Jeffrey McGowan - Major Conflict

Most of the classes I took in Snow Hall weren’t that difficult. The most glaring exception to this was gunnery. It got so tough I began to question whether or not I was cut out to be in the “thinking man’s branch” of the army after all. Gunnery is a catch-all term that describes the procedures used to calculate the trajectory of a round of flight to ensure that it lands where it’s supposed to. In order to do this one has to use algorithms that account for things like wind speed, muzzle-velocity variations, and precise target locations. It’s the kind of stuff that sends the old geek meter into the red zone for people who are really into that sort of thing. My background was in liberal arts— political science, history. I could talk for days about, say, the nature of the Soviet nomenklatura system or the impact of foreign aid on developing nations, but I was no math whiz. As we moved through the curriculum I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated and lost. I always seemed to be the last one getting the material, if I got it at all. Finally, as the possibility of my failing the class became ever more likely, I ended up getting a tutor. I worked my ass off, and when the final came, I managed to pass, but just barely. My instructor, who happened to be a Marine, congratulated me but then joked that the hammer in his toolbox probably understood the material better. I didn’t think that was quite fair, but marines aren’t often known for their tact, so I just smiled and tried to laugh at his lame joke.

As it turned out, the instructor who had the greatest effect on me at Fort Sill was a woman. Her name was Captain Bridgeport, though she was often referred to behind her back as Captain Bridgebitch. I’m sure had she known she wouldn’t have cared, having developed a tough hide in her years in the service. I admired her. She was one of the first women to graduate from West Point and one of the few women to join the field artillery. I was drawn to her instantly, maybe because I, too, felt like something of a trailblazer, an outsider, though I didn’t consciously see myself this way at the time.

Being something of a ballbuster, she wasn’t a particularly popular instructor. She was especially hard on the West Pointers. Unlike some of the other instructors, who saw teaching as a kind of vacation from the real army, she took her job seriously. And it was obvious from the very beginning that she really knew her stuff. You could tell that she had high standards for herself, and because of this she expected, and often got, the very best out of everyone. On top of this it was clear to me from the start that she had a big heart.

Most of all, Captain Bridgeport had courage. When we listened to her talk about herself sometimes after class we learned just how difficult it had been for her breaking in as a woman. She was spit on, was verbally abused, and was, in a very real sense, forced to pay a far higher price than even the most average of men, simply for the privilege of serving her country. I often wondered where the kind of courage that Captain Bridgeport seemed to possess came from, and why, I sometimes asked myself, I didn’t have some of it.

My first roommate at Fort Sill was Tony Alvarez, another lieutenant. Originally from Fort Lauderdale, he was a great guy, laid-back but quick as a whip. We hit if off instantly, and I learned a lot from him. Since I graduated in June and went on active duty right after graduation, I had to attend the officer basic course with the West Point class. I found this a little intimidating because there’s always been an intense rivalry between West Pointers and ROTC graduates. Luckily, Tony wasn’t your average academy graduate, so we got along fine. He’d been on active duty for four years at the academy, so he was familiar with the day-to-day routine of a post, and he basically took me under his wing.

In many ways my first six months at Fort Sill felt a lot like college. We went to class and studied hard, and spent far too much time at night sitting in bars with sawdust floors, listening to country music, chasing whiskey shots with beer. Years later, when I saw the movie Road House, with Patrick Swayze, I was reminded of those days with Alvarez and the guys. The only difference between the bars in the movie and the ones we hung out in was that the bars we went to didn’t have chicken wire strung up to protect the band.

We’d stay out until midnight, sometimes later if we went to the strip club afterward, and then get up promptly at six-thirty the next morning for PT (physical training). It was always about pushing yourself to the limit in the army, even when it came to having fun. And we were all so young and fit, our bodies seemed to be able to take just about anything. Later on, there were road trips to Oklahoma City and Dallas and Wichita Falls. It was usually Alvarez and I and a few guys from my unit—Dave Bartlett, Jay Squire, and Ron Citro, three West Pointers who really knew how to have fun but were serious about being soldiers as well. We had a great time together and we all got pretty close. We’d sit in the bar drinking and talking about school and women, mostly, and I really felt like a part of the group. I had dated girls in college after all. There’d been Eileen and a few others, so I never really felt like a total outsider. I was one of the guys, though there was always, in the back of my mind, some distant whisper, a phrase from Greg’s outburst in the rain, the memory of some freshly squashed desire (a glimpse of a soldier’s hairy legs; the clean-cut back of a neck; a strong, wide wrist banded with a watch) that kept me just slightly apart. Still, it was usually just a whisper, and it became clear to me early on that the truth was I was far more like these guys than I was different from them. Despite coming from completely different backgrounds, we all shared similar hopes and dreams about the future; we liked a lot of the same music, movies, and TV shows; and we all shared a sense of humor that kept things light and helped us get through courses like gunnery.

I remember the night I first began really to appreciate Alvarez and the guys. It was one of those nights when you become convinced you’ll be friends for life, when it becomes inconceivable that you’ll drift apart and go on with your separate lives. That’s exactly what happened, of course, but on this night I just couldn’t imagine it.

It was the night before our first gunnery exam. I should’ve been home studying, but they’d convinced me to come out with them to the bar. The energy was high that night, and we drank quick and fast and soon found ourselves laughing hysterically at the story Dave was telling to a couple guys from another unit who’d joined us at our table. We all knew the story already, but Dave told it in a way that made us laugh as if we were hearing it for the first time.

We’d been bivouacking on one of the ranges to learn how to call for fire. One night Dave and Ron, always the practical jokers, decided to put some food in front of the tent of a couple West Pointers they didn’t like. They hoped to attract a skunk or a raccoon to scare the crap out of them since one of them couldn’t be convinced that there weren’t bears in the area. But they were disappointed in the morning when they saw that the food was untouched. That night Jay decided to get in on the action, so he placed some food in front of Dave and Ron’s tent. During the night they heard some scratching at the entrance to their tent, and when they looked out were confronted with the largest skunk either of them had ever seen. Dave looked at Ron and said, in the gravest of tones, as if they’d just come under enemy fire, “Remain calm.” But then he panicked. He leaped up and rushed out, tearing the tent stakes straight from the ground, leaving it half collapsed on top of Ron, and terrifying the skunk so that both of them got sprayed head to toe.