The Eight-oh-first was just like the MID at Fort Meade had been — neither of them had a mission that justified its existence. No one in the 801^st had a job. Some had a "position," but nobody had a job. Me, I didn’t even have a position because I was excess. The Detachment’s TO&E only called for one master sergeant and they already had one, Master Sergeant Jones.

I remember Captain Kenny Hooper, Warrant Officer Hector Barrientes, Master Sergeant Jones, Specialist Seventh Class Egor Puthe, Sergeant First Class Ernest S. "Ernie" Jenkins were also assigned to the 801^st at that time. Jones, who was the Detachment First Sergeant and due to retire with over thirty years service very soon, had served with the 82d Airborne during World War II and had made all four combat jumps with them. Ernie was the supply sergeant. Hooper was the CI Section Commander, Hector was the Interrogator-Translator Section Leader, and Puthe was one of his interrogator-translators.

Once again, I became very, very bored. We mostly just sat around all day long after PT which was the only training that we did the entire time that I was there. A few guys played hearts or pinochle, but mostly we just sat around and chewed the fat. A sergeant first class in the unit was a back-stabbing little suck-up. This was the first time that I had ever knowingly served with one and it took me a while to figure him out. He and I became better acquainted when he mentioned that he played tennis and to have something to break the boredom, I asked him if he would teach me tennis. He agreed so I bought a racket and a can of tennis balls and we started spending some time each day, during duty hours, on a nearby court that was in our unit area. As soon as I got to where I could make every other serve cross the net and land inside the proper half of the court and I could successfully return the ball across the net every now and then, I began to back out of our association. I had figured out he was a back-stabbing butt-kisser. Nobody likes to associate with that kind of person.

Finally, I told our Detachment Commander that I was dying from boredom and asked him if there was anyway I could be placed on SD or TDY to a local CI unit that was actually running investigations or maybe with the local CID. We had no luck at that so I started going over to the Education Center and signing up for every college level examination that I thought that I could maybe make a decent grade on, if I crammed on the subject a little an hour or so before I took the test. I signed up for the test before I had even read anything on the subject. They had books there on each subject that they tested us on. So I would sign out the book while I waited for my test date to roll around. This went on for several months. I took about a dozen of the individual exams and I passed all of them except for two, Geology I and Geology II.

Then I got really brave and signed up to take the CLEP [One Year- College Level Equivalency Proficiency Test]. First, I attended a short course during the afternoons to prepare me for the CLEP. I also passed the CLEP with flying colors the first time that I took it which surprised the hell out of me because that was a tough exam.

Out of sheer boredom I also enrolled in the US Army Intelligence School’s Senior Noncommissioned Officer’s Correspondence Course. It was about the same length as the Infantry School’s Senior NCO Correspondence Course, but about half of the subjects were the same so I didn’t have to repeat those subjects.

Also, to fight boredom, I began wearing a 40 pound rucksack on runs just to give me something to think about and to use up my excess energy. It didn’t work. I gradually became more and more bored, depressed, and lonely and I began to drink more and more. Booze didn’t solve my boredom, but at least while I was shit-faced my brain was numb.

For the entire time that I was in the 801^st, I volunteered for anything that would give me something to do to help me fight the boredom and loneliness. During this time, I attended the Defense Industrial Security Course, snow-ski training, and improvised demolition training that was conducted by the CIA. Puthe and I also participated in a short FTX during that eighteen months. Our part in the FTX lasted all of two days.

The 801^st was tasked to support an A Team on an FTX that was to be conducted in South Carolina. One part of the A Team’s multi-task mission required them to penetrate the security of a factory and obtain certain documents. We were to provide whatever support we could. First I was to give them a class and then, if they couldn’t penetrate the factory on their own, they were to request assistance and I would be parachuted in to their AO [area of operations] to do the job.

Instead of preparing a formal lesson plan for the class, I decided to let the A Team members tell me exactly what their mission was and perhaps recommend possible areas where I could be of assistance. When the team entered the class room, I explained my idea to them and asked their leader to fill me in on that part of their mission. Sergeant First Class Gifford, a buddy of mine from Project Delta and 46^th Company was the Team Sergeant. A Teams like to play their cards close to their chest and they do not like to call for help. Their captain wanted me to teach them how to be a spy and locksmith so they could do everything themselves. I politely informed them, "The army spy course was about six months long and their locksmith course was eight weeks long, but I only have two hours." My answer was met with silence, so I added, "Let me give you some examples of how you may be able to by-pass a locking device or security system without being a locksmith. You could send one or more team members to apply for a job at the factory. Perhaps while they are there one of them may have the opportunity to accomplish your mission without being detected. If not, perhaps they could jam the outside door to prevent it from locking securely, make an impression of the key to the main door or perhaps they could leave a window unlocked in the rest room or an empty room."

Then I went on to demonstrate how to fix the lock so it would jam when they tried to lock it without anyone noticing it. After that, I demonstrated how to make hasty impressions of keys. This gave them some "food for thought" and generated more questions. All in all, it turned out to be a fairly good class.

The 801^st Commander called me into his office about three days after the team had parachuted into South Carolina. He told me, "Val, the A Team that you were supposed to support has already successfully completed that part of their mission. They don’t need your help anymore. However, the Group Commander has found out that they are goofing off. They are living in a vacant farm house on the outskirts of town and he wants you to go down there as an "aggressor." He wants you to find them and make them wish that they had stayed out in the woods." He sent Puthe with me. Being now forced to play the "enemy" of the team that I was supposed to be helping, killed my joy. Orders are orders, but I felt like a damn traitor as we headed south in my gold Camaro.

As soon as we found a motel room, we went straight to the Sheriff’s office. I told the sheriff why we were there and asked him, "Sheriff, if we can find them, could I get you to pretend to arrest them and lock them in your jail until I could interrogate them? I would then put a few of them through a hostile interrogation and then we could release them. They shouldn’t be locked up more than three or four hours." His deputy was in the office also and as soon as I finished, he said, "Sheriff, I’ll betcha they’re in Ole Joe’s house out on County Line Road. [Not the real names.] I heard there’s some men that look like soldiers staying out there." After checking my ID, the sheriff laughed and said, "Sure thing boys. We’ve got some free time on our hands. Let’s go out there and round em up." Sure enough they were in that farm house. The A Team guys were stunned when they saw the sheriff car pull up followed by me and Puthe in my car. I explained, "Captain, there’s been a change in plans. I am now one of the "bad guys," a member of the "Secret Police." You are all under arrest and will come with us, by order of the 5^th Group Commander." Now there really was a bunch of Sad Sacks milling around there and a couple of them would have loved to punch their Secret Policeman out. I allowed the Captain to leave one man there to watch their gear and we began hauling everyone else to jail — it took two trips.

The tiny jail only had two holding cells. The sheriff locked all of them in one cell so I could put the ones that I finished interrogating in the other cell. Being an interrogator himself, Puthe wanted to watch the interrogation. So did the sheriff and his deputy.

The ones that I selected to interrogate were the youngest team members because they would benefit the most. Gifford expected me to pick him just so I could harass my old buddy a little, but I didn’t. I figured that Gifford was the most experienced team member and I wanted to make the most of what time that I had.

I interrogated the prisoners individually. The first thing I did was have the prisoner strip down to his skivvies and then while I went through his pockets, I asked him questions. They stuck to the name, rank, service number, and date of birth bit. Then I had them drop their skivvies, stand back from the wall about five feet, and lean against the wall on their thumbs while I rapidly asked them more questions. Being stripped naked emotionally disturbed the young guys. That wouldn’t have bothered the old hands at all. Actually, they were pissed off, very pissed off. They spent quite a bit of time either in the pushup position or leaning against the wall in between the rapid-fire questioning, but they stuck to the minimum required information and their cover story. One young soldier was so upset he was shaking. After I had made each of them suffer for about an hour, I let them dress and placed them in the cell separate from their team mates who had not yet been interrogated. Then I would make a great show of selecting my next victim. It took me about five minutes just to select each victim. Except for Gifford, the hatred in their eyes was obvious so I guess I was doing a good job. Gifford appeared to be mildly amused by the whole affair. Even though I only interrogated two or three of the prisoners, my selection process put some stress on the others as well.

Hopefully, that was enough to make the Colonel’s point. Not being a sadist, I didn’t see any reason to take it any further so we returned them to the farm house. Where I told them, "As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done what the Colonel ordered and we’re finished with you, but we’re not returning to Bragg as soon as we leave you here. We’re going to hang around a while and we will be back here later. If you are still here when we return, we’ll go through this process again, except everyone will go through a very hostile interrogation — even if it takes all damn night. So please don’t be here when we return." With that Puthe and I returned to the motel, packed our things and drove back to Fort Bragg. Me, I had a bad taste in my mouth, being a turn-coat was not my cup of tea.

Each SF detachment usually turned in a written After-Action Report after each mission, including training missions like that one. Apparently, they spared no details about my treatment of them because about a week later, I was presented with a Letter of Commendation for the "excellent" training that I had provided. Five will get you ten, that’s not what it was called in Gifford’s After-Action Report.

Puthe and I, along with about fifty other SF guys from the 5^th and 7^th Groups took two weeks of improvised demolition training. The training was classified "Secret," hell SF treated almost every FTX as if it were "Secret." It was just their way of instilling the "need to know" in their troops. They bused us to the school which was conducted by the CIA at what used to be a Coast Guard Base.

It was a very interesting school, especially learning how to make explosives and incendiaries out of material that you could buy across the counter in hardware stores, supermarkets or drug stores. However, the best thing there was the chow.

State Department employees also attended these classes so we had great chow. It was still cafeteria style like the regular army, but at breakfast you got your choice of meats, number of eggs and how they were prepared and as much of the extras that you wanted. By "extras" I mean bread, butter, milk, coffee, juice, cereal, etc. Also at the end of the breakfast line the Head Chef awaited you with a clipboard and a roster of all students and instructors. He would ask each student something like , "Would you like wine or beer with your pheasant?" It may have been duck or steak instead of pheasant. If you said beer, he would check that beside your name and then they would put two beers on ice for you. If you said wine, he would put a small bottle of wine on ice for you. We were in shock. We thought that it was a joke, but sure enough at that first supper we had pheasant and much to our delight out came the beer and wine.

The next day, while standing in the breakfast line, one of the lieutenants complained to the Head Chef, "Hey cookie, I can’t handle all of this good chow. I miss my cold eggs, burnt toast, and ice cold coffee." The next morning when that lieutenant came through the chow line with his tray, the Chef said, "Hold it right there lieutenant! I’ve got your breakfast already made special just for you." With that he walked over to the big freezer and brought out a tray that contained two frozen scrambled eggs, two black pieces of toast, two badly-burnt sausage links, and a frozen cup of coffee. He handed the tray to the lieutenant with, "We aim to please, lieutenant." The mess hall roared with laughter. After the initial shock wore off, the lieutenant joined in the laughter. Then he tried to hand the tray back to the Chef who refused to take it and motioned for the lieutenant to continue on down the line and then we really did roar. The lieutenant stopped laughing and begged for another empty tray until he finally got one. Then he was a happy camper again. Each SF student gained an average of fifteen pounds during that three week school. Hell, we ate like Kings...errr...well, maybe like hogs.

One of the demolition instructors also bartended for us at the bar that was located on the second floor of our barracks. That was a great school, we were quite a distance from the nearest town of any size, but they sure did their best to compensate for it. They even had civil service guards posted at the gates. They must have been there to keep unwanted folks out because we sure weren’t in any hurry to go anywhere. By the time we left there, my gut was hanging over my belt.

One day, all 5^th Group enlisted men had to assemble in a large auditorium there on Smoke Bomb Hill. A captain from the Puzzle Palace in Arlington hopped up on the stage and began telling us about the latest "good deal" that the army had for their retirees. He was really trying to "sell" us on this latest "good deal" from DA.

What the captain told us was so unbelievable, we weren’t sure that we heard what we thought we heard. One sergeant raised his hand and when he was recognized, stood up and said, "Captain, let me see if I understand this new deal. As I understand it, under the present system, if we were "already" retired and became eligible for our social security pension, we would continue to draw the same amount from the army, which we would have earned with honorable service, and the full social security pension, which lwe also would have earned, like everyone else, by paying into it. As I understand the army’s ‘new deal’, now when "we" retire from the army and qualify to draw our social security pension, the army is going to reduce our army pension by whatever amount that we draw from social security. Am I correct?" "Yes sergeant, you’re absolutely correct." "Sir, with all due respect, that deal sucks!" The entire auditorium then booed the captain so bad he finally gave up trying to "sell" us on liking this latest Catch-22 and we were dismissed.

My two room unit in the BEQ [Bachelor Enlisted Quarters] where I shared a bath with Puthe began to shrink so I moved out and rented a larger apartment off post — way off post. But that was too far from my unit to suit me so I didn’t stay there very long before returned to the BEQ.

While I was still living in the apartment off post, I got a telephone call late one night. The voice was just a whisper and I couldn’t recognize it at all. The guy said that he was coming over there and kick my ass because I was running around with his wife. That wasn’t true because I wasn’t running around with anybody’s wife, so I had no idea who this character was, but I told him to drag his ass on over there and hung up. After I got myself a fresh cold beer, I went out front, sat on the curb, and waited to see who showed up.

A short time later, up drove Bob Kaszer, Brer Fox from radio training at Fort Gordon. Bob was a captain and had just finished Finish language training and was heading for embassy duty there. I hadn’t seen Bob since we were on Oki in 63. After finishing OCS, Bob was sent back to Vietnam where he had been shot in the throat; that’s why he now whispered. Bob was still a firm believer in that stupid war. He whispered to me, "Enlisted men just don’t see the ‘big picture’." I thought, "Damn, Bob you’re definitely an ‘officer’ now. I don’t see how a guy with an IQ so high, he’s almost a damn genius, can actually believe that shit." However, I kept my thoughts to myself.  After all it wouldn’t be fair to start a shouting match with a friend that can’t shout back. We talked until late in the night and then I had to get some sleep because I was scheduled for a very early parachute jump and I really needed that jump for pay purposes. That was the last time that I saw Bob. [As it turned out, Bob was sent to the 10^th Group in Berlin, Germany instead of to Finland. So much for Finish language school. That’s the army way. Maybe that has something to do with the ‘big picture’. Bob retired, lives in Kansas and has fully regained his voice.]

The Lieutenant Callie incident was being discussed everywhere. Callie was the dumb ass lieutenant who was a platoon leader with the Americal Division. While his platoon was on a search and destroy mission in an area that had been designated a "Free Fire Zone," he had executed unarmed civilians and he had ordered his platoon to do the same. Some did and some didn’t. He claimed that he was following orders and some of his men backed it up because they witnessed his commander giving him that order. He had the unarmed civilians [men, women, and children] lined up in a ditch alongside the road and then he and some of his troops mowed them down with automatic weapons fire.

Based on the conversations that I overheard, and/or participated in, many of the senior career enlisted personnel thought the young second lieutenant had done the right thing, simply because he had obeyed orders. I disagreed.

I firmly believe that Callie told the truth. That poor dumb ass second looie was given an unlawful order and he obeyed it. When the shit hit the fan, the officers that had issued him those orders suddenly developed amnesia. I suppose that dumb ass Callie expected his captain, major, and lieutenant colonel to stand up in front of God and everybody and admit that he had been ordered to murder those villagers and that they were the guilty ones, not him. If so, he is still waiting for that to happen.

The enlistment oath given to military personnel requires them to follow all lawful orders. That poor dumb ass second looie and the platoon members that helped him were guilty of murder and, if he was ordered to do it, the commanding officers that gave that order to him were also guilty of murder. Those guys were also guilty of being either "gung ho fools" or "gullible snooks," but I don’t think either is illegal — yet.

During the winter of 72-73, a bunch of us from the 5^th Group went for a week of snow ski training at a ski resort in the Boone, North Carolina area. We slept in squad tents that we erected in an open field behind the large ski-lodge. The weather was colder than a witch’s tit. The first night we were there we all went to Boone for supper. While we were in town a snow storm hit and when we returned we found that the wind had blown our tent walls loose from some of the stakes. Everything inside the tent was covered with about four inches of snow and most of us had already set up our folding canvass cots and laid out our fart sacks. First we re-staked our tent sides, then we spent several minutes trying to remove the snow from our fart sacks and warm them up before we crawled inside. Every day we skied from daylight to dark and every night was miserable cold. At first, I did poorly: I couldn’t stand up for any length of time or lean in any direction without falling. The problem was my boots: they hurt my Achilles tendon like all hell.

Whenever I took a step or leaned my weight on one foot, the hard tops of the rear of the boots would dig into my Achilles tendon and I would collapse. After two days trying to ski with those damn boots, I insisted on getting a different style of boot — the kind that had soft tops. That solved my problem; then I could stand up and lean without my ankles collapsing. My skiing greatly improved and the last three or four days were fun.

While Fran and I were married, I had grown fond of Fran. ’s brothers and sister and also her children and it had been four years since I had seen or heard from them so I called her mom to see how they were getting along.

Fran had re-married twice since I had sent her home from Oki, but still wasn’t satisfied with what she had. Her present husband owned a lake-side motel, lounge, bait shop and restaurant on US Highway 17 in Crescent City, Florida and she managed the restaurant and lounge. Apparently they were making money hand-over-fist, but she wasn’t satisfied with that poor bastard either.

The very next day Fran called me at work and then she called again and again. The next thing that I knew, she was at Fort Bragg and we were buying a mobile home. That girl moved so fast it was like a blur to me.

Fran had said that she had changed — that she had learned her lesson. But after about a month, she seemed to be even worse than before. If I got off work early and arrived home before her, it was because I was flirting with the next door neighbor. If I worked late or got caught in traffic and arrived home fifteen minutes later than usual, I was screwing off with some other woman somewhere else. Life with Fran hadn’t improved, it was still hell: I had let her snooker me again. That woman could sell snowballs to Eskimos. Fran and I got along great as long as we weren’t married or if we were married as long as we had a little something between us, say a couple of states, a continent or an damn ocean.

Shortly after Fran burst back into my life, I discovered that the JFK Special Warfare Center received two slots in every Industrial Security Specialist Course that the Department of Defense Industrial Security School presented. By then I needed a break from Fran so I asked my Detachment Commander to send me to their next class. The next day he informed me that they were going to send a couple of guys from the line companies to the course. I said, "What? What the hell are they thinking about for God’s sake? We’re the intelligence detachment and I’m our Defense Against Methods of Entry specialist and as such our Group’s Physical Security Specialist. How could they possibly justify sending someone else to an industrial security course before we have attended it?" He apparently agreed with me and convinced someone in the Head Shed because I got the slot for the two week course.

That school supported the mission of the Defense Supply Agency [DSA] and it was located on a DOD [Department of Defense] Supply Depot just south of Richmond, Virginia.

The Industrial Security Specialist Course was the most worthless training that I had ever been involved in. As it turned out, an Industrial Security Specialist is a DOD civilian employee that inspects civilian contractors that are working on contracts for the US government to determine whether those contractors are complying with DOD Industrial Security Regulations. The only purpose of the Industrial Security Specialist course was to translate the Department of Defense’s Industrial Security Regulations so the people responsible for seeing that those regulations wer followed could understand it.

The security regulations governing defense contractors were incomprehensible. They were so poorly written, a separate Security Manual was written in "plain English" to explain what was contained in the security regulations. The separate Security Manual was issued to the civilian contractors along with a copy of the incomprehensible security regulations in hopes that it would help them understand what was expected of them. It was absolutely brain-numbing.

What this course taught, no one in JFK Center [John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center], or the army for that matter, needed so I wondered why we always got those slots. One day I asked one of our instructors why SF got those slots. He replied, "Well it’s sort of a recruiting program of ours. Maybe some of the SF students will be about to retire and will consider going to work for DOD as an Industrial Security Specialist." I also asked this same instructor, "Sir, why doesn’t DOD re-write the regulations so they are comprehensible? Then they could do away with both the Contractor’s Manual and this course and save the taxpayers a bundle of money." You would have thought that I had dropped a skunk in that fucker’s lap. That son of a bitch nearly shit in his pants right there in front of the class. His face turned red, his jaw gaped and he stared at me as if he couldn’t believe what I had said. He finally said, "I wrote the regulations and I have a Masters in English." I told him, "That’s fine sir, but do all of the inspectors and contractors also have a Masters in English so they can read and understand that regulation? It’s too complex to comprehend, for example a forty word sentence is not uncommon and some sentences never end — they just have a colon which is followed by a list which is followed by another statement which is followed by another colon which is followed by another meaningless list and this is followed by the next chapter. All of that text and data without a single period. The average sentence is so long and so full of clauses and acronyms, it is virtually incomprehensible."

Come to find out, he was also a retired US Army Colonel, the author of the regulation, the author of the contractor’s manual that explained what the regulations really said, the School Commandant, the school’s Chief Instructor and the man who dreamed up the school in the first daman place and then convinced the army that it was needed. Talk about "double-dipping" and "feathering your own nest," that dick head had given new meanings to those terms. He had created a useless empire and then made himself it’s dictator. Needless to say, he didn’t have much to say to me after that and I didn’t harbor any hope of ever becoming an Industrial Security Specialist with DSA. That didn’t bother me in the least because I knew that job would have driven me crazy anyway. All you did was compare their inventory of classified material with the actual classified material they had on hand and check their security procedures, in other words you were an auditor. It would be very boring work even without the gobbledy-gook regulations.

Somehow I managed to pass the course, but it wasn’t because of my smooth silver-tongued ways — that’s for sure. Fran came up to the school to pick me up and we visited Williamsburg and Jamestown enroute back to Fort Bragg and Fatalburg.

During this period of time, the army had a great program for enlisted personnel that were leaving the army. It was called "Project Transition." They provided training in several civilian occupations such as electrician, plumber, brick and block mason, carpenter, and insurance adjuster. Several SF sergeants went through more than one of these courses during their last year in the service before they retired. It was a great program. The army had trained civilians to be soldiers and now, through Project Transition, the army re-trained soldiers to be productive civilians. Snuffy Smith retired and started his own plumbing business because of Project Transition. Many GIs took full advantage of Project Transition and learned a trade before they were discharged. Of course this program made too damn much sense, so the army soon eliminated it. They eliminated the program, but they couldn’t eliminate the need for it.

Shortly after I returned from the Industrial Security Course, the army decided that they were going to cut back on the number of troops so the first to go would be excess personnel that had over twenty years of service. That description almost fit my predicament to a "T," except I needed another eighteen or twenty months before I was eligible to retire. MI personnel notified me that the 500^th MI Group badly needed me in Camp Zama in Tokyo, Japan. Being assigned to the 500^th would require me to first pass a 47-week Japanese Language course at DLI [Defense Language Institute at Presidio of Monterey, California] and then spend at least 30 months in Japan. As soon as I had twenty years service, I intended to retire. I had all of this here now army that I could handle, but the earliest that I could retire would be about 1 December 1974.

MI Personnel Office in DC told me, "It’s either this assignment or the very next one that becomes available — whatever, whenever or wherever that may be." I said, "Hey buddy, I intend to retire as soon as I’m qualified for a pension which I figure will be about 1 December 1974. Why can’t you just leave me alone until then?" That dick head told me, "You have too much time left before you are eligible for retirement to qualify for an exception to assignments. You have to make this decision right now." I telephoned the 500^th MI Group Headquarters at Camp Zama and talked to the First Sergeant. First Sergeant Hill turned out to be an Ex-SF man and he remembered me from Okinawa. Hill was married to an Okinawan or Japanese lady and he spoke fluent Japanese. He assured me that I was desperately needed there. Well, under the circumstances, I decided to take the Japan assignment. At least I knew what I would have a job.

By the time I finished language school, I would have twenty years of service, but the Catch-22 was, if I went to language school, I had to take the overseas assignment. My tour in Japan would be thirty months because I was taking Fran. That meant that I would have to wait until June 1977 to retire. I thought, "I wonder if I can hang onto what little sanity I have left for that long." A couple of months later I received orders assigning me to DLI with a reporting date in early January 1974.

Fran and I decided to put our new mobile home in storage in Spring Lake, which is just outside Fort Bragg. We, or rather Fran, sold the Camaro: she hated it anyway because it didn’t have power-steering or an automatic transmission. We kept the 1972 F-100 Ford pickup truck to take us and most of our "stuff" to California. I had bought it before Fran arrived back on the scene. The truck also didn’t have air-conditioning, power steering or an automatic transmission, but it would carry all of our belongings to California with us.