Knee Deep in the Hooah!

I wrote most of the following while drinking Sniper’s Brew White Russian, not exactly something I’d encourage close to midnight, but I’m thankful for the jolt.

So it’s late and I’m way behind several promises to my lovely bride. When juggling glass balls and rubber balls, I’m supposed to keep the glass balls in the air because if I let the rubber balls drop they’ll bounce. When my style is a bit disjointed it’s because I’ve bitten off more than I can chew but I still think I pull it off. That may be the norm.

Flashback. It’s 1986 and it’s Panama pre Just Cause. Noriega’s in power but we haven’t quite figured out what to do with him. I’m a young Corporal by now and my roommate and immediate supervisor is Sergeant Soap. Yes, Soap’s a ridiculous pseudonym but if you translate his name from English to Spanish there’s a lose similarity so I’ll stick with it.

Anyway, Sergeant Soap and I live in a structure that was condemned as uninhabitable. We lived there, along with a few Army and Navy folks, as we waited for the last section of the new barracks to be completed and our turn to move in. My first CO let the inmates run the asylum concerning the barracks. Our building was soon to be demolished in any account, but this also led to some unique realities that I thought were going to be the Marine Corps norm.

Things are starting to break. Screens don’t exactly stop all the vectoring critters. One sailor, a Chief as I recalled, has a girlfriend from one of the local bars that has managed to take up residence. She runs a fairly decent laundry service using our collocated washers/dryers and table for folding clothes located in the mens’ head (our locker room style bathroom that also has open showers). Like most newcomers, I wasn’t the only one surprised, quickly grabbing a towel. She paid us no attention except for laundry. The head was as much hers as ours.

Our subsequent CO set the record straight and eventually I’ll get around to the profound impact he made on me and the epiphany of my understanding just exactly how much one individual can change an organization. Back to my lucky circumstances.

Sergeant Soap is an alcoholic, an unusual usually functional alcoholic, nice discovery none the less that was common knowledge to everyone but me. Welcome to Panama. To complicate things he’s also hopelessly in love with an Army gal, a Specialist (E-4), that wanted to be a friend but definitely not a romantic interest.

I actually cared about Sergeant Soap and looked at his situation somewhat sympathetically. He had some idiosyncrasies that aligned themselves fairly well with some of my peculiarities. For example, he found peace by reading out loud a variety of adventure/spy/hero novels before we’d crash for the night. He had top bunk and as strange as it may sound, I actually enjoyed listening to him read the stories more than I’d admit to my peers at the time.

But Sergeant Soap drank to excess and, under the influence, was prone to get in trouble.

Liquored up, it was his habit to go upstairs to the female floor and pay a visit to the Army gal I mentioned. Somewhere along the line, a formal declaration was made that Sergeant Soap was persona non-gratis. Unfortunately, the Specialist caveated her statement to the circumstance of Sergeant Soap being intoxicated. Bad strategy to tell a guy to come see you when he’s sober. When Sergeant Soap was drunk he wasn’t exactly lucid enough to self evaluate, he’d just remember the, “come see me part.”

Sergeant Soap would knock on her door and profess his love. I guess he’d do this off and on and sometimes pass out at the foot of her door. She didn’t mind too much as his commotion was somewhat subdued. She’d tell him to shut up and for the most part he complied. He never tried to force the door open and would usually wind back down at our room with enough time to get himself cleaned up for our next shift. He wouldn’t quite remember the event and when he was sober the Specialist didn’t mind his company; I think she just wanted to help.

Evidently, the visits were becoming more of a nuance and occurring with more frequency. I had my own life and wasn’t around for the majority of his escapades so I’d hear of the drama second hand. The Specialist didn’t report the harassment because she didn’t want him to suffer the consequences. One occasion, however, proved to be too much.

It was the night before Sergeant Soap was going to head back to the States on leave. This is how the situation unfolded itself to me. At about 0300 Sergeant Soap came stumbling in the room and crawled into the top rack with all his clothes on, not a rare event. I’d already hit the hay early. At about 0315 a somewhat livid Specialist is knocking on our door.

I get out of the rack and she tells me she’s had it. Evidently, Sergeant Soap must have had a dog back home and was taking hinters from a childhood revelation on how to express affection by peeing on the door of the Specialist. She didn’t understand the significance of the gesture or merit its value. She told me she was turning him in. Normally, I wouldn’t have given this further consideration but Sergeant Soap was going on leave. If he was turned in, his leave would likely be canceled, bad for him, and I’d have to put up with his increased antics, bad for me.

I told her I just wanted to get him on a plane home but she was having none of it. I thought for a moment then told her he’d be duly punished for his malfeasance and I explained how she’d get her pound of flesh and perhaps reform him a bit in the process.

The whole time I had been negotiating with the Specialist, Sergeant Soap remained passed out in the rack. Somehow, I got him out of the top bunk and on his feet. We walked down to the head and I sat him in a chair; this was our barber shop as well. It was an effort to get him to sit still but I convinced him that he needed a haircut or the Marine Corps wouldn’t let him go home on leave. I may have convinced him the haircut was his idea, forgive me. I plugged in the clippers and shaved him down to peach fuzz. After the electric shaver I got an old bic and shaving cream and went to work. Okay, so I knew shaving his head like a bowling ball wouldn’t be appreciated, but I didn’t quite expect the dozen or so nicks from the marginal razor blade. That’s where the toilet paper came in, to stop the bleeding.

A few hours later Sergeant Soap is barely functional enough to get his bags and his leave papers and head to Panama City in time to catch his flight back home. In uniform, under cover*, the damage could go unnoticed. I’m not sure I ever gave him a full explanation of what exactly happened that night. Close to thirty days later he came back from leave. No more crazy episodes but I’m not sure he was completely reformed.

Somehow I lost track of Sergeant Soap, he eventually got orders back to the States and I stayed in Panama another two years. I don’t know whatever became of him but if he somehow comes across this I hope he’s doing well. I want him to know that those of us who knew him really did want him to succeed. I fell short of getting him the help he needed.

With Utmost Respect ~ Semper Fi, Hank

Used by permission KDH Copyright © 2009 Sniper’s Brew All Rights Reserved.

*under cover for Marines means wearing the traditional Marine Corps cover or as civilians like to call them ‘hats’. Since Marines commonly have “high and tight” haircuts, while covered you wouldn’t necessarily know that a Marine was bald.  Being bald, unless occurring naturally, is out of the norm for grooming standards. Being bald with a dozen or so nicks on your head would solicit, “what the hell happened to you?” Being shaved bald is reminiscent of a Marine recruit’s first haircut in boot camp.