I woke up to reality the next morning and hopped out of bed for my first day on duty. I threw on my everyday uniform and slipped into my standard-issue boots. I felt more comfortable in that than slacks any day. I locked my door with my key, and I turned to leave when a white buck sergeant immediately greeted me. I noticed that he had a key with a white wooden tag attached. I greeted him back, but as I walked away, I saw that he was reaching for my doorknob, so I turned back to ask him what he was doing.
“I’m here to check your room for cleanliness,” he responded.
I looked him up and down and noticed he didn’t have a combat patch on him.
“How long have you been a sergeant?” I asked a little aggressively.
“Why do you need to know that?”
“Look, I’ve been a sergeant for a couple of years. What do you have on grade?” I reiterated with more force.
“About five months,” he finally tells me, still extending his arm out with the key in hand.
“I’ve had more time in the mess hall than you have on rank. You better pull that hand back unless you want pull back a bloody stub,” I said without a second thought.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked me with a bewildered look in his eye, pulling his hand back from the door.
“I mean I’m gonna cut your fucking hand off if you put the key in the keyhole, Sarge.” I said, staring him down.
“Oh my god, you’ve got a knife! I’m going to report this to the first sergeant!” he yelled like a banshee.
As he ran off, all I could see were elbows and assholes. After the door of the barracks was closed and he was gone, a few black soldiers down the hall started to laugh out loud.
“What a fucking wimp,” one of them cackled.
“Is that what you have to put up with here?” I said while grinning back at them.
I nonchalantly went on to work and reported to the platoon sergeant for duty. He immediately told me to see the first sergeant. I saw it coming from a mile away, so I just saluted and turned on my heels to report to the first sergeant’s office. I knocked on the door and requested for permission to enter.
“Sergeant Bravo, I assume?” he said through the door. “Come in.”
I walked in and stood in front of a large desk where the first sergeant was seated.
“Yes, I’m Sergeant Bravo, and this is my first day at work.”
“I heard you had a confrontation with one of my other sergeants?”
“Yes, I did,” I said confidently.
“Did you really pull out a knife?” he asked me while furrowing his brow as he spoke.
“You think just because I’m Mexican, I carry a knife?” I defend.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I might’ve scared Miller when I said he’d lose a hand, but I’m telling you, I don’t carry a knife. It was just trying to scare him.”
He looked at me puzzled and said, “Look, you don’t have to talk to my sergeants like that. You’re not in Vietnam anymore. There’s no need for that.”
“First Sergeant, I was out of line. It won’t happen again,” I said. “Look, I’m a sergeant. I don’t need a rookie looking through my room and that’s why I’m here right now. I felt disrespected.”
“Can your platoon sergeant trust you to keep your room straight?”
“You bet, First Sergeant.”
“I’ll let your platoon sergeant know that. You can go now.”
After a couple months I began to settle in, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before I got into trouble, which happened to be my nickname. An Anglo-American soldier, Private Hill, was talking about a trip he had been on to Mexico and he was commenting on how poor and dirty the Mexicans were. He specifically mentioned Boystown, a small village infamous for little to no law enforcement. So it was very common to see public drinking, dancing, prostitution, gambling, and other acts of sin. A real shithole. The streets were unpaved and made of dirt with craters so deep that you could hardly drive over them, popping a tire just by driving across the street.
He said people’s houses in Mexico were so dirty that there was dirt all over their floors. I reminded the white private that some of the houses had dirt floors so of course they were going to be a bit dusty.
Then he gave me a smart aleck remark, chuckling to himself while saying, “What does that have to do with your dirty lazy father never taking a bath?”
“What the fuck? What did you say about my father? You don’t even know him,” I said with anger in my voice.
He was still laughing to himself, which pissed me off even more. He was sitting down next to a plaster wall across the room, and at the time I was working with a three-pound hammer. Not holding back, not knowing my own strength, I threw the hammer hard at him. It barely missed his head and made a hole in the wall next to him.
He ran off crying to the platoon sergeant that I was “trying to kill him.”
Here comes another trip to the first sergeant’s office.
I reported to the first sergeant’s office, and he was already expecting me. When I knocked on the door, he immediately said, “Come in.”
“Did you threaten someone again today, Sergeant Bravo?” First Sergeant Worshiem asked me.
“Sort of. You know Private Hill, that white soldier? He wouldn’t stop going off about my father being a dirty fucking Mexican and how he never bathed. I found that a big problem because I’m a sergeant and he’s a private, and that’s extremely disrespectful to me and my father, especially since he doesn’t even know my dad. I needed him to pay attention to me, so I threw the hammer at him, never intending to hit him. Or make that hole in the wall. I mean, if this was your parents being talked about, how would you react?”
“I wouldn’t try to kill him,” he told me in a very serious tone.
“Neither would I. I wasn’t even trying to hurt him. I was just trying to scare Private Hill.”
He sighed a little bit, and after thinking for a minute, he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you…Look, I’m going to give you something to think about. I’m going to give you a task. We have a mission to pick up the troops from the Frankfurt Air Force Base tomorrow night, and it looks like I just found my man for the job. Go down to transportation and get a bus license before tomorrow. Can you complete this mission for me, Sergeant Bravo?”
“Yes, First Sergeant,” I replied.
I was determined to complete the mission the first sergeant gave me because I knew if I hadn’t I would be discharged for bad conduct and sent home. I didn’t want my military career to end, and I didn’t want to disappoint my father. He was proud of me when I got back from Vietnam because I came back with an honorable discharge and many accolades to show for my service. But if I was court-martialed, it would be a very different story.
I got to transportation around 11:00 a.m. that Friday morning, and when the driving instructor saw me looking around, he approached me.
“What are you here for?” the RAD asked.
“I was sent here by the first sergeant to get a bus license, so I can pick up our troops coming back home.”
“Well, you’re going to need to come back on Monday morning when we open. We close at 12:00 p.m. today, and the course is a twelve-hour program split up over three days.”