Marches, Medals and Martyrs

I wake up to bright lights and lots of yelling so I look at my watch and its 5:30 in the morning. My body wants to just rollover and go back to sleep but my head says get up before the drill sergeant comes down the aisle. For the last 3 months I have been a resident in the C company barracks at Fort Campbell , Kentucky. I am sleeping in the lower level of bunk beds and above me is Tommy Rowland now a good friend and fellow soldier in the US Army. There are 45,000 soldiers stationed at Fort Campbell and most of us have come to realize that the sole purpose of our training has been to effectively kill someone and not to get killed.
Tommy is climbing out of his bunk and looks my way and warns me that the Sergeant is only seconds away and the last thing you want is to be caught in bed.
I jump out of bed just in time and act like I am getting dressed and ready to go. We have 15 minutes to use the bathroom and be dressed for inspection and roll call. We are all a little tired from lack of sleep. At 2:30 this morning one of the other soldiers decided to eat a light bulb from one of the barracks light fixtures. His thinking is that this will get him a medical discharge. All it did for us was shorten the night because of all the commotion of people coming to take him away. As we fall in for roll call a jeep pulls up in front of the company and the poor soul that ate the light bulb climbs out with a company commander. The lieutenant instructs him to get in position for roll call and informs us that Private “so and so” ate a light bulb last night in an attempt to get out of the Army and he now owes the government 60 cents and it will be taken out of his pay check. The drill sergeant barks out orders for us to fall into formation for a 2 mile run before breakfast and another day in the Army begins.
At breakfast everyone is watching the guy that ate the light bulb and he seems to still have an appetite. After breakfast, which lasts only 30 minutes, we fall into formation for calisthenics which consists of push-ups, chin-ups , jumping jacks and a whole list of other exercises. We again fall into formation and the drill sergeant informs us that we are going to march to the rifle range and re-qualify on the new M16 rifles. We spent three days at the range last month and qualified on the M14 rifle and that was quite a spectacle. Coming from Wyoming and living with a family of hunters and having considerable experience with rifles, I found qualifying as a sharpshooter relative easy. Unfortunately I was definitely a minority. Most of the other soldiers had not only never handled a gun but hadn’t even seen one. After hours of instructions we are standing in a trench and our rifles are all facing down range towards the targets. As they come down the firing line they issue each man one bullet ( right out of a Barney Fife script). Half of the firing line drop the bullet when trying to load the chamber of the rifle. When thy reach over to look for it, rifle barrels are pointing every direction and drill sergeants are running up and down the line yelling, and the more they yell the more chaotic it becomes. After things settle down and everyone learns how to load the rifle and keep it pointing down range we are to fire one shot at a target 50 yards in front of us. We are instructed not to fire until we hear the command. Just before the command is given more rifles go off and more yelling and chaos ensues. By the end of the day, out of 100 men, we are down to only about 3 going off accidentally. By the end of the second day we are able to be issued full clips and can shoot at multiple targets. On the third day a scorekeeper with binoculars sits behind you and scores hits on targets at varying distances. If you hit them all you are awarded a sharpshooters medal to proudly wear on your uniform. The only thing I learned was out of 100 men there is about 5 of them that I will never let behind me with a loaded gun.
The M16 rifle has a shorter barrel and a plastic handle. As I pick out targets to hit I notice that it is not very accurate after 50 yards and almost a third of the firing line is having trouble with jam ups. Thankfully we are not scored on accuracy just capabilities.
Tommy Rowlands family lives in Paducah, Kentucky which is only about a 90 minute drive from Fort Campbell. Tommy has decided that we should get a week-end pass and his dad will pick us up and we can spend the weekend in Paducah.
We get our passes and Tommy’s dad meets us at the gate at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning. The ride to Paducah is just beautiful .The dogwoods are in bloom and Paducah is one of the prettiest small towns in Kentucky. I get to meet Tommy’s family and friends and when the word gets out that I am from Wyoming and a cowboy, all of the neighborhood comes over to visit. We are treated like Kings for the whole day and night. Sunday morning at breakfast Tommy’s mom tells us that on our way back to the fort we will stop at her sisters place to meet her niece. Tommy’s cousin was runner-up to Miss Kentucky and they are all quite proud of her. The day goes fast and on the way back we stop in some small town to meet Tommy’s relatives and the beauty queen. The girl is pretty enough but she won’t stop talking and talking and talking. The family is quite proud of her, but I’m sitting there thinking that they are all lucky Joan doesn’t live in Kentucky because this girl would have been in third place and then they wouldn’t have anything to talk about. We talk Tommy’s dad into swinging through Nashville on the way back to the fort. Tommy and I have decided to get a day pass next weekend and go to the Grand Old Opry in Nashville. We want to see if any ticket offices are open and if there is a billboard to say who is playing there next weekend. Tommy’s dad is at first reluctant but finally concedes. As we exit into Nashville and get close to the Opry building I start to realize why his dad did not jump at the chance to go there. It is a really rough part of down with old buildings that mostly closed up, a lot of poverty and really dirty streets.
We pull up in front of the old Ryman Auditorium building but can’t find a ticket office. The billboard says Johnny Cash will be performing next weekend. We still plan on being there next weekend but assure Tommy’s dad that the Army bus will take us to the front door and pick us up as soon as the show is over.
The following week at the post is typical training and exercises. We are getting close to finishing and everyone is waiting to see where they will be transferred. Thursday evening Tommy and I head over to the PX to buy some treats and stop at the NCO club on the way back to the barracks. Just as we find a table and sit down four MPs bust through the front door, shut the music off and order everyone to report back to their company barracks immediately. As we cross the drill fields to get to our barracks the whole post is on alert and many companies are already taking formation on the other end of the parade grounds. As we get to our company’s barracks the drill sergeants are barking out orders. Everyone is ordered to have on their fatigues, jackets , helmets and rifles and be in formation out front in 5 minutes. Rumors are flying and no one really knows what is going on. After formation we are marched to the parade grounds and fall in with thousands of other soldiers. The word comes down that Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis and there are riots in all the major cities. The city of Nashville has asked the Army for help and we are headed for the city. Trucks and buses pull up and we are loaded up like cattle and driven into the city. Officers are in jeeps and Army vehicles are leading and following the caravan into the city. We unload in downtown Nashville. It looks like a high school or college inter-mural field. Only about a quarter of the trucks and buses that left the post are here, so the rest have gone somewhere else in the city. There are about a thousand of us and we take formation and start marching down the back streets of Nashville. The area looks a lot like the neighborhood of the Grand Old Opry …poor, dirty and scary. The regiment breaks up in four different units and we each take different streets. I look forward and can see a glow in the sky from fires about 6 to 8 blocks in front of us. I don’t have any idea what part of the city we are in, but I keep thinking around the next corner I will see the Billboard in front of the Opry building with Johnny Cash staring at us. The air is full of smoke, fire trucks and police cars are everywhere, and the sirens are making everyone nervous. We were not issued any live ammo but the trucks following us were fully loaded. After spending the time on the rifle range with these men, I’m glad that the guns aren’t loaded. The streets are empty and everyone is anxiously looking at every roof top, every darkened building, and every dark alley. We are now about 3 blocks from the fires lighting up the smoky night. We come to a halt and stand in formation for about an hour. We then change directions and march down other streets. I never get any closer to the fires and never see anyone. At the break of dawn we are back at the trucks that brought us to Nashville and we are hauled back to the post. Roll call is at 6 a.m. and it’s just another day in the Army.
All weekend passes are canceled and Tommy and I spend the weekend on post and talk about our night in Nashville. The next Monday I get orders to transfer to Fort Sill , Oklahoma for Field Artillery training and Tuesday, Tommy gets orders to transfer to Fort Benning, Georgia for infantry training. Eighty Five percent of the soldiers that go to Fort Benning end up in Viet Nam but only about forty percent of Artillery units get shipped to Nam. Both Tommy I know what this means and don’t talk about it. By the end of the week we have both gone our separate ways and I never see Tommy again.
In 1983 I am asked to attend a conference in Washington DC regarding livestock identification systems using radio frequency transmitters. I am the proud owner of a patent on this subject and receive an all expense paid trip to DC. After the meetings one evening I walk over to the Viet Nam War memorial and am emotionally moved by its impact. Not wanting to find it, I look for Tommy’s name etched into the black granite amongst the over 58,000 names on those black walls. I do not find it and find comfort that he is probably enjoying life in Paducah.