Army Achievement

I was a Private First Class in November of 1997 when my battalion went to Japan for a month to participate in an Orient Shield exercise. We flew on a commercial 747 from Honolulu to Tokyo and for the first and only time I smoked a cigarette on an airplane as we made our way across the Pacific. We landed in Tokyo after dark, and I remember my first impression of the country was that it was shockingly clean. The tile floors of the baggage claim shined better than the floors we spent hours buffing and waxing back in our battalion area.

Charter buses waited for us outside the airport along with an unpleasant surprise. A few weeks before, on the Japanese island of Okinawa, a group of Marines had been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a local teenager. It was a brutal crime, and the Japanese people were rightly upset, many demanding an end to U.S. military presence on their island. As we walked from the baggage claim to the waiting buses we were greeted by a silent crowd of angry looking Japanese stoically holding signs that said “Americans go home.” The blinds were down on our charter buses and the drivers wouldn’t allow us to raise them until we pulled out of the airport for fear of the crowds protesting outside.

I don’t remember much about Tokyo in the dark. It was late and I was exhausted and city lights look like city lights. I was shocked to see so much English on the road signs.

We were all surprised how rural the Japanese Self Defense Force camp they housed us in proved to be. In our minds Japan was Tokyo. Japan was neon and city lights. Instead we found cold mountains and a small camp surrounded by dense forest and angry primates. Our lodgings were little better than a POW camp. Long, low, unheated buildings with raised wooden platforms for beds. We’d come expecting talking toilets covered in LED lights only to find that the latrines were little more than holes in the ground and the Army had to pay to move trailers with American toilets out into the wilderness.

There were high points. Outside of each of the barracks buildings was a pair of vending machines. One that served beer and another that served instant Ramen. On our third day a Japanese family arrived in a tiny mini-van stuffed full of boxes and opened a little shop at the entrance of the camp that sold hygiene necessities, porn magazines, and home made dumplings. Eventually the battalion had to enforce a two 12oz beer limit, but we rarely ate in the U.S. Dining facility, surviving instead off of MREs, ramen, and homemade dumplings. (The pornography, we learned, was to be avoided because the Japanese age of consent at the time was disgustingly low. Some things unfortunately can’t be unseen.)

Our first week was spent meeting our allies. We didn’t speak Japanese. They spoke little English. But together we spoke fluent grunt and quickly made friends, trading gear and meals in our down time. I still have the Casio GShock watch I traded for a cheap pocket knife. We demonstrated a squad level live fire and they showed off their anti-tank weapons. At the time the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force was woefully underfunded and their weapon systems were antique in comparison to ours, and the 25th ID was lagging behind the rest of the Army at the time, most of us still wearing Vietnam era kit. But our Japanese allies were still firing WW2 era recoiless rifles and first generation wire guided anti-tank missiles. Their main battle tank looked like a knock off of a Russian T62. They drove Jeeps made by Mitsubishi. Their battle rifles were early 1960s vintage and they still had the WW2 era M3 Grease Gun in service. We couldn’t help but giggle when we discovered they still carried and trained with two foot long, sword like bayonets.

But they still had OH-6’s and UH-1’s in service, and as much as we laughed at them for their 1960s era rifles we leapt at the chance to fly in Hueys without seats. They flew us low through a wooded valley and out over a mist shrouded lake. There wasn’t a man made structure in sight but we could see what looked like Junks on the water below and the lake was dotted by these small, mountainous, islands. It felt like we were flying back in time. Like we may accidentally run into King Kong or Godzilla. Like we could land in feudal Japan and find ourselves surrounded by Samurai.

They flew doors closed “for safety.” We begged and pleaded for them to allow us to ride with our legs dangling out the side like our fathers and grandfathers had once done in a different Asian nation thirty years before. The best we could get from them was a promise that they would open the doors when we were one minute out from the LZ. We knew they assumed we’d stay in our seats. We also knew they couldn’t stop us from doing what we wanted to do. So when the crew chief gave us the one minute warning and opened the doors we slid to the edge and sat dangling our legs out while the crew chief screamed at us in Japanese to get back in the aircraft. We made the last thirty seconds of that flight standing on the skids with “Fortunate Son” playing in our heads and proudly took the ass chewing and revocation of our nightly beer ration in punishment.

I didn’t understand a word that crew chief said but I assume it was a Japanese equivalent of “You motherfuckers!” They may be a stoic culture, but soldiers are soldiers and that crew chief was fucking pissed.

We had an opening ceremony and a home visit with a Japanese family and a day out in Kyoto playing tourist and I wish I could tell you about them all, but for today, what’s important today is we eventually went to the field. The weather turned cold the second we left the relative comfort of our little camp. Rain became sleet, then snow, then rain again. My company was tasked to move through a dense draw, climb a steep hill, and attack a trench line at the top. The terrain was rougher than we expected, a cold weather version of Hawaii’s deep jungle gulches. The ground was sopping wet and so muddy in places we almost lost a Machine Gunner who stepped in the wrong spot and sank chest deep in Japanese mud. It took six of us to pull him out.

My platoon was in the rear of the company. I was in Bravo team of the second squad. This put me in the very trail position when we took our final halt before moving into the objective rally point. I was a SAW gunner, so I found a big tree with good sight lines back up the draw and laid down in the prone behind my machine gun. Tired. Wet. Cold. I had no idea that I was about to do one of the most badass things I would ever do in the Army.

Our Headquarters company was acting as the opposing forces (OPFOR). With all the mud and obstacles it was impossible for a rifle company to move perfectly silent and they picked up our trail quickly. We didn’t know when we stopped that they were already stalking us. It was a minor mistake that doomed them. Their point man was following perfectly in our tracks, which meant he was standing in the path my company had beaten when I spotted him. One foot to the left or right and I wouldn’t have known that they were there, but standing in the trail I could see the point man from hundreds of yards away.

At first I didn’t believe my eyes. Their point man seemed to materialize out of the cold, gray, trees. Slowly a second, then a third, then a fourth soldier appeared behind him, moving slowly toward where we were stopped, rifles up, searching for us. This was in the day before every soldier had radios and I was ten meters or so away from the next man in the formation, well hidden behind good cover. As the enemy snuck ever closer I debated about trying to get my squad’s attention. In the end I decided my SAW was the best option. They were getting too close too fast for my liking. I counted five enemy when I opened up. The closest was within twenty-five meters and if I had been firing four in one tracer instead of blanks I would have torn him in half with the first burst.

I didn’t celebrate. “SIX O’CLOCK FIFTY METERS!” I announced as I transitioned to the next target and fired another burst, and then another, and then another.

It was a slaughter. By the time my fire team leader moved up beside me all of the OPFOR were dead, sitting in the mud, cussing as their laser tag like MILES gear screamed. In less than a minute I’d killed the entire OPFOR squad, tore them to pieces with six bursts of my SAW before they even realized I was there.

We pushed on from there, climbing a steep, muddy, hillside and catching the defenders by surprise in the trench line at the top. We’d just hit the limit of advance and were reconsolidating when we heard the unfamiliar sounds of diesel engines and tank treads from somewhere in the distance. As light Infantrymen, most of us had never seen an armored vehicle in the wild so we were caught off guard when a platoon of Japanese armor clanked and clattered out of the fog and engaged in a brief battle in the field in front of our positions.

The sun came out as soon as they announced an end to the exercise. For three days we’d been cold and wet and suddenly there was a hint of warmth, so we stripped out of our wet, muddy uniforms and laid them out to dry then laid naked in the grass, soaking in the weak but welcome sunlight. Our entire company was naked when a tour bus pulled up on a nearby road. We watched in confusion as the doors opened and Japanese civilians poured out, realizing just a little too late that they were media. The more modest among us scrambled to cover themselves while the braver stood, naked and unashamed, as the Japanese media set up their cameras and began to film us for the evening news. There is a good chance that my penis has been on Japanese television.

It was only after we’d returned to camp, cleaned our gear and showered that my squad leader called me into a huddle with the lieutenant and our platoon sergeant. The battalion had asked for award recommendations, and it was decided that due to my solitary stand in that cold, muddy, draw, I was being nominated for an Army Achievement Medal.

We went right from Orient Shield into Expert Infantryman Badge testing when we returned to Schofield. No sooner had we unpacked our gear than we were back out into the field for two weeks of long days training routine tasks. This was our second EIB cycle in a year and we were bored with the process. Few of us took it seriously that year. Our apathy was compounded by a basic leadership mistake. Our first sergeant announced that if we failed out we’d have to stay in the barracks and do area improvement. He thought he’d motivate us, but to a tired Joe sometimes sweeping floors, talking shit, and smoking cigarettes is more appealing than a week of ranges, night land navigation, and 12 mile road marches. I was one of the dozen members of my platoon who sandbagged our very first tasks so we could be sent home. I intentionally double no-go’d putting on my gas mask and happily hopped on the truck back to the barracks to push a mop.

Each morning that week the chain of command left us a list of chores and each day we finished them in a matter of hours and for the rest of the day we hid in barracks rooms, talking shit, napping, and watching porn. It became something as a party as more and more guys failed testing and joined us. By the last day we had permission to barbecue. We broke out the beer Friday at noon. I was drinking one on a picnic table in front of the CQ desk when they took in the guidon and the company commander told us to have a nice weekend. Everyone knew I was only nineteen. No one cared.

Which, in retrospect, is why the rest of the night went the way it did.

We started drinking beer at noon and we didn’t stop. I don’t remember how we got dressed to go out, when we left, or even where we started our night, but I know we made it to our favorite cowboy bar on Pearl Harbor sometime before midnight. The Navy was in. The pier across the street was crowded with sleek, gray, ships, frigates and destroyers of the Pacific Fleet. The bar was stuffy and crowded and I was drunk and intent on getting drunker. There was a bottle under the set of whatever car we rode down from Schofield in but Evan and I were getting sloppy. Instead of taking a walk outside to top off I slipped him a twenty and he bought a round. A beer for himself, two double shots of Jack Daniels, and a coca-cola for me. One shot Evan drank, the other he poured in that coke. I dunno how many I had before we got caught. Three? Four? I just remember I was reaching for another when a burly bouncer with a thick mustache appeared out of the crowd and snatched it from my hands.

He sniffed it and smiled. “What’s this?” He asked. “Rum and coke.”

It was bourbon, but I was smart enough not to say it out loud.

We were two weeks from Holiday block leave. My leave request had already been approved and my parents had already purchased a ticket from Honolulu to Shreveport as my Christmas present. That ticket was all I could think about as they handcuffed us and moved us to a back room to wait for the Shore Patrol. I blew a .12 at the Pearl Harbor shore patrol office. They handcuffed us to a hard wooden bench to wait for our platoon sergeant to pick us up. That is all I remember of that night beside the gnawing fear that my leave would be canceled and I’d have to tell my mother I couldn’t come home for Christmas because I’d gotten caught drinking underage in a Navy Bar.

My company commander took pity. Canceling leave was never part of the discussion. Instead he had Evan and I assigned as the Charge of Quarters and runner every Saturday until block leave, ensuring that we wouldn’t have the time or energy to get in too much more trouble. Two weeks of holiday block leave with an article fifteen hanging over my head was punishment enough, but there were fourteen days of restriction and fourteen days of extra duty waiting for me when I returned to my unit in January of 1998. Once again my company commander took some limited mercy and had Evan and I work CQ and Staff Duty during that time so between 24 hour duty and mandatory rest we only worked ten days of extra duty. The biggest punishment was they moved Evan to Alpha company and they withdrew my Army Achievement Medal for my actions in Japan. Technically we were banned from our favorite cowboy bar on Pearl Harbor for six months, but an admin SNAFU meant we’d never been informed of this and there was only sixty days left on our ban by the time anyone figured it out. I spent those last two months drinking Jim Beam in the barracks.

Neither of us learned lessons. If anything, my alcohol consumption increased dramatically during that brief ban. Turns out a 750ml bottle of Jim Beam from the Class Six was significantly cheaper than double shots at the club. By the time my ban was lifted I was drinking one a weekend. On a particularly hard weekend we managed one apiece each night. 1500ml of cheap Bourbon on the weekend then wake up Monday morning and run five miles. No wonder twenty year olds feel like they’re invincible. Soon I’d meet Guy. Soon I’d meet Lorrie and Cathy. Within a year Evan would leave Schofield for Fort Drum where two years later we’d see each other one last time and share one last drunken adventure, this time I bought the rounds.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Thirteen years later and four thousand miles away I was a rookie Sheriff’s Deputy in a suburb of Austin, Texas when my usual Field Training Officer called in sick and I was assigned to spend the night with another Deputy who we’ll call “Jay.” Jay was a burly biker type with a bushy mustache and sleeve tattoos hidden under his long sleeve uniform. I’d seen him around for weeks and there was something vaguely familiar about him, like I’d seen him before somewhere but we’d never really spoken until we ended up riding together. A twelve hour overnight shift in the front seat of a Ford Crown Vic gives you plenty of time to chat, and the conversation quickly turned to our backgrounds. I’d been in the Army. Jay had been in the Air Force.

“Ever spend time in Hawaii?” he asked.

Small world. He’d been assigned to Hickam Air Force Base in the late 90s.

“Ever go to a little cowboy bar on Pearl Harbor? Place called The Paniolo Cafe?”

I mean, every Southern kid on Oahu who had the least bit of interest in country music went there at least once and Jay was from Texas and he did listen to country music when he wasn’t listening to Pantera. Still…

“I used to moonlight as a bouncer there.” Jay announced proudly.

There was no way. No fucking way. I said as much out loud.

“Swear to God.” He said. “I worked there almost every weekend from 97-99.”

I recognized him immediately in the photographs he brought the next day. He was younger, his belly flatter, his hair fuller, but he was standing under a familiar paper mache shark with a battered cowboy boot hanging from it’s jaw. The same shark that hung from the ceiling above my usual table at our favorite cowboy bar on Pearl Harbor.

“I lost an Army Achievement Medal and did fourteen and fourteen because of you.” I told him. “I almost didn’t get hired here because of that arrest.” Our Sheriff was notoriously unforgiving of alcohol related incidents.

“If I caught you then you were being real obvious.” Jay replied, and he wasn’t wrong.

Six years we worked together on the same shift and neither of us ever forgot the fact that I ended up partners with the only cop who’d ever arrested me. Jay liked to tell the story sometimes when we caught kids drinking underage.

It's been awhile and I'm sorry for that. I've been working on a new fiction project and have found balancing the blog and writing a rough draft to be a little bit more than I can handle. I'm going to shoot for one post a month until I get this rough draft finished. Meanwhile...music...