Beautiful Bullshit

The French Foreign Legion, 1984, photographed by John Robert Young

I heard the platoon from my back yard.  40 men in white t-shirts, green fatigue pants and bloused black boots.  It was 1965 and I was eight years old.  I raced from my yard and caught up just as they turned left onto Sunchon Street in the Ft Bragg housing area called Hammond Hills.  I ran behind the platoon for a block or so before there was a sudden down pour.  The platoon sergeant lead the men under an empty carport, barked an order I didn't understand and everyone relaxed and lit up cigarettes.

I was mostly ignored as Zippos snapped around me.   One young black soldier smiled and I smiled back.  He lit a cigarette and stuffed the bright green pack of Salems back in his trouser pocket.  I don't remember talking.  Him or me.  But I see him clearly in my memory.  Tall, he was built like a "V" with broad shoulders and a narrow waist.

The rain let up and the run continued.  I ran behind my friend for a while but saw the border of Hammond Hills, shouted goodbye and veered off towards home.   I'll never forget that day or that soldier or the feeling I belonged… safe in the platoon.  I see it in my mind as a black and white photo on high contrast paper.  The black of the boots and bright white t-shirts…all in four straight lines.  My home... running away from me.  Ten years later I'd enlist.

Is Smoke Bomb Hill Kosher?

From Left: A couple A team sergeants and Dad on far right

Smoke Bomb Hill and Hammond Hills (click image to enlarge)

I remember him walking home. At eight, I was in my Hammond Hills bedroom researching an MG-TC. The Old Man was racing in the local SCCA club and I desperately wanted him to dump the Berkley with the chain driven motorcycle engine for a British Racing Green TC. For some reason, I look out my window and I see the swagger. More shoulder than hip - he had cocky written across his forehead.

The captain bars on his green beret glint from the sinking September sun. Starched jungle fatigues are cut at the waist with a web pistol belt. My Old Man is walking home from Smoke Bomb Hill with his XO who has less than seven months to live before drowning in the Son Toy River. Later that night, I'll fill an empty Budweiser bottle with water and wander out to the patio and stumble and weave in front of these two men who'll laugh their asses off.

10 years later I drank draft beers at the main post bowling alley with three of Dad's team sergeants from his tour in Vietnam. Two were still in Special Forces. The third had retired and spent most days sitting outside his trailer in Spring Lake, playing gospel music over a surplus PA system. The two sergeants told me how Dad used a Boy Scout wire saw to garrote VC. They laughed while the gospel lover just stared at me.

I was in the middle of zero month for the SF Qualification Course. Phase I at Camp McCall wouldn't start for another two weeks but I was happy fucking off on Smoke Bomb Hill. SF was a fairly loose group and I watched senior NCOs dry hump each other out in front of morning formations. There was so much dry humping in the Army that when I went back to college, still shitting army chow, I dry humped Roland Schumann who was bending over an ice box looking for a pint of chocolate milk. He turned and looked at me with this unmitigated terror in his eyes... and I realized he didn't get it. Neither did the 300 or so other students watching from the dining room.

Back in the Army, I knew I wasn't going to make it through Special Forces training. One of the few times I've accurately predicted anything. Of my class of 88, only three would get a green beret and they were all second term NCOs. The washout was so great, I was told my class was the last to allow anyone under E-5. But knowing I didn't have a prayer took a whole lot of pressure off and I Ghosted, disappearing to avoid details, whenever I could.

Another formation, more dry humping and names of the 85 "No-Go" are read. The 1st Sergeant repeats, "82nd Repo" over and over and over…until XVIII Airborne Corps goes to an PFC infantryman. Everyone looks at this bastard and wonders whose dick he's sucking. I'm wondering what the fuck an infantryman does at a corps headquarters and as I ponder the thought, my name gets closer and closer and the first sergeant, who's fond of saying to the formation, "You, in the green pants and black boots, come here," says my name and XVIII Airborne Corps. And everyone looks at me and wonders…

To this day, I still do. Before my father died a couple years ago I asked him for the umpteenth time, "Was it you? It had to have been you." He sucks on a cupped cigarette, inhales and blows out a pin stream of smoke and tightly wrapped words, "That wouldn't have been kosher."

"We Ain't Got No Beer..."

Ft Bliss (El Paso), TX, 1963


Me, Upper Left - Debbie, Lower Right, Hose, Background


"We Got Beer," Rosa Mexicana


Rosa Mexicana, Union Square

The Old Man loved Mexican food like he loved the West. Cheap, hot and not a lot a fans. Well, used to be. Charlotte, NC -- Sometime in 1970. Not a lot of fans. A new Mexican restaurant opened and it looked like the Alamo. We pulled into an empty parking lot on opening night.

Five of us cram into a red banquette and a waiter takes orders. It takes forever for my family but military life in Texas and Mexican towns speaks to our cutting edge knowledge of Mexican food. Hell, in 1970 Charlotte, we were cutting edge... and we were showing off.

The waiter looks to the Old Man for the last order -- he gives it and adds a beer. "We ain't got no beer," says the waiter without looking up. I'm not sure what the Old Man's thinking, "Do they expect me to drink sweet iced tea like everyone else in this one horse town?" Or, "He didn't even look at me."

What the Old Man said was, "Then what'aya doing with all those beer signs lit up in your windows?" The waiter opens his mouth. I look down at the table and wince. The bull has entered the arena. He is snorting and pissed off.

30 years later, I order Carne Asada tacos with hand made corn tortillas, marinated hanger steak, raw chopped onion, cilantro and lime. No cheese. No salsa. The waitress looks at me and says, "You eat like a Mexican." I think I'd be happy with those words on my tombstone. Under, "He never ate a Big Mac. He never watched, 'Titanic.' He never stepped foot in Las Vegas."

I remember eating at Rosa Mexicana in 1985. My date was Jean, an FBI agent who was learning Italian and who is better remembered here. The tab was a quarter of my monthly take home pay. Rosa Mexicana is still at it. I'm a fan. The Union Square location has always been my favorite. If I were you, skip the table and head for the bar.

Guacamole and a beer starts it off with a side of corn tortillas. Butter and salted or spread with Guac -- Doesn't matter. At least I know what I'll be eating when I lose my teeth. About a year ago, Rosa did a Pork Pibil that was as brilliant as it was unknown. Slow cooked in banana leaves covered in an achiote paste. Not sure why but they discontinued it.

The Carne Asada tacos are my way home to El Paso. They connect me with tumble weeds and horny toads and underground desert forts we built as kids. A girl named Debbie made me walk a garden hose shaped like a heart. If my foot slipped off -- I had to kiss her. Later, her brother and I went to the Ft Bliss skating rink and I dropped a cherry coke on the smooth hard wood floor. The spill arc must'a been 20 feet.

Rosa Mexicana always takes me back to El Paso and it never hurts to be six again. It does hurt to remember Charlotte, NC again. The waiter tells the Old Man they don't have their liquor license yet. I remember thinking that might explain the empty parking lot but not before I hear, "Let's go." And we all follow the Old Man out of the Mexican restaurant. Adios, mi amour...

I used to know them.

The Family Portrait, 1988

Like many military brats -- when it was time to settle down -- it was time to find the settled. A good looking crowd -- My ex-wife's family. Third generation Chicago North Shore. The wedding photographer announced the family picture and as my new Irish Catholic relations came from every direction a guest laughed, "When does Rose Kennedy roll out in her wheel chair?"

I didn't think of looking for a family to go with my wife. That wasn't my intent. With hindsight, it's easy to see how I embraced them and became a Chicagoan in short order. Much like moving in the Army - - You quickly absorb everything in your new surroundings or you're screwed.

I was married for 13 years... to my wife and to these people. I loved them very much but after the divorce, except for four people, I never saw or heard from any of them again. In all fairness -- I never reached out. I wasn't sure how. They may have had the same problem with me.

A friend is going through a divorce and I think how sad it is to not only lose your spouse, but their family as well. I lost so many friends in the Army after only knowing them for a year or two. It's inconceivable to me to lose people you know for 13 years. When asked if I knew someone in this picture... I said, "I used to."

Can I help you?

The Living Room

I was 14, when a friend I was with got caught stealing a double Chicago album in the Willow Oaks Shopping Center just before Christmas. He was older and his father was a famous Air Force Ace as well as Thunderbird pilot. My friend was detained by the store and police were called.

That afternoon the Ace visited my home with his son. I was called downstairs by my father and we all sat in our living room with Danish furniture and a white Flokati rug. My fathers paintings were everywhere. Some were, I like to think, tasteful nudes. I don't think the Ace painted.

He told my father his son was arrested for shoplifting and that I was I with him. My father, who didn't have much use for me at this age, sat on the edge of the sofa and looked my way. "Is that true?" he asked. "Yes." I said, and said nothing more. There was silence and I looked at my friend who was staring at the Flokati rug.

The Ace suggested I was the lookout and that it was probably my idea to steal the Chicago album. My father turned to me and I told him I didn't even like Chicago, that my friend had been stealing anything that wasn't nailed down for as long as I knew him, and that he told me about stuff he stole before he ever met me.

My father, a major, turned to the Ace, a colonel, and said, "There you go." The Ace looked at his son and asked if it was true. The son nodded. The Ace suddenly looked small and dark in our bright living room. He left with his son taking the dark with him. Nothing else was said by my father.

40 years later I still obsess over shoplifting paranoia. If I don't buy something a feeling of dread comes over me. I'll be stopped. Questioned. Accused. By a famous Ace. And then I remember my father... and how bright it was in that living room.

'When We Walked Above the Clouds'

When We Walked Above the Clouds by H. Lee Barnes available here.


H. Lee Barnes on far left with 57mm Recoilless Rifle and the Australians


Barnes firing recoilless rifle

Barnes in flip flops


Barnes (in Tiger Stripe fatigues) shakes hands with Charlton Heston. Heston was considering a film role that went to John Wayne.

H. Lee Barnes 2002

In 1963, H. Lee Barnes was an Army Brat living in El Paso and struggling through college. A disinterested and alcoholic mother wasn't helped by a radio announcer step father whose constant job searches would later be subsidized by Barnes himself. There comes a time in some men's lives when they discover they don't belong anywhere. This is usually followed with the recognition that they're pretty much alone. It's a ripe moment for an Army Recruiter.

Barnes enlisted in the Army and volunteered for Special Forces. "You know that song?" Barnes tells me. "One hundred men they'll test today --Only three win the green beret? I was the only one of 50 who made it." I tell Barnes only three in my class of 88 made it and I wasn't one of 'em. I'm looking for a laugh. I don't get one.

Memories of Ft Bragg in 1965 and '66 are seared into my brain despite being eight years old. The green beret itself was something holy to me. I revered the men who wore it. My father, his team members, the next door neighbor and all the men who inhabited Smoke Bomb Hill. This small corner of Bragg was home to Special Forces and was littered with white frame buildings from WWII stuck in the pines. I revered the place when I came back ten years later looking for my own beret.

Assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group at Ft Bragg, Barnes is sent to the small but promising hot spot of the Dominican Republic where Communists are trying to push over a domino. Barnes quotes a lifer's observation in the book, "Wherever Americans go, they turn the women into whores." It's easy duty, guilty even, so Barnes volunteers for Vietnam and winds up at SF Camp A - 107 in Tra Bong some 60 miles south of Da Nang.

Barnes specialty was Demo and secured the Spec 5 ($194 a month) two hazardous stipends of $55 each. One for jump pay and one for blowing things up or the more challenging job of keeping things from blowing up. This all sounds pretty sexy but life at Tra Bong is a thumping bore. As junior man on the team, Barnes gets the shit details...to include burning it.

Jame's Jones took tedium in the army to an art form in A Thin Red Line. A man's thoughts and memories of home in the book became film director Terrance Malick's flashbacks in the film version . A Walk Above the Clouds (author's blog here) takes us on patrols of surrounding mountains with a ruck and a weapon. But there's higher altitude.

Barnes mines his deeply personal reflections. Not only on his good luck, and the guilt that comes with it, but the value of a man's specialty over his value as a human being. Two senior noncoms whose alcoholism reflect a sad army tradition but whose honor and duty spoke to a responsibility the army instills. What Barnes calls, "An honorable action" and "Doing the right thing."

I ask Barnes if he can think of any traits unique to Special Forces members back then. He quickly ticks off a list: "A broken home. Poor. Rootless. Driven to be recognized. Bright and unstable." Tra Bong is one of three places in the world where Cinnamon grows naturally. It is also a place where Lee's captain was beheaded and three team members were killed. Barnes writes of the obsessive card playing with fellow team members, "Cards, like war, reduced to luck no matter a man's skills. No one wanted to be alone with his thoughts to think about that."

Barnes tells me he is done with writing about Vietnam and claims it's the hardest thing he's written. Not only because he was bound to the truth of it but because his team mates names were on it. These events occurred 45 years ago but they should be fresh on everyone's mind. War in a far off place and in a culture not understood. Where the object of "Hearts and Minds" becomes confusion over who the enemy really is. The surprising ending of this book is a reminder...sometimes our biggest enemy can be on our own team.

GANT from Esquire Magazine- April 1960

This would have made a nice companion to the post below on the Bastian, Bastin, Bastion post but I blew it. I grew up with GANT. Not because I shopped at an exclusive haberdasher when I was 12. Nope. The Post Exchange (PX) carried GANT. From the time I was born into the army until I ETS'ed from the army at 22.

That name...GANT. It was a quality for those who didn't have Brooks Brothers in El Paso, Lawton, Fayetteville or Colorado Springs. Amazing the places a brand can take you.

More Trad Dad

Since my earlier post about my father...and thanks to all who have expressed their concerns about his health...it has occured to me that I keep coming back to him. This is a photograph I grew up with. I was seven or eight when it was taken. This was before he finished the officer's Special Forces selection course. After which he was awarded a full flash (the patch on the beret) and sent off to Vietnam.

I remember when he left. We were at Pope AFB. He kissed my mother and sisters goodbye. He turned to me, pointed a finger at my chest and said, "You screw up once while I'm gone - - I'll come back here and kick your ass. You got that?" I nodded in the affirmative. He turned, threw his duffel bag on his shoulder and walked off to a waiting C130.

As a kid, I walked a fairly straight line. That is, I made every effort not to piss him off. Growing up on Army posts was somewhat unique in that a child's actions were a direct reflection on his father as well as his father's career. As I watch children today running loose in stores, kicking the back of my plane seat from Heathrow to O'Hare, demanding everything from their parents and most recently...video taping the beating of a fellow student...I am reminded of what it was like to grow up with this kind of father. Who could give you that kind of look. Thanks, Dad. If that ain't Trad - - I don't know what is.