At some point along the way in high school I did a report of some kind on the Coast Guard Academy … and I suppose I entertained some notion about going there.
After graduating from Brandon, I ritually trotted within the “preppie” herd and headed for “college.” In two rich and rewarding terms I demonstrated convincingly that I was “not ready for prime time,” … so to speak. I found a totally unexpected and welcome social group … numerous talented, bright, open people … and I hung out there, in “The Lounge.” More about that elsewhere.
Now … I like to say that my “Uncle” … y’know, the one with the red white and blue top hat? … white beard? … points a lot? … always on about who he “wants?”… you’ve seen’im … yeah … that one. Well, he was stalking the land in those days in search of able, young men … and conscripting them, training them to kill or be killed, and sending them about half way around the world to a place where they died by the hundreds weekly.
I was about to become what you call “1-A” … fresh, strapping, steerable meat. I knew it, too.
… and it scared the shit outa me.
Now, I had been raised by two (count’em … 2) United States Marines, one of whom was in combat with soldiers of the Empire of Japan contesting possession of a remarkable island we call “Guam” as part of a little dustup we all called “WWII.” I did understand honorable service and … I always wondered if it was just me but … it seemed there was a certain glorification of “war” in the culture. It seemed to me that the fact was, you just weren’t a “Man” … if you didn’t end up in combat somewhere. For me, the notion of combat was … I think … very much an expected “Rite of Passage” to manhood and that was strong in me.
… so was the abject terror of knowingly placing myself somewhere I knew there were armed, capable people waiting to do their very best to kill me.
… and as strong as the abstract “killer duty” was … the horror at killing someone … being expected, trained, required, … tasked … to kill another person, along with the urgent terror at the prospect of putting myself where I knew people were trying to kill me … uhhhh … mmmmotivated, I think is a good word … yes … yes … most definitely: motivated me to Find Another Way to handle the Fact that I WAS going to be required to be in the military … I could choose: I could “volunteer” … orrrrrr … be DRAFTED!!
Yes, sir … it seemed a rich field of choices that lay before me. Oh, I can see now that I did have “other alternatives” … but I din’ WANNA live in Canada … and that “beat–my-knee-with-a-two-by-four” thing? … that … naaahhhhh … The whole point is to avoid physical injury … itnit ??
… and I … I had a “Superman” cape … it completed my (Thank you, Paul for this exquisite visual.): Savior Suit …
In my fantasies and in my dreams throughout my childhood I was a magnificent superhero … rescuing damsels (yes … I knew what a “damsel” was in utero, I think …) I flew and acted with irresistible strength intervening and steadfastly thwarting the most powerful “Evil” to protect and recover the cherished … and hence, adoring … Tender Young Woman.
… and there … was the Coast Guard … you know: Stout Boats with Strong Men braving the Fury of the Sea to act in the rescue of People in Trouble.
Flying spray … leaping boats … grateful people … (no one was shooting at me) … military service … (no one was shooting … at … me… )
2 + 2 = COAST GUAAAAARRRRRRD …
To this day, there is a twinge … “Coward” … and, y’know what? … I’ll own that.
Yes, I was a coward … still am in some ways … and I looked at my situation and I calculated a choice that I deemed in my best interest. I was not pissed off enough at the Vietnamese people to travel nearly half way around the world to kill them. I have since discovered that I am capable of being that pissed at someone, and at the time … nahh …
… so I enlisted. Went to the office, took the tests, signed, and I was in the Coast Guard. I was in the military.
There ensued a tenderly touching, heart-rending, and lengthy “Goodbye” to that community, to those people I had met in “110 Southcourt Lounge,” including one tiny fascinating woman with whom I had become utterly smitten … and that’s a whooollllle other story … then I stood with hand raised and took the oath.
I guess I flew to Philadelphia. Now … I think the farthest, up to that point in my life, that I had ever ventured from my home … alone … was the day I wandered off in North Bergen and ended up in the police station being entertained by a Sergeant who drew things, while we waited for my family to come and collect their three … four? … year old, so boarding an airplane and flying to Philadelphia … alone … one way … was prêt-ty damned “freaky”…
The instructions were to go to the bus station in Philadelphia and board a bus to Cape May, New Jersey. I think it was a cab ride from the airport into downtown but, hell … I was just barely conscious by that time …
… and I was walking around in the middle of Philadelphia … my cracker ass effectively incandescent as I rubbernecked and pulled pieces of paper from my pockets to peer at street signs and numbers … and I could NOT find the bus station …
I had no iDEA where that thing was … and I was standing on the sidewalk peering first one way and then the other up and down the rumbling city street, trying to figure out where I was when from very close behind me there was a blast from an air horn …
It was a bus
… I was standing between the bus and the street, in the “Departure” drive of the Union Bus Station in Philadelphia … PA.
Oh …
There’s the bus station …
It seems like a dark bus ride to Cape May … but that may have just been my mood … because I remember arriving at the United States Coast Guard Recruit Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey on a grey, drizzling, VERY chilly 26th of May day. Grey … 46 degrees … raining … May 26, 1966.
We left the bus under the … instruction … of several khaki-clad gentlemen with very very clear notions as to what precisely must be done and what is absolutely, emphatically NOT to be done.
Reality began to blur and the rather shy, smart, suburban cracker kid from White Bread, U.S.A. increasingly became a highly attentive and compliant, even eager … military trainee … I became a guy living in a room with fifty-some other guys … maybe more, I don’t remember … a guy with clothes that looked exactly like everyone else’s clothes and a shaven head … just like everyone else’s.
… a guy who either ran, or gathered a “squad” and marched to called cadence, at any time he was outside moving from one place to another … which was almost constantly.
The physical aspect was very nearly brutal. Early on we, we recruits, we stood in ranks, many companies, all the incoming companies … in a single huge formation and we did calisthenics, “brisk” and extensive calisthenics in sets, long, vigorous sets … and if someone fell out of rhythm, failed to carry out a movement or maybe didn’t stop at the correct time, the set was repeated … and … y’know … repeated … and … y’know …
for a lonnnnnnngggg time. In that way I became so completely and stiffly bone-deep and painfully sore that I would not sit down if the opportunity might last less than maybe ten minutes, because it took me about that long just to sit down (especially on the floor (DECK, SIR!!) because if we were in the squad bay … one did NOT sit on the “racks.”) and stand back up.
I lived in that squad bay with those men for a while, long enough to have our “Recruit Company Commander” … fail and have the D.I. call me to the desk and offer me the position … and for me to decline.
I had been told “The Way” to go through boot camp was to get into the Honor Guard and there was a tryout where anyone who wanted to could perform certain specific things for review and potentially be selected to be in the Honor Guard. Down to the shady end of the huge three story block barracks and put in formations of four, we marched … for form, pace, bearing … to “silent cadence.” Then we lined up, shoulder to shoulder along the walk, ”dressed right,” and the squad stood before us, one holding a Springfield ’06 bolt action rifle with a bayonet affixed. The “drill” was … “He’s gonna toss you this rifle. YOU are going to catch it in your right hand.”
OK …
… and I watched out the corner of my eye as they progressed toward me down the walk along the rank and it was just an underhand toss from alongside the leg. No big thing …
He stood in front of me and the rifle flew. Short … and low …
I set one foot crisply forward, bent at the waist, reached out and down and seized the rifle in midair by the front hand grip with my right hand, about three inches from the concrete, caught it cleanly, stood and stepped back with the rifle butt on the deck beside my right foot and the bayonet along the front of my upper arm, at attention.
I was in the Honor Guard.