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“I know about Leavenworth,” Fernando said.
“. . . and the chief of staff and some other really senior brass tell them how to behave as general officers. McNab said the real purpose was to make sure the new generals didn’t get too big for their black braid trousers . . .”
“That’s right,” Fernando said. “Generals have two lengths of half-inch braid the seam of their trousers, don’t they? I’d forgotten that.”
“. . . and with that in mind, I was on the four-forty flight from Fayetteville to Columbus, Georgia, via Atlanta, where, starting the next morning, I was to begin the course of instruction leading to being rated as a parachutist.
“ ‘Don’t pay any attention to their bullshit, Charley,’ McNab said. ‘They still think what they call “airborne”—vertical envelopment, which means a thousand hanging targets floating down onto a field—is modern warfare, and getting those wings is an end in itself. Just keep your mouth shut, get through the course, and then come back here and we’ll get you some useful training.’
“So less than twenty-four hours after I arrived at Bragg, a decorated, wounded hero who had been on a couple of interesting operations, and was now to be the aide-de-camp to the deputy commander of the Special Warfare Center, I found myself lying in the mud at Benning with a barrel-chested hillbilly sergeant—his name was Staff Sergeant Dudley J. Johnson, Jr.; I’ll never forget that—in a T-shirt with AIRBORNE printed on it standing over me screaming—I couldn’t do forty push-ups—that he couldn’t understand how a fucking flaming faggot—I loved that line—like me got into the Army, much less into jump school, and I better get my act in gear or he would send me back to whatever fairy-fucking dipshit outfit I came from so fast my asshole wouldn’t catch up for six months.”
“I know the type of gentle, nurturing, noncommissioned officer to which you refer,” Fernando said, laughing. But then he had a thought and asked: “Didn’t he know you were a lieutenant? Had been in Desert Storm? Worse, that you were a West Pointer?”
“That I was a lieutenant? Yeah, sure. But rank doesn’t count in jump school. And I was still a second lieutenant. He probably thought I’d just graduated from OCS, or, more than likely, from some ROTC college. He didn’t think I’d been in Desert Storm, because I was there. McNab brought me home a couple of days after the armistice. And I’d already learned what wearing a West Point ring means . . .”
“What?”
“People watch you closely to see if you’re really perfect and are absolutely delighted when you fuck up. So my ring went in my toilet kit beside my wings. I was pretty stupid, but I knew better than to show up at jump school wearing pilot ’s wings.”
“But you muddled through?” Fernando asked.
“I could even do fifty push-ups by the time I finished.”
“Was there a temptation to show up at the graduation ceremony wearing your wings, ring, and DFC?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t. I’d worked for McNab long enough to know that when he said I was to keep my mouth shut he meant that I was to keep my mouth shut. And Staff Sergeant Dudley J. Johnson, Jr., was really just doing his job, trying to get people through jump school alive. I did see him, come to think of it, a year, eighteen months later. He had applied for Special Forces and reported in to the SWC to go through the Q Course. It was McNab’s turn to give the welcoming speech, and there behind him, in Class A uniform, wearing a green beanie, with the rope of an aide hanging from his epaulets, was this familiar-looking lieutenant, an aviator.”
Fernando chuckled.
“I did check to see how he was doing,” Castillo said. “He didn’t make it through Camp Mackall. They busted him out as ‘unsuitable.’ ”
“What does that mean?”
“It can mean any number of things, but it’s us
ually because the raters, which include other trainees, conclude that he would be either a pain in the ass in an A-Team or that he couldn’t carry his share of the load. Special Forces requires more brains than brawn. You can’t make it on the number of push-ups you can do.”
“Then how the hell did you get through if it takes brains?”
Castillo looked at him thoughtfully a moment.
“Fernando, I’m not trying to paint myself as John Wayne, but when I decided to have this little tête-à-tête with you I decided I was going to tell you everything I could.”
“Okay, Gringo. I understand.”
“I had already passed the real test; I’d been on operations and carried my weight. The instructors at Mackall knew that, so they knew all they had to do with me was give me skills I didn’t have and polish the very few I already did. Aside from having my ass run ragged, I actually liked Mackall. The instructors knew what they were teaching and they wanted you to learn. I can’t remember one of them ever shouting at me, even when I did something really stupid.”
“Interesting,” Fernando said.
“My weekends were free,” Castillo went on. “I spent them proofreading the How to Fight in the Desert literature General McNab was preparing. And staying current as an aviator.”
“How did this affect your social life?”
“If you mean how did I find time to get laid, I didn’t.”
“Poor Gringo.”
“Anyway, I finally finished the course and went to work as his aide.”
