I soldiered my butt off the remainder of those two weeks, carrying my share of the load and then some. The survival training was as much about surviving without sleep as it was about food. The cadre made us move every night to a new area, recon a target and conduct some sort of offensive operation. The success of those operations determined if you ate the next day, because a case of 'C' rations or some other food stuff waited at each target. If the cadre thought your attack or ambush was good enough, you received the loot. If they didn't approve, you got the finger as they drove off.
It was barely the start of spring, so there wasn't a lot of foraging for chow that we could do. Still, I religiously set out a few loop snares every time we stopped for the night. We had yet to catch anything, but at least the cadre knew we were diligently trying.
On our second target, our team leader cooked up a diabolical ambush that damn near wrecked the deuce and a half the opposing forces were using as a rolling target. The cadre sergeant on the truck was impressed enough that he threw us down a couple of live chickens, ten pounds of rice and two empty number ten cans. Greg Tomatsu, our unofficial team chef, made some fine chicken and rice soup. We each had a canteen cup of the stuff and still had enough left for each of us to fill a canteen.
By the tenth day, our asses were starting to drag. Besides covering a couple of hundred miles during our frequent moves, we were getting less than three hours of sleep a night. On night eleven, we conducted a raid on a bridge complete with simulated explosives to drop the span into the creek it crossed. We carried out the mission without a hitch and swarmed onto the bridge to collect our reward. We were perpetually hungry by then, burning four thousand calories a day and lucky if we took in half that. The smaller guys like Greg Tomatsu were especially suffering, because they had no reserves.
When we reached the middle of the bridge, we all groaned in anticipation when we saw the twenty pound bag of potatoes, the two bunches of carrots and the two big fat rabbits. The two big fat, flop-eared, cute and friendly bunny rabbits that had obviously been lovingly hand-raised. We all felt bad for the bunnies, but we were also happily looking forward to them starring in a stew come the next afternoon. It was all good until our fearless leader gave Pookie Ramos the job of carrying the rabbits and their collapsible wire cages when we beat feet off the bridge.
We headed to our last overnight camp in a very good mood. Tomorrow night we would link up with another team, conduct a raid on a radio tower, then escape and evade back to the McCall Drop Zone. If we made it to the DZ without being captured by the OPFOR (opposing forces) by ten AM on day fourteen, we would move on to the next phase of training. Getting caught or arriving late meant you either volunteered to do the entire two weeks again or you headed on up the street to the 82nd Airborne Division.
We arrived at our over night hidey-hole about two in the morning. Even though I had squat to show for it so far, I stubbornly moved into the woods and set a couple of snares that I carefully baited with some 'C' ration peanut butter. When I crept back into our camp, I found big Pookie laying on his sleeping bag with both rabbits snuggled up to him. The team leader and team sergeant were kneeling beside him in animated conversation. I had a bad feeling about what was going on when I saw the look on Pookie's face. I arrived just in time to hear him whisper angrily.
"You are going to have to fight me to get these rabbits, sir. We can do without meat for one day, and I'll carry the gear of anyone who is too weak to make it."
As luck would have it, our team leader was a JAG captain who would be headed to the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center as soon as he graduated. Being a lawyer, Captain Jones didn't order people about just because he could, especially when it might lead to getting his ass stomped by a big angry Samoan. Instead, he knew how to negotiate and lead by consensus. He called us all together and laid it out for us.
"The rabbits get a reprieve until 1500 hours tomorrow afternoon. Those of you who want them to live, better find something to put in the pot in their place. Because, gentlemen, tomorrow at seventeen hundred, I'm eating stew made from some dead mammal before I spend all night evading those OPFOR idiots."
I am happy to say that I was the reason the bunnies didn't end up in the stew pot. They got their reprieve because a huge possum caught himself in one of my snares. The thing had to have been four feet long from his nose to his rat-like tail. He wasn't real fat, but he weighed at least ten pounds or so.
A possum is not the tastiest of animals, but I'd eaten one in my youth, and it hadn't killed me. The one I ate was one I shot with my 22 rifle when I was a kid. My grandmother had a strict policy that I had to eat anything I shot, so I dragged it home and she cooked it up. It was greasy and gamy, but I ate it anyway. If I hadn't, my rifle would have been history.
"A man who would kill one of God's creatures just for meanness or sport doesn't need a gun, Junebug," Granny once told me.
Granny sure didn't have to worry about this big old possum, because not a spec of him was going to waste.
My teammates were less excited about the possum than I thought they'd be. My teammates who weren't from the city were from out west or Hawaii, where there aren't any possums, so most of them didn't know what it was and thought I'd brought home a giant rat for supper.
I finally grew tired of all the arguing they were doing and spoke up. Since I was the quietest guy on the team, me speaking up got their attention.
"Listen, we are supposed to be training to be Green Berets, guys who regular soldiers call snake eaters, yet you are turning your nose up at perfectly good food. We are in survival training and you want to eat some kid's Easter bunny, instead of something we caught ourselves. How's that going to look to the evaluators when they drop by this afternoon?"
There was some serious grumbling about it, but in the end, we cooked up some possum stew. Remembering how Granny cooked it, I boiled the critter for half an hour, poured off the liquid and then boiled it again in salted water. After the second boiling, we cut him up in small chunks and threw him in fresh water with the carrots and potatoes from our raid. We weren't permitted to bring food out with us, but condiments were allowed, so I had garlic powder, Steve had black pepper and Pookie had Tabasco Sauce. A good slug of each went into the pot. We soon had three number ten cans of stew bubbling away.
Mister Opossum had been stewing for a couple of hours when Master Sergeant Travis and two of the other cadre brought us our operations order for the link up mission. Captain Jones, feeling cocky at us being nearly finished with the exercise, asked them to stay for supper. Knowing we had the rabbits, and smelling the garlic and pepper, the sergeants were thinking hasenpfeffer, so they readily agreed.
The look on Travis's face when he chomped down on that first bite of possum was worth everything I'd suffered over the last two weeks. My teammates were acting as if the stew was actually tasty, so the three instructors grimly finished their portions. Captain Jones made a production out of draining his canteen cup and saluting me with it.
"Very tasty, Specialist Jamison," he said.
As soon as Travis and the other sergeants departed, we all had a good laugh about the meal. Putting the cadre on the spot like that boosted our morale, and we breezed through the next thirty-six hours. We were the first team to make it back to the assembly area and were rewarded with a hot breakfast and a chance to lounge around while the rest of the teams came straggling in.
While we were lazing around in the shade, Travis and the Sergeant First Class who had been our grader for the exercise came by and debriefed us. With a pointed look at me, Travis said that after a rocky start, the team had done well and he was advancing us to Phase Two. After he congratulated us, he pulled me aside.
"What did you feed me last night, Opie? I'm still burping it up that shit this morning."
I decided I'd better answer him honestly.
"Possum stew," I said.
He grunted and looked at me sharply.
"What happened to the rabbits?" he asked suspiciously.
I figured Travis thought we'd been eating rabbit stew while he was choking on the possum, so I set him straight.
"Pookie let them go after we caught the possum. We decided that since the possum walked into my snare, we'd eat what we caught."
Travis surprised me by laughing and shaking his head.
"You idiots are just crazy enough to make good operators," he said.
A third of the people who jumped into Camp McCall with us did not pass Phase One. Some of those were recycled back to a later class, but most of them ended up in the 82nd airborne Division. Our team was the only one with all twelve members advancing.
Phase Two was where we learned our individual specialties. Since Steve and I were both Infantrymen, we attended the light and heavy weapons course. We parted ways with our roommates the Sunday after we arrived back from Camp McCall. Greg Tomatsu was staying at Bragg for the demo man course, but would be in a different company than us. Pookie was headed to Fort Sam Houston for the Special Forces Medic course.
Steve and I moved two buildings down the street and once again roomed together. We were in another four man room, but by some quirk, no one was assigned to share it with us. We had a three week delay before our training started, so we were farmed out to the Special Warfare Center as post support soldiers. What that meant was that every morning after PT and breakfast, we were marched down to the back of the headquarters building, where a sergeant sent us off on some detail. We did everything from mow grass to unload beer kegs at the NCO Club. The detail pool was called the slave market, because of the way NCOs needing detail soldiers picked us out of formation.
The details were no problem, but the lack of doing anything interesting was. With nothing to occupy my mind, all I did was think about Megan. By then it was early April and I hadn't seen my wife since Christmas. The separation was driving us both crazy. We made plans for her to come up and visit when school broke for the summer, but that was still two long months away. My buddy Steve solved our dilemma the very next Friday evening.
We were in the barracks, just back from our details, when a guy popped into our room and told Steve some woman wanted to talk to him on the pay phone by the dayroom. Steve was only gone for a few minutes; when he returned, his smile was the biggest I'd ever seen on him.
"Put on your civvies, Jody," he said, "because we are going out to dinner."
Steve wouldn't give me any more information than that, so I shrugged and threw on some slacks and my nicest shirt. We had been standing out in front of the barracks for about ten minutes, when a sporty dark blue 65 GTO pulled up in front of us. The door of the car swung open and a well-dressed, statuesque woman stepped out. The woman was taller than me in her heels, and there wasn't an uncurvy place on her body. I gawked as Steve swept her up in his arms and laid a smooch on her that raised the air temperature ten degrees. When they broke their clinch, the woman stepped back and looked at Steve adoringly.
"I missed you, Baby," she purred.
Steve took her hand and turned her slightly to face me.
"Roxanne, this is my friend Jody. Jody, meet Roxanne Fuller."
Roxanne held out her manicured hand, I took it and mumbled out a greeting as I tried manfully to keep my eyes on hers. I recognized the tall redhead, because she was the woman in the pictures Steve had taped to the inside of his wall locker. She looked just as luscious with clothes on as she did in the cheesecake photos. Steve said Roxanne was in her mid thirties, but she looked much younger than that. She smiled wickedly as she held my hand.
"Steven has told me all about you, Jody. He said you were a great admirer of the photographs I sent him."
I turned four different shades of red, embarrassed beyond belief. Steve laughed and took Roxanne's hand from mine.
"Stop teasing him and let's find a place to eat."
We ate dinner at a very nice steak house on Bragg Boulevard, right outside Fayetteville. During the meal, I learned that the GTO was Steve's and Roxanne had brought it down for him. She was staying the weekend with Steve, then taking the train to New York for the spring fashion shows. Roxanne was a terrific person; she was funny and down to earth, despite her obvious wealth. Roxanne's feelings for Steve were as obvious as her wealth, and I could tell he had feelings for her. I think the high point of the evening was when Roxanne told Steve she had filed for a divorce from her much older husband. I know it bothered Steve that she was in a loveless marriage that revolved around money.
Steve told me I could borrow his car, and he goaded me into seeing the first sergeant about a three day pass. I was honest with Top, and he surprised me by giving me a pass and wishing me luck. I found that SF guys were always willing to help a fellow trooper connect with his woman, because they had all been in the same boat at one time or another. I called Megan that night and we excitedly made plans to meet in Atlanta on the following Friday. We picked Atlanta, because it was a five hour trip for each of us.
I signed out on pass at five AM Friday morning, and aimed that GTO towards Atlanta. It took all my self restraint to drive the speed limit, but I was respectful of Steve's property. I drove into the parking lot of our rendezvous Comfort Inn at a quarter after ten. My heart soared when I saw Meggie's 63 Impala already parked in front of the motel office.
Our little weekend getaway was even better than our honeymoon had been. I guess it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I am positive that we did not spend a second of that weekend when we were not touching, regardless of what we were doing.
As you can imagine, we spent considerable time in bed. After all, we were young and healthy, and we have always been very active sexually. Before I enlisted, three days was the longest we'd ever gone without making love; now we were going months. The men I worked with at Georgia Power teased me that the longer we were married, the less frequent we'd want sex. Actually the opposite happened, because the more sex we had, the more we seemed to want.
That was easily explained from my point of view, because quite simply, I thought Megan was the most beautiful and sexy woman who ever lived. Megan was five and a half feet tall, and weighed around a buck and a quarter. She wasn't huge up top, but her medium sized breasts were perfectly formed, and sat proudly on her chest. Her waist was narrow, her hips womanly and her legs were shapely and strong. She had thick, wavy medium brown hair with natural auburn highlights and those amazing big blue eyes. Her nose was straight and fit her face and her lips were full and almost always smiling.
Yes, the packaging was nice, but it was what was inside that was even more beautiful. Megan was sweet and caring, but she also had an inner strength that made her no one's pushover. It took some doing to get on Meggie's bad side, but once she was wound up, she was hell on wheels. She also had a wicked sense of humor that complimented mine perfectly. When the two of us were on a roll, we cracked people up.
Megan is the social one in our relationship. I don't think she's ever met a person who didn't become her friend. I have always felt that I was holding her back, because I was quiet and reserved around most folks, but she insists that just the opposite is true. According to her, my love gives her the stability and courage she needs to be herself.
I mentioned earlier that Megan and I were virgins when we married, so we are each other's only lover. I guess some people would think that means our lovemaking is plain and uninspired. The people who think that miss the mark by a mile, because we are adventurous and open-minded. I think it helped that Megan was a very sensual woman. Even when I was a sexual neophyte, it was no trouble for me to make her orgasm. Megan was loud when she was in the throes of passion. That fact has caused us a few embarrassing moments, especially when we visited her parents. But that's a price we gladly pay for all the enjoyment. Megan loves it that I don't try to keep her quiet; as for me, I wouldn't have it any other way.
In between fantastic bouts of sexual gymnastics, Megan and I discussed the future. When she told me she was spending the summer in Fayetteville, I was tickled to death.
"Find me a place to live, Honey, then find out what you have to do to stay there with me," she directed.
It was tough for both of us when we departed the motel at noon on Sunday, but we were buoyed by the idea of being together again in less than two months. Right before we left, Megan gave me a manila envelope about the size of a sheet of paper.
"Here are a few pictures for you to decorate your wall locker with so you don't have to look at Steve's. Don't look at them until you are back in your room," she said.
Traffic was light, so I made it back to the barracks by five in the afternoon. Steve was lying on his bunk, reading a science fiction novel when I walked into our room. He took one look at my face and burst out laughing.
"Seeing that goofy grin tells me someone had a good time this weekend," he said.
I nodded and threw my AWOL bag into my wall locker. Then I handed Steve the coffee can of toll house cookies Megan made him and the thank you card she sent.
While Steve was reading the card and stuffing a cookie in his face, I sat down on my bunk and open the envelope of pictures. My jaw dropped to the floor when I pulled out the first eight by ten photograph, because in it, Megan was leaning against a door jamb, wearing a long white, barely opaque nightgown with a plunging neckline. Her long luxurious hair was draped across her left breast. The photograph suggested much, but showed little. It was sexy as hell. In the second photo, Megan was wearing a short plaid skirt, red halter top, high heels and saucy smile.
The weapons course was actually a lot of fun. For the six week light weapons section of the training, we received classroom instruction on a host of U.S. and foreign weapons, then went out to the range and fired them. I have always been a good shot with a rifle, but during the training I discovered that I was damned good with a pistol also. One of our instructors, a Sergeant First Class named Mayfield, took an interest in my ability and gave me some coaching in snap-shooting, or what he called point and shoot. It wasn't a skill I'd likely need, unless I was in a duel, but I became good enough to score as well as most of my classmates who were taking aimed shots.
After the first of May, Steve and I began apartment hunting. Steve wasn't along just to help me; instead, he was looking for a place for himself as well. I guess he and Roxanne had the same talk Megan and I did. Roxanne's divorce would be final at the end of May, and she was moving down the day after the gavel fell. I figured with the money Steve and Roxanne had available, that we would be looking at different properties, but that wasn't the case. Steve said they wanted furnished, short term and close to Bragg, just like us. On Sunday of our second week, we found what we were looking for in the form of a fourplex owned by a retired Special Forces major. The available apartments were side by side and one was an end unit. The end unit's master bedroom was on the outside wall, so we wouldn't disturb Steve and Roxanne when Megan got a little loud.
Major Hanes had built five of the four unit apartment buildings about five miles south of Fort Bragg out on Yadkin Road, and furnished them with the basics. His normal tenants were officers attending courses at the Special Warfare School, but he was happy to take our money after we agreed to his long list of dos and don'ts. Hanes ran a tight ship and his rental agreement read like the rules we had to follow living in the barracks. I liked the idea that there wouldn't be any loud parties or obnoxious drunks to deal with, and readily signed the agreement.
I even only frowned a little writing out the seven hundred and fifty dollar check for first, last and security deposit. I thought two fifty a month for rent was steep, but it was within our budget. Steve saw my frown and chuckled. He thought my frugality was a stitch.
"It's only money, Cheap Charlie," he said, "and you can't take it with you."
I thought getting permission to live off post would be a major hassle, so I was pleasantly surprised when the first sergeant didn't even blink at my request. As a matter of fact, he authorized me to receive the basic allowance for quarters that married men living off base drew, and even signed off on separate rations for me. I walked out of his office all smiles because not only would I be living off base with Megan; I'd be drawing an extra hundred and thirty dollars a month to do it with. True, I'd have to pay to eat in the mess hall, but I figured that would only cost five dollars a week at most, since breakfast was a quarter and lunch was fifty cents.
Top gave me a stern lecture about living off base being a privilege that he'd revoke in a heartbeat if I fucked up, told me I could not move out of the barracks until I had a telephone and then sent me on my way. I was excited as hell and couldn't wait to call and give the news to Megan. With all my pay and allowances, I was now making just over three hundred dollars a month. Since I had basically paid three months rent in advance, we wouldn't have to dip any further into our savings to make ends meet while Megan was up for the summer.
It was different for Steve, because he was single. He was granted permission to live off post, but he had to maintain his place in the barracks also. He did not receive the extra pay and allowances, but money wasn't a problem for him and Roxanne.
School ended for Megan on the second of June and two days later she drove up to Fayetteville. Her parents followed her up in his big dodge pickup truck loaded with what Megan and her mother felt we needed to set up house. Her parents planned on staying for a couple of days to see the sights, so we offered them our second bedroom. Mister Stedman laughingly declined the offer.
"We'll get a motel room so you two can get reacquainted. Besides, I'm tired and need my rest, and if we stayed here, Megan's screeching would keep us awake all night."
Newly single Roxanne drove down from Chicago two days later. By then, Steve and I had started the heavy weapons course and were spending a lot of time out on the mortar range, so Megan helped Roxie settle in. It took about twenty minutes for the two women to become best friends. You'd think that strange, considering the women's backgrounds, but like I said, that was Megan's nature. She immediately found the common ground between them. Roxanne was also likeable and not nearly as flamboyant as she appeared. Roxie told Megan that falling in love with Steve had driven her a little crazy, and being separated from him made her even worse.
Steve and I completed phase two in the middle of July. We changed companies again and went back to the slave market until our class filled. Our luck held and we ended up on the same team again, me as the light weapons leader and Steve as the heavy weapons man.
We started phase three the second week of August. Our new first sergeant let us continue to live off post. About that time, Megan sat me down and informed me that she was not going back to Valdosta and her teaching job there. Instead, she'd applied for a position teaching at the elementary school about three miles from our apartment. Doing that was a big gamble on her part, because when I graduated from the Q course in a couple of months, there was no telling where I'd be assigned. It was entirely possible we'd end up having to relocate. Regardless of the gamble, I was happy as hell that she was staying.
Phase three was all about guerilla warfare and training and leading indigenous soldiers, the primary mission of Special Forces. We also received a good dose of counter insurgency training, modeled on the conflict in Vietnam.
After four weeks in the classroom and local training areas, we were placed into isolation and prepared for our final training mission — a two week FTX in the mountains of western North Carolina in the Pisgah National Forest. The exercise was cool, because the SF instructors up there had recruited some of the local folks to portray both supporters of the insurgency and citizens loyal to the government in power.
We completed our missions and avoided capture, so on the tenth of October, 1966, we graduated and became full fledged Special Forces soldiers. Right before the graduation parade, Steve and I were promoted to staff sergeant. Since the lowest rank on a Special Forces team was sergeant, enlisted men who completed the course were automatically promoted to that rank. As an incentive, the top ten percent of each class was promoted to staff sergeant. Both Steve and I made the Commandant's List, so Megan and Roxanne got to pin on our new staff sergeant chevrons with its one rocker.
To add icing on the cake, I was assigned to C Company of the 3rd Special Forces Group, which was located right there on good old Fort Bragg. Steve and I didn't go to the same group, but he was staying at Bragg as well. He was assigned to a team in A Company of the 7th Group.
Life was good!