St Thomas More & The Nuns

With sisters: Chapel Hill, NC 1967


Dad gets his ears cleaned: Vinh Thanh, 1967

Sister Jane did not like my Cub Scout knife clipped to my shorts.

Up to the Fall of 1966, Army posts had been my home. Any Army post since they were the same no matter where. Same front gate, P.X., Commissary, movie theater and MP barracks. Grade schools were usually on post and that was life behind the wire. St Thomas More (Grades 1-6) in Chapel Hill was a strange world where nothing was familiar.

My introduction to trouble came by a fund raiser for a new church. I violated all rules of low profile by asking a nun why the Vatican didn't pay for the church. Later, it seems that same week, I stood in line for confession without any idea of what it was or what I was doing there. I saw a line and like any Brat, I joined it.

At lunch, I was caught by Sister Rose with a Playboy picture in an empty chocolate milk carton that had been passed underneath a table to me. I was kicked out of advanced reading class and placed in the slow reading class. I pushed a bully off a stage into a pile of metal folding chairs and I was never fast enough to kneel by my desk when a priest entered class.

I knew I didn't belong, but I don't remember caring. This was just another stop and I'm here to leave. The nuns allowed me time alone in the school chapel everyday. They told me to light a candle for my father and pray for him to come home safely. I would light a candle and sneak out a rear fire door. Steps from the back of the chapel was a golf course fairway where I prowled through the pine needle rough looking for lost balls.

I didn't need to light a candle to know he was coming back. The idea that he might not? It never crossed my mind. Today, I'm not sure where that misplaced optimism came from. Some of it had to do with his being invincible. That much I remember. I was well aware of the Green Beret celebrity at the time. Back at Ft Bragg my father had told me Barry Sadler was an idiot.

If an idiot can have a best selling record and be on TV -- then my Dad is coming home. The principal, Sister Jane, taught the slow readers. She never asked me to read until my last day. After I finished, she stared at me with that pissed off look I had seen so many times. "You do not belong in this class." she said. "No shit." I thought.

Dad came home. The Mayflower truck showed up. It was time to go.

The Mediocre Six

HHC XVIII Airborne Corps at Ft Bragg. I'm second from the right. The peace time Army. All volunteer as well. A horrible time it was. For the Army that is. Not for us. This picture was taken after I had been kicked out of Special Forces Phase Selection. 88 were in my SF class and only three made it to the green beret. All prior enlistment NCOs. I never really had what it takes. I certainly don't now.

Four of us were infantry in this picture. The other two were clerical types. Not that it matters. We were all REMFs. It was about this time that I started thinking seriously about being a soldier. A little late but there was rumor of war in Europe. We were all being trained for W.W. III. The idea was the Soviets would invade West Germany. We would be parachuted in and most of us would never exit the aircraft. We would be shot down long before ever reaching the drop zone. That's what we were told.

I tried to imagine who would kill me. Some 19 year old from the Ukraine or Estonia. With no more interest in killing me than I had in killing him. All of us children. All of us, wound up in our training and hot for medals and bobbles. The Combat Infantry Badge or the CIB was the one to have. Combat Jump Wings. Little star on the parachute indicating you jumped onto a hot DZ. Very rare. A Bronze Star for just showing up. Or with a V clasp if you did something truly heroic but not heroic enough for the Silver Star. All of it cheap metal and ribbon. Napoleon said men would die for mere bobbles. He got that one right.

But these serious thoughts were almost always pushed away with mind numbing duties interrupted by jumping out of planes and visiting Hay's Street in Fayettville. Hookers and their pimps were a lot more dangerous than the Warsaw Pact soldier ever turned out to be. For the first time I saw a part of the Army I had been kept from. The Pawn Shops and Stereo Stores with 33% APR. The Pop a Top Lounge, Flaming Mug, Seven Dwarfs and Susie Wong clubs where "Coke" girls shared time with you while they sipped a soft drink you paid three bucks for. Outside, the professionals walked the street and asked if you wanted a "date."

All of those experiences are like a patina no Brasso could ever polish up.

The Magnificent 13

Ft Bragg. 1966. My father's A Team just before deployment to Vietnam. Three men did not return. In memory of their sacrifice. I don't know what else to say. Only, that I look at their faces and remember when they were alive. At a party in my living room with the theme from "The Magnificent Seven" blaring from the stereo as they drank beer and smoked cigarettes . How I wanted to be like them.

Quarters on Bragg - 1978

Ft Bragg in 1978. Me on the left. I can't remember the guy on the right. We lived in these WWII barracks just next to Pope AFB. I would stand on the top of the fire escape ladder and read Richard III aloud to the guys below drinking beer. "What glorious summer this son of York..."

The latrine had six toilets without any partitions. Something that took a while to get over. A Staff Sergeant, who I would never think about twice as a Brat, was God. He could make my life a misery. Same with the mail clerk and mess hall sergeant. These were people you didn't screw around with.

I felt like I had fallen from some sort of grace as a college freshman to these circumstances. I do not recommend it to any Brat. However, I'm damned glad I did it.

The Enemy

I know a lot of Army Brats can be pretty gung ho. Real patriotic and they cry at a flag raising. I'm not like that for one reason. I served in the Army for four years. In the Infantry as a paratrooper. I returned to my childhood home (one of them), Ft Bragg and was exposed to an Army I knew nothing about as a dependent. It was a real eye opener.

The picture above is a water color of a NVA attack against a US camp. It's dated 1968. Some people refer to it as "Commie Art." I'm quite fond of it and would like to own more. I like this water color because it tells another side of the story. It's very gung ho and patriotic. It's damned evocative as well. Notice their enemy? That's right. You can't see them. My Dad. Your brother. Her son. Just tents and wire.

We did the same exact thing to our enemy. Made them faceless with names we couldn't pronounce and food we would never eat - -although we did come around to the food. I read somewhere a woman in North Vietnam asked her husband who was going off to fight in the south..."Is this war more important than our love?" It always helps to understand your enemy. It also helps to know they're not that different from us. At least when it comes to the important stuff.