The Case of the Missing Gas Mask
Right off the bat, you need to realize that there was a principle involved. I would not have threatened my getting out of the Army on time for anything less than taking a principled (if somewhat trivial) stand about something. It all started on about December 12, 1969:
I was out-processing (wonderfully awful hyphenated word) and the supply sergeant (an overweight lifer who had, for some reason I cannot fully understand, never really liked me, grinned and said, “Your gas mask is missing.” Now, the sergeant did not say “gas mask,” but used military nomenclature that I cannot recall, something like “protective face gear, AR-M-40pcuwhatever.” I said I had not seen it, that we didn’t keep the gas masks but that they were stored in his supply room at all times.
While these were not his exact words (they would have been much more colorful and I wish I could recall them), he said something like, “Specialist Shit-for-Brains, you owe your fucking Uncle Sam $27.95 for losing your protective face gear.” I informed the sergeant that I had no intention of paying for a piece of equipment that had never been in my possession. He glared at me and I left.
That same afternoon, I got permission from the boy captain to visit the Judge Advocates Court and consult with a military attorney. One of the truly great things about military attorneys at the lower ranks is that most of them dislike the military viscerally. They shouldn’t since most of them had their law school expenses paid for by the military but they still resent having to put in some years of service to repay their tuition and expenses. Some are there because they couldn’t pass state bar exams and the Army is the only place they can practice law, but that’s another story and is not mine to tell.
I lucked into finding an Army attorney who wanted to use me to get back at the Army. Mind you, now, I had nothing against the Army (he said with a straight face), just did not want to pay for something I had never seen. My attorney advised me to ask for a “report of survey” of the company. A “report of survey” [RoS] is a process that requires the company to search diligently to try to find missing equipment. That took two days and my ETS of December 19th was getting closer. The RoS did not turn up the missing gas mask. The supply sergeant said, Pay, asshole.” I said no.
I went back to my attorney. He laughed and said, ”Now request a RoS for the battalion.” I did. Nothing. The whole regiment! Nothing. My attorney told me that, eventually, we would have the entire 1st Army, headquartered at Fort Meade, searching for one $27.95 gas mask. A day before my ETS, the boy captain, evidently pressured by superior offices (and who was not?) informed me that an anonymous person had paid for the missing mask and that I was free to leave the Army the next day. I almost regretted having to tell my attorney that that had happened. He had calculated the man hours we had cost the Army and they were enormous. Much more than $27.95.
The next morning, I packed up my VW convertible and drove home to Texas.
Het roi! No more about the army. One more post about peace marches.
Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts
Friday, July 15, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Just a Few Notes About Vietnam #43
I Get Kicked out of the National Security Agency (Gently)
I should, I suppose, mention the huge march again. . .the one on November 15, 1969.
More than 500,000 of us marched through the streets of D.C. and gathered on the national mall to protest the war. As I have said, I found the October march more significant, almost spiritual in its quiet solemnity, but the November march was impressive for sheer numbers.
Finally, people seemed to get it. Please, don’t get me wrong. among the more arrogant things I always disliked about the “Peace Movement” was all the verbiage by 18- to 20-year-olds about the necessity to “educate the people.” The people were really no less educated than you or I; they merely disagreed with us. Well, that’s what I thought in the late 60s and early 70s, but the rise of the so-called “Tea Party” movement and the far right wing-nuts, of the "birthers" and "Fourteenthers" might mean that I should reassess my thoughts about that. In spite of that, I will always look back on both of those marches as important and memorable moments in my life.
Part of the sheer joy of those marches for me might have been that I knew I was getting out of the Army before Christmas and had been readmitted to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin for the spring semester. Part of it was having all of that to share with Linda Casson, being young and in love, marching against the war and making love: the sixties! Judy Collins was wrong: I was in the sixties and remember it all. I was living in D.C., commuting to work like a regular working stiff, enjoying life, living in my twenties. Nothing could be better! Elena Poniatowska, the great Mexican journalist and writer was absolutely correct: Doing what you believe in, especially if it is tinged with some modicum of danger (and love), makes you become more alive, more aware of everything around you, casts some small amount of light in dark corners.
And then: Monday morning after the march, I returned to work at the National Security Agency, the quintessential alphabet agency, the NSA, The Building, and Don and I were stopped from entering by the Marine guards. Why? I had not read The New York Times on the morning of November 19, 1969, but I was in the newspaper.
If you’ve read earlier entries in this blog, you may remember that the previous summer my friend Don Mohr and I had driven in my little VW convertible down to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to participate in a march against the war sponsored by GIs United Against the War. My friend Allen Hallmark was one of the organizers and had invited us down. While there, we had both signed a petition of active duty soldiers opposed to the war and demanding that it stop NOW!
The actual petition was divided into military posts by alphabet and then by names of active duty troops, alphabetically. Even NSA was sharp enough to go down the list to Fort Meade and pick out the two names there. Let me say right now what I said in my first chapbook of prose and poems, From the Periphery, that my name on that petition remains one of the publications I am most proud of.
We were taken from The Building to a small cubicle (I forget where on post) and interviewed (no enhanced interrogation measures were used) by an officer from CID. It was actually fairly pleasant; perhaps because the ACLU had made it public that they would defend any of the petitioners against anything that might affect our futures (e.g., withdrawal of our security clearances, felony charges, etc.). So, we were asked if we could give the names of other employees of NSA who had participated in the anti-war movement. We both, in different rooms, said "no" but that we would ask them if it was okay. A bunch of people who had participated wanted to be named; some who had never participated wanted to be named. I decided not to name anyone.
What happened as a result of all this was that I was denied access to cryptographic information and access to The Building, but I did (thanks to the ACLU) retain my security clearance. For the remainder of my stay in the U.S. Army, I defended our rights to freedom of speech and petition by painting rocks blue and white around the company area and filling in for the clerk/typist when he was on leave.
I was at the time of all this, 27 years old. The captain commanding “C” Company, ASA, Ft. Meade, was 24. I have forgotten his name. But the First Sergeant was a very nice guy named Zeigler. Sergeant Zeigler was approaching his twentieth year in the Army and retirement and asked me all the time if I thought he could find a job in the private sector. I remembered my days working at Sear and told him they hired a lot of retired Army sergeants but recommended that he use the GI Bill and go to college. he was a bright guy (unlike some of my drill instructor sergeants at Ft. Leonard Wood). Odd, I thought, to be giving advice to a man in his forties.
I found the captain somewhat disturbing as he frequently asked me what these kids were so upset about these days and why we were marching and demonstrating. I mean, he was younger than me!!!
My next blog entry is going to be about what everyone except the Army called “gas masks.” They called them something like “protective masks, OD” or some other nomenclature.
I should, I suppose, mention the huge march again. . .the one on November 15, 1969.
More than 500,000 of us marched through the streets of D.C. and gathered on the national mall to protest the war. As I have said, I found the October march more significant, almost spiritual in its quiet solemnity, but the November march was impressive for sheer numbers.
Finally, people seemed to get it. Please, don’t get me wrong. among the more arrogant things I always disliked about the “Peace Movement” was all the verbiage by 18- to 20-year-olds about the necessity to “educate the people.” The people were really no less educated than you or I; they merely disagreed with us. Well, that’s what I thought in the late 60s and early 70s, but the rise of the so-called “Tea Party” movement and the far right wing-nuts, of the "birthers" and "Fourteenthers" might mean that I should reassess my thoughts about that. In spite of that, I will always look back on both of those marches as important and memorable moments in my life.
Part of the sheer joy of those marches for me might have been that I knew I was getting out of the Army before Christmas and had been readmitted to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin for the spring semester. Part of it was having all of that to share with Linda Casson, being young and in love, marching against the war and making love: the sixties! Judy Collins was wrong: I was in the sixties and remember it all. I was living in D.C., commuting to work like a regular working stiff, enjoying life, living in my twenties. Nothing could be better! Elena Poniatowska, the great Mexican journalist and writer was absolutely correct: Doing what you believe in, especially if it is tinged with some modicum of danger (and love), makes you become more alive, more aware of everything around you, casts some small amount of light in dark corners.
And then: Monday morning after the march, I returned to work at the National Security Agency, the quintessential alphabet agency, the NSA, The Building, and Don and I were stopped from entering by the Marine guards. Why? I had not read The New York Times on the morning of November 19, 1969, but I was in the newspaper.
If you’ve read earlier entries in this blog, you may remember that the previous summer my friend Don Mohr and I had driven in my little VW convertible down to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to participate in a march against the war sponsored by GIs United Against the War. My friend Allen Hallmark was one of the organizers and had invited us down. While there, we had both signed a petition of active duty soldiers opposed to the war and demanding that it stop NOW!
The actual petition was divided into military posts by alphabet and then by names of active duty troops, alphabetically. Even NSA was sharp enough to go down the list to Fort Meade and pick out the two names there. Let me say right now what I said in my first chapbook of prose and poems, From the Periphery, that my name on that petition remains one of the publications I am most proud of.
We were taken from The Building to a small cubicle (I forget where on post) and interviewed (no enhanced interrogation measures were used) by an officer from CID. It was actually fairly pleasant; perhaps because the ACLU had made it public that they would defend any of the petitioners against anything that might affect our futures (e.g., withdrawal of our security clearances, felony charges, etc.). So, we were asked if we could give the names of other employees of NSA who had participated in the anti-war movement. We both, in different rooms, said "no" but that we would ask them if it was okay. A bunch of people who had participated wanted to be named; some who had never participated wanted to be named. I decided not to name anyone.
What happened as a result of all this was that I was denied access to cryptographic information and access to The Building, but I did (thanks to the ACLU) retain my security clearance. For the remainder of my stay in the U.S. Army, I defended our rights to freedom of speech and petition by painting rocks blue and white around the company area and filling in for the clerk/typist when he was on leave.
I was at the time of all this, 27 years old. The captain commanding “C” Company, ASA, Ft. Meade, was 24. I have forgotten his name. But the First Sergeant was a very nice guy named Zeigler. Sergeant Zeigler was approaching his twentieth year in the Army and retirement and asked me all the time if I thought he could find a job in the private sector. I remembered my days working at Sear and told him they hired a lot of retired Army sergeants but recommended that he use the GI Bill and go to college. he was a bright guy (unlike some of my drill instructor sergeants at Ft. Leonard Wood). Odd, I thought, to be giving advice to a man in his forties.
I found the captain somewhat disturbing as he frequently asked me what these kids were so upset about these days and why we were marching and demonstrating. I mean, he was younger than me!!!
My next blog entry is going to be about what everyone except the Army called “gas masks.” They called them something like “protective masks, OD” or some other nomenclature.
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