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    Leftovers: Remembrance of Duty
    Leftovers: Remembrance of Duty
    Leftovers: Remembrance of Duty
    Ebook119 pages2 hours

    Leftovers: Remembrance of Duty

    By James Garrett

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    About this ebook

    Memoirs of a combat veteran and the brothers and sisters at arms he served with.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames Garrett
    Release dateFeb 14, 2013
    ISBN9781301029082
    Leftovers: Remembrance of Duty
    Author

    James Garrett

    James Garrett, a U.S. Army combat veteran, hails from a small Pennsylvania town. A martial arts instructor, Garrett, has received extensive media recognition, including Black Belt Magazine, UPI, AP, and TV networks.

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      Book preview

      Leftovers - James Garrett

      LEFTOVERS – Remembrance of Duty

      Published by J.R. Garrett at Smashwords

      Copyright 2013 J.R. Garrett

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support.

      It is not the years that mark a combat veteran, but the wear and tear of the mileage. When you overuse an ordinance, you are often left with scrap pieces, The Leftovers. It's not just that I have seen them, our veterans remnants wearing the remnants of what was left to and of them. I do not have the right to tell their stories. I have the duty.

      I'll start with L.V., a combat vet with scars and a drug habit left to him from a claymore mine. Still, if I had to choose a man to have at my back in a fire fight, L.V. would be right there at roll call. I met him when I worked in the transportation unit of a V.A. hospital. While we were the minority, two of the five caucs in a thirty man unit, that was no loss of water to L.V. or me.

      Although his leg wound alone qualified him for a 100% V.A. comp benefit, and made me feel guilty for spending my V.A. comp for the bullet hole in my leg, he still worked full-time driving a deuce and a half. His main concern was how you were in the military, how you left it, and if you acted like you had a pair, then and now. We got along just fine.

      I thought of L.V. today while I was waiting in an auto repair shop and had to listen to a guy I'll just call Dick, hold court. If he had any military experience it was limited to how to get out of it. He was pasty-faced, more than a few clicks overweight, and wearing culottes. His main concern was some threat from the president of Iran, Ahm still-a-nut-job, to explode a nuclear device that would negate our vehicles, computers, yes, even our gas pumps. Of course he had the answer. Line everything with lead. Safe, harmless to humans, protective lead. Of course, he had no experience with the exchanges of lead I've been a part of, but the light touch of my wife's elbow to my rib cage, ensured my silent recon of Dick's position on warfare. Moments like that make me miss guys like L.V. and combat with men.

      Remembering L.V. and the rest of the vets in the unit brings back how easy it was to slip back into some military customs. Since at least ninety percent of the men in the unit were vets, and wearing uniforms again, it followed that we called each other by last name, not first name. If Civilians cannot fathom the why of this, imagine a roll call of a platoon, and when the name Bob is called, at least twelve guys yell out, Here! Chaos.

      Naturally, we separated into branches of the service with the usual joking and rivalry. Of course our language was, to say the least, colorful. But, whether a marine or army vet, we agreed that all unit meetings, regardless of subject, were CLUSTER designed by the brass to harass and badger the troops. Some things never change. As to the language, mine became clearly split and defined between work and home, having a cultured wife and a small son anxious to learn by mimicry.

      In all, the fourteen years I spent in that unit of the V.A. hospital were the best of my life, especially since my son, Dane was born during that time. He has always been my soul, and at ten, more man than I or most others could be.

      Although I do have to admit that when I first drove onto the grounds of the V.A. hospital and saw the sign Serving Those Who Served, I felt they meant it. The mission of the V.A. was to serve those who had put it all on the line to serve our country. I had yet to learn the difference between a combat soldier and a combat veteran. When you're a combat soldier you're doing the drill or just about to see action. When you're a vet, the newest politically correct statement to you is Appreciate Your Service. Unspoken is What have you done for me lately? Say on the line to most civilians today and they think you're talking about a computer dating service. So now I wonder if that sign meant they would serve up what's left of us as Leftovers.

      Although we sure had our rivalries and our alpha male stand down, I have to say, as vets we tried to keep the Band of the Hand. Sometimes the situations were humorous, sometimes not, sometimes both. Take J.H. for instance. While L.V. always said J.H. had snafus because he had been a member of the Air Farce, it did seem more like J.H. smoked, sniffed, and sipped. It really didn't matter. He will always be one of us. He was also amiable, gregarious, and in one snafu after another until the weekend he literally took the bus.

      J.H. was licensed to drive any vehicle in the motor pool, right up through the trash compactor and the bus. One rainy Sunday when his own car wouldn't start, he got into the motor pool office to find all the auto and van keys locked up. But the bus didn't need a key, so off he went with the bus, sans any passengers. Sadly, he had barely cleared the gate before the cops, unamused, brought him to bay. This was the last straw for the unit chief, and despite the efforts of a lot of us, J.H. was dismissed and discharged.

      In C.W.'s case, the incident with the bus was well within the line of duty, but potentially more disastrous. Our bus was more than just a full-sized city bus. It had been donated to the V.A. Hospital and was fully equipped to transport all the wounded, even the vets whose first line of transport was a wheelchair.

      This meant load and lock so that a wheelchair, even with its own locking system snafu-ed, could be locked in place aboard that bus. Imagine the shock and awe there was when C.W. brought the bus to a stop, and a passenger disembarked in his wheelchair down the steps for the walking wounded, to land upright and rolling. That vet was so frosty under fire, he never filed even so much as a verbal protest, and C.W. kept his job without so much as a written reprimand. Of course, the rest of us never let him forget it, but had to admit he did keep the faith. Leave no man behind.

      No one reading this should think I was exempt from any screwed missions. We were, after all, a transport unit, and I had the distinct honor of having a government vehicle towed away from where I left it. In fairness though, I was L.L.R.P., and had no one to post as a rear guard. It happened when I was on courier duty off post in the city of Chicago.

      I parked the vehicle on the street outside a federal building while I went in to pick up and deliver documents. Since I did lock the vehicle and we always parked in the same unofficial spot, imagine my shock and awe when I returned to find my wheels M.I.A.

      There was no real loss but time since we did get the vehicle back and the federal government would never pay any city for towing away federal property. Whenever C.W. tried to ride me about it, I told him I was scared to ride a bus back to post, and if M.S. tried, well that was easy. He had managed to accordion a Jaguar against a loading dock.

      In M.S.'s case, it really didn't come around to get him in the butt on the job or in a court. Not that the doc who owned the Jag didn't try. But he was outflanked by the facts. There were too many signs on the dock explaining exactly the types of vehicles authorized. The doc's black Jag clearly did not belong pulled into the dock as though it was a parking spot. Due to the topography of the dock, and the forward position of the doc's Jag, when M.S. wheeled his deuce and a half into position and began to throttle back, the Jag was in the wrong place to be sighted in the truck's rear view mirrors. The result was really noisy and some of the guys who were on the dock then said it was just like a jeep losing a skirmish with a tank.

      The doc of the dock with the shortened Jaguar was a civilian. His attempts to make someone else pay for his parking illegally were more a case of suppressive than friendly fire. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But every combat vet has questioned at least once, where did the phrase friendly fire come from, and are there any friendly civilians toward vets? Not that the V.A. Hospital did not employ civilians. While the vets were supposed to have priority, we did not have exclusive privilege. I remember in particular the summer two brothers, John and Richard, joined us out of some helping hand employment group. L.V. and I were assigned to train them as helpers on the clean linen trucks. At first there was a semblance of a four-way conversation that became less and less as the day wore on.

      Other that the fact that we were all caucs, it seemed we had nothing in common. So the afternoon dwindled into L.V. and me talking to each other, and John and Rich communicating in whispers and their own form of sign language. Finally, I made the mistake of asking how they liked the work so far. Their retorts were that these were slob jobs for grunts. Their remarks brought L.V. to port arms, so he asked if/when they were in the service; were they shavetail (2nd) lieutenants. At this, John

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