3 of 12 Fort Devens At-Ease

Army Code “Lead Follow or Get Out of the Way”
Now at Devins it's a month later and I am back playing Army man. I enjoyed my thirty days of leave and am looking forward to getting back out of the way. Turns out I am in a holding company. This is just a place to hold you until they can figure out where and when you are supposed to be going and process the appropriate paperwork. Bingo! Jackpot! It does not look like anyone knows who is in charge here. The left hand is not communicating with the right. The place is in total chaos and the turn over of soldiers is fast and furious.

We are labeled as Casuals in the military paperwork but there is nothing casual about the amount of work the army is trying to squeeze out of these guys. Normally this is a most unpleasant place to be and they among other things assume you will want to move right along. The harsh treatment for the “normal” included KP kitchen duty. That is 24 hours of kitchen clean up. I caught that one time. OK! That’s enough for me.

So bad is this place company D that one solder killed himself during my stay there. After his 24 hours shift of KP and only two hours of sleep the sergeant came into the barracks and told him to report to the mess hall for KP. He found out that he was not going to school as he was promised by his recruiter some days before and was very depressed. Anyhow this company performed all the unpleasantries of the entire base. This was the first time I realized that my ass was on the line and I was not immune to the possibility of ending up in the jungle warfare of Vietnam. This place was however a safe heaven for me. The way I seen it the longer I stayed there the less likely I would end up in Vietnam.

I was learning to play the game well and rule one was don’t hang around or someone will find something for you to do. Their was roll call at the early morning at formation and job assignments after that. Some assignments were daily, some were weekly and some were for the week ends. I immediately used some of my basic training skills to make various appointments to get out of the way until I could secure a second residence or place to hide. In the mean time I improvised by making a temporary escape route. The lockers were set-up down the middle of the barracks like a giant room divider. I took the back off of two wall lockers in the middle of the row and lined them up back to back. Although they appeared to be in use and locked with padlocks I had taken out the locking mechanism. Now I could slip away in the blink of an eye by stepping through one locker and out the other side.

By the 4th week I erased my name from the duty roster, which turned out to be a list on the wall of our operations building. The turnover of troops was so fast that their system of keeping track came down to a list on white board with a grease pencil. That wasn’t to difficult to take care of and then I could disappear right after roll call. The problem however was that each week they checked the roll call list and my name would reappear on the duty roster. By the 7th week my name disappeared from the roll call roster all together. I went to the personal department and asked the kid for Corporal Raab's file and suddenly according to the information from the personnel office I had been shipped off to school. Basically they removed my name off the roll call list for me.

I found that I could not only escape appointed details but also fake them. If I needed to have some paper work get lost, I just had to figure out where it was. On my own volition I invented and assigned myself to the personnel office for detail. They never heard of such a thing but obliged me none the less. I told them I was supposed to sweep up and empty the trash because there was some kind of inspection coming up. That’s how I got too check out my personnel records from time to time and keep them on the right track. That is how I knew I was going to be a 33B20 electronic technician.

Some of the guys were not so lucky and were getting other than expected or promised assignments. The recruiters would promise these guys whatever they wanted. This was where they would find out they got screwed. Here they would come to learn that they would be going to school for Morse Code literacy for 4 weeks and then to Vietnam or 8 weeks for infantry radio operator and then get to run around in the jungle with a CB radio instead of an m16 rifle. You have to be pretty fast to block the bullets with that thing and breaking off the antenna and trying to stab your combatant was a far fetch even for my imagination.

My school started every 3 months and ran for 6 months. There were always 2 classes going on at the same time. I would have started school on my 4th week according to the education schedule but oh well some paperwork failure at personnel and I will just have to hang around here for another 3 months.

The climate was very different in my new not to distant land of Fort Devens. At home it snowed occasionally during the winter and the snow would vanish in a few days. When it snowed here there was snow on the ground until the end of winter and it was always cold.

POV’s (privately owned vehicles) were not allowed on the base if you were below the rank of E4 but I got myself an admittance sticker for the windshield and had no problem with the MPs (military police) at the gate. I found an inconspicuous place to keep my car and was going home most weekends. I stayed home for a week now and then but I was worried about getting caught and could not enjoy it. After all this was good living and the only things I had to do was show up on payday and keep abreast of other events that would bring to question my whereabouts.

One weekend I was returning to Fort Devins from home around 3am. I generally used interstate 95 as my route back and forth for the weekends. There wasn’t any cruise control back then so I improvised with a paint roller handle positioned from the bottom of the dashboard down to the gas peddle. At that time of night there was no traffic and the speed limit was dictated by the limit of my ford falcon. By coincidence the interstate number and the miles per hour were the same 95. On this particular trip the driver side rear brake was dragging and heating up. I could hear the noise of metal grinding but kept on going.

That is of course until the explosion. The car lifted up, there was a bright flash, my heart stopped and I was sure I was dead. I ended up still in the car under a bridge and on the shoulder of the road and with relatively speaking only minor damage. The rim was glowing red hot and caused the tire to explode. The remains of the tire were burning and the rear axel fluid was leaking out and fueling the fire. This is all happening along side the gas tank and I am thinking I don’t want to be here. My second thought was that the bridge was going to blow up along with my car.

I was disoriented and took off promptly with no particular destination in mind.
I didn’t make it very far when I heard the second explosion. I don’t know what I was thinking but I went back to the remains. On the way back the first things I saw were the spare tire, tire iron and my rear license plate. Then there were more parts here there and every where. The smoke was thick and smelled nasty. The smoke slowed down what little traffic there was so I was kind enough to remove the door and trunk lid from the roadway. There were a few other large pieces of metal and I removed them as well. I did not want to think of myself as a litter bug. There was nothing to save so I used the tire iron to remove the front license plate and promptly exited the seen.

I had never been without a car after my 16th birthday and I considered my vehicle an extension of my legs. My car was part of me not just some object. I knew I had to go home and get some new legs. Well even if I tried to get back to Devens I would be late and in trouble. I crossed over the road way and stayed far enough off the shoulder as to be out of sight. I imagined there might be some objection to abandoning my burning car on the side of the road. I lost my car and I wasn’t about to pay for towing too.

I made it about a mile down the road when two cop cars with there lights flashing raced down the other side of the freeway. Shortly there after the fire trucks and ambulance went screaming by. I decided to hide and get off the freeway. I figured they would be coming back this way. There was a road that ran parallel to 95 and I walked that for a while. At first light I made it back to 95 and hitched a ride towards home. My first ride took me all the way to New York City. I took the bus from there and was home for lunch. I borrowed $400 from my sister and bought another Ford. This one was a station wagon.

I headed back to Devins around 10 pm which was early for me but I would not be able to get this car on base without the sticker. I would have to find someplace to park and do some walking. I wasn’t sure how much trouble I was in and needed to get some rest before my demise. Sure enough that morning I was ordered into the first sergeant office after roll call. I told him about my car breaking down on the way and he said “What the hell do I care about your car? Were you tethered to it with an umbilical cord?”. And to that end I was reminded what KP was all about.

I helped a few guys out now and then and always kept a few close contacts to keep abreast of any formation details and up and coming events. My new alias was Jerz Jim and that was fine with me. I brought the boys out to Boston one or two weekends and crashed some wild parties at the Boston Hilton. There were plenty of colleges and I dropped a few buddies off here and there on the way. I even took a car load in my new old Ford station wagon up to Vermont for some weekend skiing trips.

I bartered some favors with the supply sergeant and signed out some skiing equipment. There was other army gear that improved the trip. I didn’t know that an army supply room could be so well stocked. By the second month I shared an apartment off base so during the week I was 30 minuets away. When necessary I was able to account for the time lapses in my communication network (on base friendly informants) and travel time with my assorted appointments. The weekends were free and clear unless you were reassigned from the Company Commander’s duty roster to be there for some guard duty or some other such nonsense. I was 3 hours away in Jersey for most of the weekends to visit the wife.

Now a bit about skiing, it may look easy on television but I assure you it is not easy. I suited up got on the ski lift and enjoyed e pleasant ride up the mountain. Now at the top of the mountain there is quite a gathering of people, lots of conversation and o what a spectacular view. The catch is there is only one way down and off you go. That did not bother me because there were lots of 10 and 12 year old kids right there in front me and they were doing just fine.

Now the lay out was obvious and simple. By staying to your left and keeping the lift in sight and you will be on the beginners’ course. If you go to your right the slope becomes steeper and that’s for advanced skiers. I am trying to go left with my shoulders and the skis are going right and taking me with them. The harder I try to go left the further I am taken to the right. I didn’t take long to get my self into some very steep trouble.

For my next trick I tried to stop by jamming the poles into the snow, they stopped and promptly ripped out of my hands leaving me with only the wrist straps. I found that with enough distance I could lean to one side or the other and barely avoid the trees. It wasn’t that easy to avoid other skiers because they were moving targets. I tried screaming to warn them but over they went one after the other. At some point I was going too fast to have any control at all. I managed to squat down, well more like in the fetal position but I did not slow down at all. I tried to understand how I could seem so smart and end up so stupid as to be in this predicament.

Suddenly I was in the blizzard of 68. Not a well know blizzard in fact it was my own private blizzard. The winds were calm and it was me doing the 60mph and I was cutting through the snow rather than gliding on top of it. This was churning up the powdery snow and throwing it up in my face. This change in snow texture was me leaving the ski resort and going where no man had gone before. This light fluffy snow was half way up to my knees. I literally could not see anything and I was numb with fear.

My skis came to an abrupt stop on someone’s plowed, salted and otherwise snowless driveway. I tumbled into some bushes on the far side of the driveway once again escaped injury without so much as a scratch. Two hours later I made it back to the ski lodge and to this day I have never touched skis again.

3 more months of company D was a long time to kill and I found out that I could take a correspondence course for my up and coming 33B20 MOS electronics school. I did that and aced the correspondence course. I still have that nice looking certificate and a few more. I also took the correspondence courses for 33C, D and E20 MOSes. I was pretty much king of company D and think it’s only a coincidence that the D stood for disappear or do details.

At this point I had an affinity for tracking down Vietnam returnees and finding out everything I could from them. I wanted to know where they were stationed, what they did and anything I could about there tours. I left no stone unturned and relentlessly perused information about Vietnam as if my life depended on it. Jim Raab

http://jimraab.blogspot.com/