The 53rd Hostage

We sat in the back of a deuce and a half (two and a half ton truck), dressed for battle, M-16's, M-60's, hand grenades and other weapons were loaded up. It was full alert. In a few weeks I was scheduled to get my discharge from active duty. My Army contract stipulated that I had three more years of inactive duty. I didn't take that very seriously until we went on full alert.

In a few weeks the impetus for the alert, the Iran Hostage crisis would be over. The last 52 hostages would be set free. I believe they were released on Reagan's inauguration day, January 20th, 1981. It was also the day that I was released from the tyranny of the military.

I'm not sure how long our alert status lasted. It seemed like a week or so. Many of us waited in between breaks of smoking hash. Hash was ubiquitous in the military in Germany at the time. I was telling my friend David about my experiences in Ludwigsburg, dealing hash, selling black market cigarettes and whisky. He said you should watch Buffalo Soldier with Joaquin Phoenix, it sounds like a similar experience. I did watch it. I think it failed to capture the humor, but it captured some of the detached behavior. I was never so pissed off at humanity in my life as I was in the Army, but I also laughed a lot. I made two trips to rehab, the first for alcohol, the second for heroin. For the first one I poured a beer on a lieutenant's dress black shoes, while he was wearing them. I said I didn't really remember the incident, that helped me avoid a court martial, the alcohol made me less accountable. A few months later I tested positive for opiates, heroin. I wasn't addicted. I probably snorted and smoked it about 50 times in two years, but never shot it up. I wasn't addicted to anything in particular. I liked to get high.

Being on alert waiting, and maybe going to war, I always thought of myself as a pacifist, but at 22, high on drugs, just waiting for any new episode in life, I thought maybe, I need to go to war, as a rite of passage. Even then I was aware of how self absorbed that sounds. There is no way that I can really place myself in that reality vicariously. I wanted to write a novel, I thought I have to experience everything. If I had gone to battle, I may have ran.

I was in a military intelligence unit. We did have a few bright lights of humanity. Most of them were regularly disciplined. There was one guy, William, he was a little older around 25. He had been a high school English teacher. He joined, because he couldn't figure out the next step in life. He had a huge book collection, and more books were constantly coming to him in the mail. He was the professor to a few of us, from the San Francisco area, he directed me to several transgressive writers. I guess that fit. I remember reading a Henry Miller book, I think it was Tropic of Cancer. I came across the word weltschmerz. I thought that it was interesting that a German word was in his story, then I realized the word is also in the English dictionary. It translates into world pain, welt-world, schmerz-pain, suffering. When a local would come up to me and ask wie gietz? (How are you?), I would respond Ich habe weltschmerz (I have world pain). It was a great ice breaker.

I thought I might see the hostages at the airport in Frankfurt. They were transiting through Germany. I didn't see them.

I can't remember exactly where the bus ride started, but we were headed for Ft. Jackson near Columbia, SC, to finish processing out of the Army. I hadn't been in the states in over two years, billboards everywhere, everything looked ugly to me. I wanted to go back to Europe.

My family and friends met me at the airport in Orlando. I was happy to see them. My brother said, "The 53rd hostage is home."