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Joseph's Brethren |
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The sun had set, but brightness lingered in the cloudless April sky as we climbed down from the deuce-and-a-half. As the empty truck's roar faded in the distance, eleven recruits in the last week of basic training gathered in the sandy road. Tom Self, our leader, distinguishable only by the chevron armband pinned to his fatigue jacket, looked at me. "Okay, General," he said, handing me a map and a compass. "You understand this land navigation stuff, right?" I flinched at the nickname. It brought me back to the first day of basic, when our drill instructor had begun to explain the rudiments of military drill, starting with the position of attention. Sergeant Aflleje was from Guam, and English issued from his mouth as though it had been strained through marbles rattling beneath his tongue. It was all that I could do to follow him, and I joined my comrade's smirks and grins —until Aflleje glared at me. "Yuse t'nk das funny?" he bellowed. "No, Sergeant," I said, coming to attention. "Yuse gets me ten," he said. I dropped down and, straining, counted off ten pushups. As Aflleje continued with his drill lessons, his accent thickened. He couldn't explain something as simple as keeping one's hands at ones sides, fingers extended and joined, the way it was described in FM 22-5, the field manual for drill and ceremonies. In spite of myself, I laughed aloud. Aflleje stared a curse at me. "Gettmeh ten moh," he said, and when I had finished and stood up, panting, he crooked a finger. "Git ou' here," he hissed. He handed me a 3x5 card, on which was typed: Attention Parade Rest At Ease Left Face Right Face About Face Forward March Halt "Yuse t'nk yakin du bettr?" he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Yes, Sergeant," I replied. "Show me," he said. Standing calmly before the platoon, I described the position of attention. I told everyone to assume that pose, and when all had, told them to relax. Then I explained the command, called the platoon to attention, and they responded. I taught them "at ease" and "parade rest," strolling among the ranks, adjusting an arm here, a heel there. In an hour, my platoon was doing right face, left face, and about face as though we were actually soldiers. Aflleje bent down and looked into my seventeen-year-old eyes. "ROTC, hunh?" he said, and I nodded, yes. "Okeh, Gen'ral. Yuse in charj dismount'd drill," he said. "Give the mens ten minute break." I told the platoon to take ten, but when I unsnapped my canteen, Aflleje stopped me. "Not yuse. Yuse need extra training, and yuse gets it now." I spent the break doing pushups, sit-ups, and squat jumps. Judging by the way they laughed and pointed, my platoon thought that this was even funnier than listening to Aflleje mangle English. When the break was over, I resumed my role as instructor. For the rest of the week, Aflleje squatted in the shade, smoking, while I taught. Every fifty minutes I gave the men a break, then spent ten minutes sweating under Aflleje's angry stare. Soon everyone in the company called me "General." I hated it — sort of. Actually I was so smugly assured that I had little to learn from the Neanderthal noncoms, that secretly I reveled in the moniker. I asked questions in every class, raised my hand when instructors quizzed us, and without saying so, let on that I already knew everything that we recruits were supposed to learn in Basic. In the seventh week, we held Open House. Wives, parents and siblings came from all across America. We entertained them by displaying our new skills in demonstrations. Barking out orders, I led the precision drill team, a bullet-tipped swagger stick tucked under my arm. Afterward, still toting the stick, I worked the audience, accepting the praise of my buddies' families. A week later, we went to the boondocks for a final field training exercise. "Sure, I understand land navigation," I told Self, the squad leader. I spread the map on a large rock and oriented myself on the terrain. "We are here," I said, pointing to a spot on the map as the others gathered around. "We need to get there," I added, indicating a confluence of squiggles, contour lines whose proximity suggested a steep slope. "Near the crest of this hill, in a draw just above the trail." I folded part of the map into a straight edge and drew a line between the two spots, about fourteen grid squares apart. I laid the compass on the line, turned the map until it pointed north, let the arrow settle, then read the compass. "The azimuth is 32 degrees," I announced. "A little east of due north." "Let's go," said Self, and we moved into the woods. We soon came to a big clearing, but as the first man stepped into the open, I called, "Halt!" In a low voice, I recalled that we had been trained not to cross open spaces without knowing what was beyond them. "There could be Aggressors in there," I said, pointing. We were one of twenty squads dropped in widely scattered spots around Fort Ord's vast training area for an exercise that combined land navigation with escape and evasion. Armies train to re-fight their last war, and in Korea, a few years earlier, many US units had been cut off by the surprise advance of Chinese forces. Most who survived had formed small groups that stealthily threaded around and through enemy lines until they reached safety. That was our training mission. Barring the way to our destination was a company of "Aggressors," G.I.s patrolling the roads and prowling the boondocks. Their mission was to catch us, take us to a training version of a POW camp, and make us wish that we had never been born. For the Aggressors, who wore distinctive uniforms and helmets, it was playtime. They had rifles with blanks, and license to be brutal, up to a point. They would not kill or maim; aside from that they could do almost anything in the name of training, and if they erred it was on the side of pain. "Someone should crawl across and check out the other side," I said. "You go," said Self, glancing around at the others. "Leave the map and the compass, recon the area, and let us know if it's safe to cross." After ten minutes on my belly, low crawling across the clearing, I edged carefully into the darkening wood, listening and looking. When I was sure that it was safe, I walked back. The grove was empty. I searched through the gathering murk, moving quietly, listening, but my squad was gone. Captured by the Aggressors, I assumed, wondering briefly why I had heard nothing. I was alone in a Central California wilderness populated by rattlesnakes, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes — and 200 mean, nasty Aggressors. I had no weapon, no compass, no map, no food, only a little water. Panic descending through my gut, I took several deep breaths, then sat down and went through my pockets, as my Scoutmaster father had once taught me. I had a small folding knife, some coins, a handkerchief, matches. I had a canteen, a compress bandage, and a poncho secured with a bootlace. I sat thinking, waiting for full darkness. I told myself that I would be fine, that I must not surrender to the terror welling up within me. I forced myself to relax, felt the trembling receding from my extremities, regained control. When stars were visible, I found the Big Dipper, and used it to locate Polaris, the North Star. If I marched just right of that, a bit east of north, that would be about the azimuth I needed. I had to cover 14 grid squares, or about eight miles. I did the math in my head, as my father had taught me. The average man's stride was thirty inches, so forty paces was a hundred feet. I aligned Polaris with my left shoulder, and after one hundred twenty paces, a hundred yards, I stopped to listen, and tied a knot in the bootlace. A mile was about eighteen knots; when I had tied a hundred and forty I should be near my destination. Soon the full moon rose to my left, casting eerie shadows. Behind me, somewhere close, a coyote howled, and chills tap-danced up my spine. Would a pack of coyotes attack a man? I didn't want to find out. Moving northward, the hills flattened and pine and spruce gave way to shoulder-high sagebrush. There were game trails and paths, but I avoided them, detouring around clearings, trail junctions, and other danger spots, but always returning to my line of march. When I had tied seventeen knots, I paused, listened, then sipped a mouthful of water. I came to asphalt, stopped to listen for several minutes, then dashed across two lanes. Halfway, I heard the muted throb of an engine, and a shaft of light stabbed the hillside behind me. I burrowed into the brush as a truck cruised by, headlamps off, a crew of Aggressors smoking cigarettes, talking and laughing as they probed with the searchlight. I had no timepiece, but the moon's arc across the sky gave me a sense of hours passing. On and on I went, counting paces, tying knots, until a gentle breeze brought the smell of burning tobacco. My knees turned to rubber, and I knelt beside a bush, scanning the darkness, hearing myself gasp for air, listening to the kettledrum in my chest. The wind shifted and I heard the clatter of metal on metal, the indistinct murmur of voices. A man screamed, a long, continuous cry. There was raucous laughter. My blood ran cold. Lord, be with me now, I prayed, silently. I crept forward. Suddenly the silence was shattered by the ear-splitting yammer of a heavy machinegun. It was only a few yards away; muzzle flashes silhouetted its crew in their ridged helmets. I dropped flat, using elbows and knees to propel myself. Abruptly it was quiet. I froze, listening to the clink of belted cartridges as the gunner reloaded. A man left the gun pit, stopping a few feet from where I lay. I smelled urine, and heard sloshing. When the machinegun again broke into its stuttering roar, I crawled as fast as I could, skinning elbows and knees on the way to a copse of stunted pine. Shaking with fright, I got to my feet and edged forward. To my left was a barbed wire enclosure, topped with guard towers and bathed in the harsh glare of floodlights. Aggressors screamed obscenities at men doing sit-ups and pushups in a watery quagmire. In a movie this is the place where the hero rescues his buddies. I never considered it. I was unarmed. I was alone. I was scared. It was all I could do to save myself. Carefully moving around the camp, I crawled between two more gun pits. A cigarette glowed in the darkness to my left. Nearby I smelled after-shave, heard the distinctive click of cooling metal. A patrol with a leashed dog was silhouetted on the crest of a low rise, and the shepherd's bark was answered by a canine chorus behind me. I lay down and waited a long time, praying that no dog would catch my scent. When the camp was far behind me, I found Polaris and resumed my course. The low moon shadowed the valley but lit the top of a grassy slope. Below the summit I found a track. Exhausted and out of water, I went prone behind its earthen berm. I fingered my bootlace, counting: 147 knots. Away to my left, above the road, stood a large tent; a jeep was in front, its hood raised. I crept forward until I could read the white markings stenciled on its bumper: HQ-9-3. Headquarters Company, Ninth Battle Group, Third Brigade. My outfit! A pair of legs protruded from the hood. A man extricated himself, stood up, turned around — and jerked backward in fright when he saw me. "Where the hell did you come from?" said the motor sergeant. "You scared me half to death!" I held the flash while he attached a pair of wires to the jeep's generator. He cranked the engine, and the tent glowed. "Get you some coffee," he said. "The debriefing team will be along soon." Before midnight I had showered and was asleep in my bunk in the deserted squad bay. The rest of my platoon arrived just before reveille, exhausted, filthy with mud, cursing the Aggressors who had terrorized them. Nobody said a word to me. Four days later we graduated, and were reassigned to units and schools worldwide. Along with several others from HQ-9-3, but nobody from my squad, I went to advanced infantry training. I rarely thought about that night until a warm afternoon in 1967, when I passed a captain in front of the Fort Benning Officers Club. There was something familiar about him, and as he returned my salute, I glanced at his name tag. We turned back at the same time. "General!" he said. It was Tom Self, my basic training squad leader. Over beer we reprised our respective careers. After Advanced Infantry, he went to OCS; he had been a captain for a few years and would soon depart for his first Vietnam tour. I was a new second lieutenant. He asked what OCS class I had attended, and I shook my head, explaining about my appointment. "A battlefield commission?" he gasped. "I've never met anybody who was commissioned in Vietnam." I confided my ambivalence about my new status. The war had altered my perspective of the Army. I had given up a plum assignment with Stars & Stripes to accept the commission, and I still wasn't sure if I'd done the right thing. We talked about Ft. Ord, and how that experience had changed us. He took a long swig at his beer. "You saved us from being held back a week, did you know that?" When I shook my head, he went on. "You were the only guy in Fifth platoon who wasn't caught. Brigade wanted to run the whole platoon through the exercise again, but Aflleje talked them out of it. Said that you had made it, and it wouldn't be fair to make you go again. And he said that you were only seventeen years old, the puniest physical specimen in the company, so you must have gotten good training, and if you did, we all did." "Aflleje actually used the word, 'specimen?'" I asked, skeptical. "I'm paraphrasing, a little," he replied. "You're sure about this?" I asked, and he nodded, yes. "It was the swagger stick," he said. "The damned swagger stick that you carried around at the Open House." I was lost. "What about it?" "That was the last straw. That's why we ditched you on E & E." I was stunned. In all those years it had never occurred to me that I had been abandoned. Suddenly it made sense: If Aggressors had come to capture my squad, surely I would have heard them. "But why?" I asked, dumbfounded. "You were like Joseph in his damn colored coat. Always knew better than we did. You were a kid. You still look like a kid, and that was eight years ago." I stared at my beer. "You were so full of yourself! And always right. You were insufferable, did you know that? You needed to be taken down a few pegs, and we thought that getting lost, or being caught by the Aggressors, would fix you right up. We talked about giving you a blanket party, but this was better. You crawled off, and someone said, 'We've got the map and the compass, screw him, let's split.'" We exchanged addresses, but I never heard from him. I hope he made it through Vietnam. He got me thinking, and I realized that he was right: In basic I was a smartass, neither wise enough to know how others saw me, nor sensitive enough to care about their feelings. And yet, deep down, I was terrified that these men would never accept me. I felt too young and puny — like I didn't really belong in their Army. Surviving that awful night alone in the wilderness bolstered my confidence. I'm not sure how much I toned down my act, but by the time I left Fort Ord, I knew that I was worthy of wearing the uniform of my country. Joseph's jealous brothers sold him into slavery because he flaunted his gifts. He forgave them when he matured and realized his own shortcomings, and saw that they had mended their ways. Joseph accepted that he must endure slavery in order to prepare the way for his family's survival. And so I forgave my brethren, who by abandoning me, provided the opportunity to prove my self -- to my self — thus ensuring my own survival. Long after my Ft. Benning encounter, reading the Bible, I discerned the importance of names. Joseph, whose name in Hebrew means "to add in," put Israel's 70 children into Egypt. Centuries later, Moses drew a nation out of Egypt to freedom. Moses means, "to draw out." Could it be mere coincidence that, just back from Vietnam and trying to find my self, the man who revealed my secret past, pointing the way to understanding , acceptance, and self-confidence, was named Self? # # # Copyright © 1999,2002 Marvin J. Wolf Joseph's Brethren |
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