Watch #7
I want to go back over the path that I took to reach the Point Defiance. Naturally, I received orders, probably from BUNAVPERS which was the Bureau of Naval Personnel, while I was still in Radar "A" School at Treasure Island. But the path began long before that. Back when I was very young I had a friend, Jackie Manley, whose father operated the Army/Navy Surplus Store in Pawhuska, Oklahoma so, naturally, a bit like Ron Kovic (Born on the Fourth of July), we played army. With some of the artifacts we could acquire, helmets, utility belts, folding spades, canvas, we could imitate a fairly good soldier. We did not have everything; we lacked real rifles, grenades, other things. I remember having an army canteen for drinking water with a canvas container that fit on a utility belt. Most of the things we acquired still had the odor of a soldier, which was a bit of a negative part, but not enough to discourage us. We assumed some rank, lined up together against some unseen enemy and made daring charges over a hill, courageously in the face of enemy fire, which we basically created with the sounds coming from our mouths. We could make the sounds of rifles, machine guns, grenades and even some heavy artillery with amazing accuracy, especially for never having heard these sounds in real life. Somehow, the boys around me and the movies were creating a deep military culture within me. My friend Jackie was in a severe automobile accident when he was around nineteen or so, and never recovered from it. He lay with brain damage for the rest of his life and died from the effects of his injuries many years after the accident.
As I got a little older, somehow my attention shifted to the United States Marine Corps, where I came to believe that the roughest, toughest and most daring men alive dwelt and that's what I wanted to be: A Marine. My friend Jerry Traylor and I even developed what we thought was our own code; the code of Semper Fidelis. We may not have understood it was Latin and translated to "Always Faithful" but we grasped that it was a code and a very serious one; one of honor, of duty, of commitment and mostly, of deep and lasting brotherhood. Like all boys, sometimes as we got older and found new viewpoints, we changed friends some and Jerry and I did. But we still knew each other, still saw each other now and then.
As I got older and I became more interested in motor scooters, motor cycles, cars, and other things, I was not thinking about the Marines so much but about life in high school and having fun. Around ages fourteen to sixteen, some of us were smoking, talking tough, thinking we were tough, and acting cool. We didn't know what cool was but we thought we did. Some of us got a little wild, some wilder than others and as we moved into relationships with young women, sometimes life became very complicated. The complications included jealousy, heart break, anger, love, loneliness, betrayal, possessiveness, pain, teenage angst, "Problems, problems" as the Everly Brothers sang. I had them, and most problems related to my girl friend and our relationship. But I was also influenced by some of my friends and the looming thing in front of us by a few years: The Draft. If we didn't go on to college, marry, find certain jobs, the draft board was out there, looking for us and would one day send us a letter requiring us to serve and for most, that meant the United States Army. That wasn't bad. Let me put it this way. Audie L. Murphy was in the army, and he was always my hero.
More on the next watch.
Stevie Joe Payne
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