A Wild Start

By David Robert Crews

I don’t wanna discuss my first trip off post, which occurred only 3 ½ hours after I landed on Okinawa. I can’t discuss it. You see, we newly posted soldiers on Okinawa were supposed to stay on our new posts for our first three days there, so our Army ID Cards were taken away from us, when we landed there, and kept from us for our first three days on the island. When I took my first trip off post, I didn’t have my Army ID Card back yet, which was the only pass that we soldiers there needed to legally go off post, but my newly assigned Army Post, Sukiran, didn’t have any gates guarded by MPs (Military Police) at its the exits and entrances. There were no barriers to stop me from exiting the post and going into town and coming back a bit inebriated; consequently, I went out bar hoppin’ as soon as I could, and because prostitution was legal over there back then, I had sex with a prostitute, for the first time, during my first evening on the island, in spite of that little ole’ three day rule.

Aww yeah well, that three day rule was good for most new guys, cause they often went wild if they went into town before they had a few days to settle in and adjust to being so far away from home. After World War Two was over, but previous to 1970, when many of the GIs who had landed on Okinawa realized that they were about 10,000 miles from where there was anybody whom they knew, who could tell their families and friends about them getting loony-toon drunk downtown in the wild and crazy bar scene that was rockin’ and rollin’ on Okinawa at the time, they sometimes went way too wild and got into big trouble. The Army wanted their expensively trained troops to start work at their assigned jobs on Okinawa as soon after landing there as possible, not after spending an extended stay in the hospital and/or stockade. In a worse case scenario, of a wild drunken mistake made by a GI, during his first time going out to get drunk and laid in town, on Okinawa, the Army really hated sending bad news to a soldier’s family back home.

Fortunately for me though, a GI gentleman who had sat next to me on the plane ride across the Pacific Ocean, when I had flown from America to Okinawa for the first time, was returning to The Rock (GI jargon for Okinawa) after being home on a thirty day leave. Previous to his one month leave, he had spent a year on The Rock. On that plane ride he became a true buddy of mine, because he gave me explicit instructions on the ins and outs of the entire bar and babe scene on Okinawa. Also, the way my young, maturing mind figured it–because I happened to be an experienced booze consumer and was rather well self controlled when under the influence of alcohol, I excused myself from that three day rule, and headed for the downtown bar and red light district after only 3 ½ short hours of being on The Rock.

OK, I admit it now, no one is all that self controlled when they get to drinkin’ booze, and I knew that I was taking a risk by going AWOL for a few hours, but I was just plain freakin’ horny and thirsty, so I went to town anyway.

Several days after I had left the East Coast of America to go to the West Coast to wait a few days, at Oakland Army Base in California, till the Army flew me from there to Okinawa on a chartered commercial jetliner, my father sold a 1961 VW Bug, for me, that I had bought while going to US Army Photo Lab Tech School. He sent that money to me during my first week on The Rock. I immediately went to the Post Exchange, to the giant main PX (military Wall Mart) on Okinawa, and used some of that cash to buy two more Pentax lenses and some assorted photographer’s necessities like lens filters, lens cleaners and such. Then I went on through the PX and did some other shopping. I hit the men’s clothing department and picked out some nice short sleeve shirts and some in style pants, socks and a belt. I bought myself a small, used stereo off of a guy in my barracks, to play phonographs from part of my record album collection that I had carried with me on the plane ride over there. I purchased some other odds and ends here and there and thusly started out on my tour of overseas duty with plenty of civilian type amenities to help me feel comfortable in my own skin.

After that, I went out bar hoppin’ again.

Gate Two Street and BC Street in Koza City was where the best wide open bar district action was, except for the majority of African American Servicemen. Some of those guys did party with us Euro American and Spanish American Servicemen and go bar hoppin’ with us, but most GI Soul Brothers stuck to “The Bush.”

The Bush was an all black guy environment. The Soul Brothers had nearly completely segregated themselves out of all the other bar districts on The Rock a long time before I got there.

Oh, that probably isn’t correct. I bet that they had been segregated out of the light skinned GI’s bar districts, way back in the beginning of American troop occupation of the island. Then the black guys had liked what they were left with, because they had made themselves a place of their own that fit their lifestyles and cultural tastes, so they kept it.

I remember going by The Bush, while riding in taxis or friends’ cars, numerous times. It was located down in on a side street that, I think, lay off of a main highway that ran between Gate Two and BC Streets. When I looked down into that street, especially on a pay day night, there were thousands of Soul Brothers walking all over the place in a dark, thick, smoky crowd. Euro American Brothers and Spanish American Brothers weren’t allowed down in there, and if they made the mistake of entering The Bush, they got jumped by a bunch of black dudes.

During my time on The Rock, I had heard one or two white dudes say that they had gone to The Bush a couple of times with some black friend of theirs, but I don’t know. Maybe it was at the end of the month, when the bar districts were sparsely populated, because most GIs were out of cash. Maybe they knew one bad ass black dude who could keep the other Soul Brothers from thumping on their white faces, but I never saw any white faces down in The Bush.

We rarely had any kind of racial segregation in our barracks. We white, black, brown GIs all usually got along fine while working, living and partying together. There were times when I had some serious conversations with a black GI friend or two, a few of whom had lived through a lot of combat in Vietnam, we felt the same about a many things in our lives, and we partied hard together, but The Bush was off limits to me.

Around 1989, when I was a patient in Ft. Howard Veterans Hospital, I got into a conversation with two African Americans about The Bush. One was a male Army veteran, who was also a patient there at the time, and the other was a female VA employee, who was also an Army veteran. They both had been stationed on The Rock during their military service. One day, we were swapping memories of our individual experiences on The Rock, and when I mentioned to them that I knew about The Bush, the male veteran said to me, kindly and sincerely, as he was a buddy of mine, “Ya know, a lot of white guys like to say that they went down into The Bush with some great big, bad ass black friend of theirs, but they never did, them brothers down there wouldn’t ever have allowed that to happen. They woulda’ jumped both the white and black guy and kicked their asses.” The female veteran looked at me, and nodded in solemn, but friendly, agreement with that statement and said, “Yep, that’s right, no white guys were ever allowed down in The Bush.”

Bars on Okinawa were either A Sign or Non A Sign. An A Sign Bar was designated by a large letter A that was printed on a two by three foot placard which was nailed in place over the top of the bar’s front entrance door. The A stood for Army approved, but it was meant for all branches of the service. It was illegal for GIs to enter a Non A Sign Bar. Each bar was inspected by the military before an A Sign was given to the place. If there was something about a bar that the inspectors didn’t like, then no A Sign went up. Bars were denied A Signs, because of fire hazards, filth, potential or actual drug activity, etc.. If the Okinawan who owned a particular bar didn’t particularly like GIs, they refused to have an A Sign. In some Non A Sign Bars, any GIs who entered there would get their butts kicked real bad-real fast by the Okinawan men hanging out in the bar, in a few others it was a definite ear to ear throat slice for the errant GI. All Okinawan men knew at least the rudiments of karate. Fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers and school gym teachers taught their male kids karate. Some Okinawan males practiced it religiously, from when they were little boys till the day they died. There were a few Non A Sign Bars which were OK to go into as far as the bar owners, bar tenders and any Okinawan clientele in there were concerned, but most places that did not have an A Sign had refused to allow one and thusly were 100% dangerous for GIs to enter.

There were good reasons for Okinawan bars not to want American GIs as clientele. Sometimes GIs drinking in bars got ignorant, and then they would start to insult any Okinawans in the place, try to wreck the joint, and then the dimwit GI would get into a fight with a bunch of Okinawan men who were lifelong karate experts. Sometimes the Okinawans simply needed to have a private-peaceful-and-quiet place where there weren’t any intrusive foreigners around, or maybe they just wanted someplace to enjoy their own culture and music and to have some raucous good times. But the most important reason that it was usually no good to have GIs drink alcohol in a bar along side of Okinawan men was that at least 99% of Okinawan men did not want to have anything to do with Okinawan women who had dated a GI, so fights over women were inevitable in bars where Okinawan women were present and GIs and Okinawan Men were drinking and thinking of spending time with the same women.

Only Okinawans worked in the civilian bars on The Rock. In a Gate Two-BC Street type of an A Sign bar, there were bartenders, bar bouncers and doormen who were all good at fighting Karate style. When a fight started in an A Sign bar, between a GI, or GIs, and one of the Okinawans working there, if the GI, or GIs, didn’t give up, back off and get the hell away from there real quick, or get knocked unconscious right away, the unfortunate GIs got their crap Karate kicked outa’ them by some, or all, of the Okinawan men working in that bar. If any of the fighting occurred outside of a bar, then the bouncers and doormen from the other bars in the immediate area came over and jumped into the action and backed up their brethren Okinawans; that way any other GIs in the immediate area would be discouraged from jumping in on the side of the unfortunate GIs having the crap kicked outa’ them. If any GIs got knocked down on the ground by the bouncers, then the Okinawans all took turns kicking on the poor guy.

Rarely would any other GIs step in and try to rescue any GIs getting beat up by any Okinawans. In most cases, it would have been a bad mistake for the would be rescuers, as they would have been outnumbered and outfought as more Okinawan men in the area would have jumped into the fight and the Okinawans’ Karate strikes and kicks would have gotten more intense, numerous and viscous. The Okinawans had all of the martial arts advantages, along with the highest numbers of available and willing street fighters, who often carried knives; consequently, GIs had little chance of winning any street fights against those odds.

One time I saw two big US Army MPs using their night sticks to push two even bigger drunken Marines down the sidewalk on the opposite side of Gate Two St. from me. There were several angry bar bouncers following close behind them.

One of those Okinawan bouncers was no more than about four feet tall, but he was a regular Mighty Mouse–no disrespect intended, he was friggin’ dangerous looking. The top of his head only came up to about the bottom level of the two Marines’ chests. That short bouncer looked almost as wide, at his thick, muscular shoulders, as he was tall; he had his coal black hair all greased down and slicked back, like a 1950s American style hoodlum, and he was wearing pointed toe shoes with big Cuban Heels that had metal cleats on them; his legs were short and solid, and he moved with a steady stride that showed he had some powerhouse kicking abilities in those short legs. He walked on that sidewalk with a deep sounding thunk, thunk, thunk from his cleated hoodlum heels. Them boots were made for stompin’.

That little powerhouse bouncer kept inviting them two great big dumb Jar Head Marines to come back and visit him anytime they wanted to. The stupidly unafraid Marines were huge; they had no problem looking back over top of the two MPs’, who were six foot plus tall and all beefed up themselves. Them two dumb Jar Heads kept grinning at, and steadily insulting, the Okinawan Mighty Mouse bar bouncer stomping down the sidewalk behind them.

That bouncer was not acting tough, because the well armed MPs were between him and his two foolish adversaries, he was tough. I had been on The Rock long enough, at the time, to be able to clearly see that that pair of drunken Jar Heads were lucky that the MPs had encountered them in time. Mighty Mouse woulda’ whipped them good. He would have kicked their giant legs out from under them, with crippling, pain inflicting, precision and then bounced all over their big dumb heads and very large bodies like a gymnastic circus performer doing a double trampoline act.

I never had any problems like that on Okinawa myself, because, luckily for me, that kind GI gentleman buddy of mine, who had sat next to me on my first plane ride to The Rock, had taught me how to avoid trouble with them Karate trained bar bouncers; he had taught me that they were mostly very nice fellows until some dumb, drunk GI changed their attitude. He had also instructed me on how not to get hustled by the bar girls, what the written and unwritten rules of engagement with prostitutes were, and how The Rock’s numerous steam bath-massage parlors operated. With all of that helpful information ‘under my belt’, the part of my VW Bug money that I didn’t have to spend right away on my camera equipment, which I needed in order to be able to do the photo jobs that the 30^th Arty Bge made me do, lasted through several weeks of shopping, bar hopping and buying drinks for bar girls, plus through a few trips to brothels and steam bath-massage parlors.

The bar girls were only there for conversation. A bar girl would intimate to and promise a GI sex for as long as he was buying himself and her drinks, but when a GI’s cash ran out, so did she. My buddy on the plane had taught me never to buy a bar girl more than three drinks, and I never did. I liked their company and would buy them the maximum three drinks while I drank with them and talked to them till they had to move on, when the bar tender signaled them to do so, after he or she saw that I wasn’t falling for the hustle.

The bar girls, steam bath girls and prostitutes were all about the same age as me—I was twenty years old at the time. I usually enjoyed the company of most of those working girls, whom I spent time with, and the feeling was often, evidently mutual. Some of them reminded me of girls back home whom I had had a crush on some time during my school days. Others were new flames that I would never get to fully ignite.

After had I finished getting a massage or enjoying some sexcapades, I liked to sit and talk with the young lady stranger who had just been so physically intimate with me.

I never used Pidgin English when I talked with Okinawans, it seems to me that when regular English speaking people do that they are belittling Asians. As in, “I come-a from-a Texas, ebby ting-a bigg-a bigg-a in-a Texas.” It’s efing ignorant and often emotionally cruel.

When I tried learning to say some Japanese words and phrases to Okinawans, I sounded just as goofy to them as they did to me, when they tried to speak English. Sometimes it ticked me off when some Okinawan dudes laughed at my Japanese language goofs, so I learned real quick to respect all Okinawans’ limited abilities to speak English.

I spoke English to Okinawans a tad bit slower than I normally talked and with clear diction, sans my Baltimore accent. One of the first questions that I usually asked the Okinawan girls was what high school did they used to go to. That’s what I often did when I met American girls. Instead of me murderlizing the English language with my “Bawdamore” accent by saying, “Weirdjah go dah hoye skoool?” I would say, “Where did you go to high school?” The look that I would see in an Okinawan girl’s pretty face, when I asked her that, was one of endearing appreciation of my question. We usually bonded in the next several minutes like we could go on being together forever.

Unfortunatly, in every brothel or massage parlor there was an intercom speaker in the corner of every room and the mamasan/papasan who owned the place, or one of their henchman, would start yappin’ over the intercom and tell her to get me out of there. The girl never did do that right away. As I would rise in response to the voice on the intercom, that most likely belonged to a lifelong karate expert and possibly an Okinawan gangster, she would always put her hand on my thigh and say, “No dats-a OK-a, nex-a customer can-a wait.” Then we talked together for a few minutes longer.

The truly great part of it all was that many of the girls were desirable in every way.

The worst part of it was that most of them had been sold into their tragic lives by their own fathers.

The majority of the working girls’ fathers had borrowed money off of the mamasan or papasan who owned the bar, brothel or massage parlor to, this is a direct quote from two different sweet young ladies, whom I had just made prepurchased love with, “To fix-a da house-a, buy-a da car.” Then each of the two girls had told me that right after most of Okinawa’s ‘working girls’ had graduated from high school, they had been forced to go ‘work’ off their father’s debts to mamasan or papasan.

One girl told me that when she had been assigned to her bedroom in the brothel, where I was visiting her at the time, that the mamasan who owned the brothel had set the girl up with a nice selection of new clothes to wear, a small stereo phonograph and some record albums, along with plenty of make-up and toiletries. That girl had never had so many personal possessions before; she was only eighteen year old and from a poor family, consequently, her new possessions made her think that it might not be so terrible as she had expected it to be, when she had learned that her father had used her for collateral on a loan, and that she had to work as a prostitute to pay her father’s debt off, but then the mamasan informed the poor girl that the cost of all of that stuff had been tacked onto her father’s debt, plus the cost of the girl’s room and board. The mamasan also let the girl know right away that out of the four dollars that each GI paid to have sex with her, the girl only received a dollar fifty off of her father’s debts to mamasan. Those cruel facts meant that she had to work for several years longer than she had expected and dreaded, and her realization of that deeply shocked and depressed the unfortunate girl to no end.

When the bar, brothel, massage parlor girls were eighteen years old, after studying hard during twelve years of going to school, six days a week, for eleven months a year, life as they knew it was over. If any girl ran away from the mamasan/papasan, who held her in bonded servitude, the Okinawan cops went and fetched her back. It’s a small island, where was she going to hide for long?

They were locked into their unfortunate lives.

They were held in human bondage.

I was aware that most of those girls had not chosen to live the lives that they were forced to endure. The way I saw the situation was, if love could have blossomed, between one of the working girls and myself, I believed, and still believe, that I would have been willing to deal with what they had had to do, before I met them. The devil be damned though, they were owned and operated by the mamasan or papasan whom they worked for. It was no use for me to try to get emotionally close to one of those attractive young ladies.

The brothel girls usually aged quite prematurely while working off their fathers’ debts. They often burnt out physically, mentally and emotionally by the time that they were let free from their bonded, sexual servitude; when they burnt out like that it was drastically, tragically evident in their old and worn out looking, but still rather young, faces and bodies. Then they had to struggle to survive through a hard life after sexual servitude. They were basically outcast by Okinawan society, and their families, and were rarely ever still attractive enough to have a GI want them for his live in girlfriend, wife or just a sexual partner and partial, financial dependent.

If any former bar girls or massage parlor girls, had had sexual intercourse with an American man, then 99% of Okinawan men never, ever wanted anything to do with them. Okinawan men believed that their peckers were always shorter and skinnier than those of most American men, so they did not want to try and sexually satisfy themselves with women whom they believed had been stretched out inside by us American guys. That is what several Okinawan men had told me, and some of my GI buddies, at various times, during my stay on The Rock. But it probably had more to do with Asian style racial prejudice and segregation.

Some former working girls did marry GIs and went on to live good lives, but most of those lucky ladies had been bar girls or massage parlor girls who had most likely only had premarital sex with one or two GIs who had been their steady boyfriends.

I don’t know how the girls who had had sex with GIs but did not marry one, nor did not marry an Asian man, have managed to get along for the rest of their lives.

Hopefully, most former bar girls or massage parlor girls who never had sex with an American man, and didn’t ever want to, did get married to an Asian man and have made good lives for themselves, their husbands and their children, after being freed from their human bondage.

I would like to see some writer do a book about the fates of all of those former Okinawan working girls. I would do that book myself if I could afford to go back to Okinawa and do the necessary research for it.

David Robert Crews

Dundalk, Md.

ursusdave@yahoo.com

 

 

 

david robert crews

okinawa

30th artillery brigade

On the day before my CQ Runner duty was scheduled to take place, I awoke at around 11:40 AM, in my bunk in the barracks.

Ever since I was in high school, I usually showered and shaved when I woke up, because my hair has lots of body, and it looks goofy thanks to ‘bed head,’ when I wake up. It is always out of style and hard to manage in the morning. I wash my hair every time that I shower, so that the water puts my hair back into the style that I like it in.

On that fateful Saturday morning, at almost noontime, in the 30^th Arty Bgde Headquarters Battery barracks, I decide to eat lunch down in the mess hall, then do my morning shower, shave and brush my teeth routine. I don’t remember if I was hung over from the night before, but I was feeling low in the saddle. I put civilian clothes on and went into the latrine, peed and washed my hands and face.

I looked hard at myself in the mirror and thought that I looked awful, with my morning beard hair stubble growing and my sagging soul clearly visible in my cloudy eyes. It was not a happy to still be alive type of start to my day.

I walked on out and down to the first floor of the barracks, where the mess hall was. Then I moseyed on over to the first floor bulletin board, where the CQ Duty Roster was posted. We were all required to check the duty rosters posted there every other day. There was a duty driver roster, but I never had a military driver’s license, on purpose, so that did not affect me. And one or two other duty rosters that did not pertain to me.

The duty rosters were changed every Wednesday, that was when I saw my Sunday CQ Runner posting. I had checked it again on Friday morning after breakfast. Army Rules and Regulations required that we only had to check it every other day, but I felt like looking at it on Saturday morning anyway, just to double check. I was hoping that I had been moved up to a weekday, when the duty times are 5 PM to 9 AM, and then we got the next day off.

Instead I had been moved back to that day.

My name on the roster had been scratched out with a pencil, the name of the soldier who was originally scheduled for Saturday was scratched out with a pencil, and our names had been switched and rewritten in pencil.

Holly O’ Geezus!

The first thing that a CQ Runner did, on a Saturday, was to take head count at 12 noon lunch. He had to stand at a podium in the entrance to the mess hall and take head count. Guys who lived in the barracks had meal cards and they had to sign the head count sheet, put their meal card number down and show the head counter the meal card. Married men who lived off post got extra pay for meals at home, so they had to sign in and pay for their meal.

I looked down at my civilian clothes, rubbed the palm of my hand across my beard stubble and realized that I had less than fifteen minutes to get back upstairs, shower, shave, scrub my teeth and gums and run back down to the mess hall. I don’t know that I could not have done that, but I sure as hell was in no mood to do it.

When a CQ Runner was late, the CQ took head count. When they were both late, a cook took head count. I figured geeze o’ wiz, I’ll let the CQ do headcount, take a shower, by One O’clock, and come back down and finish the twelve hour duty shift.

I knew that the penciled in changes weren’t right, well weren’t fair.

I will tell you this now, instead of at the end of this part of my 30^th Arty story, because of what happened that was too late to help me on that Saturday morning. I found out many months later, from a close friend, just before I received my Army discharge, that changing the names like that was illegal. The company clerks were required by Army Rules and Regulations to retype any changed duty rosters, and replace them, on all of the company’s bulletin boards, with the new rosters, at least three full days prior to any changes on said rosters. Either a Major or a Warrant Officer, in our brigade, told this to a friend of mine, just before I was discharged. The officer was a section leader in The Mole Hole, and my friend worked there for him.

The officer was a hard working, no nonsense technician. He didn’t play any Army games, he did his important job right and expected the same from his men. According to my friend, the officer didn’t like the way that my total screw over by the 30^th had gone down. He knew that the photo lab was illegal, it was in his work area, but he couldn’t risk his career over it. He knew that the incident, that I am now in the middle of telling about, was wrong too. But it really wasn’t his place to do anything about it; he told my friend that the officers in my section should have done something about it. The officer sent this message, to me, through my friend in order to help me deal with what had become a miserable situation at the end of my time on Okinawa.

I believe that I do remember his name and rank now, but the memory of that tiny bit of support that he gave me, when I desperately needed it most, keeps me from revealing his name to you. He may still be alive, and he don’t owe me a thing.

After seeing the penciled in name changes on that CQ Duty Roster, I shuffled on back upstairs with the heavy weight of some kind of bullshit bearing down upon my shoulders. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it sure did stink.

I went to two friend’s on mine’s double room and told them about the penciled in changes, and that I was going to go back down to do my CQ Runner Duty after I showered and shaved and out my army fatigues on. But I was in no mood to have anyone come hassling me in the latrine, when the CQ sent guys looking for me, so I decided to wait at least a half-hour before getting ready for duty. One friend put a record on his turntable, so I could listen to it while those two went down to eat, but they stayed there with me for awhile.

All of a sudden, we heard doors being banged on loudly, down the hall, by two barracks mates and voices hollering forcefully, “Is Crews in there! Is Crews in there!”

One barracks mate was my buddy Sp4 Marion, and the other I didn’t know. Man, I couldn’t figure Marion to act so shook up on account of the CQ wanting to know where I was; the CQ was only an E5 Sergeant. Marion should have just come to me on the Sergeant’s behalf, and I would have explained the pencil job and all and Marion would have denied seeing me. The other guy, I would have told what I was doing and why and that he could go on down and tell the Sergeant what he wanted to.

As the banging and hollering moved quickly in our direction, my friends frantically asked me what I wanted to do. I said I’ll tell them what I plan on doing and that they can go away and leave me alone.

My friends said, “Crews, they sound serious, let us hide you.”

I said, “Where man, where? There ain’t nowhere, I can’t fit in a wall locker. I’ll just tell ‘um to calm down and go away. They either know I’m that way or they can learn it real fast.”

My one good friend said, “Uh uh man, no, let me listen at the door. I’m tellin’ ya, they sound all shook up, you can fit in his locker, look he’ll show ya, get in.”

My other good friend helped me get into his locker. It was the smart thing to do, because as the two Crews hounds got closer, I could hear what my friend listening at the door meant, them two, who were coming our way fast, out in the hall were like a couple of hound dogs hot on a Bob Cat’s trail.

BANG, BANG, BANG, BOOM! Went the knock on the door.

One friend opened the door and said, “Hey! Take it easy. What’s all the noise about?”

“Is Crews in there! Is Crews in there?”

My other friend said, “Whoh! Hey, slow down! You see Crews in here? Look around. You see Crews in here? He ain’t here. What’s all the noise about? How come you want ‘im so bad? What’d he do?”

“He has CQ Runner, he didn’t show up for head count. Captain Sawyer was in his office for half a day, and he came into the mess hall and saw the line waiting for the head count guy to show up. He told us two to go look on the board and see who’s supposed to be on CQ Runner. He’s taken over head count himself. He’s standing there yelling all over the chow hall that he’s gonna have the stripes of the man who’s on CQ Runner.”

The two hound dogs ran on down through the squad bay howling my name all over the place, the door closed, and I was let out of the locker.

My friends were concerned for me. They looked far more worried than I felt. There faces were all drawn in tight around their mouths.

I was pissed. I knew that GDSOB Sawyer had set me up somehow. He was looking for a fight. A fight that an enlisted man could not win against an officer.

“Goddamn man, what are you gonna do Crews?”

“I can’t go down there now. That prick will make me stand at attention while he tries to ream me out, in front of everybody. I know what it is gonna be like. He’ll start yelling at me right up in my face right there at the headcount podium. He’ll have the whole mess hall full of guys there watching him from behind me. He’ll make quick glances past me to check out the looks on everyone’s faces as he does it. He will be in his idea of heaven. It will be his finest military hour. That lousy son of a bitch. I won’t be able to take it. He ain’t no combat bad ass. He’s been fuckin’ with us since he got here, and everybody went over his head against ‘im. He wants to prove somethin’ to the whole company that ain’t true. It won’t be with me. I won’t be able to take it. He sure as hell isn’t my idea of a leader of men. I will grab that fukin bastard by his throat, and bang his head against the wall. I won’t even know I did it till I already did. He’s bigger n’ me. But he won’t expect that. He ain’t no hand to hand combat cat. Does he look like a boxer to you? Don’t look like a boxer to me. He’s a lame ass nuthin. I won’t be able to hurt him too bad, before some of the guys pull me off of him. Definitely Andy will, he’s Sawyer’s clerk, he takes karate all the time, he’d have to jump in. He has to. He won’t hurt me, just stop me. I would if I was him. It’s his ass in a sling if he don’t. But I’ll be put in the stockade, sent to Ft. Leavenworth Federal Prison and given a Bad Conduct Discharge. I can’t go home with that. Can’t get a good job. I’d be done for. Maybe never see my family again. That piece of shit ain’t worth it. I’ll go down after lunch and do the rest of CQ Runner. You two go on down and eat, then come back up and tell me when that asshole leaves. He ain’t getting’ away with tryin’ to make an example out of me. That penciled in crap just isn’t right. Something’s wrong about this. He set me up somehow, I know it.”

It was the break that Capt. Sawyer was looking for. He knew that it was unlikely that I would have had enough time to see that penciled in duty roster change, before I was supposed to be at headcount that day. His normal office hours were from 9AM to 5PM on weekdays only, he didn’t have to be in his office on that Saturday morning, but he was. His well stated number one goal in the 30^th Arty Bgde was to always look for someone to get for something that they had done which was against Army Rules and Regulations. I knew that Capt. Sawyer was out to put on a show of power that day, in front of a whole mess hall full of men, but, unfortunatly, I did not know at the time that he was the only one who had broken any Army Rules and Regulations.

At one o’clock, I went down and did the rest of the CQ Runner shift.

The story that I got later, from company clerks, about the penciled in change was: the guy who originally had Saturday CQ Runner Duty, and his family, had been invited to a big, family style picnic. It was some official or just big important affair. Important to his wife anyway.

He was married and his wife and two kids were living on the island with him. She did not drive, he could not leave her the car to take the kids and go be with her best American girlfriends who were living on the island. Shoot, women need buddies to help them through too.

She had bitched at, and bullied, him about her and the kids missing the picnic, because he had CQ Runner Duty on Staurday. I heard that she was extremely nasty about it. For some reason she had to go to that picnic, or she was going to leave him and go back home to the states.

Dependent families had more than their share of depression and other, similar problems on The Rock. Some people are not travelers and adventurers. They couldn’t get into the cool Asian Culture, and make treasured friends amongst the Okinawans, like some military dependent women and kids did. Some people have to live close to where they grew up, and that’s all there is to it. I understand.

The Saturday guy had bitched and moaned, miserably, to the infamous Leroy and his unfortunate clerk, Andy. Then the penciled in changes were made.

All that married man had to of done would have been to ask me if I would swap duty days, to try and make a trade of something, like a promise to switch a duty day with me later on. That’s how stuff like that was done by most guys. And like most guys, I would have asked the guy if he was crazy or something, at first.

But then, if he had told me about them kids stuck over there, away from their grandparents and cousins and all, and then not getting a chance to have fun at a rare, neat event like a picnic, I would have done it for them alone.

I would have understood his dilemma with his wife, but hey, he was tappin’ her tush, not me. Ah, OK, I wouda’ made the trade, but my price woulda’ been steeper if it was just for her sake. Say, maybe, that promise of a future duty day switch, plus a free ride, in his car, to the PX and back, on the next payday.

He could have told me he wanted to switch days. He could have bitched and moaned to me. It may have turned my stomach, but I would have understood his dilemma. I would have made the switch.

I knew what we men went through, dealing with our emotional problems there in the barracks, even though our friends were there to help us and sometimes our wild party ways definitely did let the good times roll. I would have made the switch, even for a woman who’s husband had said that she had been a nasty bitch about it. She deserved a break from going through some of the same things, and worse, that I was. It had to be difficult and lonely at times, for her type of a woman, being stuck at home most of the time in military housing, with two little kids to raise.

I would have made the switch for that family.

Okinawa was Lifer’s Family’s Paradise, but low ranking two year draftee, or three year enlisted men’s families, had a right to be miserable; they never wanted to travel the world in the military and to be taken to a strange land, where most of the American families out ranked them. A soldier’s rank is his family’s rank, in the society of military dependents.

The Saturday CQ Runner guy had most likely enlisted for three years, one year more than the draft’s requirement of two years, so that he could be guaranteed his choice of an overseas duty station, and he had chosen Okinawa, which meant that he would not be going to Vietnam.

When I was in basic training, several guys there serving with me had done that third year for a guaranteed overseas duty station deal. They all had tried for Germany, for the white women and dark beer, but there was a waiting list for Germany that went on for many months ahead of time, no matter what state the guy had enlisted from. So they took what ever was left. The Army could only make a soldier do one overseas duty tour per three year enlistment. It was all about not going to Nam, baby.

I had thought about pulling the overseas guarantee trick myself, when I enlisted. It would have been a four year deal for me, because I was definitely in for some job training that would last me my lifetime, if I didn’t get killed in Nam. I was due to become a two year draftee in less then two weeks from the day I enlisted. My recruiter offered me an Army school of my choice for one extra year enlistment. Then he filled me in on the overseas guarantee, and that his waiting list for Germany was full up for at least a year, at that time. I told my Army Recruiter that three years was enough, that I wasn’t sure whether the Vietnam War was right or wrong, that I’d take the gamble, because there was some action going on over there, that I might like to check out. But I might die, so I am not going to ask for it. My recruiter neither encouraged nor discouraged me from signing up to go to Vietnam.

On the Monday morning following the CQ Runner incident, I was told to report to Captain Leroy Sawyer’s office to receive my second Article 15. Leroy was in his putrid prime. He had finally gotten to get somebody for something.