Arrival

"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." —John F. Kennedy

Sitting quietly looking out the window, I vaguely heard the pilot announce that we would be arriving in Columbus in fifteen minutes. It was a beautiful morning for flying—the sky was clear at our altitude; below I could see the clouds looking like cotton neatly arranged in a surgeon's tray. Occasionally there was a break, and the tops of the green pine trees and red, sandy roads showed clearly.

The GI beside me woke and stretched.

"You headed for Benning, kid?" the NCO asked.

"Yes," I replied.

I looked at the sergeant and noticed that he was young, probably not much over twenty, small and slim with a wispy, premature mustache. On his chest were two rows of ribbons, but the only one I recognized was the Purple Heart. He was probably two or three years younger than me, but since he was a buck sergeant and had been to Nam, he could call me "kid."

"What are you going to do at Benning?" the sergeant asked.

"I'm supposed to go to Officer Candidate School. You?"

"I just got back from Nam, and I'm going to check in with my new unit before I go on leave."

"Your new unit?"

"I'm going to be an instructor in Jump School. You goin' airborne?"

"No, I don't think so. I've got to get through OCS first."

"Yeah and that's a bitch I've heard, but so's jump school."

At that moment the pilot announced that it was time to fasten seat belts, so we both did and became quiet. Again I looked out the circular window and watched the plane descend through the cloud cover. As we came through the mist, I felt as though I were passing through some kind of mystical barrier in a science-fiction movie, and for some reason I had the urge to bend down in my seat, draw my knees up, and put my head between them. I felt the plane's wheels touch down, causing a momentary rush of fear and excitement until the reassuring sound of the wheels rolling solidly on the asphalt caused me to sigh and relax.

I had been drafted in January '69, right after I'd graduated from college and just as Nixon was inaugurated, and although I didn't have much faith in Nixon's campaign promise of a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, I thought the country's mood would change within a year or revolution would thunder in the streets. So after I was drafted, I learned that I could volunteer for Officer Candidate School and delay my entry into the Army for four months. Given the four months for Basic and Advanced Individual Training and the six months of OCS, I could bide my time for months. Long before my time was up, I expected the fighting would be over.

I had decided not to go to Canada, not so much because I was afraid of losing my country but mainly because of my grandfather, the first Jefferson Bowie Adams, the man for whom I had been named. Granddad was a veteran of World War I and worked on the railroad before he settled down on his ranch in Mariposa, Texas, to raise a few Herefords and a lot of hell with his neighbors. He was a curious combination of southwestern independence and patriotism, spoke with pride about his military days. He had joined the cavalry before the war broke out, and he would bring out his pictures of himself in uniform riding his favorite mount, Chief Bowles, named for the leader of the Cherokees in East Texas. Then he would tell war stories about the Argonne Forest and Belleau Wood. They still called them cavalry units then, even though horses weren't effective in war by then and were mainly ceremonial. So it was for Granddad that I, Jefferson Bowie Adams, II, had decided to go to OCS, knowing that if Granddad's namesake hightailed it for Canada, his disgrace would be too great a burden for him to carry and for me to live with.

I also wasn't sure what to think about the war in Vietnam. I had been raised to believe in my country and its leaders. I had read about military heroes and had seen Audie Murphy, a slight orphan boy from Texas, in To Hell and Back at least five times as a kid in the 1950s. There was something of a fascination with the belief that each generation had a war in which the boys became men. I had been brought up to believe that Americans had a God-given right to lead the world and that American leaders sought truth and justice against the forces of darkness, in this case the Communists working through the Vietnamese. And I had also learned to believe as I grew up that the little peoples of the world needed our help in learning to walk the straight and narrow.

Now in November 1969 I was on my way to Infantry OCS while the war continued like a bad movie. The end of the runway approached, and the plane taxied toward the terminal. When we were stopped, the sergeant stood up, got his gear from above the seat, turned to me, and remarked: "Good luck, kid. If you make it through, I'll salute you and call you 'sir' one of these days."

"Thanks, if I make it through."

In the terminal I learned I had an hour to kill before the taxis could take me out to the base, so I began to look around for coffee. I moved out through the passenger waiting area and saw a small room where several servicemen sat. I took a cup of coffee from a pretty, round-faced, dark-haired girl wearing a striped outfit and tried to hand her a dime.

"Oh, no," she protested, "compliments of the USO. We still take care of the boys."

"Thanks," I replied and walked to a corner table, careful not to spill my coffee. I took a drink and let the liquid flow slowly into my stomach, warming me and pricking my mind alert as I thought about six months of OCS. I had heard many rumors about jumping off the truck and being forced to low-crawl across the cement dragging my duffel bag, but I knew that an army travels on its rumors, so I wasn't worried. Nor was I really anxious about the physical requirements. But I was concerned about my decision to carry out an act that required me to do something I wasn't sure about.

The Columbus, Georgia, airport looked like the kind of airport you would expect in an army town. It was small, with telephones lining the walls. Wherever there wasn't a telephone, there was a pinball machine, one of the many money-takers aimed at getting a quarter from a guy who wants to forget where he is. GIs were everywhere—hunched over the machines, talking passionately into the phones, sprawled wherever there was enough room for a man to get. It was another big day at the airport.

At an information booth I found a Columbus Chamber of Commerce brochure that told me a little about the region. Columbus stands at the central western...