It was October of 1966.
I'd been drafted into the United States Army with a show-up date of October 31st. After actively avoiding the draft for years, this date was full of irony. Halloween. All tricks, no treats.
One could avoid the draft back then if you were going to college. It was called a 2-S Deferment. I went to school, sort of, in order to keep my ass attached to my body. But I didn't actually attend classes. I was too busy shooting pool. For money. Sometimes Big Money. I couldn't be bothered to actually GO to school. So they kicked me out, one by one, until there was no more deferment available. I cried all night.
So I gave in and showed up. I'd avoided participating in that misguided "police action" in Southeast Asia, but I could no longer do so. It was time to submit. So instead of being drafted, I enlisted. To become a sniper.
I was soon deep into Basic Training. A couple of weeks into an 8-week Fort Leonard Wood version of Hell. Where they beat the previous "YOU" out of you, and replaced it with the "ARMY" you. They take away your name and give you back a number. And make you like it. Soon, everyone's a grunt first, and somebody from Detroit, or Los Angeles, or Des Moines second.
I was preparing to go into the tear gas training, where they pull the pin on a cannister and toss it into your tent. And then make you take your gas mask off, breathe deeply, and recite your name and serial number. Just to make you suffer. All this was looming when a sergeant tapped me on the shoulder. He told me to report to the HQ building, and make it ASAP.
I opened the office door and there were two big guys standing there in off-the-rack, blue serge J.C. Penney suits. They had obvious bulges under their armpits, hiding G.I.-issued Colt .45's, no doubt. I was soil-my-shorts scared about then, wondering what Army Regulation I'd violated. And what prison they intended to bury me under. I need not have worried.
Apparently I'd performed well on my entrance exams. Well enough that I was being offered my option of tranferring to either the White House Communications Team, or Army Intelligence. Say, um, wha...? And they'd come to manage that process.
Yes, I'd apparently managed to piss away anonimity and attract big-time attention. From do your time and get out, quietly, to "Chuck Saves the World," please make your choice as to how.
The White House Commo Team is an elite group that travels to wherever the President's going, only a week or two sooner. They set up all the requisite communications arrangements necessary for his visit. The wire and satellite and TV stuff. Make sure the mic works when the Big Guy starts to speak.
And Army Intelligence is a bunch of spooks who live and die pretending to be James Bond. Without the preferred License to Kill, I might add.
They had just offered me a way out of this awful, nasty, cold (DID I SAY COLD?) torture chamber called Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Colder than a well digger's ass in the Klondike, I remember saying to myself. Like a witch's tit in a brass bra. Daddy always told me, when faced with a choice between negatives, choose the choice least negative. So it was Army Intelligence for me.
I know, I know.
BTW, they let me know that sniper school was out. Seems like your glasses tend to steam up when low-crawing through saw grass in 120 degree, and Viet Nam-style humidity.
So I wound up on an entirely different track. No churn-'em-out fodder for that dumb fight in VietNam, I was to rather receive highly specialized training on stuff they wished to protect. Like America's Freedom! So they kept me away from gunfights, and on to fighting of a more, umm, "global," gentile sort.
(NOTE: Even after all these years, I'm still under Secrecy Agreements about some specifics. But I hope my generalities prove sufficient.
They first sent to me Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to learn all sorts of spook stuff. Belvoir is just outside D.C., so you can imagine how much fun that was. Then on to Europe. Germany, at first, then France, back to Germany, then Holland, then Northern Italy, and back to Germany.
I can tell you about one of my more interesting assignments. Turns out the Army decided to appoint the very most "strack" enlisted man in all of the Service, a guy named William O. Woodridge, to the newly-created position of Sergeant Major of the Army. Making him the highest ranking enlisted man in all of the Army. He was serving in Hawaii when the announcement came out. He then relocated to Washington, D.C. But he left behind a mess. A worldwide mess. An illegal mess.
All the necessary background checks had not been done before Wooldridge's appointment was made. The Army was anxious, believing such an appointment would be a crowd-pleaser. And when the background checks finally came in, it seems he was under investigation on a purported slot macnine "rake-off" scandal. One that just might derail not only his appointment, but his Freedom...
Every Army base has an NCO/EM (non-officer) club. And every one of those non-U.S. clubs in the Army had slot machines at the time. Usually 20 or more, electro-mechanical slots, in your choice of nickle, dime and quarter. When you put in your coins to play, they dropped into a tube. Which counted and then deposited coins in a tray in a locked receptacle below. However, to make sure the machine could pay off a jackpot, the tube had to be full. It took about 45 coins to fill to chutes, regardless of denomination. And these coins were not yet counted! Meaning some enterprising soul could steal everything in the chutes and not be caught. And that's 20 tubes, x the denomination, x 3 machine dumps per week. Multiplied by the number of clubs, times the number of Army bases.
We're talking $Millions (the Army guessed they were stealing more than $150 million a year!).
As the 1971 book, "The Khaki Mafia" memorialized, there were hundreds of co-conspirator NCO's around the world who were a part of this rip-off. All reporting up the chain of command to Wooldridge. And Army Intelligence wanted me, a lowly Sergeant E-5, to transfer in to one of those clubs, and gather enough information to try and put the Woodridge cabal in Fort Leavenworth.
"But I get out in six months," I responded! My favorite colonel, one Vance Owen Smith, convinced me to extend my enlistment for 6 months so I could put the cherry on top of my career. You have to first know that everybody in the Army back then wanted only one thing; to get out. So it took some convincing, but I finally gave in. But only on one condition. The only copies of my extention paperwork would be destroyed except for the ones that went to payroll. So my paycheck would continue. If things got ugly, I wanted to be able to say, "Hey guys, I think I ought to be out of the Army!" Then make a dash for the airport to get out of Dodge. Colonel Smith agreed.
I got to the "NCO/EM Club International" on November 5th, 1969. The Club was a converted B-29 bomber hanger. It was huge. Plus it had three quonset huts attached for the kitchen, the office and the 22 slot machines. It featured seating for 450 soldiers, plus a revolving stage. One band played off while another played on. There were 40 in the kitchen staff, serving up the best ribeyes anywhere. At $1.25. And dime cocktails. It was a big deal. And I, a 25 year-old buck sergeant, the lowest ranking Club "Custodian" in the Army, was running it.
I signed on as responsible for more than $450,000 in Club cash. I was told I reported to an Army Armor colonel in Mannheim, whom I never met. I was issued the Club station wagon and allowed to live downtown in an apartment. I came to work in a suit and tie, whenever I chose, which really angered my company first sergeant. He was also pissed because I had a 1965 Porsche 911 and he only drove an MGB-GT. Sh*t happens.
Within a couple of weeks my Club manager found all the proof we needed. He was a retired Air Force E-8 club manager, so he knew his stuff.
The previous custodian, Haskell C. Latham, Jr., had stolen tens of thousands from this Club. Not knowing I was "the Man," he had showed me damning evidence before he left. In the trunk of his Mercedes were two shoeboxes full of $20 solid gold Double Eagles. Hundreds of them. And three mink coats. And bundles of cash wrapped up with red and yellow rubber bands. All this from a Staff Sergeant E-6.
And the supposedly trustworthy private company the Club had hired to pick up the keys from the Duty Officer and bring them to the Club, so the slots could be drained, was a co-conspirator. His name was Ed Arceneaux, with whom he and Latham shared the spoils. I brought the evidence with me to my superiors and laid it out. Within three days the Army's Judge Advocate General had produced a warrant. It was combined with warrants from other European and Asian clubs and Sergeant Major of the Army Wooldridge was arrested on January 20, 1970.
I provided a sworn statement and packed my bags. I wanted to get out of the Army before they could compel me to wait around and testify. Most likely at the trial to be held in D.C. that summer. Wooldridge was tried and convicted. But because the Army was so embarrassed at having its top enlisted soldier a convicted felon, they gave him home confinement and 12 months' parole. Swept it under the carpet, they did. We had Woodridge cold, but he dodged the proverbial bullet.
I heard Latham was tried in NC for tax evasion, the same charge that derailed Alfonso Capone, but died from cancer before he could be jailed. More than 230 other NCO's who were still on duty around the world also bit the legal bullet. I understand 90 of them were imprisoned and the remainder were purged.
As the saying goes, they "F-cked around and found out."
NOTE: In you're interested in learning more about this conspiracy, Google the book "The Khaki Mafia" or "William O. Woodridge."
