I began a spiritual journey in high school. I had been raised in the Roman Catholic Church, baptized, communioned and confirmed at Saint Peter in Chains Parish in Mt. Clemens. But I felt there was something that rang false in the doctrines taught at CCD on Saturdays. I had read the writings of Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hyppo, the first theologian to write in Latin, and the Bible. These didn’t square with the things the Barefoot Sisters were teaching about the Pope.
One Saturday morning, the sister teaching our class pointed out the window to the Greek church across the intersection from Saint Mary’s School where we took our obligatory classes. She said they are one with the Roman Church, the same Catholic faith. She invited us to visit them sometime. I didn’t go, but I remembered what she had said.
Around that time I began reading the preposterous books of Eric Von Danekken, who tried to prove God is an astronaut from outer space. The oddities he displayed were interesting to read, but the conclusion he drew from it all was to far fetched to swallow. One couldn’t merely suspend disbelief to accept it as state, one would have to hang it with a long drop and extra weight to ensure the neck was broken.
In Boot Camp we were issued New Testaments with Psalms and Proverbs supplied by the Gideons International. I read through the Book of Acts of the Apostles, and every passage Luke referred to that I could find, before I graduated from Boot Camp. At radio school, the message percolated through my soul. I found no pleasure in getting drunk with the other guys, and the desert was calling to me. (Marine Corps Communications and Electronics School is at Marine Corps Base Twenty-none Palms, California, the heart of the great Mojave Desert.)
After radio school I was sent to the Third Marine Division on the island of Okinawa, Japan. Eighteen hours from home by fast airliner, and living with a bunch of warriors who knew if the shoe dropped they were right under its heel, I was already disillusioned with the lifestyle of booze and whores they chased to distract them from the reality in front of them. A small group of us began to experiment with contemplation in the Native American methods, using tobacco as a stimulant and to cleanse us of spiritual influences and sitting in the lonely places by the sea in search of a vision.
That was a wash. The only visions we had were a jumbled mess of confusion and self-congratulation. But one man had a vision that turned out to be prophetic. He saw me suffering many trials and living through much pain and strife. But he said First Man told him Cayote couldn’t trick me into falling for his snares so long as I remained true.
On New Years Eve, 1977, I was in the Club Texas in Henoko Village, Okinawa, drinking strait bourbon and not getting drunk, I didn’t even feel a buzz after six shots. So when the barmaid/pleasure girl brought me a seventh a strange impulse came over me. I turned the shot glass over on the table, leaned back and said, “God, if You are there, and You hear me, show me something better to do tonight.”
I got up like a mean drunk, even though I wasn’t even buzzing, stomped out of the bar and started back to base. When I came to the intersection of Texas Street and Henoko Street, there was a busload of Christians witnessing for Jesus. When they invited me to come with them to their church, spend the night, and attend services the next morning I jumped right into their van. I figured that if God was going to answer my prayer for something better to do with such alacrity, the least I could do is take Him up on it.
It was one of those Full Gospel churches that emphasized speaking in tongues over most of the things Jesus taught. But they did teach the rest of the Gospel in a secondary way, and I took it in. New Years Day, 1978 was a Sunday, and the church held its full service schedule. I attended youth service, Sunday School, and regular service that morning and the two mornings thereafter. That first Sunday I walked the isle and rededicated my life to Christ. They kept urging me to get re-baptized, speak in tongues and quit dipping Copenhagen snuff. But I was scheduled to rotate back to the continental United States in the month of January, 1978. So it was not possible for me to attend the baptismal service they planned in February.
On the temporal side of life, thing happened while I was on Okinawa that destroyed my dream of being a Marine for life. The end of the war in Viet Nam led to a massive Reduction in Force (RIF). The Commandant of the Marine Corps at that time, Gen. Louis F. Wilson, MoH, USMC, decided there were too many fat, lazy NCOs that couldn’t pass a Physical Fitness Test (PFT). He changed the weight standard to the same as the flight weight standard, and I went from being thirty-five pounds under my maximum weight to being five pounds over. Gen. Wilson also ordered that no one could be promoted if they were heavier than the new weight standard. For NCOs above E-5 that meant they would be eliminated from the Marine Corps once they were passed over for promotion three times, once each month for three months. The non-rated men like me could be passed over any number of times without worry about being forced out.
I was put up for meritorious promotion to Lance Corporal (E-3) after only three months time in grade as a Private First Class. But the new weight standard and the no-promotion order kept me from attaining it. For the rest of my time in the Marine Corps, I was submitted for meritorious promotion on the second day of every month (I was that good at my job) and once I had six months time in grade as a PFC I was put up for regular promotion on the first day of every month. In all I was put up for promotion forty-five times from PFC to LCpl. I calculated that if I had been promoted every time I had been put up for it, and taking the General Secretary of the United Nations as one rank above President of the United States, I would have been eighteen ranks higher than God.
I was placed in the remedial weight program for the rest of my time in the Corps. But all the body building I had done in Boot Camp and radio school now inhibited me. If you are doing regular exercise, it is almost impossible to lose muscle mass.
When I first got to the Third Marine Division, I was assigned to Alpha Company, First Tracked Vehicle Battalion. In the radio section of the Headquarters Platoon, we had a corporal who was second in command of the section that told us not to use his name. He wanted us to call him “Farm” because that’s where he grew up, on a farm. I promptly forgot his name and only called him Farm as he wished; he did outrank me by two grades. When I was assigned to provide communications for a training exercise in which the amphibious tractors would swim out to a landing ship, load on the ship at sea, and then unload and swim to shore, Farm told me it was imperative that I keep the battalion operations chief informed if anything happened, because we had an incident in which Marines had drowned when their vehicle sank in thirty feet of water.
The radio net was being monopolized by the ops chief and his diver buddy making small talk contrary to military regulations. When an amtrack’s engine stalled and it had to be taken under tow by another vehicle, I could not convay the information to the ops chief as ordered by my immediate supervisor because of the illegal use of the military channel for private chatter. So as the pressure mounted, I decided to stick my neck out to fulfill my mission. I announced a Flash priority message and then proceeded to inform the ops chief that one vehicle was dead in the water and taken under tow, divers should stand by in case the towing operation failed to bring it to shore before leaks overwhelmed the electrical bilge pumps.
The NCOs were embarrassed by the fact they were violating radio protocol, a standing order. So they turned it against me saying I panicked while at sea and made a false radio call. They couldn’t make it official, because then their own violation would come out in an investigation and they would be punished. Instead they decided to wreck my career with little back-channel comments about me being a trouble-maker. I only desired to carry out my mission, because the lives of my fellow Marines may depend upon it. When it became known that I did that, the tractor crews of Company A began calling me “Flash” and deriding me with the false story of my panic. I knew better, and I decided I didn’t care.
To be continued….
Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.
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