Part 12: Sprotten

            Far across the blue waters lives an old German’s daughter by the banks of the old river Rhine.  Where I loved her and left her but I can’t forget her ‘cause I miss my pretty Fraulein.  Fraulein, Fraulein look up toward the heavens each night when stars seem to shine.  By the same stars above you I swear that I love you, you are my pretty Fraulein.  Bobby Helms

Christmas and New Years had come and gone and 2009 was starting out badly.  OPEC announced yet another increase in the price of a barrel of crude oil and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost another 200 points; the stock market was sinking downward to the post-9/11 crisis level.  Record high inflation was taking its toll on fixed income elderly citizens and the Fed jacked up interest rates yet again in an effort to keep it under control – not since the Carter administration had mortgage rates been so high. 

As a result, the real estate market was a basket case and company after company was laying-off people – even the three branches of the federal government announced a general reduction in force plan, but details were still being worked out. 

America’s GDP growth rate had once again declined in the quarter just ending, making it the sixth straight quarter that happened – consumer spending, the locomotive of the U.S. economy accounting for two-thirds of goods and services produced, continued declining as more and more people were either being laid off or feared it would happen any day so stopped spending. 

Fully eighty-five-percent of all American families were living paycheck to paycheck, had no savings, and had maxed out on their credit cards, carrying an average $40,000 in debt – the highest level in history.  Fully half of the country’s population was now without any kind of healthcare plan whatsoever, and the government’s social safety net system of welfare subsidies was bursting at the seams trying to provide assistance to the growing ranks of poor and displaced persons.  It was feared unemployment might reach the record highs of the Great Depression by the end of the year. 

Consumer banks received permission from the Fed to charge a forty-five-percent annual percentage rate on credit card balance past due in order to offset the cost of millions of cardholders declaring personal bankruptcy.  It was the worst of times in the promise land.

Archie Jefferson wasn’t worried anymore about the documents he took off the photocopier’s drum at work, hell, it’d been eight months and nothing happened so who gave a shit.  Security at work was a joke, he proved it and he was confident he could lift latent copies from any damned photocopier in the building if he wanted to.  

He dodged a big bullet alright.  Problem was, the old analog photocopier on the fourth floor had been switched out for a new digital model months before and he couldn’t lift any more latent images even if he wanted to. 

Not that it mattered because Archie had not set foot on the fourth floor since his theft of the Studebaker Institute documents. He was not putting two and two together.  Neither did Archie observe that more surveillance cameras had been installed everywhere at the Institute, and that security guards were making rounds more frequently, even during the day.

#

Archie was still getting new chapters in the interagency mail at work from his friend Sam Noble over at State every so often, and slowly he could see a book taking shape.  “Sonuvabitch,” he thought, “Noble might just pull it off after all, but this was some strange shit.” 

It was almost Super Bowl Sunday and Sam had invited Archie over to the house to watch the game with him and Nellie.  The Pittsburgh Steelers were playing the Arizona Cardinals in Tampa, and Archie was hoping to win the office pool over at Washington’s Studebaker Institute betting on the Cardinals.

Even though Archie was confined to a wheelchair, he had a specially rigged car to allow him to manipulate all the vehicular functions by hand so he could drive to work at the Institute and back home again, but he didn’t particularly like driving, especially all the way out to Vienna where Sam and Nellie lived. 

Archie telephoned Sam and after chatting briefly on what refreshments he should bring over for the game, he then provided his friend with a literary critique of his future best seller.  Neither Archie nor Sam noticed the faint clicking sound on the line as the conversation got underway.

“So Archie, whaddaya think of the stuff I sent over so far, does it make sense, I mean is it something you think people would be interested in?”  Sam was fishing for feedback from the only person in the world other than himself who had actually read his words, or at least that’s what he assumed.  He had forgotten the classic Barney Fife maxim, “When you assume, you make an ass of you and me.”

“What the fuck Sam!  Who is this guy Rowland or Rollie or whatever the hell his name is, and how did you come up with Antarctica?   One minute you got him digging underneath Jerusalem, and then he meets this saint dude hooked up with Georgetown, and then he’s related to Charlemagne, and then you fast forward and he’s nine hundred years old working at the University.  How the hell did he live so long?  And then you got him involved with the Holy Grail and drinking this elixir, what the fuck man!

 At least Sam had gotten Archie’s attention and he was glad his old pal had read everything he’d sent over.  So he replied, “I know Arch, I’m workin’ on it.  But when you write a novel you can use poetic license and just make shit up.  Right now though I’ve hit a wall and I don’t know where to go next with ol’ Duke Mitchum.  And by the way, it wasn’t the Holy Grail, remember?  It was the Jar of Manna.  Some other asshole used poetic license to make up that bullshit about the Grail.”

“That’s more blasphemy man, just like when you said Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a daughter named Sarah.  Everybody knows Jesus didn’t have no kids!  You got some pretty weird shit goin’ on there.  But I gotta admit I love stories about Atlantis and the Templars.”  Sam concurred, “Love the Templars.” 

Archie was right of course, Sam still had some splainin’ to do, but like Arch had said at the army reunion, it was all about gold and the ancients had to have traveled to the New World long before Columbus looking for the yellow metal – they needed it to make their elitist elixir, after all, so they could live on and on while all the hoi polloi died off from old age. 

So they had to have had maps and been expert navigators, not to mention scientists, geologists, architects, metallurgists, and surveyors.  After pausing for a second Sam braved another question to his chum, slightly sarcastically, “Well, is there anything you specifically liked?”

“Well, yeah,” replied Archie, “I think that part about Alaska’s pretty cool, but ain’t you supposed to use fictional names for the characters in a novel?  You used everybody’s real name from the platoon, and you even mentioned that prick Edwards.  And I see you used all that stuff on religion I gave you but man, you got it all twisted up with shit that’s just nuts?”  Archie brought up more interesting points.

“I can change the names of you guys, no problem, but what exactly did I get twisted up pray tell?”  Sam had left brief mention of Howie Edwards in chapter one on purpose even though the rest of the old platoon thought he was a traitor to the good ol’ U.S. of A. 

#

He wrestled with his conscience over the decision but felt that Howie was once a good friend and so part of him would always be a good friend, and that’s how he wanted to leave things between them.  Sam, though, was a little perplexed regarding the Rasta controversy.

“Man, the Rastafarians think Haile Selassie, the Lion of Zion, was a descendant of Jerusalem’s King Solomon and his son Menyelek and that’s the whole basis for their religion.  You said that prince Menyelek’s real father wasn’t Solomon but this dude Hiram Abiff who got it on with the Queen of Sheba and that means you screwed up their religion.  Them dreadlocked muh’fuckers are goin’ to be real pissed at you!”

“Good point Arch.  That one got by me, I’ll reconsider my hypothesis.  What else you got?”  Sam really didn’t know how to work his way around that problem, since he was well into writing the story’s plot by now and didn’t want to backtrack a couple of hundred pages plus, he was starting to wear down mentally.  He didn’t know writing was so damn hard.  Archie was also right about religions; you can’t brand any single religious belief as being evil just because of a few bad apples so he’d have to lighten up.

Archie felt a twinge of guilt about his criticisms and didn’t want to get too down on his friend.  “Hey Sam, you done good man.  You wrote about that shit you always talked about, you know, like lost cities, the Crusades, the Ark of the Covenant, cool history about Washington, D.C., treasures of the conquistadores, and you snuck Brazil in there too.  People love to read about those things.”

 “And I’m glad to see you took up my suggestion and wrote a shitload about gold,” Archie continued. 

“I know up close and personal what gold mining operations looks like from my personal experience down in Brazil, and let me tell you, it’s an ugly sight.  By the way Archie, Mardi Gras is right around the corner, how about we get hammered on Fat Tuesday?”  After a rather long pause, Sam asked, “Earth to Archie, you still there or has senility finally set in?” 

“Oh yeah, sorry Sam, I’m taking cold medicine and it’s spacing me out,” but Archie was fibbing.  Actually he hadn’t even realized it but he was daydreaming about a Mardi Gras trip he took many years previously that did not end well.  Before hanging up, Archie said, “Okay man, I’ll be at you place shortly.  By the way, what you going to call this book of yours anyway, you know, the title?”  Sam’s response was, “I have no idea Arch, but if you think of something, please let me know.”  Yeah, Archie and Sam went way back, and times were certainly different back then.

#

Sam Noble had no idea what he was going to do after high school, so like his cousins he signed on to work in the coal mines that summer down in Old Ben Number Two.  He hated it from the first day, and every day afterwards became continuing, unbearable torture – it was descending into the pits of hell to work in near-total darkness, dusty conditions, inhaling coal dust until all your pores were filled and throat and nostrils rubbed raw from inhaling filth. 

No matter how much you showered afterwards, the grunginess of the grit hung onto the skin, and hair reeked of the black rock’s dust.  It was mindless, numbingly boring work.  It didn’t take Sam long to decide he had to leave Mohlenburg and like many a young man of humble background from small towns across America, he saw military service as his way out of a life of drudgery down in the mines. 

His birthday had been June 6th so he was only 18 years old, therefore still needing his parents’ permission; trusting their son’s judgment, they signed the Army Recruiter’s forms allowing Sam to join the U.S. Army in early November 1963.  Sam’s father and uncles had fought in the big one, World War II, and all were proud of the latest Noble who decided to serve his country, as was Sam’s mother, although sad he was going away. 

But why worry – after all, there were no major wars to speak of and even the minor skirmishes in Southeast Asia were nothing to worry about.  The French screwed it up and now the Americans were going in to straighten things out and kick some Commie ass, that’s all there was to it.  So Sam bused out with the other inductees mustered at Fort Knox and headed west for basic training in Fort Lewis, Washington where after a few weeks he’d be a new buck private in the legendary Fourth Infantry Division – the Ivy Division. 

Everyone going inside the military barber shop wore the same civilian duds, the style of the times – black pegged pants, white socks, penny loafers displaying a 1943 zinc-coated steel penny, white tee shirts with Lucky Strikes rolled up in the short sleeve, blue windbreakers, and flat-top hairdos, so barbers had an easy time converting the flat-top into the military buzz cut; a lot easier than a few years later when everyone wanted to look like the Beatles. 

He learned neat stuff in basic training like the rule of threes – human survival times allowed for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food, and then you died.  

                It was while in Fort Lewis during his first days as a soldier that he met a young black man from the south side of Chicago assigned to his training unit, Archibald “Archie” Jefferson.  The only black person Sam ever knew, and at that not too well, had been Raggedy Rufus, the fruit and produce peddler back home – so he hadn’t any preconceived notions one way or another regarding race.  As far as he was concerned, people were people. 

                Archie was a cocky kid and Sam’s hillbilly accent signaled to Archie that this dude was a honky cracker; even so, it was Archie who befriended him and became the first real friend he made in the army. 

And it was Archie who taught his “chuck” friend how to play tonk, a card game they played for hours on end whenever they had free time in the barracks or mess hall; Sam was addicted to the game’s fast pace and chance to actually win, or lose, money. 

Then there was that awful Friday morning just three weeks after they got to boot camp when news began filtering in about something bad that happened in Dallas, and Sam overheard Archie say, with palpable fear in his voice to a gathered group of other young African Americans, “What’s going to happen if it was one of us what did it?”

                 

#

                Sam learned a lot about the history and esprit de corps of the Ivy Division and was told repeatedly it was cocked, locked, and ready to rock because America had the best leadership and weapons anywhere in the world.

                The Hundred Years War came to its bloody conclusion in July 1453 at Castillon, France when the last English captain rode with cavalry headlong into artillery, a weapon which was destined to become the decisive influence of a new era.  The age of feudalism was over and the age of gunpowder had begun. 

The invention of a revolutionary new weapons system that made the bow and arrow obsolete in the fifteenth-century is still around today and despite advances in the design of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction – the infantryman with boots on the ground and his assault rifle still remains the most practical and cost-effective lethal means of annihilating the enemy on the battlefield. 

This was certainly the case in Vietnam where geo-politics meant no battlefield tactical nukes could be used and combat aircraft could not pursue enemy planes across the border into the North – many high-value targets were off limits early on because the Johnson administration feared provocative military engagements in the region would trigger a more dangerous escalated confrontation with the Soviet Union or China.

                The U.S. Army’s Operations Research Office began working with Johns Hopkins University in 1948 with the objective of developing a replacement for the legendary eleven-plus-pound M-1 Garand eight-shot, .30-caliber rifle used by millions of GIs during World War II and later Korea.  New developments in Soviet infantryman weapon advancements, eventually producing the most efficient handheld battlefield rifle of all time – the 7.62-mm Kalashnikov AK-47 – meant America had to keep up so new rifle systems had to be invented. 

Research done by the U.S. Army involved questioning Korean War infantry veterans who reported that 95-percent of rounds fired had been done at targets within 300 yards due to limitations of terrain and other battlefield conditions.  Many reported that their actual confirmed kills occurred in less than 100 yards distance. 

Ultimately, factoring in these and other factors such as weight, it was determined that an automatic rifle of approximately .22-caliber firing a salvo of high-velocity magnum projectiles with a controlled dispersion pattern would produce optimum killing results for up to 500 yards.  This was how the ARmalite .223-caliber AR-15 was born which had a 20-round magazine and yet weighed only six pounds.

With the help of the very prestigious Washington, D. C. consulting and lobbying firm, the Studebaker Institute, Armalite began gambling its future on the AR-15 and launched an aggressive attack against the more popular 1959 replacement for the M-1, the heavier 7.62- caliber M-14 while at the same time influencing high-ranking officials at the Department of Defense to see things its way. 

Also with the help of the Studebaker Institute, the Pentagon influenced the purchase of 1,000 AR-15s for use by the South Vietnamese Army in 1962, and American military advisors there sent back glowing reports to Washington on the killing effectiveness of the rifle.  They told of how in one skirmish involving three Viet Cong in heavily forested jungle they had their heads and limbs blown off, with large holes shot in the body trunks from a firefight at a distance of fifty feet using the fully automatic burst mode. 

#

In-house Pentagon reports showed that the AR-15 was more cost-effective to produce than the M-14 and stated that the Armalite would give U.S. infantrymen a decided advantage over AK-47-carrying enemy soldiers.  With persistent resistance continuing in some quarters of the army community still favoring the M-14, particularly in sniper long-distance shooting, Armalite and its Washington lobbyist-firm used the civilian media to portray the weapon as needing more maintenance than the AR-15. 

Because of increased political pressure, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered a halt to M-14 production at the Unites States Armory, and shipments of these rifles destined for troops in Vietnam, and in early November 1963 ordered 104,000 Armalites for the U.S. military – now called the M-16 assault rifle, bore diameter 5.56 mm or .223-caliber. 

However, the M-14 was still kept for troop use in the United States and Europe until it was phased out there as well – Marines in particular loved the weapon.  In 1966 Armalite was awarded another contract for the M-16, this time 840,000 rifles about the same time mechanical problems with the small-caliber, high-velocity weapon began appearing. 

It was generally agreed that the rifle was a lethal killing machine in the bush and was much less heavy and awkward for close-in jungle combat as was the old M-14.  But jamming malfunctions caused by the failure of the M-16 to extract a fired cartridge shell was causing deaths to GI’s in the heat of combat, ultimately leading to a U.S. Congressional inquiry. 

The problem was that the rifle’s extractor would grip the rim of an expended cartridge and instead of pulling the cartridge from the chamber of the barrel on the rearward movement of the bolt, it would tear a portion of the rim from the cartridge as the bolt moved to the rear, leaving the cartridge in the chamber of the barrel.  This then required a soldier, sometimes in the heat of battle with Charlie closing in, to take a cleaning rod and insert it into the muzzle end of the barrel and force the fired cartridge from the chamber, clearing the weapon. 

                Confidence in M-16 by combat troops got so low because of reliability problems that soldiers began having old Winchester repeaters sent from home, or got their hands on shotguns, stray AK-47s left by the enemy, old M-1s bought on the black market, and the ever-reliable M-14 which was considered to be worth its weight in gold. 

After the 1967 Congressional investigation determined that the problem was the sticky residue left by the ball gunpowder inside the barrel and in the gas tube because the barrel wasn’t chrome-plated, the chemical formula of the gunpowder was changed to use less calcium carbonate.  The ball cartridge flaw was blamed for the problem, not the rifle.

                In addition, a new cleaning kit was developed and a massive training program was undertaken for proper rifle maintenance using comic book print and characters.  A Marilyn Monroe-type voluptuous buxom blond said in one issue of the comic book on How to Strip Your Baby, “You want to know her inside and out, every contour and curve, every need and whim that makes her tick.  Come a firefight – your M-16 rifle’s your dearest next o’skin – bar none.” 

With all problems of the rifle now ostensibly fixed and American involvement in Vietnam continuing to escalate, modifications of the weapon began taking place leading to the development of the next generation model called the M-16A1 – and hundreds of thousands more purchased became standard military issue, completely replacing the M-14 for combat use. 

The Studebaker Institute continues raking in millions and millions of dollars from royalties and consulting fees over a time span of almost fifty years, including income from sales of modified versions of the AR-15 sold to gun enthusiasts in the civilian market. The Armalite project became SI’s most lucrative project of all time and made Zachariah “Zack the Knife” Greese a legend inside the Beltway.

                

#

                Sam did two tours of duty in Vietnam and the guys in his outfit thought he was nuts for signing up a second time.  They joked that he actually believed the “every day’s a holiday and every meal’s a banquet, be all that you can be, join the U.S. Army” propaganda bullshit.  But Sam liked the organized structure of army life, the camaraderie, the chow – three squares and a cot – and was proud of his advancement in rank and status in the platoon. 

He didn’t even mind the chiding from his buddies about his repeated declarations that one day he would write the great American novel and become famous – braggadocio that finally earned him the nickname “professor.” 

His outfit’s mission with Foxtrot Company was mainly to train South Vietnamese AVRN Rangers, in its official capacity as “military advisor,” on how to shoot and maintain the new M-16s coming into the jungle combat theater, so that meant a lot of time at base camp with the occasional patrol in the bush to kill Charlie but they left that for the locals as much as they could. 

The jungle, that was a real scary place; the life and death stress made the adrenal pump so much so that the brain became crystal clear.  It focused on every single minor detail of the environment within a three-dimensional bubble around you. 

                When you did get into a firefight, you fought like hell, if not to survive yourself then to protect your buddies from harm – there’s no politics in the bush, it’s kill or be killed and everything’s a disorganized mess.  The two main fears, though, were from mortar attacks that rained down on U.S. troops regularly either while on patrol or back at base camp; or Viet Cong sappers infiltrating the wire by tunneling underneath the camp. 

The enemy smelled fishy and GIs knew they were coming when their mainly rice diet got boosted occasionally by what they considered a delicacy, canned mackerel.  The low point of Sam’s morale had been when his father passed away early on during his second tour and he had to return back to the “world”, to Mohlenburg and that dreary old coal mining town, but after the funeral he returned to Nam and felt right at home once again.  As the Vietnam conflict escalated, fewer men enlisted voluntarily so once again a U.S. military draft had to be initiated in 1967.

                Archie Jefferson re-up’d for another tour in Nam at the end of 1964 just like Sam did, but when Archie went home to Chicago on furlough after his first tour, he and three friends decided to head down to Mardi Gras and got into a severe car accident.  They drove to New Orleans in a six-year-old 1959 Chevrolet Impala, the one with the split trunk fins and 348-cubic-inch four-barrel engine, that may or may not have been stolen, but as it turned out it didn’t matter. 

About four o’clock in the morning outside Batesville, Mississippi the water pump blew so they had to pull onto the shoulder of I-55.  With virtually no traffic to hitchhike for – and even if there was, it’s very unlikely anyone would have stopped to give four stoned-out, inebriated young black men a lift into town regardless of the time of day – after all, it was 1965 and they were in the heart of Dixie.

                So two stayed with the car and two started walking for help; Archie stretched out on the back seat and slept, his friend did likewise in the front.  It was daybreak by the time the two who had gone for help returned with a tow truck, but the car wasn’t where they had left it – it was about a hundred feet away, down a gully, and was now a twisted pile of junk. 

Further up the gully was the wreck of an eighteen-wheeler whose cargo of furniture was also strewn along the freeway.  The highway patrol officer at the scene said the truck driver had not been seriously injured but the two black youths who had been in the car were in bad shape, and he took the two healthy young men to the Batesville hospital. 

Archie’s friend, the one sleeping in the front seat, had a broken collarbone and a few scratches – a miracle given the mess the semi made of the car.  But Archie hadn’t been so lucky, his back was broken and he would be a paraplegic for the rest of this life, and had years of very painful recovery ahead. 

                No charges were ever pressed against the black youths driving a stolen car – the trucking company took care of everything and made sure the injured young men were looked after, including a fat financial settlement for Archie to avoid any lawsuits. 

Archie had two positive memories from the whole sad affair: one was how well the nice people of Batesville’s hospital had treated him, and for that he was always very grateful – you just never knew about white folks.  The other was a postcard from sunny Saigon he received from Nam and his chuck buddy Sam Noble, wherein he wrote that he wished Archie a speedy recovery and closed by saying, “Don’t let them goddamn city shitters kick you down.” 

Like all APO mail sent home from GIs serving in Nam, there was no stamp affixed – all you had to write on it was “free postage.”  Archie was touched by the gesture, and neither he nor Sam ever really expected to see each other again, but they did.  His decorated military career was cut short, and because Archie was on active duty at the time of the accident the corporal qualified for lifetime disability plus Agent Orange exposure compensation, but his life changed forever. 

He and Sam Noble had relived and retold the story of how they won their combat “medals” a million times over beers and shots in subsequent years.   They’ll gladly share the tale with whoever wants to listen at the drop of a hat.  The heroic events happened at the end of the first tour, right before Archie went home on furlough and never came back.

#

                The gang from the old platoon had been filling up expended and emptied ammo boxes and sandbags with dirt all morning for protection around their Quonset hut "hooch" against mortar rounds, and since it was Sunday, very humid, and about 90-degrees in the shade, they knocked off when papa-san and mama-san showed up to do laundry and smuggled in some really good shit for the boys, mostly flower tops, all the way from Thailand – no sticks, no seeds, just far out weed – as the saying went. 

                Sam’s outfit had been based initially at Camp Holloway – an old French airbase in use before they got their asses kicked by pretty much the same Viet Cong who would kick American asses out eventually – called Company F, 2nd Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division near Pleiku. 

They kidded that they were like the popular television show at the time back in the world that everyone missed watching, F-Troop, and even had their own Captain Parameter, Sergeant O’Rourke, and Corporal Agarn – they were Company F’s commander Captain Rainos, First Sergeant Savidge, and Corporal Jefferson respectively. 

In the show, there was also Chief Wild Eagle played by actor Frank DeKova, head of the rather passive, peace-loving, whisky-swigging Indian tribe who when asked who they were, Wild Eagle would reply, “We’re the Hekawi” who Sam and his friends likened to their battalion commander Lt. Colonel Ernie Parrent.  That led to the joke of the day about Chief Parrent’s perpetually lost Indian tribe called “Wherethefuckarewe.”  But the best part of the show, according to Sam, had been the theme song at the opening of each weekly episode:

                The end of the Civil War was near when quite accidentally a hero who sneezed abruptly seized retreat and reversed it to victory.  His Medal of Honor pleased and thrilled his proud little family group, but while pinning it on some blood was spilled and so it was planned he’d command… F-Troop!

                Shortly afterwards, Foxtrot Company moved out to Camp Radcliff near An Khe where it was permanently based, and it wasn’t bad duty although very hot and dusty part of the year and very fucking noisy ‘cause the 29th Artillery was also headquartered there.  The other part of the year it was always wet because starting in September the monsoon storms came and lasted for months – and the big Hueys had trouble re-supplying the camp.  It rained so much that everything got wet, everything, and stayed that way.

                When they weren’t playing tonk and getting wasted and got permission from that tough sonuvabitch First Sergeant Savidge, the boys of Company F would go into An Khe and “walk the line” for a steam bath and “massage,” and drink copious amounts of cold Ba Muoi Ba, commonly called 33 Beer. 

In comparing all-time worst beers, 33 won hands-down against some pretty stiff competition back in the world like Grain Belt, Cooks, Old Milwaukee, and the indomitable Buckhorn Beer – the latter receiving honorable mention because it came in recycled glass bottles usually chipped at the rim to make drinking it without cutting your lips quite challenging. 

The outfit’s favorite dive was an old French joint called the Pianola Bar because it had an old player piano with only one tune on some ancient yellow, weather-beaten perforated scroll – the Billie Holiday song entitled “When You’re Smiling.”  The piano supplied the music and as the homesick boys got drunker and drunker and cried in their beer, they sang the lyrics: When you’re smiling, when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you.  When you’re laughing, when you’re laughing, the sun comes shining thru… 

Now sitting in their hut back at base, getting high as a kite off the reefer, the boys cracked open a bottle of Jim Beam and poured it over a helmet filled with ice cubes – it was cannonball time – so after every hit off the cigar-size joint, bam, wash it down with cold bourbon.

#

 If that wasn’t enough, ice-cold cases of Schlitz, Carling Black Label, and Pabst Blue Ribbon came into play, and finally a few hits of purple haze blotter acid showed up so naturally everyone sucked down a tiny square of litmus – all this getting-fucked-up firepower and it wasn’t even dark outside yet. 

Howie Edwards passed up on the acid, he was a coke freak, but he did partake in everything else.  To pass time, they still dealt the cards out and tried playing tonk, but the colors and suit patterns danced around too much to be able to focus on the game so people just giggled most of the time. 

At twilight’s last gleaming, a wobbly Sam decided to take a leak and headed outside for the latrines taking his M-16 with him.  There were always small-dog-sized rats hanging around and they didn’t shoo very easily so occasionally he’d put a magnum .223-caliber round up one’s ass and the rest would scatter, at least for a while; they gave a whole new meaning to the expression, “crazy as a shithouse rat.”  What happened next became a matter of great debate over many subsequent years, as told and retold by the men of Company F, but the general consensus was that it went something like this:

                The guys inside the hut said they heard M-16 fire, on fully automatic, coming from outside over by the latrines and they figured Sam was in trouble – maybe enemy sappers had gotten under the wire and were attacking the camp.  Archie was the first one up and the adrenal rush overcame the effects of drugs somewhat, but he was still pretty shaky. 

He grabbed his 12-gauge Remington and flew out the front door, pumping a shell in the chamber, and as he tripped over a sandbag he almost fell on top of Sam who was backing up into the hut and firing off in the distance somewhere. 

As Archie tripped the shotgun discharged down and outward.  Archie was okay but Sam got a few pieces of buckshot right in the ass, and he let out a squeal so loud the whole camp heard it, and then proceeded to puke his guts out.

                The MPs arrived first, then Captain Rainos, and then Lt. Colonel Parrent, and they joined the rest of the totally wasted Company F rifle platoon laughing their ass off at all the chaos, and the two pathetic bastards on display – stoned out Archie and wounded, bleeding, and puking Sam. 

The official report of the incident said that a vigilant Specialist Fourth Class Samuel Lee Noble saw, trying to get through the wire, Viet Cong infiltrators and firing magazine after magazine, thwarted the sneak attack by the enemy while assisted by Corporal Archibald Jefferson.  Furthermore, Specialist Noble had been slightly wounded during the battle. 

Estimated body count of enemy dead was at least a dozen although their bodies were dragged back into the jungle underbrush by retreating comrades so kill confirmation wasn’t possible.  For their combat heroism in the heat of battle, both men received a short time later the Bronze Star, and in addition, Sam received a Purple Heart. 

Sam wasn’t quite sure to this day what he was firing at, but at that darkening time of evening he could of swore those diesel oil drums out by the motor pool sure looked like black-pajamas-clad Viet Cong sneaking up on the camp, so he cut loose.

                The old platoon broke up in late 1964 after their first tour was up, and with Archie in the hospital stateside from his car accident, only Sam remained in Nam for a second tour – a time span punctuated only by his emergency leave home to bury his father; the Lung got him but in the end and he was also suffering from Alzheimer’s. 

While stateside, he received new orders to report to Saigon for the months still remaining in his second tour and was given a cushy job shuttling dispatches and confidential courier sacks back and forth between the U.S. Embassy and other foreign embassies around the city, and between military installations.  

#

After two tours in Nam, and a chest full of medals – besides the Bronze Star and Purple Heart pins on his ribbon bar, he wore a Combat Infantry Badge, Good Conduct Medal, and Vietnam Service Medal – he was given his choice of assignments for his last year on army active duty and he chose West Germany. 

He had remembered the stories he heard from First Sergeant Savidge about those pretty Frauleins in Germany and all that great beer – and unknown to the Top, because it wasn’t his thing, great hashish. 

                Sam didn’t carry much with him out of Nam except his army-issue duffle bag filled with clothes and a folder with his orders.  His old disassembled M-16 he had mailed home as a souvenir through APO mail, along with some photos for his scrapbook.

                As the U.S. military really began its massive build up in Vietnam, in 1966 Sam arrived at his new post a few miles outside Bad Windsheim, a small dorf located just northeast of Stuttgart in southern Germany.  He was surprised to see how many bombed out buildings there were still left over from the war. 

The American army still had a huge presence in West Germany twenty-one years after World War II had officially concluded because of the Cold War going on with the Soviets, so American taxpayers were paying for two lines of defense against the encroachment of Communism – one in Europe and one in Asia. 

Shortly after arriving at a facility once occupied by the Wehrmacht, he earned another promotion and was now Staff Sergeant E-6 Sam Noble, and he was hot shit on the little base – a genuine Vietnam decorated combat hero and only twenty-one years old.  Of course, back in Nam there was a shortage of NCOs and so “shake and bake” E-6s were being turned out with only a couple of months experience because of the war’s escalation.

                Life was good in Germany, and with the increase in pay from his promotion and a job he got moonlighting he was able to buy his first car, an old Volkswagen Beetle.  He was still sending $100 home to his mom every month but now he could afford to splurge a little on himself.  The car had an air-cooled gasoline engine, manual transmission, was dark gray, and had these interesting little turn signals that flipped up and stuck out the sides of the car on the column beside each door – and it ran forever on a tank of gas. 

Occasionally he’d take it out on the Autobahn and open her up, hitting sixty miles an hour, but there wasn’t any speed limit so the Mercedeses and the Porsches zoomed by him like he was standing still, and sometimes a hot American car like a Corvette Stingray could be seen shooting by. 

And the weight Sam lost in Nam from amoebic dysentery shits – no thanks to all that paregoric and lomotil – he gained back and then some living in Deutschland.  If it wasn’t bratwurst, brötchen, sauerkraut, kartoffelsalat, and beer off post at some Gasthaus, then it was mess hall chow, snack bar food, and cheap booze on base.  The Yankee dollar was worth four Deutsch Marks, enough to buy a couple of liters which meant plenty to get buzzed on – German beer was strong stuff. 

                On post, mess hall food was free but got pretty dull after awhile – except at Thanksgiving when the old pot-bellied mess sergeant prepared a real feast – so like a lot of the other GIs, Sam ate at least once a day at the snack bar run by the European Exchange System or EES that was organized like a U.S. soda shop of the 1950’s and had burgers, hot dogs, fries, pizza, milkshakes, corn beef and pastrami sandwiches, fried chicken, barbecued ribs, hot roast beef and gravy, sodas, malts, and soft drinks. 

#

It even had a jukebox playing 45 rpm vinyl records, some hippie music and Motown, but mostly country western honky-tonk tunes and songs by Merle Haggard and Elvis Presley.  Elvis was stationed in Germany in the late 50s and the Germans loved him until his dying day.

                Sam moonlighted Wednesday through Sunday for the better part of the year he was stationed at Windsheim for EES as a short order cook, from five in the evening until ten at night.  EES decided to set up a phone ordering system working out the back of the snack bar for fast food that troops could call in and have it delivered to their barracks, or to on-base housing for NCOs and officers who had family stationed with them. 

Army brats went to the base’s American school, grades one through twelve, and the University of Maryland even had a two-year college campus set up in Munich for military dependents who graduated from high school in Europe and wanted to stay there to attend college – it was quite the party school back in the day. 

Sam’s job was to take the food orders over the telephone, “Good evening, EES dial-a-snack service may I take your order please,” make the potato salad and coleslaw, deep fry the frozen fries and chicken in lard, flip the burgers, bake the pizzas, blend generic milkshakes, and fill the order trays so that two shuttle drivers could pick up and deliver the food. 

He pretty much ate junk food all the time.  The high point of the job was when Sam got an assistant to help him because the dial-a-snack business was going so well – turned out it was a nineteen-year-old kid who graduated from the post high school and the father pulled some strings to find work for his unambitious son; the boy’s dad was a full-bird colonel and base commander.  Kid indeed, he was only a few years younger than Sam!  

The kid, Billy, was pretty pathetic, weak-kneed and obviously beat down by a domineering father.  He and Sam smoked hash and drank beer when business slacked off a bit, particularly on Sundays when things got pretty quiet and they just shot the bull; soon Sam got to like him.  He sort of reminded Sam of Teddy O’Connor, the fresh faced kid from the old platoon who got blown away along with Wally Hoffman during a mortar attack a few weeks before the great oil drum shootout, they were even about the same age. 

Billy was a fantastic musician and practiced his guitar by strumming at work whenever he got a chance.  Sam and he would sit out back in the parking lot on cigarette break and shoot the shit, and sometimes they and the snack truck driver, PFC Vaughn Steven Fudge, would practice throwing kitchen knives and cleavers into a telephone pole for fun. 

On Monday’s and Tuesday’s Billy did gigs in town at the Gasthauses with the Hansi Köffner Kombo, a local German group, as lead guitarist.  Billy came to work one evening really upset because he’d just gotten a notice in the mail from the U.S. Selective Service System telling him he had to get a pre-induction physical examination to join the U.S. Army.  Since he had no college deferment, he was red meat for the military draft and a certainty to be shipped to Vietnam.

#

His father thought being drafted was the best thing that could happen to his no account son, but the boy was terrified.  Sam told Billy not to worry, he had a plan.  Seems that Sam had become phone buddies with the army medics over at the base dispensary because a few hailed from Boston and, following their detailed instructions, he had once prepared for them a genuine Beantown frappe – an extra rich milkshake made with real ice cream, not that milkshake mix shit, and raw eggs – which he sent over with the food order. 

After that, the medics always got frappes with the food orders, no extra charge.  From then on they told Sam he had a favor coming – whatever he wanted anytime – just ask.  So Sam asked the medics for a favor to help a friend of his who needed to fail his pre-induction physical.  Billy’s father couldn’t believe his son had actually flunked the physical, my God, no one ever flunked an army physical, but his son did! 

Seems that the young man’s laboratory tests of blood, urine, and inner ear balance he had taken at the base dispensary showed he had serious problems and therefore he did not meet minimum military physical qualifications needed for passing the medical exam.

Furthermore, and at the disbelief and shame of the father, his son was given a 4-F classification, meaning he was forever exempt from military service.  Billy left Germany shortly afterwards and Sam never saw him again, although he knew the kid went back to the states to go to college because he received a letter a few months later. 

He had said he was in St. Louis living with his grandparents and found out he got accepted to Arizona State University out in Tempe, so decided to hitchhike there since his father gave him very little in the way of spending money.  He stuck his thumb out practically in front of his house and got a ride from some Air Force enlisted man dude stationed in Tucson, all the way to Tempe – one ride. 

When they ran out of money in Tucumcari, New Mexico along old Route 66 Billy talked the airman into selling his spare tire so he could buy gas and they made it as far as Tempe, where Billy gave him a few dollars of his own money to buy gas to get to Tucson.  It was during his trip through the deserts of the southwestern U.S. that he got this idea for a song about a horse with no name.  As it turned out, later he met these Air Force brats who went to high school in Lakenheath, England and formed a band with them since they had a lot in common.

It was towards the end of his tour in Germany near Christmas time and not long before his active duty in the army ended and he returned to Mohlenburg, that he met some good folks in town.  Sam would drive his Volkswagen into Bad Windsheim and park up by the ancient cathedral, in a cobble-stoned parking lot next to this huge stone statue carved out of granite just off Wiechmann Strasse. 

The church was built, astonishingly, back in the thirteenth-century which was something that just amazed Sam – things in Europe were built long before Columbus discovered America and they were still around. 

Off at one end of the large parking lot was a small vegetable and fruit stand run by an old German gentleman, his wife, and what Sam took to be a grandson ten years old or so, who had the stand’s produce on display in neatly stacked wooden boxes – plums, apples, pears, gooseberries, cabbage, beets, Christmas trees, and whatnot with signs in German which read Eine Mark Funfzig and Eine Mark Siebsig. 

The elderly pair and the boy sat in a tiny wooden shack to keep warm and were bundled up in heavy woolen clothing – coats, scarves, hats, and gloves.  The old man had a Hitler-style mustache and seemed friendly enough so Sam whose German was so-so, tried to engage the grocer in conversation when he left his shack to greet Sam.  The old German even wore authentic Bavarian knicker-style lederhosen.

                As snow flurries started whipping up, he was invited inside the humble abode to sit next to the foul-smelling kerosene heater that didn’t work for shit – three small stools, a table, and heater were all that fit inside the small space.  The old Oma, dressed in dirndelkleid, removed from a brown paper sack a loaf of fresh black brott and proceeded to slice off four thick pieces, holding the loaf to her bosom and slicing towards her chest. 

The old Opa took from the same bag a jar of white, coagulated chicken fat called schmaltz, opened it and smeared a thick layer on the sliced bread with his pocket knife. Then four bottles of Hackerbräu beer appeared, those old-fashioned German bottles with the metal wire contraption that kept the white ceramic stopper with brown rubber washer firmly sealed onto the glass snout – for everyone including the boy to drink. 

You opened it by holding your hand over the stopper and with thumb and fingers, flipped the stopper up – doing the reverse firmly resealed the bottle for finishing off the contents later.  The old German also put on the table these little crispy smoked fish called sprotten, a type of herring, wrapped in white butcher’s paper and took little bites chomping into them from head to tail until he devoured the whole thing then grabbed another.  Sam tried one and it was delicious.

#

                To this day Sam couldn’t remember exactly what they talked about, but he did remember that the people were very nice to him and he had been polite to them.  The lad sat on his grandmother’s lap and she played this cute little game involving a chant of: Da kommt ein mann die treppe auf.  Erst klingete-ehr an, dann klopfed ehr an, guten tag mein herr, guten tag mein herr. 

                As she spoke the words, she made her fingers into a stick man and walked up the boy’s left arm, pulled on his ear lobe, gently knocked on his forehead, and then yanked his nose up and down.  It must have been fun because the little boy howled with glee every time she did it.

The only refrain that Sam memorized in German was one he couldn’t repeat in front of the good people sitting before him: Est regnet, Gott segnet, die erde wird nass.  Der Sammy hat ein loch in arsch das macht mir viel spass.  It was something to do with it raining outside and Sam having a hole in his ass, but beyond that he didn’t understand the rest.     

                After their splendid repast, Sam motioned them outside by showing them his Kodak Instamatic camera and grabbed a friendly passerby to take their picture.  The four new friends posed in front of a 25-foot-tall dark granite statue and had their picture taken, a photograph he still had.  The statue was of a famous Prussian hero who lived centuries before and had protected Emperor Charlemagne from Saracen enemies who threatened Europe with invasion. 

The shorthaired, tunic and chain-armor clad hero’s name was Knight Roland, and the statue’s pose had him holding a vertically-standing sword resting on the ground, which he held with both hands waist high.  He was killed in action at a place called Roncesvalles.  He was the most famous of Charlemagne’s twelve paladins, akin to King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, they of the quest for Holy Grail fame who appeared in literature centuries later. 

Just days before leaving Germany, the old couple insisted Sam must get the experience of going to a big beer hall in München so they arranged that their son would take him there and bring him home again.  The son was a sergeant in the highway patrol or Autobahnpolizei by the name of Hans and was a heavy drinker.  He loved his beer and schnapps. 

He picked Sam up in his green and white BMW, model Tilux 2000 police car.  Hans drove right up to the front door of the massive beer hall in Munich with lights flashing, turned off the ignition and just left the car right there.  He had a fist full of coupons for free food and beer and inside they sat right next to the Bavarian oom-pah band.  

By closing time at 10:30 pm Sam was drunk but Hans was falling-down-pass-out drunk.  So Sam took the car keys out of his pocket, pushed Hans into the back seat and drove back to Bad Windsheim.  Man, that Bimmer was a nice car!

Upon leaving Germany and the military – no way was Sam going to be a lifer and reenlist yet again – he went back home to Mohlenburg and lived with his mother for two years rent free, and was greeted by the Noble clan as the returning war hero, although some of the longhaired hippie cousins felt uncomfortable around the soldier with the buzz cut – at least until he smoked a few joints with them. 

He was still in the army reserve and could have gone back to work in the coal mines had he wished, but he refused to go descend into that black hell ever again.  Instead he enrolled in the Mohlenburg Community College thanks to the GI Bill and studied English literature (how else could he learn about novel writing), and two years later in 1969 received his associate degree, the first college graduate of the Mohlenburg Noble clan!

Now on a roll and with that confidence of a young man who has seen more of the world then most of his peers, and done things they never would, he decided to apply for a civil service job in Washington, D.C. and that’s how he got to be a State Department courier, making a mind-boggling ten grand a year and his mother couldn’t have been prouder. 

He was sure he’d advance up through the ranks and be a big shot one day; as a lyric from a popular German song went, ein schiff wird kommen, and he was confident his ship had come in.  The future never looked brighter for the young Kentuckian.

(This is a work of fiction.  Although some real-world names, organizations, historical settings, and situations are used to enhance the authenticity of the story, any similarities to actual persons, organizations, or situations are coincidental and all portrayals are purely the product of the author’s imagination.  This is the second edition abridged version 2019.  First edition Copyright © 2006.  All rights reserved)