The Angry G.I...

I was young, proud, full of myself and not afraid of anything but snakes, bees and perhaps an angry girlfriend or two. This had not always been the case though. As a child I was a scared little eggheaded runt of a boy. Not eggheaded as in smart either, I mean head shaped as an egg, literally. As kids can be cruel, I had heard all the jokes and had been beaten up by the toughest kids around. As the old adage goes, “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”. And Stronger I was indeed. What also I didn’t know was, “what didn’t kill me was making me an angry son of a bitch”.

Well upon returning from military boot camp, I was a fighting machine. I had left all my fears at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I had survived the hardest thing in my life to date. I had signed up to be an American soldier. A soldier I had become. Although, going back to serve in the National Guard was in fact an honorable duty, I wanted more. While training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma during my “AIT” (Advanced individual Training), I had requested to be transferred from the National Guard to the regular army so I could go to jump school to become an “Airborne Ranger”. Though I was an exceptional soldier, I could not just make the switch without returning to my permanent duty for a period of six months before requesting again to become one of the elite that the American armed forces had to offer. I took it on the chin as I had so many times before.

I returned to my town to show off my new self. I sported my Class A’s in style and went to visit all my friends that were still doing the same thing they were doing when I had left. They were shocked to see me with my head buzzed down to nothing, standing tall and looking good. They were also taken aback some because these were the same folks who had went to the recruiting office with me and thought that they also wanted to join. We were all supposed to join together in the “buddy” system but on the day to go swear ourselves in, no one wanted to follow through. I, on the other hand had made my decision and it was not an option for me to not go.

So here I was back home, ready to do what the military taught me best to do, get drunk. Well, they also taught us how to fight, shoot people, run obstacle courses and all the stuff needed to go to war to kill people. But it seemed that they wanted us to drink more than anything. During basic training, whenever we would get a pass for the weekend we were simply and only confined to the base, more accurately, the “Flamingo Club”, the bowling alley, or the PX, all of which sold beer. When I had gone to Oklahoma, the passes were to all of the same except here we could leave the post, and right outside the gate was “the strip”. Yes folks a strip of about twenty to thirty clubs marketed directly at the G.I. fresh out of the field or boot camp. There was beer, girls, girls, and more girls. A young mans Dream.

Well apparently I was trained well because the first thing that I do is get a bottle of Jack and a case of beer and immediately starts pounding beers with my long time friends. We start to reminisce about old times and decide it is time to go out and hit the clubs to perhaps to find some company of the female persuasion. As luck would have it, a local restaurant was right up the street that had a bar inside. Before I had left, I frequented this bar very often while underage. I was, as you say a regular here and during the eight months I had been gone, was not forgotten. Paula served me up my regular drink that she so often served me as a minor. A simple “Budweiser “in a bottle with a root beer Schnapps shot beside it. I downed the shot, choked it down and almost puked. “What the fuck was that” I asked , answering myself at the very moment I asked.
And so the anger began to surface.. More to come….