The army story has been a hard one to get started because it is a daunting task to take almost 3 years of daily weirdness, which actually requires a bit of a preface, to get underway. The preface might seem like it has nothing to do with anything until later in the story. In an effort to boil all of that down to an entertaining read and something that I have the ability to write out without it taking me a year my plan is to provide a synopsis of how the army experience went and then, later in life, include specific incidents that are worthy of taking the time to write out. So with that you might keep in mind that there will be far more things that had occurred than I have the inclination, or time, to include for now. 

Also needed here is a preface to the preface; I want to say that I have the utmost respect for those who have fought and died in the name of protecting our freedoms. But the “military” is many things at different times and in different wars and conflicts and peacetime. Those who were duped into going to Vietnam, or drafted, for example, as opposed to those who fought in World Wars, had completely different reasons for being there. Then there are the different ways that people are affected during wars, and specifics like if it is wartime or peacetime, where they are stationed, and who commands them. There and so many variables that to group the “military” into one conceptual entity is a failure to understand it.

Add to this mix that I was a 17 year old angry and lost punk kid who thought that by joining the military that I could become a “man”.  They had just rolled out the new all-volunteer army where the recruiters told the potential new recruits that it was just like a regular job where, if you didn’t like it, you could quit and go home. That seemed like a fair deal to me.

I always saw myself as someone who would not take any shit from anyone and the army would instill that in me even further as I saw it. I also liked the idea of being able to say that “I’d get to see the world” and my decision to go to Europe was based on that idea. Admittedly I failed myself in that regard to some degree. I could have seen a lot more of it, but I didn’t, and I can understand why in retrospect. What happened instead is that I became just an older punk kid, only perhaps more of a punk, certainly more of a seasoned criminal, in many regards. My criminal propensities took off and for a soldier I was rolling in money. I was also getting busted a fair amount of times, but, that came with the territory. My main objective as far as that was concerned was to not get busted for anything that I might get court martialed for. The fact was that there were actually plenty of things that I did which were felonious. Still I didn’t get caught for the worst things and those things that I did get busted for where always within the army article 15 range. I will delve into the article 15’s and the impending arrests and convictions later.

First that let’s go back to the summer of 1976 where I was 17 years old, on probation and I was offered a “job” that was set up by my probation officer earning minimum wage for some program, probably state, or federally funded, that was doing some youth based newspaper thing. To be honest I wasn’t even real clear about what was going on because all I did was go to some house that had been turned into an “office” a few times where I played Ping-Pong and I was given the title of “public relations”. Meanwhile my buddy Jim (there were three main buddies that I hung out with, all named “Jim”) who I was in a previous foster home with and who I had been talking about joining the Army with popped into the bowling alley one day and asked if I wanted to go join the army. The recruiters were just upstairs from the bowling alley where we hung out. Pinball and billiards was pretty much all we were interested in, aside from girls, beer, pot and cigarettes. Anyway he entered the bowling alley one day and asked me “Bake (as I was known) I’m gonna go join the army, do you want to come with me?” I remember thinking about it for all of less than a minute before saying “let’s go”.

Upstairs we went and we signed up to the newly established all-volunteer Army. Remember that the recruiters were saying that it was “Like a regular job. You could quit and maybe even keep your benefits if you don’t like it”, which seems absurd in retrospect. Understandably, when I tell people that as part of the story I’m often met with an incredulity that we fell for it with an abundance of naivety, but as I found out later all new recruits all over the country were told that so I think that was the plan at that point, probably established by the pentagon, or wherever these decision are made. But what happened in practical terms was that once we recruits got to our permanent duty station, in my case of Germany, there were two problems that caused many of us to want to leave. One was that the soldiers from Vietnam-era on were not interested in dealing with youngsters who expected it to be a job and to be treated with something other than what I imagine is the disdain afforded all recruits. The other was that there was a pretty serious recession happening and the dollar was weak and the German Mark was strong and going into what we called “the economy” of Europe was costly. The result of that was that it kept most soldiers on post most of the time due to the cost. But that gets ahead of the story because first there were plenty of hijinks afoot in basic training and advanced individual training, otherwise known as AIT. But even before the actual getting into basic training there is a story to be had.

Jim and I both wanted to jump out of airplanes so we joined the 173rd airborne brigade, which is located in Vicenza, Italy, interestingly less than an hour from where I am writing this. We joined as what was known as “the buddy system”. Being in the buddy system meant that no matter what happened, with obvious exceptions, that we would be inseparable. We also went “delayed entry”, which is to say we had 30 days before we had to report to the induction station. Meanwhile we had to go to the Los Angeles AAFES to do some pre-induction things. One of the things we needed to do was to complete a depth perception test for going into airborne. I was supposed to wear glasses since I was 10 and had effectively learned how to navigate the world in a haze and, as weird as this may sound, didn’t even think that it might affect the test. To me all of the circles that they showed were the same, just blurred. But the guy giving the test saw that we were in the buddy system and for whatever reason had me keep guessing until I got it right. In retrospect I wonder why he bothered having me actually say anything at all instead of just passing me through, since that’s what he was going to go anyway, but there you have it.

So why would I bother you with that trivial info? Because a few days before our 30 days where up and we were due to go to the induction station Jim got into a collision with a van on his motorcycle and was laid up in traction at the hospital. I figured I was already committed to going in and so I went to the induction center on the appointed date only to be told that since I didn’t have a buddy that my contract was null and void. They asked what I wanted to do, including giving me the option going home, which wasn’t on my agenda. I still liked the idea of jumping out of airplanes in Italy so, let’s go. Except that when I did the depth perception test this time the guy giving the test rejected me immediately. So, okay, what are my options now? They gave me a list of jobs that I qualified for from the aptitude test given at the start of this thing and duty stations I could go to and I blindly chose “generator mechanic in Germany”. This all was definitely a harbinger of things to come. 

Basic training lasts for 10 weeks. Those weeks consist of 6 days per week of approximately 12 to 14 hours per day of training. Of course basic training is supposed to suck, so no surprise there. What was a surprise came after the first chaotic hours of the first night, after we were chased out of the cattle cars and ordered repeatedly to “grab your gear you maggots, and run up that hill!” We were later marched into an auditorium and given stacks of paperwork to fill out in the midst of general chaos as drill instructors (DI’s) were busy berating, barking at, and otherwise harassing the recruits. It was in this psychological melee that I was ordered upfront where I was asked if I was really a “public relations” person for a newspaper. Oh-oh! “YES DRILL SARGANT!” The grizzled hard-core DI looked at my 17 year old baby face incredulously and told me “I’m making you a platoon leader, don’t fuck up.”

I was suddenly the “leader” of men who were mostly in their mid to late 20’s; one man was somewhere in his early 30’s from New York City. Talk about a set-up for disaster! The fact was that I had no business telling these men what to do. I had absolutely no self-confidence in the fact that I was their “leader” and there is no doubt that came through. I was resented by some and openly loathed by others.

That is where I encountered a very real, deep, bigotry for the first time. As much as I was raised by any one person my mother was extremely liberal and anti-racist. I was taught the truth of the fact that skin pigment did not matter when it comes to determining the quality of the individual. Yeah, so why did all of these folks of African descent seemingly hate my guts without knowing the first thing about me? Unfortunately this white-black separatist bullshit continued throughout my stay in the army.  I was plenty naive when I entered that army when it came to race tensions at that stratum of the American culture, which was naturally a very low rung of the socio-economic latter, but I learned pretty quickly.

At some point, perhaps three weeks into basics, I left my locker unlocked, which the DI’s take very seriously. Returning to the barracks all of the contents of my locker, which was everything, was strewn all over the place. This included nice little artistic touches like tent posts driven through various fruits I had saved, which, of course, the maid was unavailable to clean up. At that point they made a very understandable decision to demote me from nothing to nobody, and take away my position as platoon leader. This was the first of what turned out to be a long list of demotions over the course of my stay in the army.

When it came time to “graduate” from basics I was running a temperature and had to go to sickbay. Again, this was fine with me and again it portended a long line of failures to attend my own graduations. I didn’t graduate from High School so no attendance there, then basic training, advanced individual training, 3 of my 4 college graduations went unattended by yours truly. The only graduation that I went to was for my master’s degree and that was also attended by my orbs, of which I will write about someday perhaps. Meanwhile as soon as we had graduated from basics we were allowed to go home for a couple of weeks before starting our advanced individual training. By that time the DI’s had what is known in the army as having “a case of the ass” with me. That would be an army term meaning they didn’t like me and had it out for me.

I’m guessing that they looked stupid to their superiors for putting a 17 year old kid in a leadership position and they probably also had some kind of problem with my failure to be a part in the graduation, since everyone knew that sick call was the one way to get out of doing anything. So they decided it would be a good idea to make me walk on my hands in the prone position, which is the position where your body is like a plank at the top of a push-up. I had to drag my feet behind me the length of the barracks, into their office where they said I needed to “give them” 100 push-ups in a row before I could go home. Remember I had a temperature and while I was very fit at that time 100 consecutive pushups was not something that I could do in that condition. I can’t remember how many I was able to do, but I want to say into the 70’s. But I couldn’t make it to 100 so I kept on starting over until they were done having their fun and they moved on to the next sadistic thing.  

I accepted that the boot-camp experience was something shitty and to be expected. I figured that the next thing to do was simply move on to the next shitty experience of advanced individual training (AIT). I was sent to Fort Belvoir, Virginia to learn how to be a generator mechanic. I know that I had previously stated that I wanted to join the army to become a “man” and that I knew that basic training was going to suck, but I was getting soured on the experience mighty quickly. Plus the whole idea of basic training is to tear the recruit down and rebuild him/her into a soldier who would take orders without thinking twice. Well, I wasn’t built for that kind of thing as it turns out. So we men at AIT had separated  ourselves into those who were all about becoming good soldiers and those of us who thought of it as a job. Many had something of a derelict past since the military back then was often times an option given by the courts instead of jail time. We had money in pocket and were going to be housed and fed, so, let’s see what we can get away with. You can guess which group I landed in?

At 17 years old when I joined I was mostly interested in getting drunk, high, and laid. The first two came easy enough, but in 1976 men with buzz cuts stood out, and not in any kind of appealing way. Plus we were at AIT for only 10 weeks and we would be spending most of our time on base, so there was pretty much zero chance of developing enough of a relationship with a woman to have sex. At 17 having already spent 10 weeks in basic training and only a short “dry” stint at home I was plenty eager to do what was standard at that time and place, which was go down into Washing D.C. to 14th avenue and solicit prostitutes. This project was usually one where a buddy came along, or maybe two, and got their own action, typically using a bar as a rendezvous point later on. It was not unusual for us to get a cab back to post and then all take off in different directions to avoid paying the cabbie. Other than that it was 10 weeks of “getting through” the training of being a generator mechanic, which mostly consisted of trouble shooting and learning which parts to replace. It was definitely not rocket science.

So, okay, basics sucked and it was supposed to and yet I started to sour on the whole army experience. AIT got me kind of further aimed at an anti-army stance. But I was open-minded to the idea that I had to settle into my permanent duty station to get my bearings and to determine what was what. Well what I encountered when I got there was not good. There was a clear and palpable tension between the established military folks, commonly called “lifers” and these new all-volunteer recruits who seemed to think they we were at a job and should be treated with a little dignity. The lifers were backed by a white-bread Company Commander who probably went through ROTC to get his commission. He probably weighed all of 130 lbs. and seemed to me that he was the kind of person who got his ass stomped regularly in school and who finally had some power to make other people’s lives more miserable when he could. His second in command fit perfectly (keep in mind this is the description as an angry 17 to 19 year old street kid) as a hundred lb. man-hating-dyke-bitch (remember where I was coming from) who accentuated the Company Commanders little power trips as a sadistic creep in her own right.

There was a lot of unnecessary yelling going on during morning formation. These tirades were mostly along the lines of for tedious bullshit like a thread hanging off of a shirt, or pants not properly tucked into ones boots, otherwise known as bloused. As for me, with my authority issues deeply entrenched in me I didn’t do well being a part of that program. My unwillingness to be a part of that came from what I, in my clearly psychologically self-centered pseudo-superior way, thought of as being berated by stupid, weak, and lesser human beings than me.  

So with an immediate disdain for the whole thing I decided that I wanted out. The problem, as stated previously, was that I was not alone. So many guys wanted out at that time that some of them were happy and willing to take dishonorable discharged by doing things that were so egregious that they couldn’t be overlooked. As for me I felt like I had already put in too much time and effort into the army that I was going to get something out of it! I figured that if I walked a tightrope between being a thorn in their side, while not going too far in my peaceful non-compliance, or, more to the point, purposeful idiocy, as to avoid being court martialed that maybe they would see it in their best interest to get me out of there. Oh, how naive I was.   

I worked my “project” with the delusional optimism and alleged precision afforded a 17 year old confidently stupid young man who clearly had no idea what he was getting himself into. In retrospect I seemed unaware to the fact that I had decided to do battle with a power structure of an immensity of that of the U.S. Army. I’m not sure when it occurred to me that if they gave me what I wanted, which was a chapter 5 discharge, which would allow me to leave the army while keeping all of my benefits, then everyone would pull the same shit and they could not have that happen. So, many months into my “project” I found myself in a Mexican stand-off, which is to say that they were going to allow me to leave only with a dishonorable discharge, or when my three years were up, and that was that. My other option was that I could give up and give in and comply with their program. Obvious to anyone who knows me, then or now, knows that was not going to happen.

So then allow me to get into the weeds a little bit about what, exactly, my “project” entailed and how things went for me when I found myself in what seemed like a “no-win” situation many months later. I decided that they couldn’t bust me for being stupid, right? So I became so stupid that I basically forgot how to do my job. The fact that I had some buddies working alongside of me made this a bit awkward at first but soon enough they, along with pretty much everyone else in the company was clued into what I was doing. I mean a person can’t forget how to use a ratchet, much less diagnose a broken generator, without raising a few eyebrows. I initially would stretch a 2 hour job into a 5 hour job and without the benefit of total and clear recall some 50 years into the past I can’t remember how exactly it was that I found myself with so much time where I was able to avoid working. I would carry around “props”, like a shovel, or a ladder, making it look like I was busy doing something. By that point my platoon sergeant was happy to not have me around as much as possible since I was costing him time and productivity.

I was drunk almost every night and therefore hungover almost every day. There were canvases for huge tents rolled up right above the motor pool where I “worked” that I spent a lot of time sleeping off these hangovers. The drone of people working was my lullaby. But soon the company commander was tuned into my act and so it was no longer just about my platoon sergeant being just fine with my absence. I had to be made an example of so I became the company grunt assigned to whatever “special duties” that needed to be done but were, um, shall I say, not “glamorous”? One might think peeling potatoes, or scrubbing urinals, of which there was some of the latter, but more like raking leaves around the company grounds and painting the common areas of the barracks.

It seemed to me that the company commander liked to assign me tasks that were as high profile as possible so as to probably want me to feel embarrassed. Well by that time I had established myself and even relished this position I had carved out for myself. I had also created a one man contraband/loan sharking/illegal drug operation and just saw the shit details as part of the “project”. Besides all of that I had a weird kind of status as “that guy”. I was, I guess, what would be considered admired by the anti-army crowd. Those were the guys, and women, who had decided to buckle under and they were grudgingly doing their time with an accepted resignation for their circumstance. I was also the recipient of a deep and abiding hatred by the “lifers” for having an open and fully displayed disdain for them and their chosen way of life.

So aside from the specific stories and episodes along the way there is still some finer points on my daily “work”. You see even though I was given the special duties details, that still didn’t mean my “project” was done by any stretch of the imagination. I embarked upon a strategy of such monumental idiocy in action that it was my objective to not just leave tasks not completed; I was to cost the company an extra man to supervise the idiot, Baker. So, the first time I put this plan into action as I recall I was given a rake and told to rake up the leaves around the company grounds. The company marched off to the motor pool and I stood there rake in hand. When they returned I was in the same spot raking that same spot into submission. You see, I was following orders, but as a zombie might follow orders. They couldn’t bust me for it so they had to free up an NCO, which is a sergeant, in order to tell me to move all day long. Plus he had to be very specific about his orders because “move” didn’t cut it, since technically I was moving. “Move to a place you have not raked yet and rake the leaves” is how it had to go. Oh, I know how monumentally shitty this sounds. It was, and it got those NCO’s who were assigned to me plenty pissed off. But so it was on and the company commander didn’t let up but kept on trying to find me shittier jobs to do and I kept on doing what I did. On one occasion I had to paint a stripe around the barracks at about calf height. When the NCO supervising me went to the bathroom I “accidently” kicked the paint all over the red tiled barracks floor. This caused logistical problems for days for those people living on the far end of the building as well as third floor.

We will keep in mind that after two years of these kinds of antics during my regular duty hours there was an abundance of story-worthy events occurring during off-duty hours. I will synopsize the aforementioned criminal enterprises, but if one would like a bit more detail regarding my army-era criminal enterprises those can be found by reading the crime stories section of this blog. In a nut-shell I paid other G.I’.s for their monthly cigarette rations of four cartons a month. I would haul those off post to a German connection I had off-post who was a grizzled old woman we called “Grandma”. She would pay me twice my investment for the smokes and, when she had them, would trade in these European sedative-hypnotics called Mandrax, which were similar to Quaaludes. When that exchange took place I could take those back on post and resell them redoubling my investment. Plus I was dealing in hashish by the “plate” which is 100 grams. When that is chopped up and resold in 5 or 10 gram chucks it was mighty profitable as well. Since G.I.’s are notorious spendthrifts, knowing as they do that they will always have food and shelter until next payday there were always people willing to pay top dollar in interest for a loan to the end of the month, and since I was making plenty of money from those other enterprises it just so happened that I had the money to loan.  I was making money hand over fist.

While all of that entrepreneurial activity made me plenty of money it also got me busted on multiple occasions. My best guess is that I was charged and pled out somewhere between 10 and 15 times. Somehow, while most of the charges against me were certainly felonious in nature they were never bad enough for a court martial and I always had the opportunity to plead them down to an article 15, which is the army equivalent of a misdemeanor. I know that my company commander wanted me to go with a court martial so that he could be done with me, but that wasn’t how I was playing this. The consequences that I incurred where typically that I would have to do extra duty, pay a fine, and lose a pay-grade. As far as they knew I was at as low a pay grade as can be, which is E 1, but I had a girlfriend in the legal division located on another post who kept shuffling my paperwork to the bottom of the pile whenever it came up and I actually left the army as an E 3 and had been payed as such during the whole time.

I’m not sure what kind of picture I’m painting here but to be clear this was not fun. It was something that I was committed to and that I was so wrapped into that I couldn’t even consider doing things any other way.   At that point in my life and for almost two decades that followed I was so consumed by anger and self-loathing, among other maladies, that I simply moved in the world according to some kind of program that I was supposed to follow without much conscious awareness. I knew that I was miserable to the point that I wanted to get out of my head all the time, which was usually accomplished with the aid of alcohol and drugs. I knew that my misery and self-loathing brought with it a desire to hurt certain types of people, mostly people in authority, or part of “the establishment”.

It was very clear that “the establishment” didn’t care too much for me either. I found myself “loaned out” to other companies to do grunt work where they didn’t mind freeing up an NCO to give me tedious orders all day long. I was sent into war games and made to “guard” the company grounds from midnight until 8 A.M. , in the dead of winter, every day for 2 weeks running. My boots never dried off and I got jungle rot on my feet. I was 10 minutes late to relieve a guy from another company one night and this man, who had to be 6 ft 5 and 300 lbs walked up to me and, without a word, knocked me unconscious for I’m not sure how long.

So it went for a little over two years. Then my company commander came up with a task for me that was brilliant. Allow me to set the stage; He loved and even doted over the company picnic area behind the building. He had it all set up with picnic tables, manicured grass, and even flower beds, and barbeque pits. He was “the man” whenever he decided to have a BBQ for the company. So sometime around late summer I was given a digging bar, a spade, and a pick-ax and told that I was to remove a tree stump that was maybe about four feet in circumference. I realized right away that he didn’t care if I stood there until the end of my tour of duty a year later. I could stand there in the sun, rain, snow, or a freaking hurricane, for that matter, just so long as I would be out of his way. If I was not there then I was technically AWOL.

Well, I thought, he won. But I still had fight in me so I got to work digging and chopping and chopping and digging. I had no idea how many roots extend from a tree that size until I started to expose some. As I was working up a massive sweat and becoming even more dismayed the more I discovered regarding tree root systems he walked by on his way to the motor pool with a self-satisfied smirk on his face and said “Having fun Baker?”. Then he continued walking the next hundred yards or whatever it was to the motor pool

A couple hours later a guy I knew from the bar was driving by with a “cherry picker”, which is a small crane. He stopped and we chewed the fat for a bit and then I got an idea. I had to think hard about this idea because it was going to cause some kind of damage. However I came to the conclusion that while my orders were to remove the stump and I was given certain tools to do the job, I was not specifically told that I could only use those tools. My crane operating buddy knew that I had an “honor among thieves” mentality and that he wouldn’t get implicated in anything so when I asked him to let me wrap some of the cables around exposed roots he didn’t hesitate.

I knew that there was going to be some destruction but I had no idea what was about to happen. I can’t tell you how long and widespread a root system is for a tree that size but when that stump was pulled from the ground I was literally stunned to the point of being bug-eyed and slack-jawed. To say it was like a bomb went off regarding the destruction to the picnic area is not exaggeration. The lawn, flowerbeds, picnic tables and pretty much the whole area came up with the stumps roots. I was blown away, thrilled, excited, self-satisfied and too stupid to be scared.

I sat and smoked cigarettes facing the motor pool waiting for the Captain to come back. As he came into view and walked in my direction I saw his face slowly turning from his normal pasty white complexion to beet red. He got close enough to where I could see his own bugged out eyes and by the time he got to me he was visibly shaking and frothing at the mouth. He stammered out the words “Ba-Ba-Baker..Wha-what have you done?” Which is where I got to say “Just following orders, sir” providing a weak sarcastic salute.

The next day I was given orders to get in a truck which took me to a place called “Garmisch” which is where the army has regular wargames. When I got there I was met by a sergeant who told me something like “Baker, here’s the deal: Go do whatever you do, just stay out of our way for a few days and I couldn’t care less what you do.” Well, that seemed like a decent deal to me. So I met up with cronies in different divisions to get high and whatnot, just passing the time. Several days later I was handing my Chapter 5 discharge. A few days after that I was on a plane home with all of my benefits intact.