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Chapter 2

Germany

Schwaebisch Hall

The next day I boarded a plane and was on my way to Germany. I flew out of McGuire Air Force Base and got into Germany at ten o’clock at night at Frankfurt Air Force Base. From there we got picked up on a bus and were transported to a replacement center near Nuremberg, a town rich with history. Most people know it as the town that held trials for the Nazis after World War II, many of them hanging for their war crimes.

I was only there for a day before they took me to Schwaebisch Hall. It was still winter when I arrived, so there was a thick blanket of snow covering the roads and wilderness. Living in Texas all my life I had never seen such beautiful scenery, and there was no way in hell I would have ever seen anything like this in Vietnam either.

Since I was an E5 I got my own private room in the barracks, much nicer than the shitholes I was used to in Fort Polk. On a Sunday I decided I wanted to go off the kaserne, which was just another way of saying “post” in Germany. I wanted to go to a German guesthouse, or a tavern, to try some of the German beer because I had always been told it was delicious. Since I had just arrived to Schwaebisch Hall and it was required for us to dress up anytime we left post during our first two weeks, I put on my dressy uniform and went off to explore the economy.

I wasn’t in a rush to get to the tavern, so I decided to take in more of the beautiful sights of the country. Schwaebisch Hall is a town built roughly eight hundred years ago, with beautiful architecture and cobblestone roads. In the distance I could see an elegant castle covered in a blanket of snow. The closest thing we had to a castle in Texas was a large cathedral in San Antonio, but a cathedral looks nothing like these Disneyland castles.

I completely forgot it was New Year’s Eve, so I was surprised when the tavern I ended up at that night was holding a masquerade Fasching party. You needed a costume to get in, but since I was in my nice dressy uniform, I was able to pass it off as my costume. When I got inside, I wandered around looking for an empty table but couldn’t find any open ones left. After a couple minutes of awkwardly looking around, a few young Germans invited me to come over and sit with them. As I approached the table I noted that there were two German couples who looked like they were in their early thirties.

After meeting everyone around the table, I realized that they didn’t speak very much English at all. Although I could talk well enough with one of the men, I wasn’t able to make out what everyone else was saying. Nonetheless, we had a few beers and talked for about half an hour until one of the German men, the one who knew more English, asked me if I would like to dance with his wife. There was no reason to refuse, and I didn’t want to offend her, so I said, “Sure.”

I let her lead me through the crowd of people to the dance floor. She spun around to grab my hand and placed it on the small of her back, then pulled me closer to her. I tried to keep some respectable distance between us, but she kept herself pressed up tightly against me. It was literally impossible not to be drawn to her massive breasts.

It didn’t take long to get a boner, and she wasn’t letting me pull away to hide it. When the first song was over, I sat back down because I felt a little embarrassed. I didn’t find out until later that it was a German custom for women to dance with men other than their husbands at Fasching parties.

At the end of the night, her husband invited me to their house because they were going to go skiing the next day. I didn’t have my own car yet, so they offered to pick me up from the barracks around 9:00 a.m. I was aware that I didn’t know how to ski and I had hardly ever seen snow, but I figured I would give it a try anyways. I spent most of the day on a bunny slope trying to impress the RAD’s sister with my obviously poor skiing. I really didn’t impress her when I chickened out of going down one of the larger slopes. We ended up at a guesthouse drinking some beer, and when his sister took off her ski jacket, she was wearing a white angora sweater, her humongous knockers stretching it out to its limit. The RAD asked me to stay and drink some more, but it was getting late, so I headed back over to the barracks to get some sleep.

I woke up to reality the next morning and hopped out of bed for my first day on duty. I threw on my everyday uniform and slipped into my standard-issue boots. I felt more comfortable in that than slacks any day. I locked my door with my key, and I turned to leave when a white buck sergeant immediately greeted me. I noticed that he had a key with a white wooden tag attached. I greeted him back, but as I walked away, I saw that he was reaching for my doorknob, so I turned back to ask him what he was doing.

“I’m here to check your room for cleanliness,” he responded.

I looked him up and down and noticed he didn’t have a combat patch on him.

“How long have you been a sergeant?” I asked a little aggressively.

“Why do you need to know that?”

“Look, I’ve been a sergeant for a couple of years. What do you have on grade?” I reiterated with more force.

“About five months,” he finally tells me, still extending his arm out with the key in hand.

“I’ve had more time in the mess hall than you have on rank. You better pull that hand back unless you want pull back a bloody stub,” I said without a second thought.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked me with a bewildered look in his eye, pulling his hand back from the door.

“I mean I’m gonna cut your fucking hand off if you put the key in the keyhole, Sarge.” I said, staring him down.

“Oh my god, you’ve got a knife! I’m going to report this to the first sergeant!” he yelled like a banshee.

As he ran off, all I could see were elbows and assholes. After the door of the barracks was closed and he was gone, a few black soldiers down the hall started to laugh out loud.

“What a fucking wimp,” one of them cackled.

“Is that what you have to put up with here?” I said while grinning back at them.

I nonchalantly went on to work and reported to the platoon sergeant for duty. He immediately told me to see the first sergeant. I saw it coming from a mile away, so I just saluted and turned on my heels to report to the first sergeant’s office. I knocked on the door and requested for permission to enter.

“Sergeant Bravo, I assume?” he said through the door. “Come in.”

I walked in and stood in front of a large desk where the first sergeant was seated.

“Yes, I’m Sergeant Bravo, and this is my first day at work.”

“I heard you had a confrontation with one of my other sergeants?”

“Yes, I did,” I said confidently.

“Did you really pull out a knife?” he asked me while furrowing his brow as he spoke.

“You think just because I’m Mexican, I carry a knife?” I defend.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“I might’ve scared Miller when I said he’d lose a hand, but I’m telling you, I don’t carry a knife. It was just trying to scare him.”

He looked at me puzzled and said, “Look, you don’t have to talk to my sergeants like that. You’re not in Vietnam anymore. There’s no need for that.”

“First Sergeant, I was out of line. It won’t happen again,” I said. “Look, I’m a sergeant. I don’t need a rookie looking through my room and that’s why I’m here right now. I felt disrespected.”

“Can your platoon sergeant trust you to keep your room straight?”

“You bet, First Sergeant.”

“I’ll let your platoon sergeant know that. You can go now.”

After a couple months I began to settle in, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before I got into trouble, which happened to be my nickname. An Anglo-American soldier, Private Hill, was talking about a trip he had been on to Mexico and he was commenting on how poor and dirty the Mexicans were. He specifically mentioned Boystown, a small village infamous for little to no law enforcement. So it was very common to see public drinking, dancing, prostitution, gambling, and other acts of sin. A real shithole. The streets were unpaved and made of dirt with craters so deep that you could hardly drive over them, popping a tire just by driving across the street.

He said people’s houses in Mexico were so dirty that there was dirt all over their floors. I reminded the white private that some of the houses had dirt floors so of course they were going to be a bit dusty.

Then he gave me a smart aleck remark, chuckling to himself while saying, “What does that have to do with your dirty lazy father never taking a bath?”

“What the fuck? What did you say about my father? You don’t even know him,” I said with anger in my voice.

He was still laughing to himself, which pissed me off even more. He was sitting down next to a plaster wall across the room, and at the time I was working with a three-pound hammer. Not holding back, not knowing my own strength, I threw the hammer hard at him. It barely missed his head and made a hole in the wall next to him.

He ran off crying to the platoon sergeant that I was “trying to kill him.”

Here comes another trip to the first sergeant’s office.

I reported to the first sergeant’s office, and he was already expecting me. When I knocked on the door, he immediately said, “Come in.”

“Did you threaten someone again today, Sergeant Bravo?” First Sergeant Worshiem asked me.

“Sort of. You know Private Hill, that white soldier? He wouldn’t stop going off about my father being a dirty fucking Mexican and how he never bathed. I found that a big problem because I’m a sergeant and he’s a private, and that’s extremely disrespectful to me and my father, especially since he doesn’t even know my dad. I needed him to pay attention to me, so I threw the hammer at him, never intending to hit him. Or make that hole in the wall. I mean, if this was your parents being talked about, how would you react?”

“I wouldn’t try to kill him,” he told me in a very serious tone.

“Neither would I. I wasn’t even trying to hurt him. I was just trying to scare Private Hill.”

He sighed a little bit, and after thinking for a minute, he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you…Look, I’m going to give you something to think about. I’m going to give you a task. We have a mission to pick up the troops from the Frankfurt Air Force Base tomorrow night, and it looks like I just found my man for the job. Go down to transportation and get a bus license before tomorrow. Can you complete this mission for me, Sergeant Bravo?”

“Yes, First Sergeant,” I replied.

I was determined to complete the mission the first sergeant gave me because I knew if I hadn’t I would be discharged for bad conduct and sent home. I didn’t want my military career to end, and I didn’t want to disappoint my father. He was proud of me when I got back from Vietnam because I came back with an honorable discharge and many accolades to show for my service. But if I was court-martialed, it would be a very different story.

I got to transportation around 11:00 a.m. that Friday morning, and when the driving instructor saw me looking around, he approached me.

“What are you here for?” the RAD asked.

“I was sent here by the first sergeant to get a bus license, so I can pick up our troops coming back home.”

“Well, you’re going to need to come back on Monday morning when we open. We close at 12:00 p.m. today, and the course is a twelve-hour program split up over three days.”

This wasn’t good. I needed to get the license before tomorrow or else I would fail my mission, and if I failed my mission, then it would be my ass.

“Well, before I start the course, can you at least show me how to operate the bus?”

“Well, we close in an hour. I can show you a few things.”

He taught me the basics—how to work the gearbox, how to open and close the door, turn it on and off. This still wasn’t enough. There was no way that this would be enough to show for a license. There was so much red tape in front of me that I would have to figure out how to cut on my own.

“Thank you for showing me some of the basics, but I still need the license before tomorrow. Is there any way you can sign for my license?”

“Well, I can log you down for an hour of training, but I can’t sign off on a license. But if you go to your battalion maintenance officer, he may be able to do something for you.”

I waited until after lunch and walked over to the battalion maintenance office. I told the motor pool sergeant that I needed to talk to the battalion maintenance officer (BMO), and I was lucky that I got there when I did because it was a Friday afternoon and the BMO was ready to book.

“Sir, can you sign for my bus license? Here, I have this form from an instructor!” I said as I handed him the form.

I didn’t explain that it was only for one hour, but he was thorough and looked over the document. “Hell no, I’m not signing a bus license for you! You have one hour of training!”

“Sir, I need the license so I can pick up the bus before the transportation station closes at noon tomorrow. My mission is to pick up the troops coming home from the field exercise in Italy.”

“The only person that can waive the twelve-hour requirement is the battalion XO (executive officer). Major Hoople should still be in his office. Go ask the sergeant major to see him and see what he can do.”

I rushed to battalion headquarters and told the clerk that I needed permission to speak to the sergeant major for a priority mission.

He got up and knocked on the sergeant major’s door.

“Sergeant Bravo is here to speak with you. May he come in?” he asked on my behalf.

There was a brief exchange of words, but the sergeant major’s side was inaudible through the door. When the clerk was done speaking, he opened the door and allowed me through.

“Good afternoon, Sergeant Major.”

“What have you come to see me for today?” he asked me.

“I’m here to ask to see the battalion XO. I was assigned to drive the bus to bring the troops home tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. I was told that I need a field officer’s signature to waive the requirement for the bus license.”

“Sergeant, I wouldn’t want to be the person that keeps the troops from coming home. I’ll contact the XO and tell him you need to speak with him right away.”

He picked up the phone sitting to his right and dialed a number. Another brief exchange of explanation takes place, and he let me know that I’ve been cleared to walk over to the battalion XO’s office.

“Come in, Sergeant Bravo, so I can sign for your license,” the battalion XO called out when I stood in front of his door.

My persistence had paid off again, and I had the signature for my license. But my mission was far from complete.

The next morning I headed out to the Stuttgart to pick up my bus, getting there a little bit before noon. I went to the transportation office at the entrance and showed the RAD my paperwork and license, then he gave me my logbook and the key to my bus.

“The bus must be brought back in the same condition as it was when you took it,” the RAD told me.

That was the plan, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it might not happen that way. I didn’t have much training. I didn’t even know how to turn on the heater!

“How do I turn on the heater?” I asked the RAD.

He gave me a concerned look and went out with me to turn on the heater, and I’m glad he did because it was cold as the wicked witch of the north’s tit that day. I took off for the Frankfurt Air Force Base, and when I got there around 3:00 p.m., I told the airman at the information desk my flight number and asked him when it would arrive. He pointed to the arrival/departure board on the wall above him.

I read that the flight would arrive at 7:00 a.m. the next day. That can’t be right. The first sergeant told me 7:00 p.m. Must have been a delay, or maybe I was just reading it wrong.

“Is Flight 56 really arriving at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow?” I asked the airman.

“Yes, sir.”

“In that case I need a place that I can stay tonight. I’m picking up the troops on that flight tomorrow.”

“Where’s your bus parked right now?” he asked me.

“Just outside there in the parking lot.”

“Lock it up and come back since you’ll be leaving it here overnight. Let me see if I can figure something out for you.”

“Let me go outside and lock the bus. I’ll be right back,” I told him.

When I came back, he gave me a key to a private room and told me that he had set up a place for me to sleep in the airman’s barracks.

“I called a car to take you to the barracks.”

“Thank you!” I said, then went outside to a blue military sedan.

The driver greeted me and told me he would be picking me up later to drive me back to the bus whenever the flight arrived. After I got dropped off at the barracks, I sat around for a few minutes looking over the room before taking a nap.

Later that night I went over to the airman’s club to enjoy some drinks and talk with some soldiers. I got pretty hammered that night. I was one of the only veterans around, so the more stories I told about Vietnam, the more beer the soldiers would buy me. This continued for a few hours until I realized I only had seven hours left until the troops arrived. It was less than a block to my room, but I was snockered, so it seemed like a mile.

The cold outside was unbearable, which made getting into bed under warm covers even more comforting. I closed my eyes and felt myself drifting into sleep. As I was beginning to slip into a deep slumber, I heard a sharp knocking on the door.

“Bravo, there’s a staff sergeant outside who wants to speak with you.”

“Hold on a minute…” I growled, rolling out of my warm sanctuary.

I went with the driver to the car, and when I got in, I was greeted by an older-looking sergeant.

“Sergeant Bravo, the soldiers and I are ready to depart and head home.”

Oh shit, I thought as I got into the car.

I looked outside and saw all the snow building up around us. To top it off, it was also pitch black because it was still one in the morning. It was just my luck that the flight came in early. There was no way I was going to be able to drive the bus in this weather, especially because I was still wasted.

“We can’t leave right now. The snow is getting too deep, and it’s pitch black outside. We’ll head out in the morning.”

I felt like I was being responsible, but the staff sergeant was not having it.

“These soldiers have been away from home for two weeks. They haven’t seen their wives and children. We need to get them home as soon as possible. I am the highest-ranking NCO here, and I say we are leaving now.”

I felt empathetic with the soldiers who missed their families. I missed mine. I hadn’t seen them in over two months. I also didn’t want to disobey someone who outranked me because then I would be going home whether I successfully drove the soldiers back or not.

I smelled like a brewery, and I was sure that the staff sergeant and other soldiers could smell the alcohol on my breath, but sure enough we were all on the bus and ready to depart within twenty minutes. It didn’t take long before bad things started to happen. A few minutes after leaving the lot, I hit a patch of ice while trying to stop at a stop sign. I wrestled with the wheel and slammed the brakes but still ended up clipping the back fender of a Volkswagen Bug.

“You have got to be kidding me!” one of the soldiers yelled behind me.

“Shut the fuck up, ladies. I got this,” I yelled before getting out to greet the old German man who had stepped out of the car, with his wife waiting in the car.

“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve never driven in snow bef—”

“We’re never getting home, are we?” I hear someone shout from behind me.

“Shut the fuck up! As I was saying I’ve never driven in snow before. I apologize if I scared you and your wife,” I said, noticing her looking back at us from the passenger’s side window.

The old man looked at the fender and looked at the soldiers. I could tell he wanted to get out of the snow, and he could probably smell the alcohol on my breath.

“You should put some chains on your tires, so you have more traction in the snow. Don’t worry about it. Just be careful from now on.”

I thanked the old man and got back in the driver’s seat. A few soldiers in the back found a compartment on the bus that had chains. News to me because I was never taught how to do that. We managed to get some chains on the back tires and all piled back in the bus. Before I started to drive, the staff sergeant came up to my seat and asked me to let him drive.

“Do you have a bus license?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, a bit puzzled by my question.

“Then sit the fuck down and let me do my job. I’m the only one qualified to drive this bus, and if you fuck anything up, it’s on me.”

He seemed like he wanted to protest, but I started to press on the acceleration, forcing him back into his seat.

After a little while the lack of visibility from a combination of darkness and snow only got worse. I accidentally drove down a one way in the wrong direction and took at least ten extra minutes backing up to get out of it, taking out dumpster and a few trash cans along the way.

There’s more than one way to get to Schwabisch Hall from Frankfurt. Unfortunately for us, I unknowingly picked a path that led us down a road on the side of a mountain. I could only see as far as my headlights threw their light, and even that was fuzzy because it was still snowing.

It had snowed so much that the snow had begun to pile up as high as three feet, so I had to use the guiding poles along the side of the road to guide me along. Some of the poles were positioned too far out, making the road seem wider than it was, so I would occasionally veer too close to the edge of the mountain. Every time I veered close to the mountain edge, the men would start crying and screaming like little girls all in unison.

“Shut the fuck up, ladies. I’m handling this!” I yelled back confidently, slurring my words as I spoke. I understand that the threat of falling off a cliff a thousand feet high is something to cry about, but it was taking a while to sober up, and the yelling and shouting wasn’t helping my concentration.

It took a couple hours to finally get the hang of it, and I could finally function soberly. I was able to drive smoothly the rest of the way back and even nailed parking the bus correctly. As redeemable as that was, I knew that the sergeant major wouldn’t be too happy when he heard what had happened.

Nothing else came of it the next day. It wasn’t until the day after that that the sergeant major called me in. I thought I was done for. I would be sent home, dishonorably discharged with a court-martial. When I got to the office, I could tell he was not too happy to see me.

“Sit down, Sergeant,” he said to me aggressively. As I sat down he quickly started to talk again. “I got a report from Staff Sergeant Taylor, and before I decide whether or not I’m going to send you to Major Hoople, I want you to tell me what happened Sunday morning.”

I told him exactly what happened, how I had all the odds stacked against me. I had less than twenty-four hours to take a twelve-hour bus course, which I didn’t do. I told him that early Sunday morning the snow was too dangerous for even the sober locals to drive through. I also mentioned that Staff Sergeant Taylor used his rank to force us to leave even though he should’ve agreed to wait until daylight when the snow had melted.

He seemed to get the angriest when I mentioned that I had been at the enlisted club the night before, drinking with the fellow soldiers because I thought the flight arrived at 7:00 a.m. He didn’t buy any of it. I had to go talk to the battalion XO, Major Hoople, again.

When I got to Major Hoople’s office, I stopped outside and I thought for a minute. I was raised religious, and I hadn’t really prayed much during Vietnam. Before Vietnam my uncle had laid hands on me and prayed a prayer of protection for me. But other than that, I was far from your stereotypical Holy Roller.

But I felt the strange urge to pray at that moment. Before I stepped inside Hoople’s office, I lowered my head for a second and asked for divine protection through this mess before me. When I walked through the door, I got the same aggressive greeting as I had from the sergeant major.

“Sergeant, I’ve read the report from Staff Sergeant Taylor. I’m going to have to take action against you for endangering the lives of the troops. You’ll be getting a court-martial, and you will be tried in a courtroom. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

I thought for a minute. All the odds were stacked against me. I desperately needed an ace up my sleeve to even the odds. Fortunately for me, I did.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my bus license. Major Hoople seemed a bit puzzled, but he stayed silent, waiting for me to speak. I put the license on the table and slid it over to him.

“This is what I’m going to show to my defense attorney when I get court-martialed.” I could tell he wasn’t understanding what I was trying to say, so I continued, “This is the bus license that you signed for me. The license I needed to take a twelve-hour course to get. But I only took one hour, and you waived the rest. You’re one of my witnesses in this trial.”

He sat there staring at the license for what felt like hours but was mere seconds. He knew what he had done. Since I got the authorization for the license from him, he would be the one taking responsibility for my actions during a court-martial. This is why I didn’t let Staff Sergeant Taylor drive that night. He took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. It was terrifying at first, staring into the eyes of a battalion executive officer with a vein bulging from his neck. It was what he said next that helped to melt some of my fears.

“Since you want me to be a witness, the battalion commander won’t let you go to court to be court-martialed. Go back to the sergeant major. He will decide what to do with you next.”

I breathed a secret sigh of relief and left Major Hoople’s office. I felt my adrenaline rushing as I walked over to the sergeant major’s office. I wasn’t going to be sent home, and I wasn’t going to be court-martialed. I felt like a new man. Hoo-ah.

When I got to the sergeant major’s office, I was snapped back to reality.

“Bravo, I did not expect to see you come back into my office. I have no idea how you weaseled your way out with the major, but you’re not getting off that easy. I will have a task for you. I’ll be speaking to your company commander, and the first sergeant will let you know when to come see me.”

I had a little anxiety about what the task would be, as the last one almost got me court-martialed after all. It took a couple days before the first sergeant came to me and told me to report straight to the sergeant major’s office. When I got to his office he looked a bit happy to see me, which couldn’t have been a good sign.

“Sergeant, sit down,” he said to me in an almost pleasant tone. “Me and the company commander have talked, and we’ve decided to assign you to take eight weeks of Special Forces Recondo training. If you care about your career, you will graduate from that course. Do you understand me, Sergeant?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” I said in a confident tone. I could tell by what the sergeant major said if I didn’t pass that training, I would be thrown out of the army for “disobeying an order.” I didn’t want that. There was a Special Forces member in our unit, so I asked him what I should expect from the course. What he was describing to me sounded a lot like British commando training.

I could feel a knot start to form in my stomach. If you aren’t at least a little gung-ho, you probably wouldn’t make it through the training. I was a little lazy by nature. I felt like there was no way that I could complete the training and graduate from it. But I wasn’t ready to be sent back home.

Commando Training

Before I completely accepted my fate, I decided I’d try one last thing to get out of the training. To take the Special Forces training, I needed to pass a mandatory physical so I went over to the flight surgeon’s office to take care of that. I was in generally good shape, weighing 190 pounds at 5'10". The only thing that might prevent me from passing my physical was my lungs.

During the Vietnam War, napalm was dropped. Each time I had to go through a smoldering, burning jungle, I had to breathe what was leftover of the napalm lingering in the air.

I had taken a physical before joining the army for a second time. In the X-ray they caught scarring in my lungs from the napalm. I was able to join the army again with my lungs scarred because I received a waiver from one of the doctors. He passed me because I’d already been through the required basic training before that time, but I figured that a waiver wouldn’t help me get through this one.

I mentioned this to the doctor hoping that it would make a difference. He gave me an X-ray and inspected the photos for a while. I sat there in silence waiting for him to tell me that I would be unfit to take the course.

“You’re A-okay, Bravo,” is what the doctor told me.

I went back to my barracks and spent the rest of the evening packing up my belongings. On Monday morning I reported to the training barracks for orientation, which also happened to be on the same base I was posted at. When I got to the room for orientation, I sat at one of the many desks in the room. It was a large room that could hold one hundred people.

After waiting a little while, the Special Forces captain walked into the room. He was a tall man, about six feet one, whose posture made him seem even taller than he was. He had a deep voice that echoed throughout the large room when he spoke.

“Hello, soldiers. You are here because you will be taking Special Forces (SF) training for the next eight weeks. This is a very demanding course. It will stretch your physical and psychological limits, and if you don’t pass our course, you will not receive your SF badge.”

He spent the next hour going over the details of the training. Each time he added something new I could feel the knot in my stomach growing bigger and bigger.

“From this moment on, everyone will be considered a private. I don’t care if you’re a sergeant or an officer. If you have an issue with taking off your rank, then the door is over there. Am I understood?”

He gave everyone a few seconds to collect themselves. Taking off your field grade was no small things to some men in the army. One of the majors in the back stood up in protest and asked, “Will I also have to remove my rank as a field officer?”

“Especially you, Major. You currently outrank me, but if I holler, ‘Trainee! Come here,’ I expect you to follow my direct orders. We do not want to be disrespectful toward anyone, so we will not salute. There is no saluting in this camp, not even to me. The only time you will salute is when you are called to see me personally. If you want out, now is the time to take your leave. You can say that you wouldn’t take your field grade off.”

The major stood up and promptly left.

“Is there anybody else?” the captain said loudly.

He gave the crowd a minute to gather themselves. No one spoke, and no one stood up.

“All of you commandos will now go and assemble outside. From this point forward, my cadre and I will be addressed as ‘Sir,’ but you do not have to salute, only when you must report to me individually. Starting now we will begin a simulation as if we were in combat. As soon as I leave the room to go downstairs, you will come down and stand in formation.”

There were eighty of us when orientation started, but with the major gone, there were now seventy-nine of us left. We shuffled downstairs and formed as a company in front of Captain Perry. The captain looked down at the watch on his wrist and said, “You’re late, ladies. Go back up to your desks, and we will speak upstairs.”

We all shuffled back upstairs unsure of what was going to happen next. When we got back to the room, the captain was already there waiting for us to take our seats at our desks.

“I called you ladies because I expect ladies to form like that. When I tell commandos to get in formation, we do it with haste!” the captain explained to us once we were gathered up again.

A trainee raised his hand and asked permission to speak. “You may speak, soldier.”

“Are you aware that it goes against our safety to rush down the stairs so hastily?” the young trainee spoke in defense.

“I’m giving you one minute to make it downstairs. You need to figure out how to get down there. While we are training here, we will have to perform a great number of dangerous maneuvers. I do not consider this to be one of them,” the captain continues. “You will be trained on how to carry out all of these maneuvers properly with the cadre leading by example. They will ask you if you think you can do it before they show you. They will be testing your spirit of core.”

It wouldn’t be until later that I would really grasp what he had meant by just how dangerous the training was and what he meant by spirit of core. Immediately after the talking was done, we went on a three-mile run. This would become a part of our daily routine, and with every week that passed, we added one mile until we got to six, running as far as Bad Toelz. We visited the range often where we qualified for a spectrum of weaponry from a .50 cal to a bazooka. It felt great to shoot a M16 on fully automatic again, even if it was just at targets. Most of us already knew how to handle these weapons, so the shooting range was a breeze.

During the second week, we swam two miles with a weapon, eventually learning how to use covert rafts to traverse down rapid rivers. I was sent to go get the rafts before the training and was driving with a Puerto Rican named Carlos, who bragged about being a daily toker of marijuana and hashish. On the drive back, while we were going down a road that hugged a mountain, I noticed that we were trailing very closely behind one of the cadre members.

I could see the captain looking back at us and mouthing for us to stop, so I turned to Carlos and said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Our breaks don’t work. I have to stay close to him, so we can use him to slow down and stop when we get to that turn down there!” he said as if it was no big deal.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Before we get to that turn, I’m going to roll over him, and his jeep underneath me is going to slow me down.”

I was dumbfounded. This crazy fuck was trying to kill me and the captain. “Have you tried using the parking brake?” I asked him with urgency.

“No, we can try that. Hold on,” he said as he reached for the parking brake.

We slowed down significantly, but it wasn’t enough. So I took the brake and pulled it as hard as I could and told him to start downshifting to slow our speed. We came within a foot of bumping the captain’s jeep over the edge. If we had hit him, he would’ve rolled off the mountain side, plummeting to the ground far below.

“We made it,” he said while letting out a laugh.

“Are you fucking crazy? What would have happened if we would’ve knocked off the captain?”

“Que se hola.” He shrugged. It meant “Fuck him.”

One time, while training at a river, one of the Special Forces shot a grappling hook across the river. Once it got hooked onto something that could support the weight of a man, one of the cadres asked for a volunteer to carry across a second rope for support. No one else spoke up, so I volunteered. The cadre showed me how to cross over with one rope, and when he showed me, I didn’t think it was that difficult.

The river was 90 feet wide and 120 feet deep. It wasn’t your average ravine that was for sure. About halfway through crossing over on a rope, I made the mistake of looking down at the fast-moving rapids and rocks that were beneath me. At one glance somebody might see white water rapids and think that they can easily escape from them, but I knew better than that.

In 1957 Hurricane Audrey had struck the Texas coast, sending large storms inland. I lived in San Benito, which is only twenty miles from the coast. I was around eight or nine when this happened, so when my cousins and I went outside to play in the overflowing canal and drainage ditches, we didn’t see a watery death trap, we saw a thrill ride.

Two of my other cousins and I took off our shoes and were about to jump in, before my oldest cousin Mary called out to us. “I don’t think you guys should do this. This is stupid!” she said, trying to use her fourteen-year-old logic to get us to stop. But we ignored her and jumped in anyway.

We were immediately swept down the canal, thrashing around trying to keep our heads above the water. Everything was moving by in a flash, and I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my body. One of my other cousins must have got out of the water at some point because I could see him running along the edge of the canal, shouting something and frantically pointing downstream. We were heading toward a culvert with a cage covering the entrance to prevent objects from entering and causing a blockage. The cage was made of metal bars that usually wouldn’t allow a kid to pass through them, but large debris had stretched out a few of the bars allowing medium-sized things to slip through. I was medium sized.

Before I could be sucked into the culvert, I grabbed the bars with all my strength and hung on for dear life. My older cousin and the one who got out of the water helped pull me out, but we had lost sight of our youngest cousin. We ran to the other side of the culvert, afraid that he had drowned, unable to escape from the cage on the other end. Fortunately, he was small enough to get out and we found him climbing out of the water on the other side.

This is why when I stared down at that water below me I knew if I fell I would be a goner. As I got closer to the other side, the rope started to sag making it much more difficult to pull myself up. I didn’t know how to climb up an incline because the cadre showed me how to climb a straight rope.

I ended up flipping over the rope and hanging upside with the rope clenched between my forearm and upper arm. I tried to readjust myself, and the captain must have seen me struggling as well because he told me to stay still and climbed on the rope over to me. He tied a safety rope around me so I could lean my weight into the rope while I climbed making it easier. Why hadn’t they used a safety rope on me to begin with?

I was relieved when I finally made it across, the song “Bridge over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel playing in my head as I pulled myself back up to the other side. I felt like it was appropriate after what I had just gone through.

A few days later we learned how to rappel from a ninety-foot tower. The goal was to rappel off a three-hundred-foot cliff. It was a very cool thing. That afternoon we went over to a cliff and rappelled from it. I hadn’t noticed there was a small cave, and when I had jumped down, instead of my boot hitting the wall of the cliff, I swung right into the cave and my knee slammed the roof of the entrance.

I heard something crack and gritted my teeth trying to absorb the pain. When I finally made it down the cliff, I could barely walk. I limped over to see medical staff to see if there was anything that they could do for the pain.

“The injury is too severe for us to just put some ice on it and expect it to heal. You’re going to need surgery on your knee,” the medic told me.

This was not good.

“I can’t afford to have an operation. I need to graduate from this course. Just bandage it up. I have a six-mile run tomorrow morning,” I demanded.

“We can’t willingly put you back on duty while we are aware of your condition. You’re going to have to sign a release form before we can let you go.”

I signed the paper without a second thought and promptly left, deciding I would try and tough it out for the next few weeks. I couldn’t give up. I didn’t care about being sent home this time. I missed my wife and son and I wanted to see them, but I also needed to keep my job so I could support them financially.

It wasn’t a surprise that I performed drastically poor on the run the next day. Later that evening the SF captain called for me to see him in his tent.

“You didn’t seem motivated with your performance today. You almost came last in the run this morning. Every previous run you’ve almost been at the head of the pack. I expect more out of you,” he said to me with a disapproving expression.

I was also embarrassed by my performance.

He continued on, saying, “I need you to give me 110 percent. If your performance continues to deteriorate, you might not pass the course.”

I knew it was going to be hard to get through with my injured kneecap, but he was right. I ran like shit that morning, and I felt like shit. But I couldn’t fall behind the rest of the group and risk failing the course.

I guess he could see that something was bothering me because he said, “Pick your head up. Don’t let those bastards get you down. Is there something else bothering you?”

“It’s been seven months since I’ve seen my wife and son. The sergeant major told me I needed four years in before I could get a command sponsor so my family can get flown over and get housing.”

He smiled a little and said, “Is that what’s bothering you, Victor. You think I can’t do that for you?” I think the look in my eyes spoke more than anything I could say. “The day you graduate your wife and child will be here, with housing,” he told me, completely sure of his words.

I was overwhelmed with happiness. It made it easier for me to keep up with the group during our runs for the next four weeks. This was the spirit of core that they were talking about. Determination and the right motivation pushing a man to do things we previously thought impossible. There was no way I would’ve completed the course with my bum leg without convincing myself it was worth it to see my wife and kids.

Toward the end of the course we had a twenty-four-hour escape-and-evade test. The test was self-explanatory. We were to be captured by “the enemy,” be taken back to their camp, escape, and then evade them as we attempted to make it back to base.

It started with a nighttime raid of a castle orchestrated by Special Forces. The SF lieutenant made sure we were ambushed and captured by “the enemy.” After we were captured, we were led back at a point that was twelve miles away from our base and we had six hours to get back.

With our luck, it always rains and pours, and that’s exactly what happened when we went through the plow fields. It rained heavily, making it difficult to walk through the plowed dirt that was turning into sloshy mud, making us sink in to our ankles. The mud made our boots feel like they weighed ten pounds more than they did.

The run back to camp consisted of hiding in bushes and between trees, waiting for a chance to bolt a long distance, avoiding detection at the same time, as gaining ground toward the base. If you were seen, it wouldn’t be long until someone caught up to you. Most of us eventually made it back to base, covered in mud and sweat.

The next morning it was finally time to take the Ranger PT Test, and we were exhausted from double-timing it back to camp the night before. One of our first tasks was to transport heavy-duty tents into the back of a large truck. I was teamed up with a few stocky German rangers. After the first couple trips back and forth, I grew weak with fatigue and the tent slipped out of my hand.

“What’s wrong, cutie? Can’t hang?” the German commandos taunted.

Their provocation worked because I got angry and channeled it into strength, picking the tents up and finishing the task with ease. We did a series of other tasks, and at the end of the afternoon, they tallied up our points and I was more than relieved to see that I’d passed.

Getting caught in the wave of high spirits, I jokingly said, “I’m ready to go pick up my wife now.”

“As a matter of fact, your wife and son really are here and they’re ready to be picked up. I’ll go with you since you haven’t actually graduated just yet,” the sergeant told me.

I eagerly jumped into the sergeant’s jeep, and we left to pick them up from the hotel they were waiting at. The sergeant gave me five minutes to go upstairs and be with my wife in private after months of not being together. Fastest five minutes I ever knew because I got about two kisses in before the sergeant started banging on the door to let us know it was time to head out. Intimacy can wait, I guess, because my family was here to stay this time. We moved their belongings down to the jeep and made our way to the hall where the ceremony would be held. I graduated at number 17 out of the thirty-nine that passed the Special Forces Recondo training.

Ammo Dump No. 49

As the SF had promised, my family and I were given nice quarters in a large three-bedroom apartment in Crailsheim. When we finally got to the guesthouse and had a moment to rest, all my wife wanted to do was sleep. I couldn’t argue with her because I knew she was tired from her long flight and sitting around at the hotel before the graduation ceremony. But man was I really looking forward to having some more private time with my wife after not having been intimate for so many months.

Because I did not own any personal furniture to ship over, I was loaned some government-issued furniture. Later my whole baggage came in a crate weighing four hundred pounds. It would be a week before transportation would bring over my baggage, but I had made friends with a few black soldiers back at Schwaebisch Hall. They didn’t avoid from me like some soldiers did because we were wrapped the same way. We demanded respect where it was due. They offered to help bring my stuff over that weekend so I wouldn’t have to wait for the government to do things on their own time. I wasn’t against the idea because I could really use the pots and pans to do some cooking. I really missed listening to some sounds on my stereo too.

These soldiers were just as crazy as I was because they showed up to my apartment in a deuce and a half that they stole from the motor pool. But they followed through on their promise. The crate with my stuff was shipped to Schwaebisch Hall, which was about a forty-mile drive from where we were. They carried everything up to my apartment within a few minutes. The truck was back in the motor pool in the morning, and no one noticed a thing. I’m still surprised that those guys managed to carry the crate up my stairs because it weighed upwards of four hundred pounds.

I lived in Crailsheim and had to drive over forty miles to get to work in Schwäbisch Hall. It was late in the year. Winters in Germany are very cold, and snowstorms and blizzards are almost an everyday occurrence. It only got worse with time, and I wasn’t the only one having trouble getting to and from work. One officer didn’t make dead man’s curve due to the weather. A little slip and there went his precious Dodge Charger. The sergeant major, in all his wisdom, got the idea into his head that because I’d driven a bus through the snow once before and got the soldiers to their destination alive that I was the best candidate to drive the bus that transported the officers and NCO sergeants to work. Thankfully, it was a smaller bus than last time, only a passenger bus was much easier to handle than the fifty-five-passenger bus.

Soon after I was transferred to the communications section at McKee Barracks in Crailsheim, so I didn’t have to drive the short bus for very long. We were tasked with keeping the battalion synced with communications during convoy movements and when nuclear rockets were deployed in the field. It was extremely important to keep convoys updated and aware of activity, but the radios during that time didn’t have the range they do now, so it was up to us to keep relays timed properly so that the convoy would always be in range of communication.

I walked into the commo section at the motor pool and told them I was going to start working in their section that day. I was introduced to a heavyset sergeant that easily weighed more than three hundred and fifty pounds. He was going to oversee me from that day on, so he gave me the basic rundown introduction to the rest of the workers in the section and for the equipment.

Once introductions were over with, I was given my first task by sergeant in charge.

“The first order of business, Sergeant Bravo, is that you go get doughnuts. So, boy, why don’t you take this $5 and go get us some doughnuts,” Sergeant Beauregard told me in his thick Southern accent.

“I’m no doughnut dolly. Go get them yourself!’’ I told him defiantly.

“What do you mean you’re not a doughnut dolly?” he asked me.

“You ever heard of the doughnut dolly girls in Vietnam? They flew out doughnuts to us.”

“I’ll talk to you later. This is no way to start working as a team,” he replied sarcastically, walking away before I could respond.

Later that day he showed me around the equipment shop and explained about being on call. He had a board on the wall above his desk in an open section of the shop that was covered in plastic film over black lines so that names could be written in. He used a grease pencil with a wax base so he could easily erase and add names daily.

One day after coming back to work from lunch I saw my name on the board and it hadn’t been there that morning. The sergeant in charge routinely writes names on the board the evening before so that when we arrive in the morning, we can know if we are to be on call that day. We were tasked to go out on alert to provide communications to the convoys that were transporting Honest John rockets. Later in the day, he went and told the first sergeant that I had missed alert. First Sergeant Dubois sent for me the next afternoon. When I reported to his office, he asked me why I had missed the alert the day before.

“Before I was out to lunch, my name wasn’t on the board. Usually Sergeant Beauregard writes the names on the board the night before, so we know we’re on call that next morning.”

“We’re going to have to give you some extra training then. I’m going to send you out to the ammo dump for the next two weeks,” the first sergeant tells me, making it clear that he didn’t believe my story.

I thought how much of an Uncle Tom this black first sergeant was acting like right now. He blindly believed the white sergeant’s blatant lies over me, a minority just like him.

In a couple of days I found myself driving out in the country, about forty miles out of camp. When I got to the ammo dump, I saw it was surrounded by a ten-foot-high barbed wire fence. It was isolated, the nearest farmhouse being about two miles away. Farmland covered most of the area, which was good so we could see any uninvited guests.

When I arrived at the entrance, I couldn’t see the bunkers where they kept the ammunition because inside the fence there were trees and brush all around the bunkers.

When we got closer to the gate, there was a button we had to press to ring the guardhouse. The guard came out to open the gate and led me to a jeep. The duty driver that was with me said he had to pick up the sergeant that I was going to relieve, so he was going wait at the entrance.

I walked into the guardhouse and noticed the sergeant was still picking up beer and wine bottles around the room, and I thought that the place looked more like a crack house than an official guardhouse.

The sergeant had already been waiting when I arrived so that I could relieve him of his duty and take from him the book of standard operating procedures for the ammunition yard.

He showed me the arms room in the guardhouse, and we inventoried the weapons, making sure the serial numbers matched the log form. There were four M16s, one 12-gauge shotgun, and one .45 pistol. He said only the duty sergeant wore the .45, although he never had to put it on himself. All the serial numbers matched the weapons, but when we got to the ammunition form, he told me to sign it because he had to get going already.

“I was taught by my father never to sign anything that I haven’t read,” I told him.

He gave me a wild-eyed looked when I said that, and he asked me, “What are you going to do, count ever fucking bullet?”

“Of course, that’s what I’m here for,” I replied.

We went over the ammunition, and I found that he was missing eighty 5.56 mm rounds and thirty .45 cal rounds. I immediately knew that someone had been shooting off rounds. I told him that he needed to report back the missing ammo and that I would be calling the first sergeant so that he could send a survey officer out. A survey officer’s job is to investigate how the ammo went missing and is usually a lieutenant.

It was a Sunday afternoon, so I called the duty officer to let him know to tell the first sergeant the next morning. I asked him if I should relieve Sergeant Taylor, and he recommended that I do because the lieutenant wouldn’t be there till the following day.

Sergeant Taylor looked at me and said, “So you think this is serious?”

“How serious is it? How many people could you kill with that much ammo?” I asked him. I later found out that the soldiers at the ammo dump had been hunting the local roe deer that were roaming around the site with that ammo.

Sergeant Taylor left, and later that night I changed my bedsheets and started to read through the standard operating procedures. I finished it that same night. The next morning I was surprised to be the only one up and walking around at 6:00 a.m. Everything was silent except the snoring echoing through the guardhouse.

I went and woke up one of the specialists. “Shouldn’t there be someone guarding the post right now?”

He told me, “We start roving patrol with the jeep after breakfast. There are only four of us, so we divided the duties into three guards and one cook. Every eight hours the guard on duty changes shifts and the other two remain off duty for the next sixteen hours. And by the way, the cook only makes bacon and scrambled egg sandwiches.”

I was surprised when he said this because I read in the SOP that each bunker was supposed to be checked on every two hours. There were thirty bunkers, and it seems highly improbable to check them properly when you’re driving by on a jeep or not driving by at all because you’re asleep in bed.

“Well, who’s supposed to be on guard right now?” I asked him.

He pointed to a bunk where another service member was sleeping. I told him to go over and wake him up and inform him that he was on duty. There was a brief exchange between the two, and the guard who was supposed to be on duty got up with his back toward me and put on his boots. As he walked around the corner of his bed, I noticed right away that he was wearing cowboy boots instead of the military issue. When he got to me, he saluted and said that he was ready to go out on patrol.

“What’s your name, soldier?” I said loudly.

“Specialist Nelson, sir!” the soldier replied.

“Well, Specialist Nelson, you’re not ready to go on duty,” I replied sternly. “Go put on your military boots, then you can go on patrol.” He reluctantly went and put on his military boots. Everything around here was way too damn lax.

Later that afternoon I was checking the kitchen for cleanliness, and I noticed it needed to be cleaned from the top to bottom. I went to the fridge and started to inspect the shelves, checking for spoiled food. While looking in the freezer, I took out a few frozen food packages and noticed there was a little package of foil hidden in the back. I opened it and saw a clump of what looked like purple plant material and some seeds.

When I saw it, I was reminded of the first time I heard the song “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix. I knew Jimi Hendrix. He was an acid head, but his musical talent with the guitar made me respect him. I’d never been around the stuff personally, but I’m not an idiot, and I knew it didn’t belong on a military guard post. I immediately went and flushed it down the nearest toilet.

That night I saw the cook going through the freezer, frantically looking around.

“What are you looking for?” I asked him.

“My stuff!” he said with a puzzled look.

“You mean that purple seedy stuff that even goats wouldn’t eat?”

“Fuck, yeah,” he said, starting to furrow his brow.

“I flushed that shit down the toilet.”

As I said this, his eyes lit up and he said, “That’s my shit, man. That fuckin’ shit cost me three hundred dollars! You owe me!”

As I turned around to leave, I said, “Forget it.” I took a few steps toward the hallway and felt his arm wrap around my shoulder, and he immediately put a butcher knife up to my throat.

He shouted into my ear, “I’m gonna fuck you up if you don’t give me my money!”

“I don’t have any damn money on me, asshole, and if you get that fucking blade any closer you’re going to jail for a long time,” I replied, trying to stay calm and still so he wouldn’t cut me with the knife that was pressed up to my throat.

As I said that, the specialist that tried to wear cowboy boots on duty early rushed in and said, “Ned, put that fucking butcher knife down. We’re already in enough trouble here!”

Ned immediately took the blade away from my throat and said, “All right, Cowboy, everything’s cool here.” As he set the huge fourteen-inch knife down on a nearby table with his arms spread out and hands open, showing the specialist that he was unarmed. It was clear to me then that this Cowboy had some unspoken respect around here.

The next morning I learned why. I woke up to the sound of shots being fired from a pistol outside of the guardhouse. I went around back to check the source, and I found Cowboy shooting at a row of empty cans with his 1880 Colt .45 pistol. He fanned out his shots, making him look like a gunslinger in the Wild West.

“What the hell are you doing, Cowboy? You can’t be shooting here in the ammo dump,” I yelled.

“The sergeant before you were always partying in his room, he didn’t mind. We even went deer huntin’. What the hell is your problem?” he replied, holstering the pistol, whirling it like a gunslinger.

“It’s an ammo dump. You don’t fire a weapon in the ammo dump. Take those rounds out of your pistol immediately.”

He flipped the cylinder lever so that he could take out whatever ammo he had left in the pistol. He took out one shell at a time, and when he took out the last round, I noticed it was a live round and it was military-issued ammo.

“I’m going to have to take that pistol from you too, Cowboy.”

“This is my personally owned firearm. They allowed me to store it in my locker,” he replied in defense.

What the fuck, this isn’t the Wild West. Why would the army let Cowboy have his privately-owned pistol? Shit had to change around here, and fast.

“Only the sergeant in charge is supposed to wear his firearm when they aren’t on duty. I’ll let you put it away in your locker, but you’re not permitted to have any .45 rounds or wear it.”

“Those were the last of the rounds I had,” he told me.

This was too wacked out. I was up against a cook from hell’s kitchen and Jesse James. Unfortunately for them, they’re up against me.

When you look at everything that’s happened so far, the easiest thing to do would be to report all these fuck heads and replace them with some soldiers who can do their damned jobs. But when you’re faced with adversity, you don’t toss in your cards. You learn to play with the hand you’ve been dealt. I learned that in Vietnam.

Later that night I strapped my .45 to my side in a tactical shoulder holster. Instead of going to sleep in my own private quarters, I placed myself in an empty bunk at the corner of the room where the rest of the soldiers slept. The only other occupied beds were all concentrated to the other side of the room with a few empty bunks between me and them, so I stuck out like a sore thumb.

“What are you gonna do, sleep in here?” Cowboy asked.

“Yes,” I began. “Starting tonight you are all under martial law. I’m the only one that will be armed 24/7. I will always have eyes on you. I will sleep here and observe you, and during the day, if you are approaching me, you will say, ‘Sergeant, I’m here!’ because I don’t want to be surprised and accidentally shoot one of you fuckers. The only one that will have a loaded weapon will be me and the guard on duty, and he’ll only have five rounds in his M16 clip.”

The room remained quiet for a couple seconds before Cowboy spoke back up. “Uh-oh, sounds like we got a new sheriff in town…”

The next day I went out to the bunkers and checked the sign in sheets for each individual bunker. I approached the first one and pulled the sheet of paper out of the little black box fastened to the right of the bunker door. I examined it up and down and saw that it was divided into two simple columns, one for your initials and one for the time you checked in, except this sheet was already filled out for the entire day, and it was only 8:00 a.m.

I put the paper back in the box and checked the next several bunkers. They were all filled out, some of them signed off for the next three days. Instead of routinely checking the bunkers as they were supposed to under the previous sergeants, they were wasting military time and ammo deer hunting. They may have been able to fool the previous sergeants, but they weren’t going to be able to pull the wool over my eyes. I went back to the guardhouse and called the men into formation out front.

“Has everyone been checking on the bunkers every two hours?” I asked with great volume.

“Yes, sir!”

“Bullshit! I just checked the bunkers, and you fuckers have filled them out for the next three days. I’m going to start spot checking your work every day, and make sure you guys are doing your job. Otherwise, I’ll send the whole lot of you back home!”

After that everyone started to fall into a steady routine for a few days. One night I went into the guardhouse and saw Cowboy reading a magazine.

“Hey, Cowboy, let’s take a ride. I wanna check out the ammo dump bunkers,” I said to him. When he got up from his chair, I handed him a shotgun and said, “This already has three rounds loaded in it.”

“Thank you, Sarge,” Cowboy said as we walked outside and jumped into the jeep.

Everything was quiet that night. All we could hear was the sound of the jeep engine, and all we could see was the headlights shining on the road ahead of us. The mood shifted when we came upon two figures dressed in black in the road about thirty yards away from us. Shit immediately hit the fan. Two bullets came through our windshield, spraying glass shards into our faces.

Cowboy hit the brakes, and as he was slowing down to a halt, I yelled, “Cut the lights, Cowboy, and answer back with your shotgun!”

I rolled out of my seat onto the road and lay down to make myself a low silhouette. After Cowboy shot off two rounds, I scanned the darkness for barrel flashes, so I could reply with my .45 pistols, but there was only silence.

“Cowboy! How much ammo do you have left?” I asked, never taking my eyes off the road in front of us.

“I only have one round, Sergeant,” he replied.

“Take the jeep back to the guardhouse, and don’t turn on your lights! Call the SDO (staff duty officer). Tell him to send the Calvary, and I mean everybody!” I said with urgency.

Cowboy jumped behind the wheel and quickly hit a U-turn and sped down the road we came through. I got up into a crouching position, pistol in hand ready to fire at any moment, and started heading in the direction of the fence that surrounded the perimeter.

As I got close to the fence I started to pick up my pace because I wanted to catch the intruders, but that was a mistake. Blam-blam. I hit the dirt immediately as I heard the distinct sound of an AK-47 being shot off, and I could see the flashing of the barrel through the brush. A couple bullets went whizzing over my head, and I sent a couple rounds of my own toward the flashes. They must have heard me while I was trying to rush up to the fence and fired a couple shots at me to keep me away.

The ammo dump fell silent again until I heard unidentifiable voices speaking in German. It sounded like someone had become entangled in the barbed wire fence and was frantically trying to escape.

Hesitant to start moving just yet, I slowly made my way toward the voices. What I was really hoping for was to catch them stuck in the fence and to hose ’em down, leaving them stuck in the fence like I had done before in Vietnam.

By the time I reached the point of entry, they were gone. Left behind was only a scrap of black clothing, ripped away by the tattered edges of the hole in the fence, and a trail of blood leading into more darkness. I turned around and hurried back to the guardhouse to be sure that the Calvary was called in. This was serious, and it needed to be investigated immediately.

I called command as soon as I entered the building and informed them that the intruders were gone. I gave Cowboy five more shells for his shotgun and sent him back to guard the hole in the fence.

About an hour later, two military police (MP) sedans arrived at the ammo dump. I greeted the MP captain and explained the whole nine yards of the event. They stayed at the ammo dump for a few more hours while they were going over the perimeter. The breach was patched as best as it could be with the resources that we had on hand. I was told that the Polish army would be called out soon to mend it properly.

“How do you know it was live ammo they were shooting at you?” the detective from the Criminal Investigation Department, or CID for short, asked me. He sounded skeptical when he said this to me, as if I could have been making it up.

“Just take a look at the jeep. The windshield is shattered. I don’t think a blank could do that. My jeep looks like Bonnie and Clyde’s car,” I told him.

“All right, well, that’s enough questioning for today. We’ll be back tomorrow morning to finish the investigation,” the CID told me.

When they came back the next day, we sat on the kitchen table discussing the assault further.

The Polish army arrived a while after to mend the fence and ensure that the bunkers were secured. Before the last of them were about to leave, one of the Polish workers approached me and asked if he could come back and cook soup for us because he was staying close by in the area. It wouldn’t be until later that I would find that he was secretly bivouacking in the woods on our land. The area was too hot for now with all the investigators around, so I told him to come back in a few days.

A couple nights went by, and he reappeared with a handful of odd-looking mushrooms. He talked about how he walked around the forest during the day and picked them from the ground. He intended to use them to make mushroom soup, he told me.

“How do you know that those mushrooms aren’t poisonous?” Ned asked him.

“Trust me, I’ve been picking mushrooms for a while, and I’m still alive,” he replied, with a little offence in his tone.

Ned and I didn’t wait around long enough to see if the Pollock dropped dead before we scarfed down some of that soup. It’s been a while since we had a real home-cooked meal that didn’t involve eggs or sandwiches. While at dinner, I thought it would be a good idea to get to know a little more about the bunkers.

“What is it that you guys do in the bunkers, exactly?” I asked the Pollock.

“We maintain the steel doors to make sure they function properly, and we rotate the ammo crates that have been out here for a while. Have you ever noticed those train tracks outside? If this was wartime, we’d be the ones sending the ammo out on box carts,” he explained. The entire time he was explaining this, I began to really question why they had these thugs guarding such an important war reserve.

“Wouldn’t it be kinda hard and inconvenient for intruders to come in and carry those heavy crates full of shells out of that hole in the fence?” I asked.

“Sergeant, they weren’t after those shells, they were after your stingers,” his reply was absolute news to me.

I mentioned this to Cowboy sometime after dinner, and man, did I wish these higher-up fucks would’ve told us about the stingers so we could’ve been more alert. “No shit!” was all he had to say about it.