We were inoculated every Wednesday. I dreaded these shots much more than anything else in Basic training. The last one was, by far, the worst. All the previous ones had been done by medics with guns. They took a split second. For the last one we got two shots, one in each arm, administered by doctors and nurses, and the needles were in our arms for at least fifteen seconds. The rumor was that these were black plague shots, but who knows? The sergeants and officers never told us, but they all knew what was coming.

These shots were right after lunch, and we had no training that day. We went to the barracks and sat on our bunks. No one had any energy, and most of us slept. They woke us for supper, but half of the guys stayed in the barracks.

I went to eat, but I felt terrible. However, while I was standing in line, my fever must have broken or something. All of a sudden I felt OK. I was still weak, but I did not feel ill at all, and I ate plenty of supper.

After supper everyone went to bed, many still in their fatigues. No one was fireguard. The drill sergeant awakened us in the morning. Everybody felt fine.

One of the guys in our platoon carried a photo of his girlfriend and his Corvette everywhere that he went. He also wrote a letter to her every day. She wrote back to him, but after a few weeks those letters ceased. Eventually, he received a note from one of his friends. It included a photo of his girlfriend with another guy. He was driving the Corvette. The guy with all these photos was miserable. No one knew what to say to him.

I don’t remember the name of the guy in our platoon, but I know the name of the guy in the photo. It was Jody. Jody was the guy who snatched everybody’s girlfriend while the poor sap was in the Army. We sang about him all the time when we were marching.

From the first day until the last our company was awash in rumors: We were all going to Vietnam. The war will be over soon. We will all be going to infantry or artillery or whatever. I never listened to any of this. I never told anyone about volunteering for Ft. Lewis. If I had, I would have been the subject of all kinds of rumors.

Our drill sergeant left in the fifth or sixth week, and he was replaced by another much more mellow guy. He wasn’t mellow enough to let us march to “Do wah diddy diddy,” but he almost never got angry at anyone (in Army terms, “jumped in his shit”).

On the last day we learned what MOS we had been assigned. You could easily tell from the ashen faces which guys had been assigned to infantry. They decided to make a military policeman out of me. I was to report to Fort Gordon, GA, for training.

I was not select for the language school. More than a decade later I learned from our company’s accountant that he had attended the school at Fort Lewis at about the time that I was talking with the captain. Only one language was being taught there, Vietnamese, and only one MOS was offered to the students, interrogator. Furthermore, most of these interrogations took place in helicopters. I was quite lucky that the Army in its infinite wisdom decided not to accept my offer to go to Ft. Lewis.

At my last assignment at Seneca Army Depot I had access to the personnel folders for everyone on the base. I found in my folder that I had scored 72 on the language aptitude test. One very slow day I looked through the other folders and did not find a single score of ten or more.

I was not too surprised that I was not headed to language school.It takes a good bit of time to become even mildly fluent in a language. I was only scheduled to be in for two years. By the time that I finished the school, there would hardly be enough time for me to use what I learned.

I hated the thought of becoming an MP. I really dreaded the training, and I did not want to spend two years in law enforcement. I definitely do not have that kind of personality. If I had known that a large percentage of MP’s in those days were used as guards on convoys in Vietnam, I probably would have been terrified.

I don’t remember what MOS was assigned to anyone else, not even Rosey or Todd Pyles. I am pretty sure that I would remember if either of them had been assigned infantry or MP. It must have been something else.

To tell the truth I did not think much about any of the guys in our company, not in the next few weeks, not ever. If any of them were in our training company at Fort Gordon, I certainly did not hang out with them. Like everyone else, I was worried about my own future.

I did occasionally think about Pvt. Houston, the company fuck-up. I assume that he was discharged either during training or shortly thereafter. The Army has low standards, but I cannot imagine him in any position in the Army. The guy could no even get in line.

Basic training finished just before Christmas. The training at Fort Gordon would start shortly after New Years. We were therefore required to take part of our annual leave over the holidays.

Intercontinental Airport opened in 1969.

My recollection is that the Army arranged our transportation home. Most of the guys in the company were from the South. Someone drove a handful us in an olive-drab bus to the brand new Intercontinental Airport in Houston. From there I flew to the far-from-new Municipal Airport in KC, where my parents picked me up.

I don’t remember too much about this period. I have a photo somewhere of me with very little hair standing beside my dad. I towered over him even though he was allegedly the same height when he entered the Army as I was. He weighed twenty-two pounds less!

My dad never talked much about his years in the Army. I knew that he had seen combat in the Pacific. I assumed that he was in the infantry, but he said that he too was an MP. I think that perhaps he did both.

Needless to say, I went to church with my family on Sundays and the two holy days.

My sister Jamie was halfway through her freshman year at Bishop Miege High School. She went out on dates a couple of the nights while I was in town. At her age I had not the slightest inclination to go on dates. Now that I think of it, I am pretty sure that I was still a Boy Scout, and there was no merit badge for dating.

I don’t remember seeing any of my friends from high school over the holidays. I didn’t really know anyone in our neighborhood. Golf and house painting were prevented by the weather. Mostly I just relaxed and tried not to think too much about the next twenty-two months.