Like most people my age, my parents were in their early 20s during World War II, and not too long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my father (along with tens of thousands of other patriotic Americans) enlisted in the United States Armed Forces.
“I did my Army infantry basic training in the state of Washington,” recalled my father the other night as we were sitting around after Easter dinner swapping war stories, “and then they sent me down into the California desert for more training. They made me a machine gunner and our division was supposed to be going to North Africa, but then they decided we were more needed in the South Pacific, so my first ten months overseas were spent in Hawaii, where we helped train other troops, and then we were all shipped out to New Guinea.”
Once in New Guinea, the mission of my father’s unit was to help clean out the enemy forces in the mountains, but since the Japanese really weren’t doing much damage up there, it was determined that it might be best to just leave well enough alone.
“We ended up with quite a bit of time on our hands,” remembered my father as a smile began to cover his face, “and one day me and a buddy of mine were driving a couple of ammo trucks along the beach when I decided to have a little fun and I tried to pass him down near the waves. Well, before I knew it, a big old wave got ahold of my truck and started dragging me out to sea. I managed to save myself, but even with the help of one of those giant maintenance vehicles, they couldn’t get my truck out of the water. All that ammo on it was just too heavy, and the cable they were trying to pull it out of the water with finally just snapped. Then the tide really started coming in, and it wasn’t long before the darn thing just disappeared.”
“You drove a fully loaded ammo truck into the sea?” I asked my father with disbelief as we both started to laugh.
“I’m afraid that’s right,” he reluctantly admitted. “And they said they were going to court martial me for it, too. Plus, they told me that once I got out of the Army, I was going to have to repay the government for both the truck and all the ammo on it.”
“They didn’t really make you do that, did they?” I asked.
“No, but let me tell you, I spent quite a few years waiting for a letter from Uncle Sam telling me I owed the government a small fortune!”
As our conversation continued, I decided to share a little “military vehicle incident” of my own.
“When I got back from Vietnam,” I explained to my father, “they asked me where I wanted to serve the last six months of my two-year commitment, and since I had never really seen much of the United States, I told them to send me as far away from California as they could.”
“I remember you telling me that,” recalled my father.
“Anyway, they sent me back to Fort Meade, Maryland, and since I was a sergeant, they had to put me in charge of something. First, they gave me my own squad of soldiers — this was back in 1970 remember — and put us in an outfit responsible for controlling the big student demonstrations that were going on in nearby Washington, D.C. But one weekend during a huge demonstration when most of my squad more or less went over to the other side, they decided they better put me in charge of something else, so believe it or not, they gave me my own tank.”
“You’re kidding?” said my father, well-aware of my complete lack of anything resembling mechanical expertise.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly a tank,” I admitted. “It was actually just an APC (armored personnel carrier) and all I was supposed to do was wash the darn thing all the time and make sure it was sparkling clean when an inspection rolled around.”
“That sounds pretty boring,” said my father.
“Exactly, so one night, me and this other sergeant who also had his own APC decided to play a little game of `tank chicken’. “
“What happened?” asked my father with genuine interest.
“Well, after a few beers, it turned out that both of us were a lot braver than we had thought, and we ended up crashing our APCs into each other. I hadn’t thought we had been going all that fast, but it sure made a loud bang and one big mess. It woke up half the base and everyone came running. And you know what?”
“What?” asked my father.
“The Army did the exact same thing to me that they did to you! They told me they were going to court martial me and make me pay for all the damages. But thankfully, just like you, they never got around to doing it. They did decide, however, to approve a request that they had already denied that gave me an `early out’ so I could go back to college. And they had me out of Fort Meade and on a plane back to California in a matter of days.”
“You know what?” asked my smiling father, lowering his voice so my mother couldn’t hear it
“What?” I asked.
“From now on when we’re sitting around talking about being in the Army, I think we better just stick to the stories that make us sound like we were war heroes.”
“Good idea,” I whispered back to my father.