~I’m A Rocket Scientist
To say that the Oklahoma stop on Heywood’s military itinerary was uneventful would be a gross understatement. He was unceremoniously dumped off at a bus station/filling station/diner in Lawton, Oklahoma, and told that somebody from the local Army fort would be along later to pick him up. Sure enough, they were right. Only they did not only pick Heywood up. It so happened that several young GIs from the fort were in town swilling the local 3.2 beer and needed a ride back to their barracks as well.
For the greater part of the trip, his fellow riders went on and on about how badly the local fort, along with the local community, sucked. A couple of them reported they were happy to be leaving the place to go to Vietnam. They didn’t like the 3.2 near beer or that you had to join a private club to get any hard liquor. There was also a severe lack of available young women, and it was dusty, windy, hot, cold, lonely, boring, and hundreds of miles to anywhere where one could even hope to come in contact with the afore mentioned essentials.
Heywood listened intently to his companions’ never-ending chatter relating to basically hating all things Oklahoma and came to the conclusion that though a few parts of Oklahoma might be all of those things mentioned, it, at least, wasn’t Vietnam. Not one of the half lit up fellow soldiers ever said a single thing about getting shot at by an Okie. End of story.
Heywood was pleasantly surprised when he eventually got dropped off in an area of the fort referred to as the Old Fort. Unlike the other parts of the facility which mostly consisted of forgettable looking WWII era wooden structures situated on flat, treeless acreage, the area where Heywood would spend most of his time was made up of large three story stucco structures situated in a park-like setting. Shade trees were in abundance to help endure the occasional hot days and, since as Heywood was going to be there for only a couple of months, it all looked fine to him.
Unfortunately, it was still the Army, which meant there would always be all the other really annoying nonsense to deal with: spit-shined boots; starched fatigues; short haircuts; policing the entire area of cigarette butts daily; lights out at 10 p.m. every night; marching everywhere in formation no matter if going only a block away, and, of course, calisthenics every morning, rain or shine. Just the usual stuff that career soldiers, packing way too much testosterone, delighted in shoving up lowly privates' sphincters daily.
Heywood decided to make the best of the situation for the short time he was there. He was eating better and no matter what they said, Army food was better than a steady diet of beer, soda pop, candy bars, donuts, potato chips, and fried anything else. Heywood was on record saying he wasn’t certain but there was a good possibility that he could eat about anything if was fried and served with gravy.
Another good thing that happened, Heywood gained weight from all the food. Since the only available beer was the reviled 3.2 percent variety, he didn’t even bother with it. If things kept going the way they were, he might come out of the combined boot camp/advanced MOS four month training period as one of those lean and mean military fighting machines. Of course, Heywood only considered this in the truest metaphorical sense.
In no time at all, Heywood and about thirty other about-face charge types settled into their new class routines. Every day was almost exactly like the day before: wake up, dress, fall out for formation, attend classes teaching them how to operate radar equipment to detect guided missiles, air craft, or artillery projectiles, and then come back to the barracks and hang out in the dayroom reading, watching TV, or playing pool until the next day when they did the exact same thing again.
Even on those few occasions when Heywood thought things might be getting a little boring, he always reflected on those poor guys who were presently ‘humpin’ the boonies’ in Nam. He actually did fear for his cousins who were already there. He hated the thought of one of his kin getting killed whilst at least half of the country was already on record as opposing the war.
To Heywood’s great surprise, his stay at the Oklahoma fort ended without him getting involved in anything that might delay his arrival at a missile site in south Florida. The only instance that might come close to becoming mention worthy involved a horse and a snake.
One of Heywood’s fellow classmates suggested that they, instead of going to town and getting blasted the last weekend they would ever be together, should travel but a few miles away from the fort to a real life cattle ranch where honest to goodness cow ponies were available to ride. Heywood knew he would have the opportunity to drink all the beer he wanted in a couple of days after arriving in Florida so he went along with the idea. What could go wrong with a few GIs going for a ride on some cow ponies? It turned out absolutely nothing unless the individual who came up with the idea happened to come across a rattle snake along the trail. Yet, that’s exactly what happened.
Heywood didn’t actually see it happen, but he did see his Army buddy holding on for dear life when the horse he was riding reared up, almost throwing the frightened soldier to the ground where the snake lay coiled and ready to inject some serious venom into the screeching soldier’s flailing legs.
The next thing Heywood witnessed was the horse doing what probably came naturally, which was to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, for the young soldier who had suggested the horseback riding idea, the quickest route to safety, according to the horse’s way of thinking, was straight through a thicket of trees with low hanging limbs. By the time the duo exited the small grove, not much was left of the young man’s uniform. He looked as if he had been run through one of those car washes with the big brushes. Practically everything he had on was ripped or torn completely off.
Heywood felt sorry for the guy; he looked a mess. Soon everyone in the group, except the unfortunate and now horseless snake finder, couldn’t help but laugh. The pathetic pleas for help coming from the flailing rider being stripped of most of his upper garments while the horse took the shortest route to the barn were permanently etched into Heywood’s cerebral gray matter.
The next day the group, who had been thrown together for a short period of time, said goodbye for the last time vowing to keep in touch. Not a single individual mentioned anything about the eight hundred pound gorilla sitting in the corner that stood prepared to foil any attempts to do just that - a little war in Vietnam. More noise came from that direction each and every day, hanging over their young but not so rosy looking lives like a dark cloud.
Heywood was on his way to Florida. The last he had heard, they had not sighted a single Viet Cong in the whole Miami area.
Years later, Heywood could still recall arriving at the Miami airport. Immediately, the humidity let him know his khaki uniform would, in short order, be showing signs of his propensity to sweat. As usual, there was someone representing the military around to direct Heywood in how to obtain transportation to his new unit. Basically he was told to sit tight until the bus from the local Air Force base south of Miami returned for another load. Then, once at the base where his unit’s battalion headquarters was also located, he would be processed in and delivered to one of the several Army missile sites in the area.
Now, this is the right way to fight a war, Heywood thought as the old military bus rolled on down the main highway heading south out of Miami. Within the hour he was safely deposited on the curbside directly in front of the Army Air Defense Headquarters building located on what had to be one of the largest Air Force bases Heywood had ever seen. Heywood noticed that the Air Force personnel leisurely walking along the sides of the roads did so without the appearance of the hustle and bustle present on all of the Army bases he’d previously visited.
An Army van soon arrived to carry Heywood to his new home - one genuine Nike Hercules missile battery located several miles inland from where the Air Force base was located. Admittedly, Heywood was disappointed that the site was not located on one of the many beaches in the area, but hey, he was going to fight his war in south Florida, not in some third world shit hole. It would take him on
ly a half hour to get to the beach. He felt sure he could live with this lone disappointment.
Within minutes of heading inland, Heywood’s attitude began to change. They were heading into the swamp. Posted signs warned of alligators and snakes. A few miles farther inland all signs of civilization disappeared. Nothing but miles and miles of more miles and miles appeared. Water was everywhere, except for the straight and narrow road they were traveling on for what seemed like forever. Soon they were seeing alligator warning signs at about every one mile interval. Smelly swamp water stretched out to the far horizon on all sides.
How would they go about placing a missile sight out here? Heywood asked as even more miles of nothing but swamp and water passed by. This terrain looked nothing like the pictures the recruiter had shown to him. That guy was going to get a quick letter from Heywood as soon as he got to wherever in the hell they were going.
Turns out, a couple of miles farther was all they had to travel to get Heywood to his new home in the Everglades National Park. His new home turned out to be a several acre cleared and fenced site containing several radar units as well as office and living facilities sitting alone about thirty miles from the ocean. Upon gaining access to the fenced site through an entrance guarded by a fellow soldier packing enough armament to start a small war, Heywood noticed not just any military personnel could gain access to the site. It took several minutes of conversation on the phone before the gate guard allowed the vehicle to pass.
The next thing he noticed, other than the humidity, was a strong odor of something rotting. He was later informed that was nothing but the usual rotting vegetation and putrid swamp water saying hello. This was the Everglades Swamp. It ran for hundreds of miles in any direction. If you thought it stunk presently, then just hang around until the heat of the summer. As for all those alligators, the only thing keeping them out of the site area during the season when it rained daily was a constant policing of the fence line that secured the area from any life form not authorized to come through the heavily guarded front gate.
Heywood thought of something else. If this secured area, with all the dogs as well as guards carrying automatic weapons could keep all forms of intruders out, it could likewise keep guys like him in!
He decided to take this opportunity, where he would be isolated from all those negative influences heretofore forced upon him by an intemperate society, to change his act, so to speak. He could do it. Of course he could.
For about three months, Heywood was a paragon of temperate behavior. All he did was work and ask questions regarding his proposed new job title, Assistant Fire Control Officer. Heywood absolutely loved the name. Even though he was only a newly promoted PFC, he was still going to be the single individual to watch everything the launch control officer, who was responsible for pushing the launch button, did, and okay the action. Nothing happened unless the two individuals agreed that the hundreds of precautions and procedures they initiated and observed during the launch sequence were properly verified, approved, and verbally acknowledged.
It only stood to reason that after working so hard for such a long period to show his new bosses that he could cut it, so to speak, he accepted an invitation from a couple of guys to take a trip out of the swamp back up towards Miami to visit the University of Miami campus to see if any of the cute coeds might be interested in having some libations with some harmless soldiers trying to do their duty far away from home.
Determined to be on his best behavior, he limited himself to but a few beers. Things were going swimmingly for most of the evening until a couple no neck jocks took umbrage at some lowly GIs poaching on their territory. Heywood tried to keep things calmed down, especially, as one of the guys with him was from the Bronx in New York and was well known at the site for his willingness to offer up his opinions at the drop of a hat. The guy gave the impression he could take care of himself in a spat.
Ultimately, it did come to fisticuffs. Heywood, though, was nowhere close to where the punches started flying. Even when one of his partners grappled on the floor with one of the school jocks while the other soldier sort of half wrestled with another one of the university’s finest, Heywood had their backs. Meaning if anyone else tried to jump in and make the odds uneven, Heywood was there to intervene on their behalf. He still had almost a full beer left and didn’t want to lose it or spill it on the floor in the melee.
After a bit, it seemed to Heywood that the whole affair was about to come to an end when some rather Amazonian looking female, broad shoulders, long blond hair and all, jumped on the back of his new buddy who helped get the fight started. Well, this was not going to happen while Heywood stood watch. He immediately went over to where the rude young lady was trying to make it a threesome. Grabbing her shoulders from the back he intended to politely, but forcefully remove her from the melee.
Being off balance, it took very little energy to pull her away. Heywood quickly released his grip and reminded the young woman, who by this time was glaring at him with more than a little intensity, that she needed to stay out of it.
The next thing he knew he was being helped up off the floor by one of the bouncers who had arrived to break up the little free-for-all. Of course being GIs, they were blamed for everything and sent packing out the door. Only Heywood was having a difficult time as his nuts felt like they were still in his throat. The young woman he pulled from the spat was partial to the jocks and felt like joining in the melee. She took even more umbrage at having been pulled away before landing some good swings upside of a GI’s head and displayed her profound displeasure by putting one of her powerful shot put thrower’s knees square into Heywood’s scrotum.
All that Heywood could think about as he was half carried, half dragged to the car was that at least one of his testicles felt as if it was now lodged in his throat. It was too bad it had gotten kicked out of place because a gazillion girls were there ripe for the picking. Even as the pain yet throbbed in the most scared area of his anatomy, he planned to let things cool down for a while and go back there someday and see if he couldn’t somehow connect with that blond with the strong knee. That girl had spunk. Heywood liked girls with spunk.
For the rest of Heywood’s stay at the little missile site in the swamp where he expected to hide out for the rest of the war, which unfortunately was still picking up steam, things went well for the most part. That is, excepting one other small incident that for a short time appeared to be an air attack upon the country.
Heywood, following the little brawl at the bar, stayed close to home except for the occasional foray into the south Miami environs to make contact with any of the pretty coeds that seemed to number in the millions. As far as he was concerned, he had a pretty sweet gig: clean work that did not entail getting shot at; being allowed to play with real rockets loaded with nuclear explosives; plenty of sun to go around just about all year long; and lots of girls. Why would anyone get stupid and mess up something like that? Heywood certainly wouldn’t.
Yet before Heywood’s most unexpected disappointing departure from Club South Florida Missile Complex just over a year after he arrived, there did occur one additional incident. It involved a suspected outright attack upon the sacred soil of the United States of America. Anyway, Heywood somehow got right in the middle of this very unfortunate event.
It started with Heywood’s commanding officer informing a very appreciative Heywood that he was in charge of the missile launch center. The CO wanted to get the site ready for a big inspection, and he did not want to be bothered while directing the remainder of the battery personnel in getting the entire facility in top shape.
Heywood was not stupid. He understood the emphasis his boss had put on, not being interrupted. Plus, there was no reason for them to be interrupted. The entire battery was in the regular stand down cycle of the four battery rotation from hot battery, meaning always cocked and ready, all the way down to having the equipment apart doing preventive maintenance. All he had to do, while the other guys were o
ut in the hot sun making sure every blade of grass got trimmed and every cigarette butt policed, was kick back in the air conditioned tactical operation center and answer the phone in the unlikely event it were ever to ring. His boss’s last words were, “I don’t want to be bothered.”
With that in mind, Heywood kicked back with his feet up on the tactical operation console and read a book he had picked up in the dayroom about how to make a million dollars buying and selling Florida real estate. It said right on the cover, “Anyone can do it.” As far as Heywood could determine he was one of those any ones. So he started reading.
Later, just about the time Heywood expected the book would tell him how to go out and get some of that easy money, the special red phone on the console in front of him rang. Heywood did a double take. That phone never rang! On the couple of occasions where Heywood had observed the battery fire control officer actually speak on that phone, it was all yes, sir and no, sir responses.
It kept ringing. Heywood picked it up and identified himself as PFC Heywood Fetcher.
Whoever was on the other end did not mess around. They cut to the chase.
“This is NORAD blah, blah, blah. We have a hot track. Your battery is to assume DEFCON 3 status immediately. Do you confirm? Over.”
“What?” is the only word that came off of Heywood’s semi-frozen tongue.
“I repeat. This is NORAD blah, blah, blah. We have a hot track. Your battery is to assume DEFCON 3 status immediately. Do you confirm? Over.”
Nothing like this was supposed to happen. He was supposed to sit there and watch all the pretty lights on the wall maps. The battery was supposed to be fourth down on the list of nuclear warhead flinging units available to destroy great swaths of human kind, if deemed necessary.
He gathered his wits and responded, “Everyone’s out cutting grass; there’s no one here!”
Click, was the final sound he heard.
What was that all about? he thought as he pondered the incident. They were not the hot battery. “Can’t those people check the big list somebody’s got to have somewhere?” he asked as he walked out of the launch control module to get a cup of six hour old coffee.
A couple of minutes later as Heywood, coffee in hand, walked slowly towards the heavy metal door providing entrance to the complex, he gave a peek through the small thick glass window that provided something akin to a limited view of the remainder of the missile site complex. What he saw sent chills running up and down his spine. Something was terribly wrong.
Heywood came to his senses and stepped aside as the heavy door flew open and his commanding officer burst into the central hallway leading to all the individual launch control consoles.
He could have sworn he saw fire coming out of his CO’s nostrils as he briefly glared at him on his way to the launch control console.
“I’m gonna get you for this. I’m gonna get you for this,” is all his commanding officer said in the split seconds when their eyes made contact.
Things sort of became a blur after that as highly trained individuals began to crank up all the machinery that controlled a bunch of nuclear warhead carrying missiles sitting in hardened bunkers down range about three quarters of a mile away.
One single thought ran through Heywood’s brain as the entire site went hot, and hot meant red hot. It meant actual missiles were up and ready to loose nuclear explosives upon some geographical coordinates somewhere in a three hundred mile radius of where they sat at that very moment. Odds were that the bogey in question was coming their way from Cuba.
“Holy crap! Holy crap!” said Heywood over and over. The next thirty minutes may have been the longest in his entire young life. It was possible that the country was being attacked from a communist country to the south, and they might all be annihilated in mere minutes. Even if it did turn out to be a false alarm, Heywood’s ass was toast for telling the most important military installation in the world, NORAD, that this particular Florida missile installation wouldn’t be able to partake in any end of the world defense scenarios because they needed to cut the grass.
It turned out, thankfully, to be nothing more than a pissed off Cuban aviator stealing a military aircraft and flying it to Florida for asylum. The pilot was very lucky he didn’t get his ass handed to him by one of a thousand different defensive systems prepared to send something up his tailpipe that went boom.
As far as Heywood, who imagined they might take him out back in the swamp where the alligators lived to shoot him and feed his useless carcass to the critters, could see, his luck held out once again.
The commanding officer, who had time to think the whole incident over, came to the conclusion that it was he who was mostly at fault. Heywood had not been fully vetted as to what needed to be done in the very unlikely event that the last battery in line to provide for the defense of the whole southern part of Florida would be called upon to step up to the front due to all the other units experiencing technical problems that heretofore would have been given zero chance of occurring simultaneously.
In the end, all the good work that Heywood intended to do for his Florida unit was for naught. It so happened that there was a small clause in his enlistment agreement that stated his Florida gig was guaranteed for only one year. Some genius in the Pentagon finally figured out that most of the missile sites could be handled by reserve units with some OJT, on job training. That meant thousands of GIs with IQs above what was required to put your pants on with the zipper in front were now available to fill personnel shortages all over the world. Therefore, Heywood would be heading to Germany to become part of an Army division tasked to guard Western Europe from those Slavic hordes intent upon forcing communism on the entire European continent.
Heywood did, in fact, mention to his CO that although technically the Army might be right, the spirit of the agreement had been sacrificed for mere military expediency. The CO, who liked Heywood, only laughed and told Heywood he sure wished him luck in the future wherever he ended up. Just to show his appreciation for Heywood’s good efforts during his tour of duty in south Florida, he was going to insert a letter of commendation into his file. Heywood thanked him for all his help and said so long to sunny south Florida.