Chapter Three

On becoming an officer

Sweat was running down my body, and into the cast that covered my right leg. I had broken my foot 8 weeks earlier, and this was the first physical training test I had to take after it had happened. I had managed to get 300 points in the low crawl, 40 yd. Run and dodge, the grenade throw, and the overhead bars, so all I had to do was to complete the one mile run and I would pass the test.

The leg felt like lead, and my lungs strained for oxygen. I wasn’t really running, but kinda hopping along, swearing under my breath. The fourth lap didn’t seem like it would ever get there. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to be here anyway. When I broke my foot, and after they released me from the hospital, they had set me back into the next class, sure as tootin’ that I would be discouraged enough to quit. I hadn’t though, and so far I had managed to beat the odds.

It was Field Artillery Officer’s Candidate School. It was May, 1967. I was in the last 6 weeks of the 23 week course. If I graduated, I would be a Field Artillery Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. It had become real important for me to graduate, in no small part due to the fact no one expected me to. My wife, Toni, had written me off a long time before. She had quit answering my letters and expected me to be kicked out of OCS any time. You see, I wasn’t officer material.

Oh, it wasn’t that I wasn’t smart enough. I was even a fair leader, but the problem was I wasn’t very neat and tidy. Not in my person or in my cubicle. I had acquired what must have been a record number of demerits, meaning I had spent every weekend on what was called the “Jark March”. This wasn’t really a march, but rather a trip with full battle gear (including rifle at port arms) at a trot up a five mile hill. This tortuous punishment resulted in burning lungs and muscle aches that were impossible to believe unless one experienced them.

In two weeks would be the “Red Hat” party. It would mark the time when we became upperclassmen, and everything would get easier. I needed to get my cast off in time for that, and wouldn’t be included in the upper class unless I completed the PT test. I strained forward toward the finish line, and collapsed in a heap 12 minutes after the start of the mile run. I had made it. I would graduate.

That night, I called Toni with the news. She expressed pleasure, but seemed shocked. Like I said, she hadn’t expected me to graduate. When I told her about the Red Hat party and how all the wives and girlfriends would be there, she mumbled something about trying to make it.

That night, she must have spent a great deal of time thinking. She had long assured herself that I was a loser, and therefore she was perfectly justified in no longer wanting to stay with me. But being an officer’s wife in the Army might not be such a bad thing.

There was another problem, however. She was pregnant. She had been taking pills, but something happened, and she got pregnant anyway. Her lover was not about to leave his wife, so it was either get an abortion or fess up to me. Hold on, there was another possibility. If she went to Oklahoma for the Red Hat party, she could get me to have unprotected sex with her and maybe nobody would notice when the baby came early.

That night, she cooked up her plan. She had saved $150.00 to buy an new saddle, and would use it instead to buy a plane ticket to Lawton. The next night, she called me to announce she was coming. I was elated. Maybe she still loved me after all.

My cast came off three days before the party. I was in fine spirits as I prepared to pick her up in my new little sports car. I had bought the car when I knew I was going to graduate, and loved it. I picked her up and we went to the guest house where we would stay while she was there.

. The party was a huge success, and she realized she had made a good choice. Everyone talked like being an officer’s wife was the cat’s meow. She was going to enjoy this! Besides, she could always leave me in the future if she couldn’t stand living with me.

When she left to return to California, I felt pretty good. My life had just reached a new plateau. Those three years of marriage hell he had endured would now payoff. Yes, I HAD been a loser, but now I was about to be certified an officer and a gentleman, and things would be better from now on.

I had married Toni quite by accident. I had returned to Colorado at the age of 22 ready to settle down and get married. I was lonely. I tried to start back up with Waverly, my first love, but it hadn’t worked out. We simply didn’t get together, and neither one would know why when we looked back later.

I met Toni at my oldest brother’s house in early 1964. She wasn’t particularly pretty. She was kinda skinny and pale, with stringy brown hair. I began taking her out. What kept us dating was that she was fascinated with listening to me talk. I expounded on the subjects that interested her, and our philosophies gelled. We were both liberals and atheists, and were in the process of rebelling from our pasts.

I read a lot about history and philosophy, and she didn’t. She mostly read romance westerns, but enjoyed listening to me talk. We were gradually attracted physically. She was completely inexperienced, and didn’t even know where to begin. She had been raised by an illiterate mother and her mother’s “uncle”, who took the single mother in when Toni was four and looked after them until she was 15.

I received my draft notice a week after our meeting. At that time one didn’t have to go into the Army if one was married, so we decided to get married. The deed was done on June 25, 1964 in the little town of Loveland, Colorado (what nice irony!). They had a wedding chapel, and she didn’t want to get married in a real church.

The marriage got off to a rocky start.

You see, I was lazy. At least that’s how she saw me. She had married me because she saw someone who could give her a life of luxury. All I wanted was to work on cars. She finally badgered me into enrolling in college. Getting into Colorado University was no challenge. I was smart enough, and school had always been a breeze. The problem was my lack of interest. Like I said, I wanted only to work on cars and build hot rods. I had been reading car magazines since I was 11 years old, and attended my first drag race in 1954, with my father.

She hated the idea of being married to a “grease monkey”; thus I found myself again in college with no real desire to be there. In order to afford college, I worked as a horse trainer on an Arabian ranch north of town. We lived in a little house on the ranch, where I worked 5 or 6 hours a day and weekends in addition to attending college.

It was not an idyllic time, but we managed. By January, 1966, we were far enough behind so that I had to drop out of college for a semester and work as a concrete form builder. I made good money and liked the work, but another fly flew into the ointment. As soon as I dropped out, the draft board was notified and I got my second draft notice.

Thus I faced a dilemma. I decided that being an army officer wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I went to see my recruiter and after taking a battery of tests, signed up with OCS in mind.

After the red Hat party, Toni headed back to California and I went on to graduate and become an Army lieutenant.