Bill Smutko
The green glow of the radium number on my watch show it’s three A.M. The rough sheets smell of laundry detergent and bleach. I look through the dark at the ceiling, my mind an unending line of rail cars each filled with a different thought.
Where will the C. O. assign me?
How will the troops react to me?
Will the mechanics know their jobs? What will I do if they don’t?
Will the Platoon Sergeant be a help or a hindrance? How will I work around him if I have to?
I flop over and burry my head under the thin pillow trying to find a place to get off.
How will I react in a combat situation? I hope to God I don’t freeze or worse, run.
The telephone on the bedside table rings sending the train on to a siding.
“It’s six thirty Lieutenant Galloway.” says the voice coming out of the hand set.
Time to get up and moving.
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Drizzle and darkness shape the day as we board the bus. We track water from the street in with us.
Smells of wet people.
The rain picks up and drums a bleak tattoo on the roof of the vehicle as it wallows along toward the airport.
There are no brass bands or young women throwing flowers and blowing kisses to see us off. There is a group of sodden protestors wielding waterlogged signs proclaiming “Make Love not War” and “Baby Killers”.
The Douglas DC 8 has Saturn Airlines painted on the fuselage.
Appropriate. Feel like I’m going to another planet.
The rain escalates into a violent storm. Thunder from a close by lightning strike is as deafening as 8 an inch cannon report and the rain ricochets off the fuselage like automatic weapons fire.
My seat is between two Captains, It’s cramped, no movies, no pillows and the smell of apprehension is thick. I sit down, wide eyed and wired.
The Angst Express leaves the siding, thoughts keep rolling by.
Will there be enough spare parts? Three quarter ton truck starters were impossible to get at Ft. Benning.
Author Bio:
Bill Smutko Served in the US Army for six -and-one-half years, two of them in Vietnam. He is a retired wine grape grower.
