ON JUNE 5, 1971, Lynne and I left Fort Benning with a three-year-old, a brand-new baby, Randy, and a U-Haul trailer stuffed with everything we owned. We drove as far as Meridian, Mississippi, spent the night, then got up the next day and drove to Fort Hood, a huge post sprawling over 340 chalky square miles slap in the middle of Texas hill country. My orders there fulfilled a requirement that I have at least four months’ experience in an infantry unit before shipping out for combat. But those 120 days spent leading a forty-man platoon ticked by slowly. The entire time, I felt like a racehorse at the starting gate.
Late September came, and the orders to Vietnam that Captain Major promised me had still not materialized. Nor did they arrive in October or November. Now I was really getting restless. Christmastime came and I took Lynne and the kids home to New Bern on leave. While I was home, I planned to travel up to Army Personnel in Washington, D.C., track down the infantry assignments officer, and tell him about the deal for orders I’d made with Captain Major. To my Southern way of thinking, there was nothing like a friendly personal visit to establish rapport and knock off any mud that might be slowing down the wheels of progress.
On January 3, the first business day of the new year, a Trailways bus carried me from North Carolina to the Capitol. I called ahead to tell the personnel office that I’d like to have a meeting to discuss my next assignment. When I arrived, a very nice secretary greeted me and pulled out my file.
“Okay,” she said brightly. “Major Major will see you now.”
I nearly fell over. Major Major? I couldn’t believe it. My good-ol’boy, personal visit plan suddenly went up in smoke. Stomach churning, I walked in to the major’s office.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant Boykin?” Major Major said, after I sat down across the desk from him.
I reintroduced myself. Then, treading carefully, I reminded the major that he had, almost exactly a year before, told me that I would have orders to Vietnam four months after my arrival at Fort Hood. Without saying so outright, I made it clear I thought maybe he had forgotten.
Maybe I made it too clear, because the longer I talked, the more disdain collected on Major Major’s face. “Lieutenant Boykin, you serve the needs of the Army,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “Vietnam is winding down and we do not need as many lieutenants there as we did when you were in Infantry Officer’s Basic. What you need to do is get yourself back to Fort Hood and enjoy your time as a platoon leader.”
I wasn’t ready to give up. “Is there any way you can find a slot for me in Vietnam?”
Major Major looked at me as though a large rock occupied the spot where my brain should’ve been. “No,” he said with what sounded like his last grain of patience. “We don’t have any requirements for platoon leaders right now.” His last sentence came out as though a period followed every word.
“Well,” I said, “I just want you to know that I’d really like to go before this war is over.”
Now, a company commander or a division officer in the field might have appreciated my eagerness to go into combat. Major Major did not. He looked at me in the exact same way a complaint department clerk might at 4:59 on a Friday afternoon. “Well, I’ll make a note here that you’re a volunteer for Vietnam,” he said, now clearly bored and ready to move on, “and that if any platoon leader spots open up, we’ll send you.”
Which was a polite way of saying, “Get out of my office.”