The Army Diaries, Mike Marino [all ebook reader .txt] 📗

proud!

Inducted in Detroit he boarded a bus bound for blood, guts and glory. The other faces aboard the bus were fresh, pink, and scared, around Mikes own age, the Sacrificial Generation is always 18, 19, me'be 20 or so, but the Fatherland needs fodder for the battlefield so these ripe peaches will do just fine.

The induction center on the Detroit River was an old grand dame as forts go. Keeping a watchful eye across the river, towards Canada, where the Brits might launch an attack at any moment, which was one of the original intents to build such a bermed bastion in the first place...war of 18-this and that and another...It was old musty barracks where muskets and small balls would rule, until a hundred years later when it would be the looking glass portal for thousands to pass through from civilian and emerge a bonofide general issue of flesh and bones...since the war ended back in the Seventies with an astounding Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh victory, the old Fort Wayne has lain defunct and deactivated and on occossion has a military re-enactment of the Civil War on the parade grounds, and you can hike about the area and down to the river to fish and watch the freighters go by on their way south to Cleveland or north to Lac du Superior....the bus pulled out of the base and out of the city so familiar to him that he could hear it breath where ever he was, he could feel her heart beating, and her factories whirring and her sweet perfume of gas and oil and diesel and grit and grime ....

The pimply kid next to Mike on the bus was from Sandusky...on the shores of Ohio and Lake Erie, he was just north of 18 years of age. He stammered out a sentence, to complete a longer thought, that would need work, metal work in a bump shop for continuity. "Think they're mean?" he tossed out.

Mike just looked at him. "Who? Do I think who's mean? Surely not the bus driver, they're all nasty anyway not so's you could tell if one was meaner than the other," he volleyed. The scared rabbit in the snared rabbit's seat explained furhter. "No, no, not the drivers. They're just doing their jobs and a responsible one at that. No, I mean the sergeants at Fort Knox, the drill sergeants. Do you think they're mean?" That said it all, and broke through the wall that Mike was trying to avoid. He figured they would give them all a hard time, trying to flex their olive drab muscles and make men out of the silly putty that was heading south to boot camp.

"Yeah," Mike said. "They probably are, red eyes, green breath and blood for breakfast. Just like in the movies, only nastier, jest as ready to kill you and me as they are commies in Korea or Cong in Vietnam, any where there is a north and south...Why does the south always belong to America anyway, and the north to the reds?

'Course in these two cases, Red China is backing them up to the north and there's no way we could win against that! We do better picking on little nations that we know we can beat, never someone our size or larger for god sake, so do I think they'll be mean? You bet your sweet ass." ....which only pushed the kid deeper inside of himself, ashen and waxen, Donder and Blitzen, the kid was back in the womb, safe for the ime being...as the bus penetrated the dark night, a silver suppository roaring through the colon of Ohio, entering the south...the south of legend..of ol' Uncle Remus with a thatched folicle roof of snow white hair and a mouth full of pearly's all stereotypical and all jes' a tawklin' and a'tellin' of tall tales, fables and foibles of Brer Rabbit and other heir brer's, Herr Brer, Achtung!

The Ohio River valley and eventually into Kain'tuck! Howdy Ma'am's and Jesus Loves Me, yes he do! Time for some moonshine and aome barbeque..."Yes'm, I do believe I'll have the beef ribs please?" as a hush falls across the truckstop..."Wha', what did I say?" panicked. The waitress with retreads just looks askew with head tilted...

"Why, Honey. You in the south darlin', we don't have no beef baby, we have po-ak (pork for the uninitiated).." Everybody laughed and he ordered "pa-ak" (two syllables). Inbredding was a family sport and cousin Helene was really your stepchile children, and crazy uncle Ernie from Pensacola, he just loved to have his neice of 13 bounce up and down on his lap while he teased her about gettin' all growed up and all.

"Why girl, your chest is absolutely gettin' ripe for the pickin', some lucky old coon dog of a boy is in fer a real treat, yes he is. They be comin' around sniffin' soon enough girl, so..whoo wee....whoo wee...," then old unk gives out a howl, a dog in heat in the heat of the south where anything goes and nobody cares....

In later years, the Bush years, when the American public and democracy itself was am-Bushed, the video game generation of military personell would be dubbed mighty "warriors" ..you know, the Army of One! Semper Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum...look, Xena was a warrior, a warrior princess, and damn fine looking one at that...

They would march off to brass bands and come home with brass balls. When they died, they got full CNN coverage and the dead were honored...all of them volunteers and not a draftee in the bunch.

Too bad there wouldn't be a draft for those little sand wars....maybe the campus's would have erupted again and another war would go down the drain before too many got killed. The sad thing is too many died there too...after victory had been claimed. In the Sixties...it was different...you skulked through the night in the Ohio Valley to get to boot camp...quietly, quite, quite and when you came home you were called Baby Killers and some yes, were indeed spat upon. Spit on a "warrior" today and see what happens. Still they too are "killers" no matter which war it is you are looking at...it's not like we as a country has been victorious since 1945 and we had a shitload of help in that one after sitting on the sidelines for so long. Warriors?

Yeah, right...Gung ho, and Dung Ho.
The bus cut an aluminum swath through the night, crossing the Ohio River at Louisville and then slugging it's way to the gates, the waiting yaw of Ft. Knox....there's gold in them thar vaults...and bodies in them thar bags on the horizon...as the bus pulled into a stop..it dawned on all of them...they were in the Army now and there was no turning back. No retreat. Next stop...Gawd Help Us..please don't be Vietnam!

Chapter Three

The cacophony of khaki rang out, out of tune, and out of time, resounding sadly and soundly, as they, the lambs, moved to slaughter, filed off the bus, through the looking glass and into a world without Alice, but one full of malice, no holy grail, no holy chalice.

Just blood and killing on it's small universe of a mind, enough to fill a rice paddy. "Hut, hut, hut" rang the bell on the trolley of the Trolls in the green machine valley. Fresh meat rolling off the racks into the waiting arms of Upton's uptown cutters in the Sinclair yards of Chicago. "Hurry up, dickheads, line up over heah and no tawkin', line up according to size," (yelled the fat one from somewhere in the deepest of the redneck south,) which by size, meant Mike was either at the end of the line or the beginning, depending on your perspective and which end was up.

If the earth suddenly upended and stood on it's head, would the south pole now be north? Heads or tails? Snakes, and snails and puppy dog tails..that's what little boys are made of, not soldiers in this heah mans army. The military experience reinforced Mike's lifelong belief that humanity was a mistake, a gross miscalculation on someones part, not the human species, but the feces species, and America, the landfill of the red, white and screwed.

Mike had a chance to look around at the others that were on board the magic bus bound for manhood glory. All young, some educated, some not, some white, some not, some with killer instincts, most not. The barking sergeant bellowing orders had a classic neck with that oh so faint sharecroppers hue of red, not to be confused with this way, that way and Red Hue, and this same sergeant, by some ironic coincidence, hated all reds, all shades. Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, North Koreans, Russkies, Berkeley, California, Madison, Wisconsin, Boston and most of all, the Peoples Republic of Ann Arbor in Michigan, hometurf of the SDS, the Port Huron Statement and Tom Hayden who would in time be fond of, fall in love with and then marry Fonda...Jane.

"You damn maggots, get in line, perfect line," he screeched. Don't you mean in perfect alignment, like planets, stars, moon, angels on high, angels getting high, angels with dirty faces, Mike thought. No, too, much too cerebral and celestial for the one with no moons in orbit in the sergeants perpetual for rent/vacant solar system. "Momma ain't here boys, I'm your mama now," Sgt. Mother sneered, and then laughed, more of a real old fashioned down deep in the southern throat guffaw heard through sheets and hoods after torching a baptist church or unleashing snarling German Shepards at the local whites only cafe. Damn, Mike thought. This is what is protecting this country and going to mold men out of boys?

This cartoon will be fashioning clay sculptures out of the raw material of urban and sub-urban and rural post-teens who still get a rush out of girlie mags? Speaking of which, some of the boys did pack some of those magazines along with them, and they were hidden deep in the bags they toted. Probably for those lonely nights in the bottom bunk when the lights were out and everyone was fast asleep, or dead exhausted, where they could bounce the wool blanket up and down, up and down, completely hand operated, like an old turn of the century carnival ride of carnal fantasy, until they emerged from the tunnel of love and the pump went dry and limp as though a spent firehose after a good dousing. But at least...the fire was put out, until the next issue arrived with Miss July flying her twin flags high and her legs unfurled, opened just a crack for a sneak peek, and ready to raise old glory up a pole...a real red white and blow job...


They roll called, counted off, and marched off to the barracks that would be home sweat home for the next 13 weeks. In those days you didn't have grief counselors such as they do today, nor could you whine that you were to stressed out to do your "duty" and although the Sixties didn't produce the Greatest Generation of WWII, it was different...the major difference between Vietnam and todays "wars" are that at least, the dead and dying are all volunteers, and not draftees who ended up dead against their will.The country was Bush-whacked at first, and then a barrage of Barack fell from the sky...Johnson and Nixon revisited.


The barracks were a two floor wooden affair, staked on top of each other like layers in a good deli ham sandwich. In the parlance of the wonderful world of American white trash, it was a verticle, up-ended,