Fran glanced out the window of his old car. The late September sun was shining down brightly on a tan, sparkling landscape; the air outside was crisp and aromatic and smelled distinctly of fall. He continued scribbling away on his notepad. Fran then closed his eyes briefly, and the time machine quickly ambushed him and whooshed him away to a new destination………
….…..ya know, the more he thought about it…….Joe did make an awful lot of sense this time!
The poor shit had been drafted into the United States Army and would be officially inducted in January—the year we’re talking about now is A.D. 1968–and he was damned near certain to wind up in that hellacious shithole otherwise known as South Vietnam. A war was raging non-stop there at the time and nearly everyone who was drafted into the military was being fed into that horrific, never-ending meat grinder; the odds of coming home from the ‘Nam in a body bag via the Philippines were about as good as those of scoring a terrific fuck this upcoming weekend–not overly strong, yet imminently possible.
And now Joe, his next oldest brother, was grouchily informing Fran that he had indirectly drawn this “short straw” of misfortune; the luckless bastard had been conscripted into military service and consequently his civilian life was in critical condition and teetering tenuously on life support until further notice.
Fran thought about his own situation, but not for long.
In his mind it was clearly a “no-brainer” decision. Joe was absolutely right; he—Joe–would go into the Army first, be quickly trained, and then get shipped off to Vietnam to suffer whatever outcome fate held in store for him there. If Fran enlisted after Joe was drafted—and with a “Mercy Rule” now strictly in place within the various branches of the U.S. military, a regulation which forbade no more than one sibling in any nuclear family from being deployed to a site of high-risk combat–he would more than likely wind up in some tropical paradise–Hawaii and Guam sprang immediately to Fran’s mind, yet even Germany wouldn’t be so bad……sucking on pina coladas or a zesty local lager and getting paid decent money to just kill time and goof around and play around at soldiering while fucking the eyes out of the exotic native women come the weekends.
Why sit around and wait for Joe’s two year military obligation to expire, have the goddamned war in Vietnam still be steaming along strong and unabated—and then be drafted himself and almost certainly be deployed to that miserable southeastern Asia civil war…….with absolutely no personal say in the matter at that delayed juncture?
Fran shook his head and smiled. Joe was totally right for a change; it all made perfect sense to him now. He would heed the officious asshole’s advice for once.
Only things didn’t quite work out that way, as is so often the case…..
No, not by a fuckin’ long shot, believe me!!!
Joe did in fact enter the U.S. Army first as planned, his innate abilities were duly assessed, and the military “powers-that-be” decided they could best be utilized as a communications specialist. Fran subsequently enlisted in the army per the two brothers’ informal agreement–after Joe, but not by a substantial number of days–and was assigned to training in mortars, the raw equivalent of infantry duty. Fran’s training regimen was markedly shorter than Joe’s; Fran would therefore finish his training program first…….and ergo be sent to Vietnam first as his just reward.
Upon discovering this highly disturbing fact, Joe was every bit the gallant, protective older brother one would expect and hope for in a close-knit Catholic family. He immediately sprinted to the administrative headquarters where his commanding officer was located and filed a written request asking that he be transferred to Vietnam upon completion of his technical schooling. Begged for this assignment, in fact, as the dumbfounded C.O. leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette, and read the just-filed request in amazement while Joe earnestly pled his case in front of the guy.
The expression on the lieutenant’s face at that moment was priceless: Is this dumb bastard completely out of his mind?! Is he a fucking moron?? Who in God’s name wants to go to Vietnam?? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear and can empathize with his heartfelt, Hallmark card-worthy story about his sheltered younger brother who he somberly promised to shield from harm’s way, but how many families are THAT close and really care THAT much about each other when their own life is at stake????? None that I can think of…….
The C.O. lit another cigarette and stared blankly at this husky, Elvisly-handsome draftee who continued to speak shrilly and gesture animatedly in front of him. The taciturn military veteran’s facial expression remained emotionless throughout Joe’s spiel, yet his eyes betrayed the plain truth: I think we better keep a real close eye on this strange guy just in case he turns out to be a psycho who can’t be trusted with a gun in his hands…….
Hence Joe’s frantic beseeching ultimately fell upon deaf ears as the ensuing official military explanation was repeatedly quoted back to the frustrated, guilt-stricken older brother:
Spec. 1 Francis E. Blahnik will be done with his skill modules first, infantry personnel are desperately needed in Vietnam to help placate the insatiable appetite of the war beast—the American military effort was already deeply advanced into its climactic downward losing trajectory by this mid-1968 juncture—and therefore Fran will be deployed to Vietnam just as soon as he is done with his formal training. There was nothing—absolutely NOTHING—that Joe Blahnik or any mortal being could possibly have done at that point in time to change this etched-in-stone army decree.
But for the eighteen-year-old Fran, the emotional shock of this revelation was earth-shaking and traumatizing. He had enlisted into the United States Army primarily on the advice of his trusted elder brother in order to safely discharge any potential military obligation while performing “easy” duty on the soil of some benign foreign location……and now THIS……..to be unexpectedly targeted for shipment off to a diabolical torture chamber otherwise known as the Vietnam War……
Fran would ultimately go to Vietnam, of course–in August of 1968—because like so many other young men his age, he had no say in the matter. He left his pastoral home as a fresh-faced, idealistic lad……and would return home almost a year later a man matured greatly beyond his years. An astonishing metamorphosis took place during Fran’s relatively brief absence. The battle-hardened and battle-scarred Fran Blahnik who returned from the landmine-infested rice paddies of South Vietnam bore scant resemblance to the innocent, laid-back farm boy who had reluctantly departed backwoods Fillmore County in southeastern Minnesota just eleven months earlier.
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