We were garrison troops in Hawaii during the Vietnam War. The temperature on Oahu was the usual 78 degrees, with breezes coming in from the west, carrying the scent of sugar cane and pineapple from surrounding plantations.  I spent my duty hours at the base, but my off-duty time was devoted to the northern coast.  

In 1970, the North Shore was not yet overrun by tourists, but there were still a lot of cars traveling the two lane highway which curved along the northern coastline, past Haleiwa towards the famous surfing spots of Sunset Beach and Waimea, then on to the less populated windward side of the island. There were turnoffs along the way, for public beaches, where old station wagons and vans, with surfboards tied to their roofs, would pull off, depositing true surfers for the best waves in the world.  The waves were five feet to ten feet.  During winter they would get up to 20 feet and create pipelines and come roaring in. The sound was fearsome.   

The surfers were in their late teens. The boys were shirtless in hip hugging swim trunks, and the girls wore bikinis and sandals, and all were tanned dark brown from the sun.  You would see them at the wooden shacks converted into small markets dotting the roadside.  There were no surfboard shops or other signs of population around, as the north shore was still pretty untouched.  As you sat on picnic tables at the turnoffs, you would see a string of surfers out on the water, spread out in a line, about seventy yards out, sitting or lying side by side on their boards, bobbing up and down with the swells, waiting for the right wave.  

There were palm trees everywhere and the breezes blew the branches and carried the salty smell of the ocean.  The beaches were sandy, interspersed with rubbery water plant.  The overall effect was of green and tan landscape with gradual hills leading down to the shore, next to an expansive gray ocean under a light blue cloudless sky.  

It was here that I learned to love night on the beach, and would wait until late to return to Schofield Barracks, about 15 miles inland, a large Army base housing the 25^th Infantry Division.

We were housed in tan-colored, three-story barracks clustered into quadrangles. Soldiers would stand on the landings on each level, leaning against the railings, smoking, milling around, and talking, looking out at the parade ground in the center of the quad, watching troops going through close order drill or running laps around the street.  Wooden screen doors led from the landings into large bays, where low partitions divided the large space into small sections, four bunks in each. NCOs had private rooms in the back.    

Most of the time, the troops would sit on their bunks, cleaning equipment and talking, when they were not being loaded into trucks for maneuvers.  You could hear their chatter from the landing, along with the slide of metal on metal, of rifles being assembled and cleaned.  The smell was a mixture of rifle oil, and shoe polish. Some men were running oilcloths through rifle barrels. Off duty soldiers were wearing t-shirts, and green fatigue pants bloused into laced-up combat boots.  Some wore their dog tags over the t-shirts.  Each floor held a rifle platoon of about 45 men.

In the mornings, each unit on post would form into platoons, call roll, and head out for a 3-5 mile run.  You could hear the shuffling cadence echoing throughout the post to the accompaniment of boots on cement: “Viet Nam, na, na—nam; Viet na, na, nam– every night when you’re sleepin’, Charlie cong comes a creepin’, — in the ni-ii- ii- night, in the night,”  or “I’ve got a problem, five thousand miles away, got to get home to the problem, get things squared away.”   

There was an interesting assembly of men in the barracks, divided into two main groups. On the one hand, were the veteran enlisted men, who had returned from one-year tours in Vietnam, some from the 9^th Infantry, from the Delta, others from the 25^th, from Cu Chi. Most were not good garrison soldiers, caring little how their boots and uniforms looked after fighting in the Vietnamese mud. They wore longer than permissible hair and there was little, if any, military formality between them and their sergeants.

They just went along for the ride on maneuvers, playing the training game to the minimum. Many were coming to the end of their enlistments and had “short calendars” on their walls, marking off the days. A lot smoked marijuana against regulations, and they really didn’t give a damn about anything. They were the true lost generation, burnt out and disillusioned. And they were rowdy, tearing up the nearby towns and bars on weekends.   

The second group, which I belonged to, comprised the new troops, mainly drafted, who had finished basic and advanced infantry training and were probably never going to Vietnam since the division was being pulled back under a policy of “Vietnamization,” turning the war over to the south Vietnamese. 

Half of these were college grads, who chose not to be officers. The other half was high school graduates or dropouts.  A few of these had enlisted, promised by recruiters that they could be telephone linemen or technicians, ending up to their surprise in the infantry. The two groups, the college grads and high school kids, didn’t really mingle much, staying within their own groups.  The college grads were better motivated, and, therefore, obtained the promotions. 

One of the sergeants walked into the barracks, carrying a clipboard in hand.  

“ LeCocq” he yelled.

“ Here, Sergeant,” I replied.

“ Report to the chow hall, you have to take Gonzales’ KP duty.  He reported in sick. “ Wonderful, I thought, another day of cleaning pots and pans.

“ Fine, Sergeant,” I said, “but, you know I pulled extra KP just last week.”

“ Can’t do anything ‘bout it,” he answered.  Guys like Sergeant Black were not going to be talked out of it, of going back to the roster to get someone else.  

Black was not a “kiss ass” for the higher-ups, and he would stand up for a soldier in his unit if needed, but he picked his battles, and wouldn’t get excited over something like kitchen patrol.  In this case, he probably knew I was picked because I was on First Sergeant Tanaka’s shit list, and even Black wouldn’t cross the company First Sergeant.  No one would. The First Sergeant ran the company, rather than the Captain, who was seldom around. 

Black had the entire platoon’s respect. He wore the most coveted decoration, the Combat Infantrymans’ Badge, or “CIB,” sewn over his right fatigue pocket, a black musket with laurels on green background, only given to those who had seen combat. He also had a Bronze Star, which was a real Bronze Star, according to the rumors, and his respectful but knowledgeable manner added up to the ability to make men do the undesirable.  Black was a draftee, who had earned his rank in Nam.  He didn’t let the stripes go to his head, but he had a certain air of authority, without trying, and a look in his eye saying he would get his way.  He seldom smiled, but was a soldier’s soldier, typical of his blue collar Pennsylvania background.  Most important, he wasn’t a “lifer,” or “G.I,” “government issue,” by- the-book, type. He would be leaving the Army in May.

Black hung around the barracks for a while, watching a couple of poker games, and came over to offer me a cigarette. I hadn’t really gotten to know him very well, but we would be working closely together since I was on the list for promotion to Sergeant. I noticed he had the usual Vietnam wound, a thin black scar, about an inch long, like a scab, running along the outside of the wrist in his case.  It seemed everyone who went to Vietnam came back with a scar. I didn’t know any who escaped untouched.   

Black lit up. “Hear you’re thinking of putting in a 10-49,” he said.  10-49 was application for transfer to Viet Nam.  I had the romantic notion I was missing the war.  

“ Yeah,” I said, “I ‘m thinking of it, but I would have to extend in the Army to get the required year in Nam.” 

“ You want advice from a guy who just got back?”  Black asked.

“ Sure,” I said.

“ We’re losing two hundred guys a week, killed. And, I’d say another thousand wounded. All from the infantry, maybe 50,000 guys, a tenth of our total troop strength.”  Black loved mathematics, and was always into numbers. “That makes the odds pretty bad, especially for a Sergeant. I’d say the odds are one-in-three, to one-in-four of getting seriously wounded or killed. And, it’s mainly a matter of random luck, not skill. Just so you know what you’re signing up for.  If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have gone, but I didn’t get a choice.“ 

I started to answer, but he interrupted, tapping my arm, sensing my motives, “and the glory of being a combat veteran would be outweighed by the risk of getting seriously fucked up for good, un-repairable in whole.  There is more future benefit in foregoing the war experience and making up for it with a Master’s degree in international relations. That‘s cache’ without the risk.”  

Black sat back and smoked his cigarette, looking at me, smiling at his knowledge about the grad school acceptance I was preparing to abandon. I hadn’t told anyone about that.  He must have heard from the company clerk.   

“ Gotta go,” he said, nodding in the direction of the First Sergeant’s office, and adding “try not to piss off Tanaka. Believe it or not, he’s not so bad.”  Black winked and was gone. 

He was right, I wouldn’t believe Tanaka was not so bad. Tanaka had put me on KP three weeks in a row, just for a smartass remark I made during a training lecture. He was tough as nails despite being about 5’5”, Japanese Hawaiian, smart, the ones imported as pineapple pickers and ended up owning the islands.  As First Sergeant, he controlled all duty rosters and could dump on anyone he saw fit.  There was no due process. 

When I was on kitchen patrol the second week, Tanaka came through the mess hall to inspect, saw me scrubbing pots and pans, and said “LeCocq, you’re a good soldier, and I expect a lot out of you. Keep a positive attitude, and I will keep you off KP in the future.”  Rather than be appreciative that a First Sergeant had acknowledged a mere PFC, I answered that he “needn’t worry about me, I can handle all the KP the army can dish out.” I had taken a chance, but had respectfully added “First Sergeant” at the end.  

He stormed out.  Surprisingly, when it came time to approve my application for battalion drill team, he signed off.  But, when an opportunity came up for a job with the battalion newspaper, which would have gotten me out of the trenches, he denied.  He wanted me out there as a fire team leader, learning all I could.  Maybe he mistakenly thought I would consider an Army career, knowing that I had been in college ROTC and studied military history. 

Once, in the field, he came by our platoon, and had our squad abandon the foxholes we had just dug, moving to a new location on the line, just to keep us from getting slack.  He saw me carrying my M-16 rifle, and told the Platoon Sergeant to have me carry the M-60 machine gun from now on, which added 25 pounds to my pack.  i carried it for three months, and, out of spite, earned an expert marksman badge in it. i also received an expert marksman badge with the M-16, and scored high on Expert Infantry Badge trials.  None of this registered with him; he would still treat me tough in the field.  

I had noticed, however, that Tanaka, unlike most NCOs, knew almost every soldier by name.  He was not disliked, and was generally reasonable.  He was spit and polish and by the book, but had two tours in Vietnam under his belt, so he was also realistic.  The more senior sergeants in our company, the career military men, all in their thirties, whose opinion mattered to me, respected him, even as they didn’t respect most of the lieutenants. I usually got along well with those sergeants. I didn’t gripe all the time, and volunteered occasionally, and kept my appearance “strack,” or very crisp.  Nor did I make the mistake of so many of the college grads, of touting my college background.  I was a middle class kid and went to a state college in Texas.  I hid the fact that I no longer cared for the military.  

While talking to Black, I observed two soldiers sitting nearby on their cots playing cards when the duty NCO, a young sergeant just out of “shake and bake” school, 12 weeks of NCO training, with no combat experience and little time in the ranks, approached them. He said to the black soldier, “Clay, you got guard duty tonight, report to CQ at 1800 with full gear.”  Shake and Bakes were not respected by the veterans like Clay, and usually tried to overcompensate by appearing tough. Most lacked the natural leadership ability necessary for the job, but they knew map reading and orientation, and how to call in air support and artillery fire missions. The vets like Clay, however, knew all this anyway from Nam. They also knew what not to do by the book.

The black soldier, Private Clay, who liked to be known lately as “Fred Clay from L.A.” was a management challenge, generally high, and borderline insubordinate.  Hoping to scare off the young sergeant, he said “don’t be giving me no shit; I ain’t doin’ no guard duty tonight.  Give it to Rodriguez or Hanson, they never do shit.” 

The NCO replied “don’t worry Clay, they’ll get their turn tomorrow,” and walked off.  One thing about Shake and Bakes, they had learned in the Sergeants’ academy to be firm and unyielding, and not to get into negotiations about orders. 

Out on the landing, overlooking the parade field, platoon Staff Sergeants Fuerth and Marshall were talking.  I could overhear some of their conversation. They were both Nam veterans. Sergeant Fuerth was quiet and might yet decide to make a career of the Army. The senior NCOs and officers were certainly courting him, and had given him quick rank. He was the only one in the battalion who had won the Silver Star in combat, and was modest but serious in a good way.  No one knew much about him or got too close to him, except for the knowledge that he was from upstate New York, didn’t go to college, and had a wife back home.  He didn’t need to prove himself, since Silver Stars weren’t given out, and were often close to being Medals of Honor, for enlisted men. My guess was that Fuerth would get out.  

Sergeant Marshall was despised, called “lifer” for making a career of the army. Not all “lifers” were disliked, but Marshall liked the army bullshit a bit too much, and was said to have been a danger for his men in Vietnam. Private Rodriguez told me that Marshall, if he ever went back to Nam, would get killed for sure. He was too dumb to avoid danger and if the Cong didn’t get him, his own men would “frag” him, toss a grenade on him during a firefight.  Rodriguez said Marshall had led his squad across open fields into tree lines on numerous occasions, despite vigorous protests from the men.  

I sat next to Woodward in the dining hall that evening.  We were discussing the unit, who was leaving, and who was “re-uping.” Sergeant Fuerth’s name came up. Woody was Fuerth’s best friend in the unit, even though Woody was only a Spec 4 and Fuerth a Sergeant. 

Fuerth, Woody said in his down east, Maine accent, was shy by nature, which comes across as reserved.  Always cool in hot situations, and kept his wits, no matter what shit was coming down. Came from a big family, raised his younger brothers and sisters.  Family was eakin’ by, and dad ran off. He had to step up.  

“What about the day he got his silver star?,” I asked. 

Woody thought for a second, “our outpost came under heavy night attack. AK rounds cracking overhead, like when you hear them close.  You could tell by the firing that the gooks had broken parts of the perimeter.  Everyone was desperate and you could tell under the flares the enemy was probably regiment size. They had their whistles blowing and were NVA, you could see their pith helmets as they came on.  Fuerth got to an M-60, got someone to feed, and things got under control.”  

Woody continued, “Fuerth says he was no hero, just fighting for his life. it was all instinct.  No time to do anything but stand up and fight, or else play dead.  I mean those weren’t Viet Cong guerrillas in black pajamas and sandals. They were NVA regulars and regiment strength. RPG rounds going off everywhere.”  

“ What was Fuerth like outside of that?”

“ Normal.  Sometimes he would take his squad out on night ambush patrols, and if the situation was dicey, he would do the smart thing– go out beyond the perimeter and set up for the night.“

I knew what Woody was saying was true, that squads would go out just beyond the perimeter and sit up all night there, rather than at the designated point further out in the boonies, calling in periodic reports, “sit reps,” “situation negative,” i.e. no enemy activity so far. Those were the guys who came home, and brought their guys back.  No “body count” of enemy dead, but, as most of the guys said, the war didn’t mean nothin’ anyway. 

“ Of course,” Woody said, “lots of times, Fuerth would go through with night ambushes as directed.  Just depended on whether it made sense.”

I asked if Private Clay had been there when the outpost was almost overrun. I heard he had.  

“ Yeah,” Woody answered, “Clay was in the fight. After that, didn’t care if he went to ‘LBJ,’ he wasn’t going on any more patrols. Found ways of getting over.” 

LBJ was the name of the U.S. military prison: Long Binh Jail.

“ Sad thing about Clay,” Woody continued, “he was a good soldier, even in Nam for most the time.  All this garrison discipline is just alienating him, all the nit picking and harassment.  And, he changed since he went home for leave during the riots.  Now, he only hangs with the brothers and has nothing to do with the rest of us.”  

Woody knew that had happened to me. Clay and I had been friends, but all that changed after he got back from Watts. When he returned, he just looked at me sullenly and answered some jargon I couldn’t make out.  When I called his name for roll the next morning, he didn’t respond, and, when I made a point of it, he said he would throw my shaky ass off the landing. I reported this to the Captain, who had already seen Clay’s changed behavior, and told me, “handle it yourself,” joking that I was trying to ”agg-ervate Fred Clay from L.A.” 

Clay started wearing his uniform pants un-bloused, had a black woven bracelet around his wrist, and spent a lot of time doing strange, complicated handshakes with the other black soldiers. He took to calling me a “jive ass” after I tried to have a heart to heart and told him to lay off the dope.  His standard response to my instructions were to comply, but say “don’t mean nothin’’.” 

I thought Clay had buried our friendship, but once, later, at the post beer garden, a well known Bravo Company bully started taunting me over something, getting personal, pushing for a fight. No one seemed particularly anxious to step in, but I noticed that Clay, who was at a nearby table with the brothers, had moved his chair out a bit from the table, eyeballing the drunk, and giving me a glance that he was ready to help if I needed it. The brothers’ table got quiet. The drunk calmed down, and Clay resumed his conversation with the brothers as if nothing had happened. We never mentioned it. And we had disagreements after that. 

A couple of months later, when his tour was over, I waited on the sidewalk in front of the barracks to say goodbye as Clay walked towards his ride to the airport. He was with the other brothers so I just “good luck, Clay,” and waved as he passed. He just looked beyond me with his watery bloodshot eyes, and walked on to the car, but as they were getting in, he stopped and turned around, pointed to me, grinned, and said “LeCocq, be cool,” then turned back to the car. After that, the brothers were surprisingly friendly to me.

I would miss all these guys. Woody, a high school graduate and lobster fisherman, biding his time till he got back to the lobster boat, which his dad owned. He was a good soldier, but also didn’t like the crap that went with garrison duty.  His best pal was a high school track star from Albuquerque High, who somehow managed to win all the physical training tests, despite being a pack a day smoker and big boozer. He was looking forward to getting back to New Mexico, and might even go to college at UNM.  

Woody, Rodriguez, Black, and the other 9th Infantry Vietnam veterans, were good to me, but I didn’t join them in smoking pot and going to town, since I knew their reputation for getting in trouble. They were a close knit group, and intended to keep in contact after the service, exchanging addresses. 

This group left me with a lasting impression of Vietnam veterans, which is that they take care of each other, as well as strangers in need, and care for their fellow man. They would do anything for their buddies. After the war, I would see this close bonding among Vietnam veterans, holding motorcycle rallies to remember those left behind, and joining hands in front of a name on the Vietnam Memorial, not hiding their tears. They would help anyone on the street, taking some food to a homeless man that no one else would think of helping. It got so I could tell a Vietnam vet, even on a construction site, just because they were more human, concerned with suffering rather than superficiality. 

The war had changed them forever and made them learn to rely on their fellow man.  When they went back to graduate school, I would see them in class. They were always questioning conventional wisdom and searching for true meaning.  They hated pomp and form.  They were quick to make friends.  And, they were not only the most engaged students, almost on a mission, but you also found out they were holding down jobs that made a difference: physical therapists, nurses aides, social workers, probation counselors, prison teachers, and so forth.  

I would also miss the wonderful career professionals, like my platoon sergeant, Sergeant Taylor, a 40-year-old Texan who was a real professional and did a lot of mentoring, including me.  He was scheduled, like most career NCOs, for another combat tour.  There was Staff Sergeant Huddleston, who was from Tennessee hill country, a real Alvin York type, and the best natural soldier I ever saw.  He was always first up in the morning, tall, thin, tough as nails, a man of few words, and when he would wake each man up in the morning in the field with a soft kick to the leg and say “getup” in his flat twang, you did it.  He knew nature and terrain, and could out shoot and out hike anyone.  

After I made sergeant, I ignored Sergeant Black’s advice, and turned in a 1049, a form volunteering for transfer to Vietnam. If approved by the Company Commander, I would be off within a month.  But, a week after I turned it in, on Christmas Eve, First Sergeant Tanaka, dropped in unexpectedly to my room at the back of the barracks, carrying a manila envelope with my unapproved application to Vietnam.  

He tossed it on my bunk, and said in his tight Japanese voice that brooked no argument, “Sergeant LeCocq, this contains your 1049.  I have decided not to sign it, and not to submit it to Captain Jones.  You only have seven months left on your enlistment. To go to Vietnam, you would need to extend in the Army for an additional five months.”

He paused to let this sink in, then continued: “You can ask to extend, but I can say it’s not worth the paperwork.  The real reason I am not letting you go to Vietnam, is that you have a future, and I don’t want to see you wasted in some firefight in a lost war. Enjoy your Christmas present.” With that he turned and walked out. 

Bob was describing his World War II experience as a guard at the Papago POW camp in the Arizona desert near Phoenix, in what is now Scottsdale. I had heard the story at least twenty times before, but if I dared to interrupt him by throwing in one of his lines, he would grin and say “smart ass” and proceed unhindered. Bob was my uncle and I was the nephew closest to him. Although World War II was a small portion of his life, it was the formative event of his life.

We were driving east down Montana Avenue in El Paso, and, seeing a familiar cross street, he suddenly decided, in the midst of his POW narrative, that he wanted to show me a house where a woman had been murdered by the gangster John Wesley Hardin in 1949, when Bob was a crime reporter for the El Paso Times. We were looking for a restaurant to have lunch, and now he wanted to make a detour to an old crime scene.

Having talked him out of the detour, Bob was caught up in his POW story once again, telling me how fortunate he was that he never had to shoot a prisoner of war. “My attitude towards the prisoners,”he said, “changed after hearing about the death camps, and it came close to destroying me. When we made the German prisoners see the newsreels of Dachau, there was a moment of silence, then cries of ‘propaganda’ reverberated through the theater. We had some bad Nazis at the camp.”

Bob continued talking as I drove, “The leader of the prisoners was a former U-boat commander and a royal pain in the ass. On Hitler’s birthday, April 20, 1945, I made a routine inspection of the officer’s quarters and discovered he had cut a picture of Hitler from a magazine and tacked it to the wall. I walked over and ripped it off the wall, leaving the tacks. He jumped up from his cot and grabbed me violently by the arm. Instinctively, I slid my billy club out of its sheath and gave him a good crack behind the ear that sent him to the floor. He complained to the Red Cross, but I was, of course, cleared.”

“Another guy I had a problem with was an Ober Leutenant…”

Bob’s story was interrupted by an elderly driver’s un-signaled turn into our lane in front of us. Bob let out his standard admonishment in Spanish, “andelay pendeho,” which I thought meant “get out of the way, peasant.” I found out later that ‘pendeho’ didn’t mean peasant, but had a more sexual translation. I guess I, too, had picked up Bob’s phrase along the line, and my wife had to tell me it didn’t mean peasant and to stop saying it. Bob referred to almost everyone, anglo and hispanic, as “pendeho.”

Bob continued about the POW camp. ”I remember being so consumed with hate that I shook all over,’ he said. “One night, in particular, I remember relieving the guard on the tower so he could go to the latrine. As I was up there, I watched two prisoners walking for exercise around the compound. What irritated me was that, In spite of being prisoners, they exuded an atmosphere of command. These sub commanders were an arrogant bunch. I seriously wondered if I could machine gun one of these bastards and get away with it.”

”Didn’t you tell me that some of the German U-Boat officers at Papago were up for war crimes, for shelling civilians in the water after their ships went down?” I asked not so innocently.

“No, you silly bastard, you made that up,” then, realizing I had put him on, he grinned broadly, his teeth showing, and his face getting pink, wrapping his arms around his sides and scratching his ribs in excited laughter, as he often did when he got tickled. He loved a good challenge, and he reportedly had started this scratching mannerism as a highly nervous kid, or so the family claimed.

“Now listen,” he said, “and you might learn something from your good old uncle, slob.”

Bob always called everyone less intelligent than him, “slob,” but he generally made exception for me, his “favorite nephew,” as he called me in front of everyone. We had been bantering like this for years, and it was always good natured, except for a brief period in the 1960s, when I was wearing sandals, and long hair–way too liberal for him. Bob was one of those conservative Republicans who admired FDR. He was tough on defense and negative on Vietnam protesters. I used to tell him that his dad, a rare Democrat in Republican Iowa, would have horse whipped him for his Republican views. Bob never answered that. The whipping part was a little too close to home. He would change the subject.

Bob continued his story, “there were a lot of good German POWs, including Willi Schmidt, and Georg Werner, from Mainz, who taught me German. I told Werner that if he ever tried to run away, I would try to give him a break by firing one shot in the air, but the second shot, no matter how difficult to do, personally, would be right between the shoulder blades.”

Getting back on the subject of his anger, Bob explained “one night, as I sat in the machine gun nest in the guard tower, I was shaking and praying, and I had a ‘healing,’ putting it all out to God, who eased my hatred that night. You wouldn’t understand, today, how we felt about Germans and Japs then…” ”But, something happened,” Bob went on, “in addition to prayer, that shocked me out of that insane mesmerism…” ‘Mesmerism’ was a Christian Science term frequently used by the Church’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy.

”That night,” he said, “early in the evening, I was standing guard in the guard tower. There was a road that ran along next to the double wire fence which was the boundary of the confinement area. As I gazed along the fence with a spotlight, my beam picked up a jeep coming down the fence line, and running ahead of the jeep was a small dog…”

At the mention of a dog, Bob’s voice became a slight bit shaky, almost undetectable, except I knew him well. I smiled.

“What are you smiling at, you silly bastard,” Bob said, smiling himself at the fact that his emotion over dogs had been detected.

Bob resumed his story, “as I watched, the jeep came up alongside the running dog, and got ahead, the dog running for its life in mindless terror. The jeep stopped and the driver jumped out with a club and beat the dog to death with it…” Bob had to pause a second.

He continued, “this was such a brutal act that it left me stunned, and brought me back to my senses about killing anyone or anything. It took a helpless animal to bring me to my senses.”

As we were still driving, Bob, always impatient, was telling me to speed through yellow lights whenever we approached one. He would say to me “Gerade aus, John Randall, Gerade aus,” German for “proceed.” John Randall came from John Randall Dunn, a famous Christian Science hymn writer. Bob’s pressures to hurry were in good spirit, and I was used to it, and merely ignored him.

Bob continued on his POW narrative, moving on to a German escape attempt that I had heard several times before. “The German officers in the camp remained uncooperative, even if the German enlisted prisoners saw by 1944 that the end was in sight, and became more cooperative. The culmination of the officer’s resistance came on Christmas Eve, 1944, when 25 officers escaped through a tunnel which was an engineering marvel. They had planned the escape for months, and had rubber rafts which they had constructed in their barracks. And, they had, somehow, gotten civilian clothes, some dollars, and maps of the Phoenix area.”

“Based on those maps,” Bob continued, “they decided to raft down the old Arizona Canal built by ancient indians to the Salt River, and down it from Phoenix to Mexico. It was a sound plan, except the Salt River had been dry for years. Most were rounded up walking south down the empty arroyo. We really frog marched them back to camp, but they just smirked at us. Real Nazis, probably the best soldiers in the world, however. Some actually made it to Mexico, but were turned over to us by the Mexican authorities. Apparently, they thought Mexico would be more neutral, but Mexico was on the Allied side.“

“The escapees,” he went on, “were taken before courts martial held in camera. They were not told in advance of the trials, and were surprised when they were called out of morning roll call into the compound by grim soldiers who lined them up in platoon formation just outside the compound.” Bob noted that he was one of the new guards brought in at this time. “Fearful of some kind of resistance on their part, they were held grimly, with two guards apportioned to each prisoner. From the camp, they were marched out into the red rocks in a nearby portion of the desert. At this point, these former submarine officers feared that they were being taken into the desert to be shot. But, their attitude lightened as they saw their destination, a small compound with guard towers at each corner and barracks for 25 men.”

Here, Bob paused to see if I was still with him. He was seeing the events as if they happened yesterday.

“They were halted at the gates and told they would be imprisoned for two weeks under harsh conditions on a ration of sixteen ounces of bread a day and all the water they could drink.” Bob smiled at the memory, saying “there was much hilarity on the part of the prisoners when they learned of the punishment, in comparison with what would have been meted out in Germany. As names were called out, each prisoner swaggered into the new compound, no doubt secretly relieved.”

Bob stopped talking and started humming “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik,” one his favorite Mozart pieces. He knew all the classical works and could bring them up at will, humming them and jabbing the air with an imaginary baton, and going “dah, dah, dah, et cetera.” I knew this interruption in the life story of Bob Dodd meant he was thinking of food, always the Bob Dodd top priority. I also knew, given our location by now, that we would end up at Heinz’s family restaurant, a Swiss chalet-style steak house, with plush black leather dining chairs and a rather dark, velvet interior. It was a high class continental restaurant, with excellent German cuisine.

Bob never stooped to fast food dives, which to him were made for “Slobovius Americanus.” He always went first class, eating only one or two meals a day, but making those meals good ones. As he got older, he dispensed with the huge breakfast, and, thus, avoided my usual comment that: “you could take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy.” Any reference to the farm boy was dangerous, however, since he could end up doing realistic crow calls at the table– “caw, caw, caw.” Bob was not often hungry, but made up for it with voracious eating habits when he did eat, usually cramming his mouth with food and talking with his mouth open while eating. This was good material for my cousins’ imitations of Bob.

“How about we stop at Jay Heinz’s,” Bob said, rubbing the palms of his hands together as if to warm them up, excited at the idea, which had just come to him. Grinning at me with a ‘let’s do it’ big toothy grin in anticipation, he clasped his sides and scratched them in excitement. I maneuvered into the right lane, since Heinz’s would be on that side.

“Sounds good.”

“Of course its good, if your old Uncle Bob says so.”

I had to admit that i always looked forward to Heinz’s. We always ordered the same thing, goulash. The proprietors, Jay and his father, “Pappy” Heinz, were friends of Bob’s, and would always come over and join us in Bob’s usual booth. Bob had several restaurants where he had “his” booth, his entitled standtisch as he called it. The discussions with the Heinzes were on an intellectual plane, assessing Toscanini, Camus, Freud, Richard Strauss, and other artists and Central European philosophers.

Over lunch, Bob was recounting our recent trip to the Civil War battlefields in Virginia, telling Jay about his grandfather, Sam Hindman, a Civil War veteran from an Ohio regiment, had fought at Gettysburg and marched in veterans’ parades in Winterset, Iowa as an old man. Bob described how he and I had followed Grant’s 1864 campaign through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. Using his almost photographic memory, Bob quoted the battlefield marker near Spotsylvania, which stated that 60,000 union troops had marched south along this road on a beautiful summer day of May 4, 1864, singing marching songs, little knowing that 20,000 of their number would not be returning with the survivors along this same road at the end of the next day’s battle. This marker had a profound effect on us, emphasizing the importance of fate in life. It was one of our historical icons.

Bob would often tell me how fate had taken him out of harm’s way when he was on maneuvers in Louisiana on Christmas Eve, 1942. According to his telling, he had just completed 24 hour guard duty with a splitting headache, and was looking forward to some time in the rack to sleep it off, when the Charge of Quarters came in and said everyone up, all hands have to help load rail cars. Bob protested, but found himself on the landing, still nursing a headache.

A jeep drove up and a Captain of the 254th Signal Corps Construction Company jumped out, calling for volunteers to join his unit which was shipping out immediately. He needed replacements for men on furlough and couldn’t make calls because of wartime security. Bob, partially out of anger and partially out of pain, quickly stepped forward and was signed up. He and five other volunteers joined their new unit on the train, where Bob got some badly needed sleep. The train then continued to Tucson, and then to Oakland, where the unit got malarial shots and shipped out to the Pacific.

After leaving Louisiana that night, the first they knew of their destination was on the train, realizing they were heading west to the Pacific coast rather than east to the Atlantic and European theater. As it turned out, of Bob and the five others who volunteered on that rail platform on Christmas Eve, only one was killed in combat. The unit Bob left that Christmas Eve, on the other hand, saw tough action at the Bulge and had a very low survivor rate. I always found it interesting that a one- in- six fatality rate was good. It was a tough war obviously.

We left the restaurant after our lunch, with Jay Heinz walking us to the door an asking about my folks. Getting into our car, Bob announced“prepare to depart,” a joke, which referred back to his return to the states from Hawaii during the war.  Apparently, as his ship had passed under the Golden Gate in 1944, a ship’s loudspeaker had bellowed out “prepare to disembark,” which, to the servicemen on board, sounded like “prepare to depart,” causing one angry solider to yell back furiously to the Captain’s bridge “hell no, we haven’t even arrived. I’m not going anywhere.” As a result, “prepare to depart” became a catch phrase bellowed by Bob, imitating a ship loudspeaker, anytime we we about to depart for anywhere.

During our travels together, Bob had introduced me to his numerous vignettes involving history, classical music, and his favorite writers. For Henry Miller, he would quote Tropic of Cancer about the fireman putting out a blaze at a Boston hospital and then taking liberties with the nurses. From Dylan Thomas, it was Bob’s personal mantra, “do not go gently into that last good night, fight, fight, against the dying of the light.” He would also quote Faulkner on the subject of Memphis, that ‘the Mississippi Delta starts the the lobby of the Peabody Hotel.’” And, he was particularly fond of quoting Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon on bull fighting: ”the cow was never born that could drop the bull that could drop Joselito.”

In fact, Bob knew bull fighting first hand, having fought bulls in Mexico after the war. When I was a kid, he would take the entire family to bullfights at the huge Plaza Monumental bull ring in Juarez, leading us to the back of the arena, to the stalls where they kept the bulls. From these stalls, the bulls would charge out into the ring, into the light. This was the most exciting moment, since the bulls seemed so confident and scary and fast at first. There was no slowing them down. They would go in to the ring fast and charge across the diameter of the ring at full speed sometimes, just getting to know the turf and showing their displeasure. The bullfighter would appear from behind the fence and the bull would see him, spinning around and going right after him.

Bob had killed 36 bulls over two years, from 1946-47, and was, thus, able to explain to me the finer points of bullfighting, pointing out the bulls’ favorite place in the ring, the “querencia,” where it would be dangerous to go in after the bull. If someone was to die in that space, Bob would say, the bull will do the killing.

Bob would recall his last bullfight, in Tijuana, where he was worn out and weak in the terrible heat, and unable to kill the final, third, bull. He had to go into the bull’s territory, and remembered realizing that the bull was getting smarter as the fight went on, learning “Spanish,” as bullfighters say, starting to look for the man behind the cape. Bob would talk about the sick feeling in his stomach and in his mouth, that came with his fear of this particular, dangerous bull, amid the booing of the crowd. There was no way out, no way to just walk away or run out of the ring.

Bob was a good friend of a former bullfighter named Carlos Arusa, who raised fighting bulls at his nearby ranch in Chihuahua named Pasteje. Bob would drop by to watch Arusa’s staff training novice bullfighters on calves, recalling Arusa himself taunting a bull to make charge, saying “Mire, Manso, Mire Manso,” or ‘come on tame one, the one who can be bullied.’ The word “Manso” seemed to infuriate the bulls. Unfortunately, Arusa, who fought many bulls as a bandarillo, was killed in a car accident, so I never got to meet him. He was another one of Bob’s heroes.

Bob had been everywhere, and he showed me a lot of his stops. Boone, Iowa was where Mamie Eisenhower got sick, and my grandmother befriended her. Des Moines was the Tramor Ballroom where my parents met. San Francisco was the Cow Palace, Angel Island, and Pier 19 at the Embarcadero, where Bob had been billeted during the war, prior to shipping out. Bob showed me where all the soldiers had slept on the floor of the Cow Palace, and spoke of seeing Lana Turner, who gave some of the soldiers kisses as she left the USO show.

White Sands was where Bob saw Nike missiles tested. Los Alamos led to his descriptions of the making of the atom bomb, and the importance of the lens mold. Juarez was a court house where he interviewed the man who assassinated Trotsky. Ft. Ord was where he and I were stationed during different generations. Carizozo is where he and his dog Rusty slept on the lava beds while prospecting for uranium.

Bob was not successful in the conventional sense, working intermittently as a salesman and technical writer. He spent his time jogging and reading. He could not hold a job, but he was an intellectual and he lived a very full life. His stories and our travels together gave me a romantic outlook on life, and they also gave me an identity, fixing me in time and place, as part of a family and nation moving from the Civil War to World War II and beyond. Slob that I was, I did listen to my good old uncle, and I did learn some things.

In 1961, when I was fourteen, El Paso had a population of about 200,000. I was used to Des Moines, about the same size, but Des Moines was more a matter of our south side neighborhood, and was older and traditional, but not as modern. El Paso was new, with ranch style housing spread over the desert and with wide freeways, palm-lined avenues, and sleek shopping centers. It resembled southern California, wide open, and spread over the desert and up against mountains.

Our family would come to El Paso on holidays, driving in from Roswell in our station wagon, two hundred miles through the mountains and desert, passing through the pines of Ruidoso and past adobe small towns, Tularosa and Alamogordo, then on through White Sands Missile Range, turning left towards the chiseled mountains of El Paso. The sunlight was overpowering, causing the desert to glitter. New subdivisions were under construction everywhere, consisting of stuccoed, cinder block houses with attached car ports, each house surrounded by low walls of large, tan colored stones encased in concrete. High above was the sun, a tensor point in white, but you couldn’t look at it for more than a second. The light blue sky was always cloudless, streaked with a few contrails from Air Force jets maneuvering high above.

For me, El Paso offered the feeling of modernity and promise never to be equalled. El Paso was the next Phoenix. Frankie Avalon was singing on the car radio, or was it Paul Anka, Ricky Nelson, Dion, or Fabian, the honeyed voice saying “Venus if you can, …” “Just put a little, sunlight in my hand…” Cars are high finned and sleek and pastel colored, two toned, the burgundy and white Plymouths, Chevys, or the more compact Ford Pintos, Volkswagen Beetles, and motor scooters.

Overlaid on this beautiful, modern city of the American West was the wonderful Hispanic culture, with Mexican food being a major discovery to anyone living there. There were family shopping trips in Juarez, across the border. This was at a time when there was little middle class in Mexico and I saw abject poverty for the first time. it was hard to take. My first contact was walking along the market streets, with poorly clothed, unwashed children in torn shirts and shoeless, coming up to ask if they could have a handout or watch our car for a dime. These memories do not go away. Occasionally, we would go to bullfights, going afterward for mango and strawberry juice atop the Hotel San Martin across from Juarez’s central market. The southwestern evenings were bright and things cooled down. The mountains took on a purple hue.

Although the Dodds were spread all over El Paso, they were mostly concentrated initially around Montana Avenue, and they were a very close knit family, doing almost everything together. On Sundays, they would all go to the Christian Science Church at the Scottish Rite building downtown, then all go out to lunch at Luby’s cafeteria, where there would be fifteen adults and kids spread along the table.

There were the family’s favorite eating places. Ardovado’s Italian family restaurant, which had the best shrimp pizza imaginable, a fetish I have been chasing every since, with the jumbo shrimp fresh and only partially smothered in the cheese. Cappetto’s on Montana Avenue had great veal. And, there was Elmer’s, which had the best tacos ever, with lots of shredded lettuce and spicy, hot sauce over melted cheese and ground beef inside a crispy shell, each taco wrapped individually in wax paper and placed in a paper tray for carry-out.

My cousins and I spent the days riding their scooters, a Vespa and Moto Guzzi, with me on the back, around the circular “Oasis” drive-ins with car hops taking orders on roller skates. Or, we would ride downtown to the ornate Plaza movie theater, or cruise up and down Piedras and Paisano Avenues running north and south between our aunts’ houses, or down Dyer. It was the time of the early Air Force jets, and my cousin Mark lived near Biggs Air Force Base, where we used to crawl between the wires onto the airstrip and lay down on our stomachs just off the end of the runway in the sand dunes. The jets would come at us down the runway, at first dots on the purple asphalt, sometimes with an orange glow in the center where the jet engine was, then getting larger, and halfway down the runway, lifting off and swooping up and over us with a great roar of engines. The military police, in their jeeps, would chase us off.

My uncle Bob was the storyteller in the family, reliving a lot of colorful childhood stories, some of which I had heard before. There was a lot of family lore, stories about my aunt’s appendicitis in Osceola, Iowa, which led the family to Christian Science, about the banker who absconded with my grandfather’s savings, and my grandfather’s horse, Bill, who was purchased by William Jennings Bryan, and who my grandfather called over to him once when Bryan was riding down Pennsylvania Avenue. There were tales of Iowa tornadoes and caves, and trains crossing the farm in the night, and one tale about the hired hand who almost killed my grandfather with a claw hammer, and who was tracked down by one of my mother’s half brothers.

The Dodds were typical of the changing America, a Midwest farming family who migrated west after World War II, taking sales jobs, and eventually spreading out as society became more mobile with each new generation. Ties to Iowa were ultimately lost. One cousin ended up in Phoenix; others in Tucson, Idaho, North Carolina, and California. My family moved to New Mexico, leaving only a sole cousin in El Paso. But, for me, El Paso is always 1961, on the back of a Vespa, the sun ever present, on the way to grandma’s house.