Military Tuna

This chapter never made it into the Black Tuna Diaries (blacktunadiaries.com). Maybe out of fear of Uncle Sam or maybe because I'm not sure if today's generation is aware of the drug experiments and the illegal ops the CIA was so fond of in those days. Like everything in my book, every word is true.

It was the 1960's, the height of the Vietnam War. I was working as a pitchman. Selling Vita Mix liquefiers, at state fairs, home shows, and department stores all over the country. During the previous two years I kept my draft board in Atlantic City informed of each change of address as I moved from city to city. Often two or three times a month. I don’t think they appreciated the joke. While it may have been perfectly legal, it frustrated their efforts to deliver my draft notice. But all good things come to an end.

It was winter and I was back home in Atlantic City after setting up TV promotions in Mississippi, for London Air Non-Run Hosiery. I was swapping lies with Ron Popiel’s uncles, Archie and Ruby Morris. Their office was above the open store front on the Boardwalk where we demonstrated blenders and gadgets during the summer months. During the winter months, before gambling came to town, Atlantic City was a very small community. Everyone knew everyone. I hadn’t been in the office an hour when the phone rang. Archie answered, and told me it was Paddy Mac Gann, a lawyer and local politician. I had been home only a day, but Mac Gann knew just where to find me. His message was terse.

“Either show up at the draft board for your physical tomorrow morning, or by afternoon you will be arrested and held until you can be inducted into the army. The draft board knows you’re in town and they’re in no mood to keep playing “change of address”. The game is over!”

7a.m. the next morning., I’m standing in the damp cold on Atlantic Ave waiting for a chartered bus to take me and seven others to Newark New Jersey for our pre-induction physical. I already knew two things. Flat feet won’t keep me from passing the physical and I wouldn’t be coming back to Atlantic City any time soon.

Minutes after my physical, I was sworn in as a member of the US Army and bussed to Fort Dix for basic training before being shipped off to the”Nam”. A dozen buses, five hundred men, were dumped into Uncle Sam’s meat grinder that day. Herded into an assembly building and read the riot act by a gravel voiced black Master Sergeant, an equal opportunity hater. He made two things abundantly clear. No one in his company was going AWOL, under threat of the ultimate penalty, and we were all headed for the”Nam”. This was at a time, when each night, dozens of draftees would disappear from Fort Dix, to head for Canada. A time when thousands of young men who believed we were wrong to interfere with other peoples right to self determination, risked their future to follow their conscience. It was that generation, my generation, that forced the government to do away with the draft and its resulting dysfunctional army, and to create an all volunteer army.

The first two days in boot camp were a blur. Mostly lectures. They told us who we had to salute, and that practically everyone out-ranked us. The third day things got serious. We were forced to pay for retched haircuts, then we were lined up and forced to walk naked through a long building where we were issued an assortment of ill-fitting underwear, uniforms and shoes. Lastly, we were put through hours of testing and aptitude evaluations.

It may have been the aptitude tests, or my training as an actor, or my life as a pitchman, schooling in communications, to innovate, or who knows? But things began to get hinky. Very, very, hinky!

It was well after midnight on my third night in camp.. Still in shock from the sudden lifestyle change, I was sitting on the front steps of the old wooden WWII barracks in a deep funk, I had looked in the mirror, with my hatchet job haircut, I couldn't recognize myself Shit! I looked just like all the other guys who arrived with me. And now no one couldn’t recognize anyone they had been with for the last two days. Of course that’s why they make everyone look like a stray dog with mange. To destroy your ego, wipe out your personality, and take away your last shred of individual self worth. Then, they remake you. Train you to accept orders and propaganda without thought or question.

I was trying to digest all that, when out of the inky black New Jersey night, walked a man in a loud Hawaiian shirt, baggy brown pants and brown wingtip shoes. Fortyish, stocky, maybe six foot two with receding dark hair and probing black eyes.

“Robert. Mind if I sit down and we talk for awhile? You might be interested in what I have to say.”

I just looked at him, not knowing what to make of him. It was jarringly odd seeing a man wearing that strange civilian outfit on a military base during wartime. His appearance out of nowhere in the middle of the night, didn’t inspire confidence. I just looked at him without saying a word. He smiled, came closer, stuck out a heavy ham of a hand, and sat down without invitation.

“My name is Sam, sorta like Uncle Sam. You look like you need a friend. You’re gonna find that I’m you’re very best friend.”

I’m now thinking. “Is this guy a fag with a proposition, or a recruiter for some clandestine military intelligence unit?” Stories of unauthorized operations in Southeast Asian countries were just beginning to appear in the press. In any case I couldn’t figure out what to say to this guy so I just shrugged and let him talk.

“You know it’s not really necessary for you to go through all this basic training crap. That’s mainly for the dummies, the cannon fodder. Your test scores qualify you for Officer Training School and a quick commission. But that only happens if you join a special unit that does the kind of work that someone like you would enjoy. Most of the time, you wouldn’t have to wear a uniform or take orders from all these noncom assholes. You would like to be and officer, wouldn't you ?”

I stared at him, trying to digest his movie plot proposition. My mind was overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all. It was difficult to make sense of what was going down.

“What I’d really like to be, is a civilian.”

He rested one of his huge arms on my shoulders as if to say we were all in this together.

“Look kid, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. So why not make the best of it. Have some fun, maybe make a lot of money, and help your Uncle Sam at the same time. Believe me, you’d fit right in with my crew. We do some interesting things and you might even get to fly some interesting airplanes”.

Airplanes? I deliberately had not mentioned that I was a pilot, on any of their forms. This guy knew a lot more than I had put on any form. I looked at him with only a slight nod, never said a word. We rose together and walked into the inky blackness of the Jersey Pines beyond the barracks lights.

It was just over two months later that I woke up in the psychiatric ward at the base hospital. The nurses and the Chief Psychiatrist informed me I had been found running naked across the fort. A week after, that I was mustered out wearing a uniform I had never seen before.

They gave me an Honorable Discharge and more money than I could have possibly earned in a year of military service. If you look at my military records today, all you will learn is that I was in a medical holding company at Fort Dix for the entire length of my service. If you ask me, well, I'm not sure I can remember, even if I want to…..and I don’t.

Regards from Tunaville, where its Always 420 and time to read another chapter of Black Tuna Diaries (blacktunadiaries.com).

Got a question or a comment..post it below or send it me at tunaville@gmx.com.