I Am Soldier of Fortune Read online

  I entered the Army in October 1954, and shipped out to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas before it was upgraded to Fort Chaffee. Although it was the same old stuff that millions of recruits have gone through since the beginning of the army, I took to it like the proverbial duck to water. I lived for range time where I became intimate with the “WWII and Korea workhorse M-i Garand. I got my first formal marksmanship training and I loved it. I spent a lot of time outside . . . running, marching . . . gladly inhaling meals in two minutes, a habit that has long endured, and being thrown in with a bunch of disparate types who had been uprooted from everywhere from ghettos to the Kentucky hills. It was an eye-opening experience for a young punk college boy . . . an experience sorely missed by many of the pill-popping, therapy-seeking, ear-piercing Y generation and other bizarre generations of punks since the discontinuance of the draft.

  I FIGHT TO AVOID BECOMING A REMINGTON RAIDER

  After eight weeks, I was shipped to what was then the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Holabird, Maryland, where I found myself thrown in with a “casual company” of recently graduated basic trainees, all college graduates waiting for a Special Agent course to begin. After a couple of weeks, forty-some of us arbitrarily were designated to take the “Clerk Analyst” course—hardly special agents. Morale went right into the shitter as all my new classmates and I realized that we had truly been scammed by the Army in a practice that would repeat itself far too often. We had specifically signed up for a James Bond gig but instead we were to end up as nothing more than administrative clerks with a security clearance. Disillusionment heightened throughout the eight-week course.

  The courses were torment . . . administrative this and administrative that. According to the rules of the game, if you failed three courses, you appeared before a board, which was pretty much a formality, and you were kicked out of the course. Those ejected would invariably end up as company clerks somewhere. Early on, although we could all type, one learned that you never, I say never, especially back in those days, let your First Sergeant know you could type, or you would sure as hell end up behind a typewriter and become a Remington Raider.

  Continuing a tradition I had perfected at the University, I not only failed three, I failed four courses . . . and along with seven other dissidents appeared before a board consisting of a captain, a lieutenant and a couple of senior NCO’s. All of the other seven came up with some type of BS excuse as to why they had failed, the most enterprising of which was made by a recruit claiming he was participating in opera rehearsals. I went in, mind you very respectfully, and on being called to account, explained that “with all due respect, I attribute my poor performance to the fact that I had been promised one thing [exerting great restraint in not going off on the Snake Oil Salesman the army had pimped out] and forced into another—that I had purposely passed up getting an Air Force ROTC commission because I didn’t want to be a paper pusher.” I can only assume this honesty must have shocked the board into allowing me to be the only one of the eight of us that was allowed to complete the course.

  That was all well and good, but as far as I was concerned I was still in the shits. Death to paperwork. (Though if I’d paid more attention to “paperwork” while running SOF, I’d be a millionaire many times over, but that is another story.)

  ON TO THE FORT BENNING SCHOOL OF MASOCHISTS

  Though I gutted it through the remainder of the course and graduated, I desperately sought an out, any out. The only option I could find was to apply for Officer’s Candidate School. I was sure that nothing could be worse than clerking. I was soon to be rudely awakened from that thought. Two other classmates and I applied, but I was the only one accepted. The only explanation I could come up with was that my fate was decided in the course of the oral interview with the student company commander, a captain. “Private Brown, if you had a recalcitrant NCO, how would you deal with him?” he asked. “Well, sir, I’d take him out behind the barracks and whop on him good,” I replied.

  I had no doubt that I could pound sense into anyone since I was still playing the part of an amateur boxer, although I was cockier than I was skilled. I’d managed to lose my first fight in the Golden Gloves in Lansing, Michigan when I got slammed with a right cross that dropped me to the canvas in 1:32 of the first round.

  Now, you would think that would have sent a message to most normal people. But normal or not I was definitely a stubborn SOB. I went on to be a finalist two years in a row in the intramural fights at CU. I finally got the message after a young Mexican fighter knocked me down four times in a row in the YMCA in Milwaukee. Still, I ended up with a 5-5 record, which is better than a jab in the eye with a sharp stick, but not much.

  Back to the Captain, who roared at my response, “Now, Private Brown, you can’t do that. Ho, ho, ho. No, you must utilize leadership skills to deal with problems like that. Ho, ho, ho.” He ho-ho-hoed for a while and then dismissed me. A few days later, I got accepted for OCS at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Not so fondly referred to by officer candidates as the Ft. Benning School for Boys, it would have more accurately been described as the Ft. Benning School for Masochists.

  After completing the Analyst course (no honors there) while waiting for a slot to open up in an OCS class, I spent two months as a file clerk in the Personnel Section where one of my many suspicions about the Army machine was confirmed. A glitch in the Army personnel system resulted in an incredible travesty.

  One Pfc. Berkowitz was in charge of assigning personnel to overseas assignments. One would think that the individual who had this responsibility would make an effort to assign a trooper to a country where his lan-guage capabilities would be of use. But noooo! Old Pfc. Berkowtz, whether he was simply lazy, hated the army or just didn’t give a fig, took the easy way out which was “first come, first served.”

  If the requisition papers ordered 10 troopers to Germany and they had just graduated from Korean language school, off they went to the land of Frauleins and Wiener Schnitzel. If ten relatively warm bodies were required for Korea, he’d assign the next ten on the list even though they had graduated from German language school. I never did figure out if the Army caught him or if the system was simply screwed up.

  Life was good. It was an eight-to-five job with weekend passes, few inspections and little harassment, with the exception of pulling guard duty or being assigned to the pain-in-the-ass kitchen police, not fondly nor very creatively called “KP.” Off-duty time took us down to the fleshpots of East Baltimore Street but we came up with damn little flesh, a disenchantment dulled by the free flowing of beer.

  I was also working out, sparring in a waterfront boxing club right out of Daymon Runyon, a second-story gym over a smoky pool hall where an ancient pug wracked the balls. Rusty lockers were crammed into the upstairs gym and doors hung askance with more types of exotic fungi than the most optimistic germ hunter could hope for. It boasted one ring . . . dried blood on the canvas . . . peeling fight posters on the walls, and a crew out of central casting, most of whom were knockabout pugs, laborers, stevedores and cab drivers. Just simple amateur club fighters who picked up a couple of hundred bucks a fight without any chance for a shot at the big time. One saw the seamy side of the fight racket . . . the heavyweight who knew he was going to get “home-towned” when he fought in Scran-ton, or the black middleweight who cried when he told the gym manager he was going to have to go with another manager or he wouldn’t get any decent opponents. Of course, punch-drunk fighters were not limited to club fighters.

  I had been the co-manager of the Michigan State boxing team in 1950 and ‘51. Michigan State, “College,” not “University” at that time, which produced a National Championship Boxing Team, had some top professional contenders using the college gym facilities in East Lansing. The best of the bunch was the lightweight, Chuck Davies, who had lightning fast hands and feet and enough sense to retire after he got pounded into the canvas in a title fight with Kid Gavilan; Jed Black, a powerfully built middleweight, and Chuck Spesier, light hea
vyweight contender. Davies didn’t have the jerks and mumbles but the rest did, as well as a kid on the college team, 17 years old, who already had 80 amateur fights. So why did I persist? In retrospect, just one of my many bouts of damn foolishness I guess, as well as the fact that I got a visceral kick out of getting in the ring and duking it out with someone.

  YOU PATHETIC AMATEURS, I LIVED WITH MY MOTHER FOR 22 YEARS

  Next stop was Ft. Benning, which damn near put me into terminal shock. Candidates from other classes were frantically running everywhere they went. I reported in, was assigned a room and class number, and the shit began to roll all downhill on to me. I figured out that 90 percent of the harassment was to see which of the candidates could handle the pressure. The theory being, “If you can’t handle the stress at Ft. Benning’s School for Boys, you sure as hell can’t handle combat.” All the modern sophisticated limp dicks stick their noses up at such a concept, but no one has convinced me otherwise.

  Why else would all of our supervisors, or “Tactical Officers,” like hundreds of thousands throughout generations before and after them, be programmed to see harassment as one of their missions to try and break us, get in our face, cuss us out, scream with an appropriate amount of spittle, and just generally jump in our shit big time for the slightest infraction or, depending on their mood, for no infraction. They made more than one grown man cry.

  Frankly, when they got in my face, I simply deadpanned, looked straight ahead at rigid attention, and thought, “You pathetic amateurs, I lived with my Mother for 22 years.” Not surprisingly, when they figured out that they were wasting their effort they moved on to some more vulnerable sucker.

  Ironically, some of the most experienced candidates—I mean young NCOs with several years of Army experience, who you would think would find the challenge a piece of cake—couldn’t handle it and resigned. Apparently, having achieved some status and respect as a junior NCO, they couldn’t adapt to being treated like dog shit. I didn’t have that problem, as I wasn’t all that long out of basic training.

  In any event, early on I was seriously thinking about ditching this whole gig and becoming a company clerk after all until I saw the first six weeks’ training schedule posted on the orderly room wall. Low and behold! The third and fourth weeks were rifle marksmanship training with shooting gloves... and shooting coats and spotting scopes.

  Wow! More bang-bang than I had done in my whole life. I figured I could put up with their West Point-type BS until I got through the marksmanship training. After I completed the fourth week, out of curiosity, I decided to stick around for the hell of it to see if I made the six-week cut. At that time, OCS evaluated all candidates at six, 12 and 18 weeks. Would I make it? Amazingly, I didn’t get cut. Well, I thought, let’s try for 12. I passed that and then it was gravy. I guess the Army figured that if they invested this much money in the candidates who endured, after 18 weeks they were good to go.

  And, by God, I graduated! I’m still not sure how I pulled that off, as 40 percent of our class fell by the wayside. Was I a Distinguished Graduate? Well, depends what you mean by distinguished. Yes, I could boast of two major feats. I had the highest number of demerits in the company (got caught sleeping in ranks on one occasion). And I scored the highest on the machine-gun range, the old but effective Browning 1919-A6 which was fired off a tripod. So what did all that mean? I guess my love of the range pulled me through.

  Now, with the gold “butter bar” of a Second Lieutenant, I would no longer be a lousy clerk. So I was sent back to the “Bird,” the not necessarily affectionate name for Ft. Holabird, to attend the elusive “Special Agents” school. The course work was the same for both enlisted men and officers and beat the hell out of learning how to fill out forms correctly. I found conducting interrogations a highlight since they fit into my definition of Special Agent. The classroom held about 40 students. Slightly elevated was a room fronted by a one-way mirror that extended the whole width of the classroom. Behind this, the practice interrogations took place. No Abu Ghraib amateur hour crap, but effective.

  We also had classes in surveillance which had their amusing moments, especially when the subject purposely walked into the lingerie section of a department store. So how does one follow unobtrusively? We didn’t.

  MY NAME IS BROWN, SPECIAL AGENT BROWN . . .

  As I had made friends in the Holabird personnel section, when I came back from Ft. Benning I had my choice of assignments to any CIC unit anywhere in the world. Beyond awesome! Let’s have some adventure! I had my orders cut and was salivating at the thought of going to jump school and being assigned to the 14th Airborne Division’s Counter-Intelligence Division unit in Germany.

  However, it was not to be, as my father died suddenly, and to fulfill family obligations, I opted for an assignment near home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where most of my time was spent conducting background security investigations, one of the cushiest jobs in the Army. The unit I was assigned to only had about 30 personnel and we used to fight over who got to run the odd complaint case, like Johnny Jones getting caught whacking off in a smelly urinal in the city bus station. Although we were always looking for communist agents, not only did we not find any, we didn’t even find any communists. Of course, this was Milwaukee, not Berkeley.

  We all wore civilian clothes, lived on the economy, e.g. were responsible for our own living quarters, and reported in for work at 0800hrs. If there were no cases, we were free to do whatever moved us, which in my case consisted of spending some time on a 3 2-foot sailboat at the Milwaukee yacht club. We drove unmarked black Chevy’s with shortwave radios, carried .38 Colt Detective Specials concealed, as well as impressive FBI-type credentials. Great for impressing the ladies but didn’t result in many affairs of the heart in those days.

  I moved in with four civilian bachelors in an old but upscale brick apartment building that had been in the posh area of town back in the ‘30s. I got tired of hitting the bar scene every night since no one was scoring, and spent most of my evenings riding my 1948 64 Harley with a 74 engine to the gym or the local pistol range. The large apartment, four baths and five bedrooms with a 30-foot living room, served as party central for the neighborhood singles. In those days, most singles lived with their parents or in efficiency apartments. Nearly every weekend we threw a big, loud party, which resulted in our eviction.

  Other than that, there was little excitement. I had quickly become bored with paperwork even as a Special Agent, and I opted for an early release to return to graduate school at the University of Colorado. I learned enough to know, though, that the Army was not for me as it became apparent that if one stays in for 20 years, one is bound to have to serve under more than one incompetent dickhead. I wasn’t about to put up with that shit since I never have suffered fools gladly, although I have been able to adjust when absolutely necessary.

  Back at CU in the fall of 1957, while working on my Master’s Degree in Political Science, I joined an Army Reserve Marksmanship unit. I actually got paid to shoot on the pistol team with free ammo. Then there was the occasional active tour of duty to shoot in Army matches or attend marksmanship courses.

  Vietnam was calling me, but a lot of twists and turns and calls to revolutions along the road delayed my tour in Indochina.

  2

  CUBA . . . THE BEGINNING OF

  THE ROAD (TO PERDITION?)

  At Christmastime in 1957 I returned home to Highland, Indiana to visit my recently widowed mother. Bored one night, I decided . to drink my way around the north side of Chicago and find some action, whatever form it might take. The cold, windy night was so brutal that few ventured out and there was no action to be found.

  I happened across a bar, called the “College of Complexes” which I gathered was a beatnik hangout but no one was hanging. The only interesting aspect of the place was a large room in the rear furnished with about 20 picnic tables and benches. At one end of the room was a podium and microphone. Two or three times a week, some character would
speak, discussing various political and social issues with the audience in order to sell a lot of beer. I happened to notice a small wooden container, which held mimeographed programs of upcoming events. I noted that a few days earlier, two individuals had spoken on behalf of Cuban Revolutionaries who were determined to overthrow the then-dictator of Cuba, Fulglencio Batista. By some strange urge, I carefully folded the mimeographed program and placed it in my wallet.

  “MACHINE GUNS + CUBAN REVOLUTIONARIES =

  MONEY FOR BROWN.”

  The program that by some impulse I placed in my wallet listed the names and addresses of Americans who supported Castro. When I got back to the University of Colorado, one of my buddies, Minor Van Arsdale, had a comment one night as we gulped down a couple of beers after busting some caps. “One of my classmates, who got off on giving the impression that he was connected to the Mafia, claimed he had some submachine guns,” he said.

  My fanciful mind went into simple overdrive and came up with the equation:”Machine guns + Cuban revolutionaries = money for Brown.” It sounded like a lot of bullshit, but what the hell, it might be an interesting story.

  I policed up VanArsdale, a pistol club and rodeo teammate, and what seemed appropriate for the occasion, a bottle of cheap Cuban rum. We headed over to the apartment of this would-be thug who bragged about the machine guns. His digs were in a relatively upscale motel on 28th Street a few blocks east of the University. The conversation was banal. Well in our cups after we had slugged down most of the rum, our would-be gunrunner reached under his couch and pulled out a French Mas submachine gun, a Thompson and a Sten gun.