Air Defense Artillery, Part One
July 24, 2008
I used to be in the army. My job was to shoot missiles at airplanes. When I was stationed in South Korea, I spent twenty-four hours at a time on duty inside of a cramped van. I watched a green radar screen, and waited. Our crew consisted of me, my radio guy, and our officer. Our officer spent most of the time in a small building a hundred yards away from our missile platforms, watching movies. Sometimes me and my radio guy read magazines. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we took turns sleeping. Mostly though, I watched my radar, and he spun knobs on his radio. We were never attacked, and I never shot a missile at a plane.
In the army, the base flag is hoisted in the morning, and drawn down in the evening. There is a ceremony that accompanies the flag going up and coming down, a lot of marching and drilling and bugle calls. A real formal thing. When you hear the bugle call, you are supposed to face where the call is coming from, snap to attention, and salute for the duration of the call. Some minute and a half each time. This is possibly the two most formal moments in the day. Set jaw, empty stare, rigid limbs, and so forth.
I liked my radio guy. Like me, he was small but wiry, and when he wasn't drunk, he was hung over. We both broke a lot of rules, but he seemed to get caught more often. His nickname was DB, which stands for Dirt Bag. One time, we were walking to the post exchange, a kind of general store, when the ceremony for bringing the flag down began. I heard the bugle call, faced it, came to attention and saluted. DB did a dance. The boogie and the twist sort of meshed together. His face really got into it. Pouting his lips and squinting his eyes, he rolled his head energetically from side to side and swung his fists and arms to and fro. I suppose he didn't see that there were several officers and sergeants around, or maybe he did. The yelling came on like thunder. DB was slow about stopping, punctuating his defiance. Finally, he assumed a soggy sort of attention stance, and brought his hand up like wet pasta against his forehead. Good ol' Dirt Bag. He lost rank like most people lost card games.
Patrick Schwab and I had gone to school together in Texas, to learn about radars and missiles. We also went to Mexico together every now and again. One time, we went too far and stayed too long, and ended up in trouble. We spent some time in a navy jail, and then some more in an army jail. Patrick was good and simple, an ox of a man, he was another guy I liked.
Patrick was a bodybuilder with a clean face and light, clear eyes. Girls loved him. We had both been stationed in South Korea after school, but Patrick was stationed at Osan, a base forty miles or so from Suwon, the base that me and DB were at. Patrick got into a couple of fights in Osan, some of them pretty bad. A lot of people in the army are drunk a lot of the time. Patrick had a temper when he was drunk. He beat up a couple of air force guys real good, and they plotted to get their revenge. A few nights later some friends of theirs snuck up behind him and swung a two by four into the side of his face. They didn't stop when he went down. Patrick had surgery to put his skull back together, and after he was good and healed, they sent him to my base to stay out of trouble. Imagine that.
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