F@#%-Up of the Year

Here’s a little tale from the days of Kent State, Watergate, My Lai, and “Hell No We Won’t Go!” 

When I moved to Parkersburg WV in 1970, I still had two years left on my Army enlistment .  The only unit available was a construction battalion of the West Virginia National Guard.  None of their bulldozers moved or even started the whole time I was there.

Bored out of my mind, I fell in with a kindred soul named Jeffry Myers. He was a sculptor and photographer, winning awards even as a student at Ohio U. in Athens Ohio.  Jeff convinced our “leadership” that he should be our company photographer, and I should be his assistant.  Since they weren’t exactly short of manpower, and this would probably keep us out of trouble, they agreed.  Jeff taught me a lot about photography and cameras, and that if you are brazen enough, you can pull off almost anything.

We screwed around for most of a year, supposedly taking pictures, and posing everyone from privates to colonels in heroic poses for supposed newspaper releases.  This of course meant we didn’t have to stand in any of their stupid formations, because we were always taking pictures.  Sometimes we even had to go into town for “supplies.” I can’t remember seeing anything get published, but since I was just the assistant, maybe I missed it.

When it came time for summer camp, Jeff told the captain in charge that he only had a few weeks left on his enlistment, and he wasn’t going.  And if the captain didn’t like it, he knew where he could stick it, and then walked out.

That’s when I found that every summer camp we elected a F@#%-UP OF THE YEAR, and Jeff was the current title holder.  As his understudy, I vowed to carry on his legacy. 

I told the captain I was going to drive myself to Fort Knox, where we were going to spend the next two weeks, because I may have to leave camp to buy photographic supplies.  In my real job as an Industrial  Designer, I had access to official looking cameras, and I brought along several.

I arrived six hours before the string of trucks hauling our troops and went directly to the PX to buy an XX large cap to hide my long hair.  Outside, a one-star general was explaining to a small group what wonderful tasks would be accomplished in the next two weeks.  I walked up and introduced myself as the official photographer from the Parkersburg Unit.

General One Star shook my hand and told me how important it was for the people of the U.S.A. to know the great job their citizen soldiers were doing, and how I could be part of that “mission.”  I was to meet him at 0700 (that’s 7 AM in F. U. time) to be part of his entourage.  I knew this was going to be an interesting “camp.”

The next morning, instead of standing in formation, I sauntered across the parking lot, got into the back of the General’s Jeep, and we drove off with my cameras clicking.

For the next two weeks, the thousand or so soldiers swarming Fort Knox were actually doing some pretty cool stuff, including building a dirt dam across a big ravine, and stringing a railroad across the dam.  I never saw any heavy equipment on the project. It was all wheelbarrows and shovels.  I guess if you have a thousand unskilled and unmotivated guys to keep busy for two weeks, that’s one way to do it.

Drowning in dust and humidity, I got lots of shots of One Star posing in the foreground, leading the charge.

After a few days, The Gen asked me if there was anything I needed that would make my job easier, and the photographic record better.  “Since your projects are so massive,” I said, “it’s hard to capture their grandeur from the ground (or something like that).  If I could just get a helicopter it would make a world of difference.”

“That’s a great idea!” he said.  “Go to the Fort Photography Office tomorrow and I’ll have everything arranged for you.”

I had no idea the Fort had photographers, or they had an office, or that they had REAL helicopters.  What if they found out I was just a schmuck pretending? I could be in real trouble.

That afternoon I found the photo office, and in the best Jeff Myers tradition walked in like I owned the place.  Wow!  They had cameras as big as desks, which took spy shots from airplanes.  They had underwater cameras, cameras I didn’t know what they did, and all the guys working there were as bored as I was, and couldn’t care less if I walked out with the whole f—n’ place.

I picked out a nifty 16 mm movie camera, a really cool piece that mounted right on the helicopter’s waist gun.  In combat, the gunner leans out the side door and clears the landing zone (LZ) with his M60 machine gun before the chopper sets down, and he can film the whole process. Incidentally, life expectancy of a side (waist) gunner in Nam was about two weeks.

When I arrived the next morning, the camera was mounted, the “bird” was warmed up, the crew was waiting, and we prepared for takeoff.  I got a helmet with an intercom that let me speak directly to the pilot as I hung out the door in my safety harness, filming the day’s events. 

WHAT A RUSH!!  As we swooped down on my buddies building the dam, the ones who weren’t doubled over laughing were busy giving me both middle fingers. We got some great shots of The General as we hovered over the various sites he was in charge of, and I got a new appreciation of what government money and equipment can really do.     

On the last day of camp, the meanest sergeant in our unit grabbed me and two or three other notorious F.U.’s, and said since none of us had done a lick of work, and none of us was worth a shit, he was going to give us a taste of real work before camp was over.

He took us out to a mosquito-infested swamp where our unit had built a set of bleachers with a roof on it.  It was about 20 feet wide and about six rows deep, which put the front edge of the corrugated metal roof about 15 feet off the ground.  We were to “paint everything” before his return at sundown.  Notice he left us no food or water. There were 10 or so five-gallon buckets of cream-colored paint that must have been left over from WW II, and a hand full of worthless brushes.

Being the elite troops we were, we sat around ‘til about 11 o’clock looking at that smelly old paint, which was about the consistency of runny tar.  Somebody mumbled “Hey, he said ‘PAINT EVERYTHING’ didn’t he?  Well let’s paint everything then.”  The grandeur of the idea began to dawn on the assembled troops.

First we opened more of the cans and hoisted them onto the roof.  Someone had found a couple of brooms, and we started pouring the cans at the peak of the roof while more elite troops spread the gunk by broom as it oozed down the slope.  Got a little on our boots, too.

The bleachers were next, and once again brooms were the weapon of choice. The posts and walls were more of a challenge, but throwing the paint from the cans as an assistant spread it proved quite effective. As a group, we were very adept at inventing labor-saving methods.

When Sergeant Meany, who was supposed to have been supervising us, returned, it was obvious he’d spent the day drinking at the E.M. (Enlisted Men’s) Club.   He was dumbstruck, probably by the amazing quality of our work. It was a long tense ride back to our unit.  That evening, in an impromptu ballot, I was elected F.U. of The Year(!), narrowly defeating some stiff competition.  Somewhere I hope Jeffry is proud.