Corporal Alien

First night in the barracks. December 2, 1966, Fort Lewis, Washington. We were 60 men, ages 17-26, but most in the 19-20 age group. The majority of us were draftees. We were anticipating the worst, and about to get it.

We had been led into the barracks after a meal in the mess hall. Our escort was a tall, thin corporal with a big and oblong skull, hair cut close to the scalp. When I think back about him I visualize the Alien, from the movie of the same name. Corporal Alien was setting us up for what was to come, meeting our drill sergeant, Sergeant Blackhurst. The corporal gave us a quick lecture on standing by our bunks at attention, and told us when and how to stand at ease. He also laid down the law. "There will be no pornography. No dirty pictures. You got Playboy magazines, you got playing cards show people screwin, you got titty pictures of your girlfriend you give em up. You don't and you get caught with em, you go down. You go down."

He went from man to man. Because he was taller than almost every one of us he had to bend down to meet us eye-to-eye. He had one of the looks I was soon to be familiar with, the fierce scowl. I think those NCOs used to practice that look in a mirror. I never saw one NCO in my basic training unit smile. Every man he looked at he gave the scowl, and threw in a look of contempt for good measure. He continued, "You smokers, ain't no smokin in the barracks. Ain't no smokin outside the barracks. You get ridda them cigarettes cause you can't smoke em anyhow."

He stood in front of Nick. Unlike the other men in the barracks Nick I was familiar with. He sang with a group called the Sinners, which played a local coffee house where I hung out. I used to see him most weekends. Unlike other guys who might've had long hair they cut before getting drafted, Nick had left his shoulder length hair intact. Corporal Alien stood in front of him and gave him a long glare. "You men who smoke pot, you get ridda that pot. You get caught, you go to jail. That goes for anything else you got on your person, speed, LSD…" He let that hang in the air, while Nick stood in front of him without responding. What I found out later was that Nick did have LSD. He dropped acid a couple of times in the next couple of days, and he had dropped it before his encounter with the corporal. Who knows what Nick saw or heard at that moment?

The corporal moved on to another man, who got the glare. He said, "You got prescription drugs, you let us know what drugs you got." I decided to ask a question, the first any one of us had asked. "What about aspirin? I've got some of that." The corporal turned to me and if my voice had been a fart, the smell was assaulting his nose. He stepped in front of me. "First of all, you only talk when I ax you a question. You do that to Sergeant Blackhurst he put you down for 50 pushups. You hear?"

"Yes."

"Yes, corporal, turd!" That was the first time I'd heard that little endearment, but not the last. It was some sort of acronym I vaguely remember as being something like Trainee Under Ridiculous Duress. That's a guess, anyway. I responded immediately, "Yes, corporal!" I think I'd seen someone do that in a movie once and he seemed satisfied. He asked me, "What kind aspirin you got? They prescription?"

"No, corporal. They're just Anacin I bought at a store."

He nodded his head and started to move to the next man, then stopped and turned back to me. "Well, you keep em." Pause. "You gonna need em." As I found out very soon, truer words had never been spoken.