|
“The Task Force believes that the military system does discriminate against its members on the basis of race and ethnic background.” - Vol 1 p.17, Department of Defense, Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces, November 1972
“Today’s Army wants to join YOU.” – Recruitment poster
Alongside Sand Diego’s glinting harbor sprawls one of several cavernous office buildings of the U.S. Naval Supply Center.
It is Thursday, a work day, but the custodial quiet of the comparative handful working here lends the place the anachronistic feel of an era long past, as if these few dozen are survivors inhabiting great halls bequeathed to a shrunken military population, tending the system, conducting the rites . . .
One is being conducted now, in a tiny cubicle carpentered into a far corner of the third floor. The room contains nine people – five Marine Corps officers, two advocates, a petitioner and an observer. Three are smoking and with the windows closed on the thunderous chatter of a jackhammer below, the heat and humidity rise.
. . .
Richard Cowsill, 27, is white, a non-singing member of the popular singing Cowsills of some years ago; he got his UD in July of 1971.
. . .
Cowsill says he “left New York City drinking milk and all gung-ho” hit the top of his class in cryptography and made specialist fourth class, then went to Vietnam, where on the second day he smoked his first marijuana and soon thereafter was graduated to speed and 95-proof heroin that cost only $2 for amounts that would sell for $350 to $400, heavily denatured, on the streets at home. He was so ripped on drugs, he says, that when he finished his normal one-year tour of duty in Vietnam, he signed for another, but soon found himself in a drug-induced state, telling his commanding officer that they all should pull out of Vietnam. For about one year Cowsill tried to get out of the service, but says he was first told that his training made him too valuable. Many months later he says a sergeant told him, “You ain’t done nothing bad enough yet.” Still later a government attorney advised him he still hadn’t done anything bad enough to merit even a general discharge. So Cowsill threatened to deck his commanding officer; he was given a UD the next day, after more than three years’ service.
Andrews recalled that at Quant Tri, while a clerk, he overturned an Army jeep and was busted to foot soldier, or “grunt,” and assigned an M79 grenade launcher that he’d never seen before. It was at Quant Tri also, he says, that he first saw U.S. soldiers shooting at other U.S. soldiers – in fact, he says, his own squad leader once pumped a round at him. (Cowsill interrupts: “That’s right. In Vietnam, they say you’ve got two enemies – Charlie and your buddy.”)
. . .
|
