On the night that Steve and I graduated from the Special Forces Qualification course, we took our women out to celebrate. Roxanne was in charge of the evening, and insisted that we dress up. So I put on my all purpose, wedding, funeral and baptismal JC Penney suit. Megan, however, broke out a brand new little black dress that showed a hint of delicious cleavage and ended just above her knees. She also wore smoky silk hose and a pair of three inch patent leather pumps. She had her hair in a sophisticated French braid and a little make up to highlight her beautiful eyes. Snuggled just at the top of her cleavage was the gold heart locket I gave her the night of our senior prom.
"Wow!" Mister Eloquent exclaimed when she walked into the living room.
Megan giggled and took my arm in hers.
"It's a special night, Jody, so Roxie helped me pick out a new outfit for it."
Roxanne's dress was similar to Megan's, except it was green and lower cut. Of course the low cut thing might have been just a result of her large breasts stretching the fabric. Roxie wore green often, because it matched her eyes and set off her flaming red hair. Steve was wearing an obviously custom tailored Brooks Brother's suit. I felt like the ugly duckling in my three year old Jacques Penne off-the-rack special.
We piled into Roxanne's snazzy new wine-colored Bonneville and headed out. We were like teenagers in that car. Steve was driving with Roxie sitting as close to him as she could get, his arm slung casually over her shoulder. Megan and I were in the back; close enough together that a sheet of newspaper wouldn't fit between us. We had been on the road for about five minutes when Megan giggled and pointed to Steve's arm. I chuckled myself when I saw his elbow moving, it was patently obvious what was going on up front. With a devilish grin, Megan took my hand and put it on her thigh. I squeezed her supple flesh and tried to torment Steve.
"You loose something up there Buddy?" I asked.
Roxie giggled and answered for him.
"Yeah, but he found it already."
With Roxanne in charge of the evening, I wasn't that surprised when we pulled up in front of a swanky country club. The place even had valet parking. The only other place I'd been where someone parked your car was the Valdosta Memorial Funeral Home.
The place was even fancier on the inside, with gilded trim, fragile looking French furniture and crystal chandeliers. The dining room was just as impressive as the lobby, I noticed, as the snooty Maître d' with the fake British accent led us to our table. I guess I looked a little pale when I saw the prices on the wine list, because Roxanne gave me a smile and patted my hand.
"The evening is taken care of, Jody. It's my graduation present to all of us."
The sommelier, (I learned that word that night) brought out a bottle of chateau something or other that was fifty bucks a pop according to the wine list. He poured us all a glass, but before we could pick them up, Steve slid off his chair, took a knee and grabbed Roxie's hand.
"Roxanne Fuller, will you marry me?" he said smooth as silk.
Roxie didn't look a bit surprised as she nodded her head yes. When Steve started to slide the ring on her finger, she stopped him.
"You know how I am about you Steven, if you put that on me, I'll kill you before I give it back," she said, her tone as serious as a heart attack.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Steve replied as he slipped the ring onto her finger.
There was some applause from the surrounding tables as Steve hopped back into his chair and kissed his future wife. I stood up and proposed a toast.
"May you two be as happy as us," I said as I looked at my smiling wife.
We clinked glasses, took a sip, and I sat down. To my surprise, Megan stood up and held up her glass.
"I have a toast of my own," she said.
I looked at her in confusion as she and Roxie exchanged grins.
"I toast my husband's timely promotion..."
When she paused, we all raised our glasses. I was blushing at being called out in public, when she continued.
" ... because we are going to need the money next April when I have this baby," she finished.
I swear that my vision blurred around the edges as the blood rushed out of my head. I think I blacked out for a second, because suddenly Megan grabbed my arm.
"Easy Honey, here ... take a sip of your drink."
I nodded dumbly and took a sip of champagne. My head cleared quickly and I set down the glass and just looked at Megan in awe. She giggled, leaned forward and kissed me.
"I told you it was a special occasion, Hubby Bear; I just didn't tell you all the reasons it was special," she said.
Steve cleared his throat as I was grinning goofily and staring into Meggie's big blue peepers. He was smirking when I looked over at him.
"I wish I had my camera, because you looked like you had been poleaxed," he said.
I could only nod my head, because that was exactly how I felt. Roxie immediately wiped the smirk off his face.
"Don't look so smug, Big Boy, because you are in the same boat, and twins run in my family."
Needless to say, it turned out to be a hell of a celebration. And it was all cooked up by my innocent little Wifey. Steve confided to me that he was going to propose to Roxanne as soon as we graduated. I passed that tidbit along to Megan and swore her to secrecy. Two days later, a tearful Roxanne told Megan that she was pregnant. Roxanne and Steve didn't use any protection, because Roxie thought she was barren, now she was scared to tell Steve about her condition, because she didn't want him to feel trapped into marrying her. Megan quickly told a very relieved Roxanne about Steve's forthcoming proposal, that's why she hadn't been that surprised by it.
A week later, Megan, who neglected to tell me that she had stopped taking her birth control pills, found out she was also in a family way. She relayed the good news to Roxie, and then she cooked up our evening of surprises.
I was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group for the next fourteen months. I ended up on Operational Detachment A-331 when the only weapons man on it retired. It was some serious stroke of luck that I ended up on that team. I was the youngest of the seven enlisted men and one officer on A-331. All of the other enlisted men were long serving senior NCOs waiting to retire. The first lieutenant who served as team leader was a Reservist recently called up from the Individual Ready Reserve. The lieutenant was unhappy about being back on active duty, so our team sergeant didn't have to do much convincing for the man to find other things to do rather than train with us.
My teammates were about the greatest, but craziest bunch of guys I've ever met. As soon as I arrived on the team, they took me under their wings and made me part of the craziness. The ringleader of the bunch of Looney Tunes of which I was now a part was Lyin' Ryan Ragan. Master Sergeant Ragan was our team sergeant, and the biggest bullshit artist to ever don a green beret. Lyin' Ryan could talk his way out of (or into) anything.
MSG Regan had five kids scattered among three ex-wives. All three of his exes lived in or around Fayetteville, and all three claimed that they still loved him, they just couldn't live with him. I know from personal experience that if he called one of them, they dropped what they were doing, happy to be at his beck and call.
The way he worked people was some sort of weird magic. I mean he'd sit down and start talking and you plainly knew that every word out of his mouth was a complete fabrication. Then suddenly you aren't so sure he is lying, and your head starts nodding up and down. By the time he stands up, you have your wallet out, giving him your last twenty dollars so one of his kids can have open heart surgery.
As good as Ryan was with tweaking us guys, he was twice as effective with women. He could walk into a bar and within half an hour leave with the prettiest woman there. That might have been explainable if he was handsome to go along with his gift of gab, but the truth was that he was an average looking guy with thinning hair. He also wore black framed army issue glasses with lenses as thick as the bottom of a coke bottle. If he looked directly at the sun, those lenses would burn a hole through the back of his head.
We had another character on our team named Jerry Smeltzer, who everyone called Squirrel. SFC Smeltzer was a demo man who spent three years in Vietnam at some remote A-Camp. Undoubtedly that assignment was a mind altering event, because Smeltzer was absolutely, certifiably crazy, which is how he earned his nickname. I liked the hell out of Squirrel, but at the same time, he scared the shit out of me. Squirrel did not even go to the latrine without a pistol and knife, and he played around with explosives as if they were Play-Doh. Squirrel was a bachelor and lived in a mobile home out in Spring Lake, a small town on the opposite side of Bragg from Fayetteville. I only visited his trailer one time. I never went back after he proudly showed me a bedroom packed from floor to ceiling with explosives he'd smuggled off the demolition range. Jesus, he must have had a ton of C-4, composition B and TNT stashed in there.
Like I said, the older guys on the team took me under their wings and taught me what being a Special Forces soldier was all about. At the same time, their spouses latched on to Megan. I learned from those guys what it really meant to be part of a team. We did everything together, whether it was cleaning the latrine of our team house or conducting morning sick call at the Shangri-La Bar in Fayetteville.
We did sick call at the Shangri-La at least twice a week.
Our normal work day started with first call at 0630. After our accountability formation, we took PT then headed over to the mess hall for breakfast. After breakfast, we'd mosey over to the team room to shower and change into our duty uniforms. At 0830, we stood work call formation outside the Company orderly room. After the sergeant major passed out any information he had, he released us to our team sergeants. The team sergeants then conducted the activities listed on the weekly training schedule they made. If our training schedule listed 'area studies' from 0900-1200, we were headed for the Shangri-La, which conveniently opened at 0900. To cover his ass if someone wanted to check our training, he typed 'Team Roam' instead of 'Team Room' for the class location. Ryan was as slick as snot on a door knob.
We frequented the Shangri-La, because the widow who owned the joint was lobbying for the position as the next Missus Ryan Ragan. The owner was a robust German woman named Greta, whose Special Forces husband had died when his parachute cigarette rolled on him during a routine jump. The fellows and I would shoot pool, drink twenty-five cent beer, and bullshit while Greta dragged Ryan back to her office. The weird thing about all this was we actually did do area studies while we were at the Shangri-La, here is how that worked:
Every Special Forces Group has a geographical part of the world as their operational area. The operational area of the 3rd Special Forces Group was Africa. The group's operational area was carved up and each team specialized in a slice. ODA-331's slice was the country of Liberia. Our team had about a dozen thick three-ring binders full of information about Liberia, two of them were classified, but all the rest were from open sources collected over the last five years. We never went to the Shangri-La without one of the unclassified binders.
While Ryan was fostering German-American cultural relations with the zaftig Greta, Preacher Hinson read aloud from the binder and quizzed the rest of us about what he read. It was probably the most effective training environment ever devised. I can still regurgitate facts about the country that would impress a native Liberian.
Preacher Hinson (his given name was Glenn) was our senior commo man, and a deacon at the First Church of the Nazarene. He didn't drink, smoke, cuss or chase women, but he never refused to go anywhere with the team because of his beliefs. In return, no one on the team even slighted him because of his convictions. When Preacher saw 'area studies' on the training schedule, he'd borrow the Church of the Nazarene's twelve passenger van so he could drive us all to and from the Shangri-La. He was the shepherd and we were his misguided flock.
I don't mean to imply that all we did as a team was fuck off, because that wasn't the case. As a matter of fact the guys went out of their way to pass on to me some of their combined hundred plus years of experience. Practicing patrolling with six guys who had a thousand real patrols between them beat the hell out of stumbling around with some other privates like we did in Infantry training. They even had to teach me how to wear my gear correctly so I didn't sound like a herd of cows coming through the woods. Where in Infantry training we tied off any loose straps and wrapped our mess gear in our spare socks, on ODA-331 every keeper, strap and flap was carefully secured with tape. It took me jumping and jiggling for a solid hour before they were satisfied we found peep.
Besides learning from my teammates, I benefited from being on 331 in one other important way — I went to a lot of schools. That happened because when we received a quota for some course or school, none of the older guys wanted to go, so I was sent by default. I attended a locksmith course to learn to pick locks, an Air Force load master course on how to cross load cargo on a plane, and even a one week school on how to drive an Army ten ton truck pulling a forty foot trailer. They even sent me to the jump master course, even though I only had twelve jumps under my belt.
Things on the home front were even better than they were at work. Megan really enjoyed teaching at her new school, and she love being around my teammates and their families. Being pregnant made her even more beautiful, and she glowed with contentment, despite the trials and tribulations of pregnancy. Not only that, but the hormonal boost of pregnancy kicked up her libido a couple of notches. There were times when she jumped me before I had both feet across the threshold. Poor, poor pitiful me, right?
We still lived next door to and were best friends with Steve and Roxanne Pleturski. I thought Steve and Roxie would by a house once Steve was assigned to the 7th Group, but they passed on that idea. Steve was not staying past the three years we were committed to after SF training, so they didn't see any point in making an extra move. Another surprise to me was Roxanne taking a job as a library assistant at the school where Megan taught. I guess it made sense though, because Roxanne loved children and she did have a degree in English Literature from Vassar.
We were all sitting around the team room doing some maintenance on our team gear when the phone rang. The date was Tuesday, April 4, 1967. Ryan answered the phone, said a few words, then called my name.
"Opie, it's Megan for you," he said.
I jumped up and snatched the phone out of his hand.
"Are you okay, Baby?" I asked worriedly.
"I'm fine, Jody," she said soothingly, "but I don't think your child wants to wait until the 19th. I'm at the school in the nurse's office; do you think you can come get me?"
I hung up the phone and looked at Ryan in a panic.
"The baby's coming, I need to go pick up Meggie," I stammered.
Ryan took charge.
"Squirrel, you drive him so he doesn't kill himself. Doc, you go with them, just in case. The rest of us will meet you at Womack."
Doc was Jim Wilson, our team medic, Womack was Womack Army Hospital. I felt much better having the Doc along, because I trusted his medical expertise more than any diploma-holding sawbones I'd ever met.
Doc grabbed his M-4 aid bag, flipped open a pouch and handed me a pill.
"What's this?" I asked.
"Thorazine," he replied. "Take it now because I'm not getting in a car with more than one crazy person."
I gulped the pill dry, then we dashed out the door, jumped into Squirrel's pristine '60 Chevy station wagon and roared away. I don't think there was a traffic law on the books that Squirrel didn't break on that fifteen minute trip. Squirrel Smeltzer thought my wife walked on water. She was like a daughter to him, and she was about the only person besides MSG Ragan that Squirrel paid any heed to, so his sense of urgency matched mine.
We must have been quite a sight as Squirrel and I burst into the school and sprinted to the nurse's office. Megan was lying on a bed when we came zooming in. She looked up at us and smiled sweetly.
"Every thing's fine Hubby Bear, so calm down. And Jerry, it's so sweet that you came too. Will you grab my bag over there while Jody walks me out?"
Just like that, Meggie defused our panic, of course by then, the Thorazine was also kicking in, and that might have helped some. Squirrel nodded and scooped up the bag she had packed and stashed at the school, just in case. The Boy Scouts could have taken lessons from Miss Megan. I helped her up and we walked sedately out to Squirrel's wagon. It was all Meggie could do to keep me from carrying her.
Squirrel pulled his vehicle up to the emergency room doors and we all climbed out. We paraded through the door with Megan holding my arm and Squirrel clutching her overnight bag. As soon as the automatic doors started to swoosh shut behind us, Megan's water broke. The Thorazine had fully kicked in by then, and I was as mellow as a midwife when that happened. Squirrel was another story though, because when he saw the sudden pool of liquid at Megan's feet, his face blanched and he swayed unsteadily. Doc grabbed the bag from him and stood him up straight.
"Go park your car and come back," he ordered.
As Squirrel reeled his way back out the door, a medic arrived with a wheel chair. Megan gratefully sat down in the chair and the medic whisked her through the ER towards an elevator. Doc handed me the bag and I scurried after them.
When we reached the second floor Obstetrics ward, the medic aimed me towards the waiting room. I gave Megan a quick kiss and she squeezed my hand.
"We'll see you in a little while," she said reassuringly.
When I arrived in the waiting room, Ryan, Preacher and Jesse Poole, our junior demo man, were already there waiting for me.
Jesse Poole was only a buck sergeant, even though he'd been in the army nineteen years. In the field, Jesse was about the finest combat engineer alive, but in garrison he was a complete screw up. He was a buck sergeant, because he blew out the front wall of the Circus Lounge in the middle of the night with a two pound block of C-4. He was miffed at the Circus because the bouncers there threw him out one night before he had the chance to check out their new topless dancer ... a dancer who purportedly had three breasts. Jesse beat the civilian charges, but the Army got him for misappropriating the explosives. He was only reduced one rank, because he used Lyin' Ryan as his advocate instead of some JAG officer.
Fifteen minutes later, a much healthier looking Squirrel Smeltzer came strolling in with Doc Wilson. Squirrel handed me a box of cigars with 'it's a girl' printed on the wrapper in pink ink, and Doc handed me a box that read 'it's a boy' in blue. They were covering all the bases.
Because we were nominally supposed to be training, Ryan called in to the orderly room and made a change to our training schedule. We were, he declared, forgoing equipment maintenance in order to receive some medical cross training in OB/GYN.
By then, nothing could bother me, as for the first time in my life, chemicals coursing through my blood stream had me floating about two inches off the floor. Doc Wilson made a production out of checking my pupils and vital signs as I babbled on about how me and Megan were having a baby. I think everyone would have jumped out the window, had not Preacher poured three cups of coffee down my throat to sober me up enough so I'd shut up.
A nurse peeked her head into the waiting room every hour or so to tell me that Megan was in labor but doing fine. The rest of the time, we all took turns pacing the floor. I was blessed to have such great teammates. By five o'clock, the waiting room was pretty much filled to capacity as Steve and Roxanne and some of the team wives showed up to offer their support.
A few minutes before six, a doctor walked into the waiting room. He looked around in confusion at all the people there.
"Jamison?" he asked the room.
I held up my hand like one of Megan's second graders.
He saw me and smiled.
"Congratulations Sergeant, it's a girl. Mother and daughter are both fine and you can go in and see them now. I'm afraid the rest of you will have to wait a few minutes until we have the baby cleaned up and in the nursery."
I shook some hands and kissed some cheeks, then hustled over to the nurse's station. The duty nurse pointed to room 203, so I changed course and headed that way.
Megan looked tired but happy as she held our swaddled daughter and daubed at her with a warm cloth. I kissed Megan's cheek and looked at the precious bundle in her arms.
"Isn't she beautiful?" Meggie asked in awe.
"She's perfect," I said as I tried not to cry.
We named our little girl Shelby Lynn, but she will always be Shelly to me.
My life was about as perfect as it could be for the next eight months. I enjoyed being a father and participating in raising our baby. Poopy diapers did not bother me, nor did getting up in the middle of the night with her. Megan was, of course, as good at being a mother as she was at everything else. For the first six months, she nursed Shelly. She stopped reluctantly when Shelby's doctor recommended it. Megan was sad about the loss of that bit of closeness and she was unhappy that her boobs, which now almost rivaled Roxanne's, would be going away. I kept my feelings on that subject to myself.
Speaking of Roxanne, a week after Shelly was born, she delivered Steven Laurence Pleturski, Junior. Megan and I were the baby's godparents and the Pleturskis were Shelly's.
A couple of months after Shelby's birth, I went on my first deployment, a three week trip to Liberia to help train the Monrovian Battalion of the Liberian Army on counter insurgency and foreign internal defense. The Monrovian Battalion was the elite unit of the Liberian Army. I enjoyed the trip and the work, but I sure missed my little family.
During the last week of September, almost exactly one year after graduating from the Q Course, Command Sergeant Major Ashton, the senior enlisted man of C Company, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), sent word down to the team house for me to report to him ASAP. I walked the block and a half up to the company headquarters, trying to figure out what I had done so I'd know how much of my ass Ashton was going to take. CSM Ashton scared the shit out of me and everyone else in the company.
I trudged into the orderly room and one of the clerks sent me right in to Ashton's office. Ashton looked up when he saw me and pointed to a chair next to his desk. I sat down and he pulled this big ledger out of his bottom desk drawer. He flipped a few pages as I sat there cringing. CSM Ashton was like Santa Claus, checking in his book to see if I had been naughty or nice. According to Lyin' Ryan Ragan, the No-No Book was divided into two columns, one for atta-boys and one for aw-shits. He said it took ten atta-boys to erase one aw-shit. One aw-shit not covered by atta boys got your ass chewed; two got a boot hung in it.
Once when I was Charge of Quarters (CQ), a second lieutenant, whose balls Ashton had in a death grip, offered me a hundred dollars to steal that book for him. I wouldn't have done it for a thousand.
Ashton found my page, silently read over it, then snapped the book shut and put it away. It was the most effective way I've ever seen to put whomever you were interviewing at a disadvantage.
"We received an alert notification for you this morning, Sergeant Jamison. Congratulations, you have won a thirteen month all expense paid vacation to sunny Southeast Asia," he said completely out of the blue.