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Boozy GI's
Nearly one in five members of the American armed forces is a heavy drinker, according to a Pentagon survey released on Monday that showed a growing alcohol problem in the US military. The survey showed a rise in heavy drinking compared to the most recent similar survey in 1998 as well as increases in the use of illicit drugs and cigarette smoking - the first such increases in two decades. The survey was based on responses by about 12,500 members of the armed services. Heavy drinking was most acute among men and younger service members, officials say. The survey's findings were announced two weeks after Pentagon officials said many of the cases under investigation of sexual assaults by men in the military against their female comrades may be linked to alcohol abuse.
Does 'G.I.' mean "Getting inebriated"?
Nobody, truly knows what American military servicemen have endured in times of conflict over the last 70 years. No wonder alcohol is the best-known anaesthetic in those situations. It's a sad irony that in, especially the stalemate Vietnam war, commonly, in order to bomb other countries you had to be 'bombed' yourself.
Post traumatic stress disorder was another word for a hangover. I know, according to Malcolm McClaren's hit record back in the dark days of the late seventies the average age was "19" for all those combatants that saw active service. But President Johnson thought it was going to be a cinch. A long, impossible war that killed 60000 American G.I's and about many times that of Vietnamese civilians.
War only creates three armies. An army of widows. An army of orphans and an army or cripples. You cannot silence nations through aggression. Oppression is like Compression. People will only take so much pressure. Like soft clay in your fist, it has to come out somewhere.
During the Vietnam War stories abound of wholesale slaughter. Here is a story of a 'grunt' that is perhaps one of many examples of "Friendly fire" taken to the extreme, with a 'Bud' in one hand and a bullet in the other.
Early one evening while on duty at the main bunker we spotted a Tanker PFC who had apparently spent the day at the E Club and was stumbling back to his unit. When he got to our post, he loaded his M-14 had began mumbling about how he was going to "Kill him a Gook".
Inebriation not withstanding, this was a normal frustration that many of us suffered from early on in our tour. With the "Can't Shoot - until Shot At" rule in play and the constant ever present threat of danger, we all experienced frustrations. Add a little alcohol, and it can become a very combustible situation. (If I had only understood this then)!
We talked to him for probably a 1/2 hour trying to mellow him out. It was getting dark and after we got him to unload his rifle we thought he was ok, and didn't want him to get into any trouble, so we let him continue on to his unit.
We were sitting on top of our Bunker watching him as he went through the gate and down the hill towards the Village. Only a few minutes had passed when it started, tracer rounds began flying over our heads in long bursts, and they were coming up the hill, from the vicinity of the village.
There was only one thing going through my mind, I let this guy go, he was shooting up the village, and now I was going to have to go out there after one of our own!
I jumped off the Bunker, pulled my .45 and chambered a round while still in the air. I hit the ground with a big boom and inadvertently shot myself in the hand.
I had been wounded on two other occasions and this was only a flesh wound, but man did it hurt! It appears that the palm of my hand was over the muzzle and my finger was on the trigger. When the round chambered, the pistol fired! Stupid, very Stupid!
And there's more bad news - this Tanker Kid had wounded two civilians in the village. Fortunately for all of us, not seriously. The good news, I shot myself in the hand, and was unable to go down into that village, which I surely would have done, and who knows what would have happened next.
I have never felt so dumb in my life, almost 1 year in Nam, Bronze Star, two legitimate Purple Hearts and only 11 days left in country, and I shoot myself. I was dumb for not busting this Kid and now I was guilty of a "Self Inflicted Wound" a Court Martial offence.
This was one of those areas where we were not allowed to lock & load unless fired upon. This Kid was drunk and had clearly violated Regulations. I should have busted him. As a result of my decision that evening, myself and two civilians were wounded and this Kid was facing a Court Martial and I could be facing a Court Martial.
It was a Court Martial offence to shoot yourself in the foot to get out of combat. I guess many guys were doing this, but that thought had never entered my mind, Not Ever!
To make matters worse, 2nd Lt Forest Goodwin definitely wanted to write me up for "Self Inflicted Wound" and recommend a Court Martial.
(courtesy www.3rdmarines.net)
Authors footnote: Combat when you are 'chemist' will always end in tears.
I used to have a Vietnam vet for a brother-in-law and when he marched into Saigon with his blond hair and blue eyes he was offered babies as gifts, as desperate Vietnamese Mothers perceived he and his comrades as Demi-Gods. He never saw action and hasn't moved much since. His only 'war wound' being that of shrapnel through his stereo speakers when his barracks was hit by a rocket attack. He was glad that his Fonda picture of 'Hanoi Jane' survived.
He didn't smoke weed or drink during the war but he always boasted that he knew the difference between a Purple hearts and Lifesavers. For instance, a "Purple heart" is a military decoration for being wounded in ground combat. The other "Purple heart" is that of an amphetamine that was used as a soft fashionable drug in the 60's by war protestors and soldiers alike. It was 'dropping acid" or taking L.S.D.
Believe me I know about Purple hearts. George Washington established this honour in 1782 on August 7th. My birthday. I should have been decorated myself a long time ago just because of this fact, but purple isn't my colour.
Now "Lifesavers" on the other hand, were a bit like our polo mints but sweets that proved ineffective on the field of battle and didn't actually preserve life. My brother -in-law was also aware that a six pack of Shlitz were to be thrown at the enemy as a very last resort and only if he ran out of grenades.
He was planning to marry his fiancé, my sister. They have since divorced and so he forgot the ''rules of engagement' there.
He gave me a pair of commando boots when he finished his tour of duty that were designed for snipers in the jungles of Laos. They had fitted steel soles to protect you from the sharpened bamboo shoots that the Vietcong planted at intervals on access routes through the jungle as 'booby traps'. These little suckers would impale any foot in a regular rubber army boot, cocktails sticks in pineapple. They fitted and looked cool, under my Oxford bags in '72 but I had no defence against hidden 'dogsqueeze' while walking my dog in Cambridgeshire. He even offered me a 'Blue Ribbon' once. I thought it was a medal that was going to be presented to me for being 'missing in action' (I just didn't feel like turning up) on Armistice day, until I discovered it was only 'lite' beer.
My sister has since married another X-soldier. He was a Brit 'squaddie' who served in Londonderry and the Falklands war. He told me once, while I was putting a radiator in his Nissan Bluebird end-to-end revelations of his own combat heroics. Going into raptures about the glory of war and how he missed Goose Green.
He breathed one instance to me about his perfunctory role in sitting in a foxhole with a rifle aimed at an 'Argie' bunker for three days and he had to defecate in his trousers because he literally was not allowed to move.
As he leaned his now over-nourished frame under the bonnet of the car with me he tapped my shoulder for a response. I lifted my head unceremoniously banging on the underside of the hood. The conversation went like this
"Ah, that's why they are camouflage trousers then? You can't tell if you have crapped yerself…errr…bye the way how do find camouflage trousers in the morning? You have to be up at sparrows fart for reveille. Do a whole line of blokes stand there naked, shaking their heads saying "I'm sure I put me trousers down here somewhere and now they just look the same as the bedclothes?" I snorted.
He glared at me with his fists twisting at his side his face in mine and his jaw set, and disgusted by my cavalier attitude towards war.
"Do you know what its like to drag a dying mate up a muddy hill, under fire, holding his helmet on to keep his brains in his head?"
"Do you know what it means to be the one to tell his wife and kids that he died in your arms?"
Images swept across my mind and I was a little uneasy about my earlier flippancy. So I responded.
"It couldn't have been easy for you, Jack. But war is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater as far as I'm concerned. We all have choices and not to squander the lives of others and mine is my choice. I will use whatever means to protect my family, but I won't fight a political war on the say so of brass and fruit salad. Thanks for all the war stories but you really are casting your pearls before swine here….now can you pass me that 14mm socket."
I could see his frustration in my refusal to 'soldier on' with this line of conversation.
"Perry, if you asked me to show you how to make water in the desert to survive, or eat a snake alive when near death from starvation, I could show you, or, or , or how to dismantle and re-assemble an M16 inside 30 seconds I could….but…I have no idea how to fix my car."
Suitably unimpressed at his revelations and the relentless rain at midnight, with a short-circuiting, handheld electric light, I replied impatiently.
"Yes, well we don't have a lot of call for that kind of thing in this particular cul-de-sac, ….can you pass me the adjustable?"
He also bragged about killing eighteen men in unarmed combat and being imprisoned in fifteen different countries making me drop the spanner and spill my hot chocolate down the front of my cardigan. He was very grateful for my clumsy efforts to work on his car and gave me a World War 2 machete to say 'thank you' because the florist was closed.
When I think of war and how futile it is, the lyric from Don McCleans' 'American Pie' album. "War is hell, and I'm not to blame."
I suppose the yanks have always loved a good raiding party fuelled by booze.
Have you seen them in antique shops? They are like an overexcited quarterback when they see a Grandfather clock and would rugby tackle any pensioner that gets in their way, to the ground, just so they can pay 'top dollar' for it.
Being a pacifist doesn't mean I don't believe in human conflict. It's just not about the trenches, 'muck and bullets' anymore. We have carpet- bombing now.
If you had a roll of Hessian backed Axminster on your head I doubt anyone would survive.
I remembered a time when I was a frequenter of the Galaxy club on a local airbase. Back in the seventies days of funk music I would bribe G.I's outside the door with free beer to let me into the dingy dancehall lured by the throb of 'Parliament' and 'Brass Construction.' The D.J was "Spike and the Gang". He could really crank up the bass. At four 'o' clock in the afternoon this den of iniquity was 'jumping'. Dark as a lorryload of arseholes and a vibe that was 'ear ring-ingly', 'right up my street'. Everybody was 'getting down'. I went to the bar to buy a beer for the soldier who had smuggled me in. To strike up conversation I asked him.
"So, do you like the airforce?"
He turned his whole body towards me, because his neck was too thick to swivel of its own accord and he bawled indignantly at me, blowing the froth off his Michelob.
"I JUST GOT BACK FROM NAM! I guess you wouldn't know where the hell that is, would you, limey."
I recoiled at his machismo attitude, but bravely responded.
"Yes. I've been there twice, actually."
The towering colonial looked down his nose and with a look of curious disdain paused for a second and then quizzically asked,
"Wha…You mean, VIETNAM?"
I drew myself up to my full height, placing my face squarely at his navel, and looking up his flaring nostrils I spat back.
"No, ….NAM palace! But if you can't be bothered to say the whole word, neither can I!"
I just remember being frogmarched from the premises by two 'snowdrops' or Airforce military police nursing a bloody nose.
At least our 'Tommie's' fought two wars on Bovril without resorting to shooting their own kind, while getting 'mortal' on the 'sauce' or 'wacky baccy'.
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