landed in one of those, they would not explode.

The day we fired direct fire, with a 105-MM howitzer was one day I will never forget. I was on the direct fire sight and each time I would yell fire the wheel on that damn howitzer when it recoiled would actually climb up my leg. I fired direct fire with the 105-MM and later with a 155-MM howitzer. They were the ultimate varmint rifles.

The week before we finished AIT, they had a fire power demonstration. They fired two battalions of 105-MM howitzers on targets in the impact area. That totaled forty-eight howitzers. They fired direct fire, with an "8" howitzer" and also a 175-MM, Long Tom. They fired an Honest John missile out into the impact area and also had a flight of Air Force F-111 fighter-bombers to drop napalm canisters. The last thing they did was to set off a nuclear simulator on Signal Mountain.

I also saw several Vietnamese officers that day. They were students at the Artillery School there at Ft Sill. The West German Luftwaffe (air force) also had officers at Ft Sill, learning how to do "air mobile" of artillery pieces with Chinook and Sikorsky Sky Crane Helicopters. I remember hearing about them having some really spectacular crashes.

We had a howitzer in our training battalion to explode and it killed two men on the gun crew and seriously injured about four others. They were on towed 155-MM guns (M-114A1's) and for some reason, they were one fuse short that day. According to my platoon sergeant they had removed the nose plug from the round because it had to be turned into the ammo dump. Since there was no fuse screwed in the front of the round, when they rammed the round into the breech, the Comp-B explosive supplementary charge, popped out of the round and into the tube. When they pulled the lanyard and the howitzer fired, the round ran over the supplementary charge and exploded it in the tube, causing the whole round to explode. We heard another platoon sergeant talking to our First Sgt and he had said the Battery Commander (BC) of that unit, had made sure all the people injured were evacuated and had the area taped off and had promptly asked for a lawyer.

I remember seeing one of the guys that was injured, the day I left Ft Sill to come home. He was at the PX, in a wheel chair and had been told he would be in it, for the rest of his life. Besides being crippled his face had been rearranged and not in a nice way.

The day I left Ft. Sill, Oklahoma my AIT Company First Sergeant came up to me and told me there was a set of orders in my 201 File promoting me to Private First Class. He said it was for all the effort I had put out in training. I was surprised, as I had thought no one had even noticed me.

December 10th 1971, was the day I graduated from AIT. By then President Nixon had suspended, wholesale troop movements to the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). It was on the news. The war would still drag on for almost another four years.

After our orders to Vietnam had been revoked. We were given thirty days of leave and an additional ten days of travel time, while the Pentagon tried to figure out what in hell to do with us. On December 27th, two days after Christmas and after only sixteen days home, I told my Mom I was tired of sitting around Franklin and reported to the Overseas Station, on Ft. Jackson, received orders to Battery "C" 94th Field Artillery, in Berlin Brigade and formally started my military career.

Post Script

Many years later in 1981 when I had returned from my second tour in West Berlin to Ft. Jackson and was leaving the regular Army to go into the Ga. National Guard. I would look up on the hill and see the new air-conditioned brick barracks, that now stood where my old BCT barracks had stood on Ft. Jackson. I had wandered if maybe, the new post Vietnam, generation of soldiers might have enjoyed their basic training more if they had continued to live in those same old, hot as hell in the summer and cold as hell in the winter barracks.

Within the time I had been out of basic training there were several changes and new rules for the new Volunteer Army. The Drill Sergeants could no longer slap, kick or for that matter even curse at, or in front of the troops. Believe me they had done all of that to us and a hell of a lot more. In our time, it had gone with the territory. It was a "rite of passage."

Some of the soldiers were saying that basic training had become a joke. One soldier told me he got to fire his rifle about twice during his training. They were told the funding for their basic training would not allow them to "waste" ammo. They were told that their permanent party unit would be responsible for their marksmanship training because they were getting the money needed to pay for the ammo.

All the old bawdy, obscene, but wonderful cadence songs we had been taught could no longer be called in basic or even on a permanent party post. It was an Article 15 offense, just whistling to get someone's attention. This was because of the increase in female soldiers.

I have always considered myself extremely lucky to have the old style basic training that the troops had been having since beyond even the time of the Korean War and WWII. I always felt that it made me a tougher soldier for some trying times, later on in my active service. At least I could accurately shoot a rifle. It also came with bragging rites.

My first Berlin alert, January 1972.

The First West Berlin Assignment

Berlin Brigade

Battery "C" 94th FA

1972-1974

When I enlisted in the US Army in 1971, I was just a young countrified dumb-ass who had a lot to learn. The education I had received from Heard High, was minimal, to say the least. I had to really bust my ass, to keep up with my fellow soldiers. It was obvious their education's for the most part, were a hell of a lot better than mine had been. By the time I had finished my third week of AIT, as advanced individual training was called, I knew that as soon as I had a chance, I would have to improve my half-assed education. I blame none but myself for half-assing around in school, when I was young.

I still managed to keep up with the rest of my peers in training. After I had finally went through all the trouble to get a decent education, my original GT score, which determined what schools you were sent to, would continue to be a deficit. I was re-tested and got it raised and that had opened the door to the better MOS schools.

When I finished AIT in December 1971, I spent the minimum amount of time at home, in Franklin and reported to the Over Seas Station at Fort Jackson S.C. and got my assignment. When I had first arrived I had been shown a map of West Germany and was asked what region would I like to be stationed in. I pointed to the Bavarian region and the assignor said he would get back to me later that day.

About 1 PM they had sent for me and told me that I was going to be sent to West Berlin. At that time I had no idea that Berlin, was way the hell inside of East Germany. (I had slept through geography, before working the 2nd shift at the aluminum plant.) A sergeant sat me down and finally explained how the country of Germany, had been divided at the end of WW II. He had shown me on a map how Berlin was one hundred forty miles, inside of communist East Germany and that the "Wall" that divided Berlin, in reality surrounded the French, British and American Sectors.

I received several briefings of what we would have to put up with from the Russians and also the crap that the East Germans would try to dish out. I was told that it was a game of "one up man ship" that went on constantly. I was told all kinds of horror stories about what they might do to me, if I was ever detained or got in trouble with the Soviet Forces. You can damn well believe that by the time they had finished the briefing, I was wondering just what the hell was I getting into. Later after I had been stationed in West Berlin about six months, I determined that unless you were going back and forth into the East a lot, that you would have very few problems, with the Russians.

All newly arriving personnel who came to Berlin had to take "in country " training. For a week they taught us basic German language and taught us German Customs and Civil Laws. We then took a tour of both West and East Berlin. We went to Freedom Bridge where they had exchanged Francis Gary Powers, for the infamous, Colonel Abel. While we were at the checkpoint, on the road to Potsdam, all of a sudden the officer in charge had told us to stop taking pictures. A green Ford Galaxy station wagon driven by an American soldier in dress greens, came through the checkpoint and there was a line of bullet holes, stitched, across the back glass. It was one of the "Mission Cars" stationed at the NATO Mission Center in Potsdam, East Germany. These guys were allowed to snoop around in the East, under post WW II treaty rules. The Russians had the same setup in West Germany. It was dangerous work and C/94 had two of its members to transfer to that unit as drivers during my tour. Both men were from the south and had either past experience hauling "moonshine" or working for NASCAR. If these cars went into restricted areas they would be fired upon. The Army had several people killed and wounded over the years who had that duty.

My unit, Battery "C" 94th Field Artillery, was the only field artillery battery stationed behind the "Iron Curtain." We had six M-108 howitzers, which had 105-Millimeter, (MM) gun tubes. They were the last six 105-MM self-propelled guns, in the US Army's inventory. All the others had been converted to 155-MM. Our guns were still 105-MM because of the "Four Powers Agreement." The Russians did not want any 155-MM guns in West Berlin, because they were capable of firing nuclear warheads. In early 1973 we had our guns switched to 155-MM tubed, M-109 howitzers and the Russians raised all kinds of hell, but there was not a lot they could do about it.

We had been told, that the Government of Spain, had purchased our old M-108 howitzers.

The biggest problem I discovered was dealing with my fellow soldiers. A lot of the soldiers in Charlie/94 were newly returned from Vietnam. They were draftees, regular Army and a lot were career soldiers. They were hell raisers. Several were recovering from severe wounds and tropical diseases and it was not unusual to see six or seven people sitting in the snack bar, shivering, with malarial fevers, while there was six inches of snow on the ground outside. For my first year in C/94, (1972) we did no physical training, because of the condition of the recovering wounded.

We only worked a four-day week. We would sit in the motor pool and piddle with the guns, or have gunnery classes in the classroom. It was not unusual to be woken up at night, when screams would echo through the barracks, from some poor bastard's nightmare or flashback. Several of these guys were on the edge and we had been warned to use caution, when we had to deal with them. Sometimes they would explode into a rage that would scare the living hell out of me and the other newer soldiers. A lot of times this would happen and we would have no idea, what had set them off. They usually drank too much and some had other hidden addiction problems. We knew very little at that time about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

During the 1972 Munich Olympics several of the troops in C/94, myself included, had gotten tickets to some of the events through the Recreation Center. We had made the arrangements to go down the next week. Then the Black September terrorist group had taken the Israeli Athletes hostage and that put an end to our going to the Olympics.

I got to Berlin just as the terrorist groups like Baader-Meinhoff, Black September and the Red Brigade really got up to speed. We had to walk guard around our compounds, motor pools, our ammo dump and also around family housing. We wore field gear, flack jackets and one man carried the radio and a shotgun and the other guy carried an M-16 rifle. Despite all these precautions they almost set a bomb off behind the "NCO Club" by brigade HQ's. One of the guards saw a sack leaning against the back wall of the club, smoking and he had picked it up and set it out in the street before it exploded. The other guard ran into the club and told everyone to exit the front ASAP. It was Christmas Eve and the club was packed. I was pulling CQ runner in the barracks when the alert phone rang and the brigade Emergency Operations Center notified all the units about what had happened. Thankfully no one was hurt. The infantryman walking guard that night later received an Article 15 punishment for moving the bomb.

According to our brigade paper, the Berlin Observer, he had not followed proper procedure.

One summer Saturday morning about five o'clock there was a loud explosion outside of our barracks. I can remember waking up as I was falling to the floor from my bunk and hearing four other bodies in our section room doing the same as we scrambled to our wall lockers to get our flack jacket and steel pot. It was all for nothing. A bolt of lightning from an early morning thunderstorm had hit an oak tree nearby, at the EM club. That event was a good example of how serious we took the terrorist threat in Berlin, in those days.

We were constantly having bomb threats. It had gotten to the point that every time we had a good movie in the post theater we would have to get up and leave the theater right in the middle of the movie because some asshole had called in a bomb threat. A couple of times we had to get up at two o'clock in the morning because someone had called and said that there was a bomb hidden in our barracks. It was a nuisance to say the least.

All the enlisted men in the unit called the senior NCO's, lifers. (Some had deserved that title, while others did not.) This was most certainly not a term of endearment. Some of the NCOs in the battery were well respected, while others were despised. A lifer is best described as a predatory NCO, who would use you up to get what they wanted. What they wanted was usually their next promotion and eventually to retire, at as high a rank, as they could get. It was perfectly all right, to want to achieve that goal, if you were a competent and hard working NCO. The lifers were not interested in work, in any shape or form, nor were they interested in the welfare of their troops. They were professional grade ass-kissers. They were an embarrassment to real soldiers and they most certainly were a deficit to any unit. There were too many of them in C/94 and also in the Berlin Brigade overall. They did more damage to the US Army than good and I watched several good soldiers leave the service, because of them having bad experiences, with those  lifers. Some treated the troops like they were their personal servants. I seem to remember there were an awful lot of "lifers" in the Army in the Vietnam era.(I have been told that they do not exist in today's Army. I wonder about that.)

My Chief of Section, SSG ------ ----- was a tall black man from Watts in Los Angeles, a combat vet and he made damn sure the lifers in C/94, never messed with his people. He was a "stand up" NCO.

The NCO's that had treated the men, like men, had no trouble getting along with the troops. But the sorry-assed, martinet, clipboard-toting lifers, were despised by all of us. The same went with the officers.

Some of our officers were from Officers Candidate School and some were "ring knockers", as we called the West Pointers. Some were great people and were a pleasure to serve with, while others were sobs, that we would not trust to lead us to the latrine. I did not have that attitude when I had first arrived at C/94, but I damn sure did by the time I left there.

When I had first arrived at C/94 I had a good sense of humor and was open minded about people in general and also with most things military. Peer pressure and personal experience helped a lot, I am sure, in developing my attitude, during that formative first year of active duty. I noticed that the longer I was exposed to the troops of "C" Battery, the more cynical I became and less trusting of our senior NCO's and Officers. As I would travel about the world with the US Army, I would become more attuned to learning how to read the overall morale of a military unit, by simply spending a day with the people in a specific unit.

Years later, I would look back at that first tour in Berlin and I would realize, that even though we had been "strack" (strict disciplined) soldiers at the time, there had been a definite problem with morale in the unit. But at that time, I had just been a kid trying to get his "sea legs" and really didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground. I learned some hard lessons, to say the least, while with "C" Battery 94th Field Artillery, about people and also about myself.

All in all, my unit C/94, was a good cross section of people from all over the United States. By the time I had been in West Berlin six months and the US Army, ten whole months, I was promoted to SP/4. The slots were there and open and at that time getting promoted was a breeze. At that time I never dreamed that it would be seven years before I would see my next promotion.

There were several different ways to get to Berlin from West Germany. You could fly in to Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, which was in the American sector or you could drive up from West Germany, but that required using the checkpoints and traveling through East Germany and could be troublesome. The most popular way was to take the "Duty Train" and I always loved riding it. The American Duty Train was only allowed to transit East Germany during the night hours. The reason they did that was to keep us from seeing their military installations. The British Duty Train ran during the day and sometimes we would ride it, so we could see East Germany and all the military installations they did not want us to see, in the daylight. Go figure.

I had loved riding the American Duty Train, because they had Pullman type bunks and some of the best sleep I ever got, was riding and sleeping on that train. The British Duty Train had a Dining Car and served wine with the meal. Once when I rode the British Duty Train to Braunsweig, West Germany on a day trip, we saw the armies of the Warsaw Pact on maneuvers, while we were transiting through a large rural valley nearby Potsdam, East Germany. There was echelon after echelon of armored vehicles, moving up the valley in battle formation. It sure as hell impressed me. According to our intelligence people there were sixteen Warsaw Pact divisions around West Berlin and also four Russian Guards Armored Divisions and six Guards Motorized Rifle Divisions, that were rotated in and out of East Germany on a regular basis. I have no doubt that if we had ever went to war, that our piddling units in West Berlin would not have lasted ten minutes against the sustained Soviet air and ground assaults, we had been warned to expect. The common consensus was that the Russians would have simply written "POW" camp on their side of the wall.

There were flight lanes then, that aircraft transiting across East Germany had to follow to get to West Berlin. Pan Am, Lufthansa and BOAC, flew into West Berlin. If you were an American citizen, you were always advised to fly into West Berlin. During the Cold War, American citizens were discouraged from traveling behind the Iron Curtain. By the time I returned to West Berlin in the late 1970's they had shut down Tempelhof Airport and had re-developed Tegel Airport in the British Sector. After that Tempelhof was only used for American military aircraft.

All GI's were always told to either fly or to take the Duty Train. Any time you crossed East Germany on the ground, in a vehicle, you had to have a set of Flag Orders. These orders allowed you to transit Communist Territory, but only by the authorized routes. We always had to be in uniform, if we went into East Berlin or when we were traveling through East Germany. When we went to East Berlin, we always wore our dress green uniforms and we always had to go through Checkpoint Charlie. They would check us against our flag orders, to make sure we were not spies. It was always an unnecessary  hassle.

All the dairy products for the brigade were sent up to Berlin from West Germany. If the Russians wanted to ---- with us, they would disconnect the dairy car from the train that pulled it to Berlin. They would then park it on a siding until all the milk and eggs were spoiled and then they would send it on to Berlin. I can remember eating dehydrated eggs and drinking powdered milk for weeks. They did this several times during my first tour in Berlin.

The other two checkpoints were Checkpoint Bravo that exited from the American sector and you exited there to drive by Autobahn, to the border at Helmsted, West Germany, which was called Checkpoint Alpha. I drove in many a convoy between Berlin and Helmsted, on our way to and from Grafenwohr, which was where we went to train in West Germany. I wonder today what its like to drive anywhere in Germany, without going through the checkpoints. But in the 1970's it was a whole different world. At that time it was a dead serious business, being stationed in West Berlin.

We probably had the best duty station of all the Army units in the whole of Europe. We were not well liked by the units in West Germany for just that reason. When we were at Grafenwohr (Graf) we had to always travel in-groups of at least four or five. When they saw our Berlin patch, they would want to whip our asses. Some of the troops who were stationed in West Germany who would travel up to visit West Berlin, told me that we were in paradise. The troops in West Germany spent several months of the year in the field training. Berlin troops probably spent six weeks total, if that much. I once went to Gelhausen in West Germany, to go to M-548 ammo carrier school for a week.

The buildings we had stayed in were old German Wermacht barracks that had carved granite relief's of German soldiers wearing the old coal scuttle helmets over the entry. They had been slightly marred with what looked like machine gun bullet holes. Those barracks had been cold and drafty and the old bunks we had slept in were in pitiful condition. When I had looked in the other rooms that the permanent party troops lived in, I noticed their rooms were in the same condition as ours. One of their soldiers told me they were lucky to spend three months a year in them. They said their barracks were better than nothing at all and having to sleep on the ground, outside in the snow.

Our barracks in Berlin were renovated four-story buildings that during WW II had been a Telefunken communications factory and complex. Our furniture was Danish modern. Our barracks were steam heated. It was like a resort, compared to the barracks in West Germany. Everything had been paid for courtesy of the West German Government.

When we had traveled down to Grafenwohr to train we would live in old one story stucco barracks, that I was told had been there since the time of the Kaiser. Several had iron rings in the exterior wall at six foot intervals. We were told that the German Calvary at one-time, had tied their horses to those rings. Graf had been a training center for the Austrian/German Army, since the mid-1800s. We would usually spend two or three weeks down there before we would return to Berlin. We would go to the field and would spend three or four days, out on the ranges, firing our howitzers and training with our other crew served weapons, the big ".50 caliber" machine guns.

Occasionally we would be at Graf, the same time that "Reforger" was going on. Once a year in those days, the Big Red One, as we called the First Infantry Division, would airlift to West Germany. This was to show the Russians we were capable of re-enforcing our troops if it came to war. There would be so many units in the field, there at Graf, that it was like being in a war movie. I went to my first Graf training, in February 1972.

Our compound in Berlin was called McNair Compound and probably covered fifty acres. All the combat units in Berlin were stationed there, with the exception of 40th Armored who had there own compound close by Berlin Brigade Head Quarters. All our support and "spook" units as we called the Army Security Agency troops and the other intelligence units, were stationed on Andrews Compound, which was about a mile away from us.

Andrews Compound was made up of buildings that had housed the visiting athletes of Hitler's 1936 Olympic Games. The huge Olympic swimming pool was inside over there and we would go there and swim. Andrews was also where the German Employees operated our motor-shops, where all our howitzers and all the other armored vehicles were taken to be repaired.

We were told to keep our associations with the security troops on Andrews Compound to a minimum. Our officers would tell us that besides hostile intelligence personnel, from all the different Warsaw Pact countries, who were in West Berlin, we should also beware of our own intelligence people, who would use us if we did not watch ourselves. You could get into bad trouble, by getting involved with any of them. If you ------ up in West Berlin, you would be gone to West Germany within twenty-four hours, if not sooner. Getting involved in any incident involving the Russians or any of the intelligence agencies, both hostile or our own, could also get your ass in a serious bind.

I had befriended two Army Security Agency (ASA) soldiers on the flight over to Berlin and we had planned to get together and get a beer after we had gotten settled in. When the guys in my gun section heard about my plans, I was told that was not a good idea. I was promptly told I would avoid any socializing with those troops. The rule about non-fraternization with the security troops on Andrews was strictly enforced in those days. I did exactly as I had been told to do.

During my first tour in West Berlin we had two cooks in C/94, who traveled to West Germany on the Autobahn, between Checkpoint Bravo and Checkpoint Alpha. It seemed every time I turned around they were going down to Helmsted on a pass. One of these men was from here in Georgia. One Saturday I saw them leaving early to drive down to West Germany for the weekend. That was the last time I ever saw them. Later that afternoon a Major from the PMO or Provost Marshals Office as the Military Police (MP) were called, came into the barracks, along with some quiet men in civilian clothes and had the Battery Commander (BC) come in and open up the room, where those two guys lived. The told everybody in the barracks, to stay off that floor until they left. Later after they had left, we went down to those men's room and everything, with the exception of the empty lockers and stripped beds was gone. There was nothing in that room that had belonged to either. They had also taken each of their 201 files as we called the personnel file that was maintained in the orderly room. It was almost a month before we had a meeting in our classroom, with the BC and he told us what had happened.

Those two men had been contacted by a so-called escape organization there in West Berlin, who was willing to pay them ten thousand Deutsche Marks (about five thousand dollars back then), to smuggle people out of East Germany into West Germany. They would pull over quickly, at a rest stop on there way down to Helmsted and a man or woman, who was hidden close by, would run over to their car and they had a hollowed out space, under their back seat, where they would hide them. They would then proceed on and after a cursory inspection by Soviet Soldiers and then by the West German Police, at the checkpoint, they would proceed on till they got into town, where they would drop off the person and receive their money.

They had finally gotten caught. The BC said that on that particular Saturday, they had made the pick-up and had made it through both the Soviet and the West German checkpoint, at Helmsted and as soon as they were out of site of the Russians, they were pulled over and arrested by our people. The BC said they had been reassigned to a new post somewhere in West Germany and would definitely get courts-martial.

He made it clear that their punishment would be nothing, compared to what the Russians or East Germans would have done to them, if they had caught them!

Of course our intelligence people were hot because they said it was possible that the people they had smuggled out, had been hostile agents. We were taught in C/94, not to believe what any of what those intelligence people would tell us. Our side or theirs, it made no difference. They had said it was a good example, of what could happen to those who wanted to get involved with those individuals or anything involving the East-Germans.

A lot of the troops in "C" Battery had served in Vietnam and they were vocal in their disdain of the military and civilian intelligence organizations. They flat out no longer trusted them.

If there had been incidents involving any members of the battery and any of Berlin's intelligence units, I never heard about them. The only reason I could see them having this attitude was the disclosure of the "Operation Phoenix" program, which the CIA had run in Vietnam. By that time all the stories about their people's involvement with the smuggling of heroin, was becoming public knowledge. They were really pissed about rumors of dope being smuggled back to the United States inside of the bodies of soldiers, killed in action, who might have been their friends.

There were also several Senior NCO's in the Brigade, that were rumored to have been members of the "Khaki Mafia." These people were rumored to have made millions of dollars, from selling equipment and supplies, on the black market in Vietnam. A senior NCO in the 4th Bn of the 6th Infantry received courts martial and was busted to Pvt. and was discharged from the Army. We were told he had been involved in the black market in Vietnam and also in Berlin. We had several NCO's in the Brigade to be busted for illegally selling rationed items from the PX, the NCO club system and the Class VI, liquor store.

There was also an investigation of some staff officers and their wives, in the brigade, who were allegedly, illegally bringing antiques, from out of East Germany. All these alleged incidents concerning the NCO's and the staff officer's were reported in the Berlin Brigade newspaper, the Berlin Observer.

We had several people who were listed on our roster that we never saw around our unit. We would get their mail in our mailroom and then it would be sent onto brigade HQ. We were told to ask no questions about those names and wherever those people were, it did not concern us.

Our battery had its own mess hall. It had been in the basement of the building our barracks had been in. We were unique. All the other Infantry units on McNair Compound ate in battalion sized mess halls. I always felt that us having our own mess hall had been a deficit. We had alienated ourselves from the rest of the units on McNair. A lot of the other units had thought that we were "special" and did not want to associate with them.

I did love the "special brownies" that some of our cooks made, especially for us, in C/94. They were unique. We would never miss chow on those nights. The word would get out the day before those special brownies were prepared. Sometimes several of us in the battery, would all donate ten marks each, for the ingredients. Every time they had served those special brownies, I noticed that the Officers and NCOs sitting in their area, after supper, would be a little quieter than usual and they would sometimes, stare off into space. (They had no knowledge that our brownies were special.) Oh well. 

Eventually they would close down our mess hall and we would eat with 2/6 infantry, in their dining facility. After we had done that, I noticed the people in the infantry units had started to get along a lot better with us. However, most of us in the battery, would miss those special brownies. The whole time I was in Berlin, we never pulled KP as we called kitchen police. All our KP's were hired. Most of them had been Turks, who had immigrated to West Berlin. The only time we had pulled KP had been at Graf and when we had the guard mount at Spandau Prison.

During this same period I was taken to the range and I had my first chance at firing the Army ".45 Colt" pistol. I was given three magazines with seven rounds in each and they had put up a human body target at twenty-five meters. I fired up the first magazine and had zero hits. I fired the second magazine and again successfully missed the target. I locked and loaded the final magazine. By now everyone on the range had stopped to watch me. I fired six rounds out of seven and missed the target again. I fired the last round and it hit the pole the target was stapled to and shattered it and the target fell over. Everyone on the pistol range had then fell out, laughing their ass off. To this day I am at most a half-assed shot with a  pistol. I am still good to go with a rifle.

Both Berlin and Gelhausen would later both become famous for both having troops who had gotten upset and who had decided to go touring the countryside in M-60 tanks. The incident at Gelhausen had occurred shortly before I had gone down for M-548 ammo carrier school. One of their troops who had a falling out with his German girlfriend had gotten drunk and had stolen an M-60 tank and had driven it through the perimeter fence and down the street to the bar his girl friend was in and had threatened to kill everyone inside. He could have done some serious damage. Down in the zone (West Germany), all the tanks were parked with a "basic load" of live ammo on board. They had talked him out of it before anyone had been hurt.

They had just about the same thing to happen in Berlin. A troop in 40th Armor, whose German wife had left him, had "went bananas" and had also stolen an M-60 tank and he had decided to tour West Berlin. He had given both the MP's and the West Berlin Police a merry chase down Potsdamer Strasse and also down Kurfirstendam Strasse. He then decided he would drive  over to East Berlin and visit his wife who had left him and crossed over to the Russian Sector. When he had tried to force his way through Checkpoint Charlie, the Russian soldiers had either activated a steam barrier or according to other sources he hit an obstacle and that had knocked off a track. It has just been brought to my attention by a former 40th Armor troop via --------------.com that we had also deployed armor to shoot his tank to keep him out of the East. As I understand it that the Brigade Commander had been aboard a chase tank. I also had no idea that the Russians had also deployed tanks to the wall. (Remember we only knew what was reported on AFN or the local West Berlin TV stations. They were heavily censored.)  He had supposedly been turned over to the MP's and he was placed in "Ward Four" as they had called the "mental ward" at the brigade hospital. He eventually was given some jail time and a dishonorable discharge. According to everyone concerned he had been a good soldier and had been quiet and reserved. The Russians had photographed the inside of the tank and then they had returned it to us, without making a really big fuss. This was not typical of Berlin. I believe this had happened on a Saturday morning and before dark that day, German mechanics had entered our motor pools and had installed steering locks, on all our armored vehicles.

We did not have ammo stored on board our tracks in Berlin.

Thank God. The last thing we had needed was for some asshole to have fired several rounds over the wall.

One of the oddest duties I had ever performed was in 1973, when 2/6 Infantry (who we were attached to) had the detail of guarding Rudolph Hess, the Nazi War Criminal. Another SP/4 in my gun-section named --------- -------- and I were detailed to go up to Spandau Prison and pull KP in the mess hall in the prison. We stayed that night in Spandau Prison. Since we were not officially on guard we never saw Herr Hess. In August 1987 when Hess, had supposedly, committed suicide, they had completely dismantled the whole of Spandau Prison and had dumped the disassembled prison into a deep lake in northern Germany. I have a book in my personal library, that has a picture of the prison and I can identify the building we stayed in that night.

The prison was next to the British Army Barracks and their Berlin Detachment were stationed there. Later that year several members of the British infantry units had the unpopular detail of being sent into Northern Ireland to Belfast. In the early 70's that place was a real hellhole. One of the Brits, whom I knew, told me that a tour in Northern Ireland was a dangerous and miserable experience. He had said the barracks where they lived in Northern Ireland, were in reality, sand bagged bunkers.

The British Units with us in Berlin were the 1st Bn Queen's Regiment, 1st Bn the 22nd Cheshire Regiment, the 1st Bn The Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment and A Squadron 1st the Queen's Dragoons Guards (Armor). Occasionally they would attend functions in the NCO Club at Brigade HQ's and would usually drink most American's under the table.

We had five "Pack 75 MM Howitzers" and we fired salutes for visiting dignitaries when they visited Berlin. We fired them for Presidents and Ambassadors and also when General Westmoreland visited West Berlin. He was now the Commander of the Joint Chiefs. We also fired a fifty gun salute (one round every hour on the hour) when President Johnson died and also when President Truman died. We mostly wore our dress greens, or our OG Green wool uniforms. We had two sets of dress greens and two pairs of spit shined Corcoran jump boots, standing by, for emergencies. My left knee used to give me hell, because I had to kneel down on it, to load the little howitzer.

One of the worst details I ever had, was armed prisoner escort, for a black soldier in West Berlin to his courts martial, for the rape of a West Berlin female juvenile. He had been in our unit less than a week, when this happened. Since I was such a pathetic shot with a handgun, I was allowed to have my M-16 and a full magazine of rounds. I also put him in thumb cuffs, at the First Sergeants insistence. I was told he was later sentenced to twenty years at hard labor, in Mannheim Germany, at the Detention Center, ran by the US Army and NATO. He had supposedly committed his crime while under the influence of drugs.

There were two types of soldiers in Charlie Battery. They were classified into being either a "juicer" as the alcohol consumers were called, or they were "dopers" or "heads," as the hashish smokers and drug abusers were called. I had to learn to walk a fine line and try to get along with both groups. It was not easy for a young kid from the backwoods of Georgia. By the time I would finish my first tour in West Berlin, I would see kids right off the farm come to Berlin Brigade and leave as heroin addicts, less than a year or so later.

I would discover that our "junkies" were like vampires. They lived to create other junkies, so they would not be alone in their private hell. I and others, would try to warn the newer soldiers, about ------- around with those scum. Some would listen to us, while others would have to learn the hard way.

I may have been raised in the country, but I sure as hell was not stupid. I never understood the fascination some people had with narcotics. I would drink at the Enlisted Men's club and smoke hashish, to fit in, but the buck stopped there. I will admit to inhaling some of the smoke, as I have no future plans to run for any federal office.

The hard drug problem was so bad in West Berlin, among the troops of the brigade, that my unit C/94 and others, had several soldiers to be either discharged or jailed for drug abuse. It was also bad Army wide, especially in the units in West Germany. We had several enlisted troops and a decorated NCO, who came from Vietnam, to our unit who had hidden addiction problems, (mostly heroin) that had surfaced, after they became a part of C/94, our unit in West Berlin. The drug problem had gotten so bad in the brigade, that during my first tour in Berlin, they would march the whole brigade, to the hospital for urinalysis testing, at least once a month. It was a sad situation.

We never considered the hashish smokers as "hard drug" users. I had known enlisted people, NCOs and also officers, who had smoked hashish there in West Berlin. We had smoked hashish because there had been very little marijuana in Europe. It was not popular over there. Hashish was easier to conceal and had packed more punch, than "pot" did. If they had gone after the hashish smokers, the barracks would have been almost deserted. I am not saying everybody smoked dope, but a large percentage did. I cannot say this about all the units in Berlin Brigade, but I damn well can speak for C/94. I suspect that the other units on McNair, were basically in the same condition, that we had been in.

It was hard to tell sometimes, just who the junkies had been. If you think that they would all be "half assed" or constantly ------- up, you would be wrong. Their uniforms would be squared away and their boots would always be spit-shined. They would always be on time. They had kept a low profile. They would never be "wasted" on the job. I used to call them "maintenance" junkies.

There were a few though, who were easy to identify.

We had a SSG newly arrived in C/94, who had reenlisted for Berlin Brigade and C/94. He was assigned CQ duty one night. He was discovered during the night, totally wasted on "smack," by the Duty Officer. That was another name for heroin. Our Chief of Firing Battery, had come in the next morning and he had assigned that SSG to cleaning the first floor latrine, with a toothbrush. He was busted down two grades (Bn grade, Article 15) and eventually he would receive a bad conduct discharge, because he could not be rehabilitated. He had been decorated for his service in the "Nam" and had received a large reenlistment bonus. He was a nice guy and until that time, he was on the "fast track," to be promoted before his peers.

He had been the exception, for as the rule, most of our NCO's, had been straight, hard working soldiers. A lot had drank and some had drank way too much. Some had faced "demons in the night," because of their Vietnam service, but they were at least capable of staying sober during those times they had been on duty.

We had several junkies in C/94 during my first tour. I had some of those soldiers to tell me that they had requested being stationed in West Berlin, because of the quality of the dope and also because there was an almost guaranteed supply of heroin.

These guys did not give a rat's ass about soldiering. These people were drug addicts.

We no longer had the large pool of America's youth, to draw our troops from. It had all boiled down to numbers in the military. They needed people to replace the last of the draftees, who were ETS'ing, from our units every day. The recruiter's who had enlisted those people, who had been drug addicts, must have realized that they were no damned good. I could not understand how they had made it through the incoming physical exam, without being caught. How they had made it through basic training and AIT was beyond me! That had shown me that the Army must have really been desperate, to get replacements, during this period.

The draft had been stopped. I am proud to say I had served with the last of the draftees. The draftees were excellent soldiers and good people. Just because they had not liked the (-------) Army does not mean they were not good soldiers. There were some though, who had truly not given a damn, about the Army. There were some that were just plain sorry. Those same rules had also applied, to some of the people, who were joining the Army, during the same period. In C/94 we had several drafted enlisted soldiers, who were college grads and they were definitely a benefit to our unit. None of the enlisted soldiers arriving in C/94 after the draft had been stopped, were college graduates.

Those were some rough years in C/94. All the problems with the junkies had occurred in the later part of 1973 and in early 1974. As we lost our draftees, these sorry sob's, would be in the batches of replacements, that we would receive in C/94. We got some good soldiers to, but for every five people who would arrive, their would always seem to be one sorry bastard, who was a hard drug addict.

The few times the junkies could not find that damn dope, had truly been hard times for them. I remember two soldiers from C/94, when they would run low on money, would sink so low as to go "purse snatching" out on the street. I remember the BC and the First Sgt had seemed (at least to me) to not know "what in hell to do about it."

It had been the constant urine screening, which had finally cleaned up the brigade.

I know there will be people reading this and they will probably be wondering, why people like me and others, did not blow the whistle on all this shit. If we as enlisted people had interceded, by turning those people in, we could have gotten into a hell of a lot of trouble. There had been an unofficial rule in C/94 about not making waves. "Informing on someone" could have back-fired on the informer.

There was also an unwritten rule in C/94 about live and let live. Informing on someone, would also have been unacceptable behavior, to most of the other enlisted people in the battery during this period. If those bastard drug addicts had found out about an informer, it could have created a dangerous situation. If we had ------ with those sorry-assed junkies, we could have gotten hurt or worse! Some of our Officers and NCOs had been scared of those dudes. I had been wary of them myself. They had left me alone and I had stayed out of their way.

All the guys in the fourth gun section,(my section) were thankful, that there had been no junkies in it. We had people in our battery who had killed people, up close and personal. Some had done that in combat. Some had done that in other circumstances, where we had known better, than to ask for details. When I was at Graf, I would always leave my billfold with a killer, while I went to take a shower. I knew when I got it back, that all my money was still there, safe and sound.

We had all known better than to trust a sorry-assed junkie. They were loyal to nothing, but their next "fix."

During my second tour in Berlin, in C/94, the drug problem in the brigade, was not as bad at that time, but was still a continuing problem. The Soviets did little or nothing at all to halt the flow of drugs. We were involved in a Cold War. There were most certainly casualties on our side, because of those drugs. The "Stasi" as the East German intelligence agency was called, made sure that those damn addicts had a good supply of drugs.

Later the Army would have disciplinary battalions at Fort Riley, Kansas. The Army would send problem soldiers to those units to try to straighten them out. The Army had finally gotten around to treating the Vietnam Vets, for their addiction problems.

One event that will always be in my memory was the day our Section Chief, SSG ------ ----- had gotten married. We had brought two M-109s up from the motor pool and had crossed their elevated tubes and had placed red carpet beneath them and then we had our Chief and his new bride photographed seated in chairs on the carpet on the howitzer decks.

That evening we had a big "blow out" at the EM club, on McNair compound. There had been cases of Champagne and we had all gotten totally "shit faced." We had left the club and had gone back to the barracks. Some of the guys in our section had lit up some hashish. I had taken a few tokes with them and the world had suddenly gotten tilted. I was already drunk on my ass. The smell of the smoke was making me sick.

I had gone to the latrine and I had been involved in a serious discussion with "Ralph" and "Europe" and "Buick" which were the sounds one makes, while one is puking his guts out. After about twenty minutes of toilet hugging, I had returned to our section room feeling somewhat better.

Everybody was gone?

I was standing there wondering where the hell everybody was, when a friend of mine stuck his head in the door and told me that all the guys had been "busted" for smoking hashish, by the Bn CQ. He had told me that the only reason they had not taken him was the fact, that he had been puking his guts out, while hanging out of the window.

They had decided to leave him alone.

They had taken the other guys because they were ambulatory. They were still able to walk.

The ones they did arrest to the best of my knowledge only received non-judicial punishment. They were busted one grade and fined about two hundred dollars. I seem to remember they had to go over to the 2/6 infantry, Bn CO's office for counseling. I seem to also remember they had said they "bullshitted" the Colonel and gotten out of being punished by a Courts Marshal. That was about the most serious crime, I can remember being committed by the members of C/94, there in the barracks.

Everybody in my gun section had smoked dope. I did to.

I did not smoke a lot, but I was realistic enough to know that I had to live and work on a daily basis with those people. The bottom line was that if I had not smoked with them, they would not have trusted me. I liked those guys, they were my friends and they were good soldiers and good people. A lot of them had taken "acid" as LSD was called back then. I drew the line there. There was no way I was going to fool with that shit. I can remember early one morning as we were convoying across the city, during our monthly training alert, hearing our thoroughly stoned M-109 driver describing the beautiful lights and colors over the intercom. SSG ----- and I had just looked at each other and shook our heads.

It had finally gotten to the point that "they, would not go out of their way" to bust anyone for smoking hashish, because they would rather have the troops doing that stuff, than the really hard shit, like heroin, which had been available on any street corner downtown.

If the troops smoking hashish, did their jobs and kept their mouths shut and maintained a very low profile, they would leave them alone. At that time the urinalysis test we had taken did not show positive for hashish or for hallucinogenic drugs.

I can remember I was also constantly being sent to Equal Opportunity Seminars and also to Drug Awareness Seminars. At the Equal Opportunity Seminars, I was taught that my fellow black soldiers and I should learn to get along with each other. At the Drug Awareness Seminars we would find out where the best hashish could be bought for the best price. The "dudes" who had been put in charge of the anti-drug program, had sure as hell, not seemed too anti-drug to me. They did try to steer us away from the hard drugs, like heroin.

I can remember walking from Andrews Compound, one Saturday afternoon, back to McNair compound and the wind, which was blowing from McNair Compound, had been rich with the smell of burning hashish. As I had gotten closer to the compound the stronger the smell had gotten. It had been the same one evening when I had been walking up Goerzallee. I am pretty sure C/94, was not responsible for creating all that smell.

I can remember walking down both the Ku-Dam and Potsdamer Strasse and there would be people on the street corners with burlap covered bricks of hashish for sale that may have originated in Tibet, Nepal or even Afghanistan. There were bars downtown that had catered almost exclusively to heroin addicts. For the most part during my first tour the West Berlin Police did very little to put a stop to it.

That was the way things were in West Berlin during my first tour. It would not be fair to write about my experiences in C/94 and Berlin Brigade, if I had left out any references to the hard drug problem that had plagued the brigade.

There had been a "Curry Stand" right outside of the back gate of McNair Compound and once you were hooked on the curry and the shish kabob and the wonderful little hard rolls that they gave us with the meal you stayed that way. I also loved their potato salad. That place would be packed every damn night. All the troops sneaking around smoking hashish were without doubt, their number one customers.

I have no cravings for hashish, alcohol or even cigarettes anymore. I had enough of all that shit years ago. I still have cravings however for "Curry Wurst mit Kartoffel Salat." I will dream about it sometimes.

I am a curry wurst junkie.

I will every so often, take a polish sausage and fry it and put curry powder and ketchup on it. It ain't the same by a long shot, but it satisfies my cravings, for at least a couple of months. In all these years I have not found a potato salad as good as theirs was.

I can remember hearing the expression "I'll buy if you fly." We would buy some ones meal, if they would go and stand in those long lines. It had been owned and operated by a retired SFC and his German wife.

They had to have gotten rich from all our business.

In those days you could not resign or "quit" the Army if you didn't like it. It damn near took an Act of God, to get the hell out before your ETS. I had served with people who had discovered they absolutely abhorred, hated, loathed, detested or despised the "------- Army" and they too, were always constantly scheming, trying to find an easy way out. There were no easy ways to get out back then.

Most of them would buckle down and eventually they would ETS.

If they had raised enough hell or kept getting caught with dope, the Army would give those guys an "undesirable" or even a "bad conduct" discharge. They might also tour the "post stockade" on their way out. Most people who got those discharges could wait a few years and with a competent attorney, they could "petition" to have their discharge upgraded, to a "general" discharge. Then they could receive limited benefits. While I had been on active duty if you had to leave the service, because of caring for a member of your family, you could get a "hardship" discharge. Most of these were recorded as being, "under honorable conditions."

We had to really screw up to get a "dishonorable" discharge. That one was reserved for the true criminals.

While I had been in C/94 I can remember no members of the unit admitting to being "gay" or of the homosexual persuasion. If there had been any they were intelligent enough to stay quiet about it. If there had been gay soldiers in my unit, I probably would not have given a damn. If they had left me alone, I would have left them alone. I had more than enough "real time" problems, with my fellow soldiers during those years in the service, to have to deal with.

We were political soldiers, there, in West Berlin. Our sole purpose, I felt, was to have parades and look handsome. Every spring after returning from Graf, when parade season was about to start, we would strip the paint off our howitzers and then the German paint shop employees would repaint our vehicles, a dark glossy green. If you would give them a fifth of Johnny Walker, Red Label Scotch, they would add a can of gloss black paint and then your howitzer would just glow. Before we would drive in the parades, we would wipe down the exterior of our howitzers with Old English, furniture polish and you could see yourself in the reflection off our tracks. Our vehicles would be immaculate.

When we went to Graf to train, the units down there were stunned when they saw our vehicles. Then they would laugh their asses off. All their tracks were painted flat olive drab, so that they would blend into the German Forest. A Reforger troop once asked me how the hell long, did we expect to survive in combat with that paint job. I looked him straight in the eye and told him we were planning on setting up in a Mercedes Benz dealership, up there in West Berlin and we firmly believed the Russians would never notice us.

One memorable experience that involved me was during an Army training evaluation or ATT, (an early version of a modern ARTEP) during our summer Graf trip in 1973. I had been assigned as the M-548 ammo carrier driver and my fellow section member ------ --------- and I were on the back half of the perimeter one night, as rear security. We had hear