DLI - You're Not In Kansas, Anymore; or "It's Raining Men!"

Mind you, I was an Army brat.  I knew that every place in the world was not like Kansas .... the only place I had lived since leaving home at 17.  But nothing prepared me for the splendor that was Monterey, California in late 1974.  It did take me a bit of time to even dare leave the Presidio, I was that horrified by the amount of work facing me in the Russian course.

But eventually, I did go down the steep Franklin Hill to explore Monterey.  There were dozens of little shops, there were flowers blooming even as the first snowflakes flew back in Kansas.  There was, as one left the center of town and headed for the marina, a beautiful courtyard where old Italian men played bocci ball games on any sunny day.  I even loved the tourist-trap "Fishermen's Wharf" and the ugly pink building with a lighthouse topper.  The smell of candy corn permeated the air there, even triumphing over the occasional fish market.

On the wharf I found my home-away-from-barracks-room-home.  There was an Italian restaurant called "Angelo's" that was painted bright shades of blue and orange.  The bar was downstairs with a fireplace in the center.  The smell of delicious things lured you up the steps where women in white aprons bustled.  And a little man looking a bit like a Sicilian mob boss would offer to seat you.  This was Angelo and he was about 55 that year.  I ate my first broiled Pacific lobster under his tutelage and decided  that was the most blissful experience yet.

Angelo made endless passes at me, but took my prim "I don't date married men" rejoinder with  good grace.  (Over the next nine months we became friends and continued that friendship for over three decades to come.)  Still, his pursuit was marvelous for me---he would drive to the Presidio once or twice a week and drive me to his place for lunch, a free lunch!  When I began dating, I asked for dinner there and he terrorized the dozens of young Army/Air Force/Navy men by looming protectively and informing them he was my "godfather".  Many evenings I walked to the Wharf books in hand and sat studying by myself or with friends around that fireplace in the bar.

And yes, men.  Obviously women were out-numbered at DLI and men....oh my Gods, there were men EVERYwhere.  The song about It's Raining Men didn't exist yet...nor did the singers who would sing it; but is certainly could have been the theme song of my non-duty life in Monterey, California.  I turned 21 that first October there as my classes got going.  And there were bars, nightclubs and MORE MEN!

My first visit to a California beach was with a man, it was our first date.  He proposed to me there.  On our first date.  It was our last date, too.  And then, being 21, I discovered the NCO/Enlisted Club.  Yum, cheaper booze.  More men.  And live music once a week.  I danced and drank.  The club was usually a wall to wall welter of young fit bodies scented with sweat and alcohol.  And with multiple languages often ringing in the air.

But you will think it was all drinking and fucking if I keep on this way.  In fact there was almost no sex at all; I was very cautious.  After all, in those days some of us still feared pregnancy worse than any plague!  The Pill made me very sick, I could never use it.  I wasn't saving myself for marriage; I was saving myself for the Army.  Getting pregnant meant getting out most of the time.  But dating, dancing, flirting there certainly was and also friendships.

I went home on leave for Christmas in December, carrying packages for my family and pissing off the stewardesses, who event then had too little space for a Grandmother clock I swore was too delicate to check with baggage.  Seeing my family again reminded me of why I had joined the Army to stay away from them.  I was very happy to get back to California.  I had friends and books and work.  I had money and no bills.  I discovered there was such a thing as a store full of ONLY books.  The Three Rings Book Store on the wharf was pretty close to my idea of heaven.

And there was sunshine.  The Monterey Peninsula gets more cool foggy weather, more rain, than a lot of California, but after places like Kansas and Texas (and other worse spots on the family map) it was bliss.  Sometimes whole groups of classmates would go to Asilomar Beach at night.  We'd run in the phosphorescent sands screaming aloud with the roaring surf.  It was a great stress reliever.  I walked to Asilomar by myself a couple times a week.

Everyone told me I was going to be raped and murdered.  I was only once approached by a man who asked me "Aren't you afraid to be out here alone?"....and that was ON the post as I came home.  I told him that no, I was not afraid.  And I wasn't.  My military handbag had a bottom lining of six rolls of quarters.  A few women I knew did this...not only did it make the swinging bag a lethal smack, but it was emergency funds for dumping an obnoxiously insistent date and catching a cab home!

As the nine months wore on, my German accent went away; replaced, as I was to learn later, by a Russian accent.  We visited instructors at their homes and had tea from samovars and vodka in tiny cold glasses.  And we bought wedding gifts, because yes, a round of marriages began.  I, myself, stood in as mother-of-the-bride for a friend whose mom couldn't' make the trip.  She was a National Guardsman who married a civilian who lived in Big Sur.  She became the sister-in-law of Beach Boy Al Jardine.  And she lived in Jardine's Big Sur place in a tiny adorable cabin with a stone  tub in the floor.  I spent many weekends there after the wedding.  Al Jardine plays a lovely medieval mandolin.

And the best man from that wedding made me his target of opportunity. He was ex-Army, ex-Special Forces and Mormon.  He had only one vice, what with no drinking, smoking, coffee or tea....and that was sex.  He lived in Los Angeles.  We saw each other a couple times per month and I was a happy free agent the rest of the time.  It was a lovely intense romance, my first experience of dating and sleeping with a man I was absolutely sure I would not want to marry.  He was a few years older than me and was a tomcat in his habits.  I didn't particularly care, emotionally; but I did worry about his seeming ignorance of sexually transmitted disease.  So, I was extra cautious and we had fun, and since he worked for Delta Airlines;  when I graduated from my course and the Army bought me a ticket to ride all the way to Boston, he upgraded my ticket to first class and flew East with me to say farewell.

The California dreaming was over; it was time to go to Ft. Devens, Massachusetts and find out what I would do with all this Russian language.

The Defense Language Institute: "You Don't Want to Be a Cook, Do You?"

Basic over, I flew across the country to Monterey, California.  I did not take leave.  The Defense Language Institute (DLI) looked like a college campus seriously overrun by ROTC sorts.  Except it was not ROTC but real soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen.   This is where the military trained linguists; some would be translators, some would be interrogators, some (like me) would either be analysts or the actual person listening through head-sets to vocal copy in what was called the SIGINT (signals intelligence) field.  I now exchanged my beautiful Athena collar brass for something less inspiring.  But the shoulder epaulets based on the crest of the school did make me happy.

Life at DLI in 1974 most likely was as close as it ever got to certain recruitment posters.  Lots of pretty tanned people in Class A uniforms on beautiful vistas!  Because yes, it was Class A EVERY day from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon.  There was no PT, and because it was such a high stress school, students were coddled somewhat.  Sure, the unfailing threat hung over every student head: "If you wash out of class, you will be sent to cook school"....but other than that, it was a cushy existence.  The women were in C Company atop the ground floor that hosted all the "joint command" folks.  Getting into the building wore your right arm OUT saluting all the officers coming and going.

 There were other companies for the men, and each of them had a mess hall---which C Company lacked.  So all the women traded off week by week.  Unlike our building, each of the others were long armed "U" shaped constructions.  The mess hall was always on the short center....so you walked a gauntlet of stacked windows of men staring at you as you went to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Wolf whistles were the least of it, lol.  Besides that, C Company seemed to get an awful lot of late night "bomb threat" calls that necessitated driving all us nightgown clad women out into the night while the building was checked.

There were three main elements of life in the beautiful California sunshine: the military schtick, the classroom side and the social life expected of a bunch of mostly young military sorts.  I'll deal with the social side tomorrow!  I arrived with a couple weeks before my classes would begin and was on casual duty. This meant playing CQ and doing "garden party" on the very pretty grounds.

 Since DLI was so atypical with no daily formations and no PT, the military bit was mostly barracks life related.  I was assigned a room with only one roomie, this was an unexpected luxury.  I was very disappointed with the hallway, the tan floors were brown at the edges with layers of wax and gave the entire area a dingy depressing look.  The bathroom was similarly poorly maintained, there was mold on the grout of the tile walls.  After the spic-and-span bit at Basic and my own standards, I found this utterly unacceptable.  My first duty roster deal was the bathroom and I attacked it with glee.  I was toothbrush bleaching the tiles of the shower when my platoon leader walked in and caught me at it.  She took in the scene with an incredulous look on her face, and then asked me if I'd like to be squad leader of that hallway.  I said yes, but said I would finish my week of the bathroom detail to get the place cleaned up.

The next week, I made a new duty roster and attached a note that every squad member would fall out into the hallway Friday night after supper.  When they all appeared, very pissed off, I handed them single edge razor blades and told them to remove every bit of that nasty brown wax.  The groans and moans were doubtless heard clear across the country.  The one ROTC trained girl bitched the loudest.
Once the wax was scraped away, each pair of girls responsible for the stretch between their door and the next, the person who had hallway detail was in charge of mopping it.  Then I released everyone to go do their normal Friday night whatever.  I hand waxed the hallway myself with solid wax and buffed it to a high shine.  I was finished by ten o'clock.

Monday mornings were inspection day.  The entire company would fall out in the back parking lot to be looked over.  I inspected my squad first.  I decided Navy uniforms of that beautiful soft wool were the hardest to de-lint.  I decided ROTC had never taught anyone how to polish brass.  I was a pain in all their asses.  But there were no gigs that Monday.  And after the squad hallway was inspected, we were all released from personal Monday inspection for the next two weeks.  The grumbling kind of declined after that.  So, before my classes even began, I had the bits of military routine managed.

And that was a good thing.  Because when I was assigned to be squad leader, I figured my predecessor had just graduated.  I was mistaken.  The hallway and latrine were in disarray because when I arrived she had been hospitalized for several weeks and not functioning for some time before.  She had attempted suicide.  And oh, the stories of students jumping off company roofs, or into the deadly rip-tide surf of Monterey Bay suddenly rolled in upon me during mess hall conversations.  The one girl who had came from my same basic company at McClellan and I looked at each other in a sort of horror.  And then to Russian class we went.

The stack of paper bound books we were given  were too heavy to even carry all at once.  Our class rooms were tiny individual buildings away from the older multi-floored school rooms.  We were divided into sections of eight to ten students each and met our instructors.  They were all native speakers and for the next 39 weeks these aging Russians would control our destinies.  We were now students, студентов.  We would spend four hours in class, get a two hour break for lunch, and then return to class for the afternoon.  Most of us would spend three to four hours studying each night and more in the morning.  We had several teachers and they rotated through the different class sections by the hour.  The little red-haired lady was a charmer and sweet.  The tall beanpole with a shock of white hair and a gentle smile refused to speak a word of English and was a martinet about pronunciation.

I was in trouble from week one.  All the teachers frowned at me.  The gentle white haired one looked at me on break and mused, half at me, half to a fellow instructor, "Немецкий язык?" I was in ignorance as to what this meant.  The little redhead enlightened me as gently as she could: "You speak Russian with a German accent, we all wonder why that is."  Fuck me sideways.  My childhood in Germany, though I could barely remember the language now, left me with an enduring accent?  And all these survivors of the Nazi horror now wonder if I AM German?  Well, that explained why the white haired grammer monster spent most of one entire hour making me repeat the word for sugar, сахар, repeatedly.  Later, in a very rare display of English, he explained (once informed by the redhead that I was not in fact German) "Oh, no, I like the Germans fine.  See, THIS is German."  He displayed a scarred arm.  He had been their prisoner and they fixed his serious burns with German skin grafts.....a rather new experimental thing in the 1940's.

So, for me....unlearn an unsuspected German accent, learn the Cyrillic alphabet, master vocabulary lists and grammer.  No wonder folks jumped off roof-tops!

In Memory....

......of the dead of war, perhaps poetry says it best.

My own petty memories are not worthy of the day.  They are merely historical curiosities and nostalgia.
But poems come with barbs to attach to the soul, to attach chains that society would like to not acknowledge.

No Booze, No BBQ, No Sales

More memories tomorrow.

Today I will be busy cleaning, re-arranging books, and sorting mental files.  And then a bit more military nostalgia will ensue here---next stop is the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California.  

1974 - Welcome to the Women's Army Corps

(In honor of Memorial Day, and the many memories thereby evoked, I will satisfy the curiosity of a reader about my old Army days.  Please forgive the boring length!)

I hate running, I hate hot weather.  So how on earth did I end up in Women's Army Corps Basic Training in Ft. McClellan, Alabama in August of 1974??  I plead temporary insanity...and that having grown up an Army brat, I wanted to go back to Germany.  And I would have done most anything to get the hell out of Kansas.  My father laughed and said "So my little girl is joining the Whore Corps."  Gee, thanks Dad.

I joined up in Texas, where my parents lived.  I packed up my apartment back in Kansas and left the stuff with my grandfather.  I flew to Atlanta and got on a bus full of other young women, and we set off for Ft. McClellan.  The driver got lost, it was 0200 by the time we got to the post.  The receiving company that greeted us put us all to bed with little to-do.

The female sergeant who greeted us in the morning was caricature terrifying: tall and broad shouldered and deep bosomed.  She looked as if she could break most men over her knee.  Her voice was reminiscent of Julia Child, the chef.  She herded us around in the sweltering heat and humidity getting uniforms fitted, and to the small post exchange annex to get things like the properly approved grooming kit.   And in barely over a week, each of us hoisting a duffle bag full of uniforms, she marched us off to our training company.

I was on the third floor of my "Echo" Company.  Our female drill sergeant was an impressively tanned and toned and wrinkle proof blond woman, Drill Sergeant Jenkins.  My platoon also had an assistant, a very petite blond bundle of energy who told us she didn't want to hear any nonsense about not being able to take a 30" marching step.  She was 4' 10" and could march and run all day.

We were assigned bunks, shown how to make them.  We were instructed exactly how and what would hang in our lockers.  One small (usually square) hard sided luggage 'cosmetic case' (what ladies USED to carry on jets and put under the seat) was the only item where we could keep personal and un-inspected items.  We found out bras had to be folded, who knew?  And our socks had to "smile!"  We spent a large part of one day preparing our foot-lockers for inspection with the requisite items in perfect order.  I had six bras as ordered.  None of them my size; all my size were gone, but these were not for wearing anyhow.  The ones I wore were stuffed into that cosmetic case!

We learned to dis-assemble brass and shine it.  And to polish boots and shoes.  We learned to burn strings off our uniforms.  I learned about the humiliation that was the WAC physical training uniform.
It was a pale green blouse, a peculiar almost sage green shorts and a wrap around skirt.  This was not the problem.  The problem was the whole affair was to be worn with anklet socks and shoes.  I have hated ankle socks since childhood.

While the other women, most of them younger than me, woke in nightmares crying, I did not.  Half the bay of women were around my bed one morning about three weeks into training, smiling at me expectantly.  To my "What?" they informed me that I had not awakened crying, but had hilariously sat bolt upright in my bed and shouted "I'm not wearing those damned anklets!"  This was considered most hilarious.

Half my platoon were black women, one an impressively tall Amazon like specimen of American woman-hood who stood 6'2", she called me "The General" because she said the Army came so easy to me.  She and I did the "bump" together during the dance and work crazed Sunday afternoons of cleaning the bay for the new week.  A few girls came in with rank due to college credits.  One woman was 35 years old and feeling her age at the end of each grueling day.  A couple were possessing every spare moment to write letters to boyfriends.  And that was the bit that gave me an evil reputation with the women in my platoon.

At the end of the second week of training, we were all told we could try testing into something called the Trainee Leadership Program(TLP) and those of us who successfully completed this would likely graduate with a promotion.  I was up for that, it meant more pay!  So, several of us took the test.  A couple days later Jenkins informed us none of us made the program.    I was in disbelief and went to her office and room (only two doors from our bay) to ask her how I had failed.  She told me we had all flunked the minimum reading requirements.  I told her that was totally impossible and asked her if she could request  the exam be rechecked.  She cocked her head at me and asked me if I was serious.  I assured her that I read at college level and that the required 10th grade level should not be an impediment.

The next day, she summoned me to her office and told me they hand graded my test and I scored very high and was now in the TLP with girls from the other platoons.  I was overjoyed and said I would be happy to tell the other girls.  Jenkins informed me I would do nothing of the kind; that while they all had passed the exam, none of them had the leadership to advocate for themselves and thus were not leader material.  Henceforth, a black band with corporal stripes would adorn my uniform and I would no longer have work details and would run a duty roster for my squad as trainee squad leader.

And thus my friction with the lovelorn letter writer.  She would not do her details until the letter writing was done.  This made the entire squad libel to discipline.  After a third warning to put down her pen and go do her detail, I ripped her stationary and stamps from her hands and told her she was not getting them back until she had done her assigned detail.   She threw a tantrum, weeping and screaming.  She also did her detail.  My Amazon dance partner sneered at the weeping girl and told her "not to mess with the General."

I admit, I was a bit conflicted over this so-called "leadership".....I felt a bit like a Jewish capo facilitating Germans.  I reminded myself that Basic was not extermination, it was a game to be played and won.  For while the other women were terrified of the entire process, it seemed second nature to me.  Other than the physical training (I was not a sports type, not coordinated and with a hatred of running), Basic did seem a game to me.  I never was gigged on inspection.  Even in the receiving company, I had been put in a trainee squad leader position and had a detail only one week of the entire training period.    I imagine I was possibly as hated as a school-time teacher's pet.

Every Wednesday was parade day.  Graduations took place on Wednesdays and all of us were marched out to view other women finishing and standing in the Alabama sunshine in their Class A uniforms---the summer "cords" that could be ironed to a crispness.  On one of those Wednesdays, as we entered the final phase of our own cycle, we were put at parade rest near the back of the parade field.  After a few minutes, my ankles suddenly felt afire.  I stomped my foot, as surreptitiously as possible.  The woman beside me began to fidget.  The fire continued inside my damned anklet socks.
We were standing atop a fire ant mound, invisible in the grass.  I did not move, I was in full view of the viewing stand.

The next morning, my ankles looked like hamburger and I had a fever of 101.  Jenkins was going to send me to sick call.  I begged her not to do so, but asked her for aspirin for the fever and if I could wear my low quarters instead of boots till my ankles healed.  She granted permission and told me not to carry being "STRACK" too far.  For, that was the epitome, you see...to be perfect in demeanor and military precision.  A bit like being ladylike in uniform; our drill sergeants never shouted, for instance, because that behavior was not STRACK, we were all adults and shouting and swearing were unnecessary.

The culmination of our training was going to the "field" and joy of joys, the rifle range.  Because YES, we were among the first few cycles of WACs to receive weapons training.  We were also told if any of us wished to opt out of this, that was allowed as well.  Who were they kidding?!  Our range instructors were all male.  And frankly happy to see us.  They told us we smelled much better than their average male trainee and we took instruction better.  Very few of us had handled any weapons before.  But none of my company opted out.  We spent a portion of every one of our "field" days at the rifle range.  Every single woman qualified with the M-16.  Other weapons were demonstrated for us, but not entrusted to our use.

And it was while standing at the range, tearing down my weapon ("This is my weapon, this is my gun; one is for fighting, the other for fun!") that the most enduring visual of the entire time there was impressed upon my mind.  It was an incredibly hot, humid day.  Sweat ran down your face when you stood stock still in the shade.  The sky was purple black with pregnant rain clouds.  And then, there was a thunderclap.  The range instructors and the drill sergeants all shouted for everyone to get under cover of the roofed areas where I stood, cleaning my rifle.  They pointed at the hills backing the range.  And there, marching down the deep green hillside that rose perhaps 300 feet in elevation, was a perfect silver curtain of rain!  It looked like an advancing blade of ice.  I will forever hold that image as one of the most perfectly beautiful moments of my life.

On Sunday in the field, the chaplains appeared for services.  I went to Catholic Mass in my heat and sweat wilted fatigues.  That is me in the blond hair and glasses with the corporal stripes.  It is the only picture I have from Basic Training.

 After our return from the field, the final exams in classrooms and the PT test remained.  Often, our physical training periods had been curtailed due to extreme heat conditions and now this was a terrifying impediment to being ready for the test.  We did not have to run the two miles that would later be required of me later when the members of the Women's Army Corps were dispassionately turned over to the un-tender mercies of the regular Army.  But I did run more than two miles that day.
As a trainee leader, if any woman on my squad was struggling to get her run in the required time, I was required to get her around the track.

The final days were tense with waiting for orders.  I was asked if I would like to consider attending drill sergeant school and explained that I had a contract to go to language school, that I already knew what my orders would be.  We marched the final time as the graduating class, bearing before us a hand-sewn silky guidon for each platoon.  I designed the one for our platoon, in not very military style it was a multi-blue-hued butterfly and the legend "Elusive Echo".  For that is what life felt like just in that moment as the forty of us prepared to be dispersed across the country and globe!  Basic training would be the echo in our minds as we went on to jobs, joys, hardships and triumphs ahead of us.  And we all flew away.....

Un-War Stories?

Someone has said they'd like to read my "war stories"....of course, having been military in the time when women were still in the Women's Army Corps and being one of the first groups to even get weapons training and just as Viet Nam wound to its ending?  I don't have real war stories.  Well, Cold War stories, perhaps, since after scads of costly training I was sent to Berlin, Germany to stare resolutely across the Wall at those nasty Soviets....

My husband was just musing on his own military history this past week.  I am not really the type to reminisce much; to paraphrase an old movie, it's a bit like "the first rule of Italian driving ---no need for a rear view mirror, if it is behind you, you don't need to see it."  I don't, of course, ignore the past (too much of an amateur historian/philosopher for that); but I rarely dwell on it.

But if there really is an interest, I will go through my mental stacks and see what might be amusing....I might even have a picture of me from Basic Training in Ft. McClellan, Alabama in 1974.

Dear America: Please Read This Book

I am behind on my reading.  What with trying to garden, exercise, take care of pets, and all the other seemingly pointless things that occupy my life....it is a wonder I get any reading done at all.

But this summer?  If you don't read anything else?  Please read "Day of Honey" by Annia Ciezadlo.

If you think you understand all the war and havoc in the Mideast because you watch the American news, trust me, you do not.  Not at any personal level, unless you are a veteran who has been there; and even then, not as the people who LIVE there understand it.

This book is not political, it is reporting.  It is rich and makes your mouth water for meals the author describes.  And then she talks of fleeing the kitchen before bombs explode the windows.

Please read this book!

You Tell 'Em, Kiddo!

Cause Westboro Baptist Church NEEDS a clue by four upside their collective heads.

Un-American Airlines

Gee, remember how offensive we found it when people wearing Anti-George Bush shirts were escorted out of Congressional balconies?  But we did sort of expect that kind of yahoo-ism from the Rethuglicans by then, didn't we?

But a place where an American PAYS to be, non-governmental and all?  Now THEY get to tell us what we can say or wear on our bodies....or what will or won't be said on WHAT we wear on our bodies, too?
American Airlines took a woman off a flight because they didn't like her pro-abortion t-shirt.

Right. Like I needed another reason NOT to fly!

Fuck you, UNAmerican Airlines, using my Constitution as toilet paper again.  Sign the petition telling UnAmerican Airlines to fuck off apologize.

Simple Pleasures

I'm on a "stepping away" mode....no, likely won't last long; but sometimes I need a refill of why I rant and rage instead of more reason to do so.

Yesterday, driving to the gym, I was behind a little red car at the stoplight.  The driver was talking animatedly to whomever occupied the passenger seat.  The back of the head there looked small and I wondered if it was a child.

Then the passenger turned to face the driver, excitedly reached across the console and licked his face.  Yep!  A dog.  A happy, well-loved dog.  I watched their joyous interaction all the way through the red light and it left a smile on my face for a long time.