An Army Story
by Walter Agnew Moore II

I put the money in the coffee-machine, and I stop. I hadn't thought about Kennedy for years.

Not the president. The little red-headed Jump-Master I knew in the Army. The one I got Donovan to shoot.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't hate Kennedy or anything like that. She was OK most of the time. A little obsessed with jumping out of airplanes, but OK—well no— she was very obsessed with jumping out of airplanes, and a real pain in the ass to boot. She was also someone who used her status as a small cute female to cheese up to gullible male officers.

Now, I want to say that I never saw the point of jumping out of airplanes. Tactically, I think the concept was best suited to World War Two. Me, I jumped out of a low-hovering helicopter just once, and that was plenty for me. Still, Kennedy had to brag about all her jumps. Maybe she wasn't scared the way I was. Even so, there is more to tactics than singing paratrooper songs and plopping down into a field in Georgia.

"Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door,
Jump right out on the count of four..."

It wasn't a good enough reason to get Donovan to shoot her.

No, that would have been the t-shirts.

We were all in Officer Candidate School, OCS, right after the Gulf War. Everybody had been in the service for a little while at least. All types, Z, for Zdrosczewski, the really calm guy who had been Special Forces. Pogue, the crazy guy who had been a truck driver. Wilkes the big guy from San Antonio. Donovan the goofy-smiling surfer dude. Kennedy. Me. About 40 others.

OK, the t-shirts. We needed t-shirts for our physical training, or PT. Seems like we did PT all the time. OCS is like basic training all over again with new twists. I remember one week where I got 4 hour's sleep.

We had a very nice PT shirt before, dark blue, with "OCS" and "33" for our class number, and a gold Second Lieutenant's bar, the rank that was our goal. It was a dignified, solid design. I know, because I am the one who drew it.

Kennedy decided halfway through the course that we needed new ones, and she flirted with Captain Ponter until he ordered us to get new shirts, and then Kennedy went and had them designed and printed at some friend's t-shirt shop.

The design included suck-up references to the brave Captain Ponter, who as far as I could tell had never been close to a war zone but had closed down many a bar. The drawing was pedestrian, probably clip-art. But Kennedy, as always, had gone one step further:

She had made sure the shirts were pink.

"PINK shirts!?" yelled Captain Gorham (the officer who knew what he was doing and who did not lose his mind over little paratrooper girls).

"SIR, they are SALMON, sir," Kennedy screeched back.

"PINK!"

"Sir! SALMON, sir!"

And so they argued, while the rest of us stood at attention in the setting sun, "Taps" playing as the flag flapped in the breeze, 40 of us in spotless new pink shirts.

I'd show you mine, but I chucked it in a Goodwill bin one night years ago. Some thrift-shop punk-rock girl probably snagged her nose-ring on it when she pulled it over her head this morning.

———————————————

Weeks later we are on a sandy hill in the woods of central South Carolina. We are running through exercises on defending a position against an infantry attack. I am a squad leader, with eight others under my command. For days I have had almost no sleep, and I have had Kennedy's unsolicited advice on everything.

Sandy hills, ticks, heat, pine-trees, and chiggers. I imagine being some broke farmer getting a government check for this worthless property. I'd head straight to California.

The way you defend a hill is not to get on top of it. If you do that, "they" can see you and direct every type of high-explosive down on top of you. No, what you do, is you pull back onto the rear of it, so you cannot be seen from the other side. The trick is, they have to come over the top to get you. When they do, you shoot them up, and the survivors run back over the hill without being able to get an accurate idea of where you were.

That's the theory, anyway.

To help see the enemy before they see you, you do put a few guys way up next to the top in little hidey-holes, these are "Observation Posts", or "O.P.'s". We had one in front of my squad's position, which was another series of hidey-holes a ways down the hill.

I put Kennedy in the O.P., I think at first it was so she would be far from my hole. Then it occured to me that Donovan with the M-60 machinegun could see her from his hole to my left.

"Hey Donovan, you see Kennedy?"

"Dude man dude, clear as day."

"Whenever an attack starts... shoot Kennedy first."

"DUDE! Your wish is my command."

So Donovan isn't going to really kill her. We are all wearing this laser-tag type gear, with special light projectors attached to our weapons. When you fire a blank, the laser shoots out for a second. If it is close to the target, the guy hears a short bip-bip-bip. If it hits him, he gets a long screeching wail that will not stop until he turns off his own weapon by removing a key that he then sticks in his harness.

Overall, a good training device, but you could get the wrong idea that a bush would protect you from bullets. If you lose the little key, they dock you five dollars.

They keep attacking us different ways, "they" being South Carolina National Guard guys in mock-Russian outfits, picking up a little extra summer money. To simulate greater numbers, the referees give them second and third "lives", and they burst out of the bushes firing away.

Damn, what a racket. I pretty much hunker down with my fingers in my ears and let Donovan's M-60 chop them down.

We hardly have time to listen to Kennedy spitting and bitching up in her O.P. hole. Donovan is tagging her from time to time and she can't figure out where it is coming from.

Then the '60 jams.

I don't know how the guy gets so close to me, but suddenly he's running at me blazing away with his rifle. I shoot back and then drop into the hole as he leaps overhead. Neither one of us hits the other. Wilkes and Navarro are to my right, I hear a "tang-tang-tang, tang-tang-tang", and he's down. Then there is a "WHOOMP" right between me and Donovan, and dust. Donovan is cussing at Burks, the other guy with him, who is talking really fast and high. Another "WHOOMP", some guy up the hill is chucking grenade simulators down among us.

I think I see where he is. I raise up my rifle and pop off a few rounds. I hear him fire back, then I hear a hollow "clank" sound.

He has just ejected an empty magazine.

I jump out of the hole and plow up the hill towards him, shooting as I see him. "Tang"— it is hard to hit anything when your pulse is up— "Tang"— A guy with no cap, he is slapping in another magazine of ammunition— "Tang Tang— Tang" "buWHEEEEEE" I fall down 10 feet below him in the tall grass as he tosses down his rifle in disgust and tries to cut off his buzzer, then he remembers the key is on the weapon itself. He picks it back up and turns the buzzer off, and then he yells at me in a very exasperated and unexpected New England accent:

"What do you think you're DOING? You NEVER charge a guy who has an automatic weapon!"

"You were empty!"

"You didn't KNOW that!"

"Yes I—"

"You NEVER charge a guy who has an automatic weapon! Are you an IDIOT?"

Then the bottom falls out.

———————————

I don't know if you've been Way Down South in the summertime. The heat builds and builds, your shirt sticks to your neck, gnats buzz around your eyes. Then all of a sudden, the sky will split with tearing thunder and lightning thick as telephone poles will smack the earth. Rain hits. It doesn't pour, it hits. Big drops thump your cheekbones hard, making you blink. Your clothes turn black with water in a few minutes, soaked and heavy. Chill winds blow through the trees like a freezer door opening.

The war is over. We are ordered down off the hill, and we mob down into a hollow to get away from the crashing lightning. We have ponchos with us, that is all. They direct the sheets of water down your back and plaster to your legs. We turn our rifles upside down and hunker in little groups to wait it out.

I decide I need some coffee.

"Wilkes— let's make some coffee."

"Good luck, Monkey Boy."

"Naw— I want some coffee."

"You're insane. Everything is soaked."

"We got coffee. I'm gonna make some."

"Cold coffee. I'll pass."

We have coffee packets included in our MRE's, Meals Ready to Eat, or as we call them, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. There's just nothing to heat them with. When I was in the Cavalry I always stashed a little Sterno in the troop carrier, but I forgot it this time.

I walk around in the pouring water, picking up wet sticks and putting them back down. Captain Gorham sees me through the pines. "It's like a cow pissing on a flat rock, Moore!"

"Sir!"

I come upon Lieutenant Quill's tent. The puff-up dude would have a tent. And there is a machete hanging from a nail next to it. I steal it.

Some of the pine trees lean instead of standing straight. The undersides of the leaning trees are dry. I start chopping upward with Quill's machete, and claw away hunks of dry bark.

Kennedy walks past me, "What are you doing now?"

"I'm making coffee."

"You're wasting your time. It's not going to work."

"Um-hum..." ching, ching, chop.

I take the bark over to Wilkes and Pogue. They hold a poncho over me, and we try match after match. Smoke. We blow, and get dizzy. More smoke. Lieutenant Quill stands over us.

"I shoulda known it was you stole my machete. Listen, don't use that bark crap. I got some fire-starter chips. Here, try this. Go ahead, take it."

We get a flame. A couple more guys take over blowing. Wilkes and Pogue and I start snapping our ponchos together and tying the corners to trees. Z fills up a canteen cup with water and produces a hidden bag of real instant coffee, not that MRE stuff. Soon we have about eight ponchos overhead, and the ground around the little fire is getting warm and dry.

You can smell the coffee. We, the true believers, are lounging warm and dry under the bedouin tent. Z is serving us our hot drinks.

"All we need now is a dash of whiskey in this."

Pogue chuckles, and unbuttons the cargo pocket on his leg.

Outside in the rain are Kennedy and a couple of others who spent the last hour mocking us, and who have fallen silent. The rain is a cold drizzle. Dovovan lifts up an extra cup like a Viking chieftain proposing a toast:

"Drink this, Kennedy; you look dead."

—————————-

I go back up the hill after the rain stops. All our holes are slick mud at the edges, and full of water. An empty vodka bottle bobs around where Donovan had the machinegun.

I think it's ridiculous that I am out here in this muck, when I know I am going to fail the PT test next week, I have never been good at push-ups, and it will all be for nothing, I will not become an officer after all.

—————————-

I didn't fail the PT test that next week. My run and my sit-ups were pretty good. I did a sufficient number of push-ups.

We all passed the test, except for Burks. But he knew he wasn't going to pass. I don't know how anybody could get fat during OCS, but he found a way. "You're a hell of a guy, Burks, and never forget it", we said as he came on the bus one last time to say congratulations and good-bye to us.

Never saw him again.

Z, Pogue... don't know where they are now. Never saw them again.

Navarro told me to look him up in whatever town that was he was from in Puerto Rico. Not San Juan, damn, I can't remember the name, but I could show you if we had a map. It's on the south coast of Puerto Rico, right in the middle. Navarro was a good guy. I would like to go. I have never been to Puerto Rico.

Wilkes, I still wonder about him. I wonder what made him go AWOL and dodge off to Mexico. That's what I heard. As if he could really hide in Mexico— 6-foot-3 and bright red hair. I wonder why he did that.

I bet he didn't really go there.

Kennedy— hah. Probably some mascot junior officer for some General in the Pentagon. Fetching coffee and acting feisty. No doubt figuring out a way to jump out of every airplane she sees.

At least, I hope so.

"one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four..."

I sip the stale machine coffee and look out through the window to see if it's going to storm.

Kennedy.