Alas, Poor Aaroneous...

Alas, poor Aaroneous.  I knew him well.

Pitiful impulsive man-boy, lost in a world and situation outside of his control, proud in his ignorance with illusions of invulnerability.  It was March of 1991 when he found himself almost two months into a 16 week Basic Training cycle on Sand Hill at Ft. Benning, Georgia.  

***

He’d been a senior at Indiana Wesleyan Univeristy just two months prior and due to a premature midlife crisis he’d made the seemingly inexplicable decision to join the Army after GHWB declared war on Iraq.  Something burned in his patriotic breast.  It may have been reflux.

Or maybe it was depression that drove him to this madness, but whatever it was he found a way to turn it into an adventure of sorts.  BFF Tibor was brought along for the ride to a mystery location off campus.  When they pulled up catty-cornered to the recruiting station the Hungarian looked at the coffee shop next door to it and exclaimed, “Buddy!  We’re going to have coffee.  How nice!”  

“We’re not here for coffee, Tibor.”  He followed Aaroneous out of the car and into the Army recruiting office where the wayward college senior announced he wanted to join the infantry.  Within an hour it was a done deal, the papers signed, and his parents didn’t even know yet.

***

So here he was on Sand Hill where the days are like weeks, the weeks are like months, and the months are like years.  Sleep was scarce and highly regimented with a regular fireguard duty rotating trainees through an allnight roster one hour at a time patrolling the barracks with a flashlight.  Days were spent strenuously from before sun-up to after sun-down.

There was complete deprivation of contact with the outside world apart from the precious few times allotted to call home which could just as easily be taken away if someone in your platoon screwed up.  Most were rule-followers to minimize any extra misery doled out by the Drill Sergeants, but Aaroneous was different in that way.  He was quiet, unassuming, boyishly naïve, but a lot went on behind those hazel green eyes of his.

In that first week when the scrutiny was at its highest intensity and trainees were afraid to breathe wrong, Aaroneous slipped out at an opportune moment and cut through an adjacent forest to the back of the base PX.  When the sidewalk next to it was empty he stepped out from the shadow of the trees to walk casually into the PX and buy some Skittles.  Back at the barracks lights-out was drawing near but there was some time to relax just a bit before the on duty Drill Sergeant came to do the last headcount of the day.

Aaroneous laid on his side and casually spilled out his Skittles onto the bunk where only the trainee next to him could see them.  The young man’s eyes widened considerably before breaking into a perplexed grin. “Holy shit Haney!  Where did you get Skittles?”  At that point early in the cycle there were frequent inspections to make sure we did not possess any contraband and the borders of the barracks were considered sacrosanct and off limits on pain of mental and physical torture.  He shared them with this bemused fellow and a few others who treated it like some exotic food from a faraway land.  “I’ve totally guessed you wrong, Haney.  Goddam!”

***

So, we are back again to almost two months into Basic Training.  In retrospect it was the be-all end-all of quarantine and shelter-at-home type scenarios.  Aaroneous felt his personhood was beginning to erode under the dehumanizing conditions and isolation.  He needed a break of some kind.  A few days earlier they’d marched past the base movie theater and he noticed the marquee was featuring Mel Gibson in Hamlet.  Maybe not his first choice but almost anything would do.  

Once again he found a time that he could slip off unobtrusively and hightail it the half-mile or so to the theater without being seen.  It was glorious!  He luxuriated in the soft theater seats and took in the Shakespearean spectacle of Mad Max emoting.  It is impossible to describe the pleasure of such a thing after so many weeks of being made to feel one is not a human being.  He laughed.  He cried.  And right as it was getting to its most powerful moment with his emotions at a fevered pitch he glanced down at his watch... 5 minutes until lights-out.

He literally jumped up from his seat and ran out of the theater.  He ran across the parking lot.  He ran across a grassy field or two.  He didn’t stop all out running until hitting the border of the barracks area and then quick-stepped to his barracks in order to not look too obvious to any casual observer.  He laid in his bunk with his BDU’s and boots still on and pulled the covers up to his chin just as the Drill Sergeant came barreling through the doors for headcount.  

Poor Aaroneous.  A fellow of infinite jest.  Caught in the spider’s web but avoiding the spider.  


***

Korea

Are there Little Boys on Jupiter?

Are there little boys on Jupiter

giggling when you say “poopiter”?

It’s fun to think about it, to 

bounce and fly and shout it.

Where colors mix and swirl 

while spinning in a tilt-a-whirl.

But are there little boys on Jupiter?

Well, I’ve heard things much stupider!

***

Murderer of Murder Hornets

With all of the talk about so-called “murder hornets” on Facebook this past week it didn’t take long for me to recollect that I had a history with these fascinating insects.

I had to rewind to the summer of 1991 to find this pertinent scrap of memory.  I was new to the Army as a young infantryman fresh out of Basic Training and assigned to “Delta Death,” a company  on the north end of Camp Casey, 2^nd Infantry Division, Republic of Korea.  When I arrived to the company area it was eerily quiet as the entire battalion was on its 3 month rotation to live and patrol inside the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea.  I was issued my weapon and necessary equipment before being sent north on a bus.

On the DMZ I was assigned a cot in my squad’s tent and then taken to be introduced to the First Sergeant, 1SGT Glasgow.  I was in a tight parade-rest position which seemed to amuse him.  He told me I could take it easy and have a seat.  Things were a bit more relaxed “in the field” as they say in the military, but I had no experience of the Army apart from the insular and high stress world of Basic Training where trainees cowered before the NCO’s, especially around one as high ranking as a First Sergeant.

He asked me some questions about myself and learned I had finished three years of college before dropping out to join the Army at the start of the Gulf War.  He then asked what I knew of the political situation in this part of the world.  I was a History and Political Science major so I gave some history of the region and dropped a few names so that he raised his eyebrows and looked at my escort and guffawed, “That’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard since we’ve been up here!”   

So what about those murder hornets, you ask.  I’m getting to that part.

While living isolated on the DMZ life was pretty much consumed with training exercises that could run around the clock, depending on which phase you were in.  Much like the quarantine situation now, there was not much to do with your “free time” after work because you were living in a small town of tents surrounded by a high fence crowned with concertina wire in the absolute middle of nowhere known as “Warrior Base.”  It was during one of our field training excursions that I ran into this notorious insect that has so captured our imaginations this past week and spawned a veritable swarm of memes.

I remember being out in the woods somewhere miles from Warrior Base around midday and I had to go #2.  I broke off from the others in my squad and went deeper into the trees to have some privacy.  I pulled out my entrenching tool (a small folding shovel) and started digging a “cat hole” at the base of a tree to do my business.  That’s when I heard what sounded like a stealth helicopter skimming the treetops.  I stopped digging and looked around.  The sound came again, but this time closer.  It buzzed by me so loudly that it produced the doppler effect!  

At first I thought it might be a small bird because it was too big and loud to be an insect.  When it finally landed on a tree and I could see it more clearly I knew there was no way I was dropping my pants anywhere near that thing!  It was either me or him, but one of us had to go (I had to go! stupid murder hornet).  I pulled my knife and circled around the tree where I knew it had landed.  It was remarkably tolerant of me as I ever-so-slowly peered around the tree and lifted my knife.  In a kind of spasm I flicked the blade with my wrist and severed the hornet in two pieces.  That’s how big it was!

I see myself now in a 30 year retrospective: PFC Haney, Murderer of Murder Hornets.

***