His Grandson, the Soldier, Is Finding Out All He Can Be

Army life is no bed of roses. My grandson, Chris, a specialist with an infantry battalion in Panama, sent his parents the following letter.

I do not often turn this space over to someone else’s prose, but I think his letter is so graphic, so vivid, so hilarious in its anguish, that it deserves publication.

“Dear Family:

“Well, we just came back from the jungle and we’re planning to move out again in two days. . . . First let me tell you about this last week, which was perhaps the worst and most miserable field mission that I’ve been on since I’ve been in Panama.

“I tell you, they’re trying to kill me before I go home. The first five days we spent building a phony village for another company to assault, while at the same time the other company built a village for us to assault. . . . In wartime an attack element never gets to see what they’re going to attack.

“Anyway, we worked from dawn to dark using plywood and two-by-fours to build all kinds of huts and towers, a mess hall, hospital, barracks and a 20-foot water tower.

“Our squad had to dig seven foxholes, and I spent many back-breaking hours digging under an intense sun. By the end of the first day, I was sunburned and very dehydrated.

At night a storm came in, and it rained all night. We were soaked, muddy and miserable. The mosquitoes and chiggers were biting constantly.

We had very little sleep, and each morning we were up at 0500 hours, infested with bites from head to toe. Everyone was in a bad mood and all the sergeants were yelling and giving commands, which seemed to irritate us more.

“Finally at the end of the week, we were done and it was time to start the mission. I was beat. Everyone was beat but we had to continue. There was no choice. We were trucked over to the area and began to prepare for the assault . . . the next morning.

“But when morning came there was a small problem. The platoon medic discovered lice on one of the soldiers. After checking other soldiers, he realized that the whole platoon had lice, including me. Eventually it was confirmed that the whole company had lice.

“The Army does not mess around with lice. The medics demanded that the entire company be sent out of the field to be properly treated. The big commanders were against this because they believe in mission first, welfare second, a policy that has won all our wars. But what a medic says must go. . . .”

The letter goes on to explain that helicopters were supposed to take the soldiers back to their base, but the choppers didn’t show up.

“It rained all night. We were wet, muddy, cold and infested with lice. I wanted to curl up in a little ball and die.”

Chris wrote that finally it was decided that if everyone had lice there was no one left to get them. So they went ahead with the assault.

“We began our march through the jungle. I was completely burned out of energy. It was just one tall mountain after another. My legs were giving out on me. I looked like a big mud ball with a rifle.

“Finally we reached the objective, and I was picked to be the first man to enter the line. My job was to clean up the wire that surrounded the village and shout at the enemy while the engineers crawled up and placed C4 explosives under the wire to blow it up.

“When the C4 blew up, a big space was left in the wire, and the company started filing through to assault the objective. Everybody threw smoke grenades to conceal us. The smoke got so thick that everybody started to get lost. Also we started to choke and gag. There was the sound of blank gunfire in every direction. I didn’t know which way was which. . . .

“Finally I found an open clearing and ran to fresh air. I located the 60 gunner and ran to his position. He was cussing because his gun was jammed. I assessed the situation and ran ahead, telling him to follow me, but he just sat there trying to fix his gun. When he finally fixed it he was so happy he started firing it right away and didn’t notice me about 20 meters away. So the asshole killed me.”

Being theoretically dead didn’t excuse Chris from making the 10-mile march to the trucks for the ride to home base. Then he and all the men spent a wretched day being deloused.

The young man isn’t complaining, understand. He’s just giving us a graphic account of what his life in the Army is like. Underneath the misery we can sense the pride.

We’re proud of him, and we’re glad to know that he’s deloused.