Sue and the Light Blue Chevy Malibu

The year was 1970, and I remember that year to this day for two reasons. The first reason is in February of that year I DEROS'd from a thirteen-month assignment with an air defense unit in South Korea. Most readers will wonder why I didn't spend a year in Vietnam like a lot of guys in the Army at that time, and the answer is I have no idea. Only the US Army can answer that question, and I doubt they know either.

I was drafted in August of 1969 and fully expected to end up in Vietnam and up to my ass in little guys in black pajamas shooting at me. That was what all the drill instructors in basic told us, that we'd all end up in 'Nam and a lot of us would come back in aluminum coffins if we didn't keep our shit together.

When you're eighteen, the little gear in your brain that recognizes danger and tells you about it doesn't work yet. All the young guys in my company spent a lot of time joking about how they'd fare in combat. They'd be the best there was and would come home after a year with medals on their chest. Maybe they would get shot, but it would be just a minor interruption in their quest to kill more Charlies than anyone else.

When you're twenty-three, like I was at the time, that little gear spins about a million RPM when you hear that stuff. I'd spent four years in college, had a degree in mechanical engineering, and my whole life ahead of me. Hearing that I probably wouldn't live more than another year sent chills down my spine and kept me awake some nights.

I know now that all that talk was just to get us used to the idea that some of us would be hit and some would die. That way, when one of us got shot or killed, it wouldn't be such a shock to the others and they'd keep on fighting the war. I think it worked on the younger guys, at least until the first firefight, but it didn't work on me.

The day after graduation, we all gathered in the day room to get our AIT assignments. I kept hearing a name and then "eleven bravo, Infantry". Eleven-bravo was the MOS for combat infantry. Once in a while, I'd hear "o-five bravo, Radio Operator". I figured that was a safe MOS until the drill sergeant laughed after he read the name and MOS.

"They're gonna drop your sorry ass in 'Nam with a twenty pound radio on your back besides another eighty pounds of gear and ammo. Radio operators make good targets because the antenna makes it easy to see where they are".

When my name was called, I held my breath. I was hoping for something that would use at least a little of my education. Instead, I heard, "Houston, William H. -- sixteen echo, HAWK fire control crewman".

I didn't know what that was, but figured it would probably be better than walking through the jungle with a rifle and a hundred-pound pack. I didn't really understand until I got to Fort Bliss, Texas and went through the orientation.

A "HAWK" was a surface to air missile, and a fire control crewman tracked targets on a radar screen and determined when and which missile battery should fire if the target didn't respond to the IFF signal sent. The instructor said they'd tried HAWK missiles in Vietnam, but they didn't work because the radar couldn't see through the trees. When he told us we'd probably end up in Florida, Hawaii, or Germany, I was pretty happy. I envisioned sitting on a beach or taking in a few beer gardens when I wasn't on duty.

Like in Basic Training, we received the orders for our next duty station on the last day, and I realized what I'd heard before was true. There is absolutely no way to understand how the US Army assigns soldiers to duty stations. Out of my whole company, the two dumbest guys in the company, the guys who barely made it through school, got duty in Hawaii. The two guys who were actually from Hawaii got assigned to Germany. The rest of us got orders for South Korea.

I got there and expected to go to my duty assignment, but in addition to not being logical, the US Army proved once again that no matter what, they were slow. I was stuck in replacement barracks for a week before I was bused to the headquarters of the Second Battalion, 38th ADA just outside Seoul. It took another two days before I got an actual duty assignment, and that duty assignment once again proved the US Army works in mysterious ways.

I was sitting across the desk from a Spec. 4 and he was reading my personnel file. He looked up and said, "It says here you can touch type. Can you?"

I nodded.

He smiled then.

"I have a clerk at Charlie battery who's going to DEROS in a week and I don't have a replacement for him yet. You're going to be that replacement. Get your ass and your gear in front of the orderly room by two so you can catch the courier when it leaves this afternoon. I'll make sure the driver knows you're coming."

Well, that was an interesting thirteen months. There were good things about being a battery clerk. I basically had a seven to five job in the orderly room, and I didn't have to stand formations every morning. I was warm in winter and relatively cool in summer compared to the guys manning the tactical site.

The bad part was I could never go anywhere. The guys manning the tactical site were on duty for twenty-four hours, on stand-by on the site for twenty-four hours, and then off for twenty-four hours. I was off duty from noon on Saturday and all day Sunday, and that limited my time to see the country. I did manage to get to Seoul a few times though, and learned a lot about how great the US really is. I also managed to get promoted from Specialist Four to Sergeant.

When I got back to Fort Lewis after my thirteen-month tour, I still had about six months of service remaining. I politely declined to re-enlist so I could pick my duty station. By then, I trusted the Army almost as much as I trusted a rattlesnake. I could see some personnel clerk thinking to himself, "Gee, I got a buck sergeant who just re-enlisted. I can send him to command school and then send him Vietnam." I figured I'd gotten lucky once and I didn't want to push it.

After another two days of sitting on my ass in a barracks, I got my orders. I was going back to Fort Bliss for duty as a clerk. It was a job that would normally be filled by someone of lesser rank, but it was a place the Army could stick me for the next six months without having to train me to do something else. I was pretty pleased with that assignment. I already knew the area, and I already knew how to do the job.

Part of any US Army school is a little task laughingly called "guard duty". It's supposed to prepare soldiers for guard duty at their actual duty station. What happens is a training company gets the assignment to guard a particular installation or installations on the base where they're going to school.

What that entails is walking around with a rifle for two hours at a time and making sure nobody tries to blow up the motor pool or the mess hall or whatever else you're guarding. You have no ammunition, so you really can't do anything if such an event was to happen. All you do have is a telephone booth somewhere close. The orders are to call the "Sergeant of the Guard" as soon as you're posted, and if you see anything suspicious, you are to call the Sergeant of the Guard again, report the incident, and wait for further instructions.

The "Sergeant of the Guard" is duty that normally falls to the drill instructors, but since I was a sergeant too, I ended up with that duty about once a month. Other than having to stay up all night, the duty wasn't really bad. The Sergeant of the Guard has the responsibility to get his soldiers to their guard posts on time and to investigate anything a guard might phone in. Since nothing ever happened, I didn't do much.

A little after midnight that night, Private Henderson called in to say he had a situation he needed help with. He sounded pretty excited on the phone.

"Sergeant Houston, I have a car sitting in front of the mess hall and there's a woman in the car. What should I do?"

It didn't sound to me like the woman was going to do anything dangerous. I didn't know why she'd be there at midnight, but sometimes people do things that don't make sense.

"Private, go tell her she has to leave."

He sounded even more excited then.

"Sergeant Houston, I was going to do that but...but...she's naked."

"Naked? You sure? Maybe she's just wearing something you can't see."

"No, Sergeant Houston. I looked. She's not wearing anything at all."

Well, that was strange.

"Private, you get the license number of her car in case she decides to leave. I'll be there in about ten minutes."

When I pulled up to the mess hall, there was one car sitting in the drive where the trucks unloaded food and other supplies. It was a light blue Chevy Malibu. Private Henderson was standing about ten feet from the driver's side door with his M-16 pointed at it.

I got out of my Jeep and walked up to Private Henderson.

"This the same car, Private?"

He nodded.

"Yeah, Sergeant. I told her not to leave, but I don't think she wanted to anyway, not from what she told me."

"Oh, what did she tell you?"

Private Henderson looked up at me and grinned.

"She said she wants to have sex with a soldier."

I had to chuckle. I'd heard this same story when I was in Basic and when I was in AIT. Probably every guy in the entire US Army had heard that story at one time or another.

The story went like this. The woman's husband had been overseas for several months and the woman was horny as all hell. She drove to some guard post that was relatively isolated and asked the guard on duty to fuck her right then and there. She was always completely naked and she was always really hot -- gorgeous face, big tits, great ass, the whole nine yards.

The story then took one of two turns. In one, the guard obliged, was caught, court-martialed, and sent to serve out his term as a private at a secret base in Moose Breath, Alaska where it's about minus sixty Fahrenheit for ten months out of the year and really chilly the other two. In the other, the Sergeant of the Guard tells him to return to his guard post and he'd take care of the woman. What happened with the sergeant and the woman was never explained but it was obvious he'd fucked her like she wanted.

It was a fun story to hear and a fun story to tell, but I hadn't believed any of it. I knew there were Army wives who did want a little companionship if their husband had been gone for a while. I'd seen them in the bars around the base. They'd come as a group of three or so, have a couple of drinks and flirt with the soldiers in the bar, and then they'd go home. I suppose there were a few who did take a guy home with them, but most were just enjoying a night on the town.

I thought it more likely the women in those stories were prostitutes using that line to get the soldier in her car. Then it would go something like, "It's twenty for a blow job and fifty for a fuck and if you don't pay me, I'll go to your commanding officer and tell him you propositioned me. You'll be in big trouble if I do that."

I figured that was what was going on here because like any military base, Fort Bliss had its fair share of prostitutes in the area.

"Private Henderson, continue walking your post. I'll take care of this."

When I walked up to the Malibu, the woman rolled down the window. I saw what Private Henderson had seen. The woman didn't have even thong panties on. I know because the security lights from the mess hall lit up the inside of the car, and I could see the start of a dark brown bush that matched the color of the woman's hair.

She wasn't exactly like the women in the stories though. She wasn't especially gorgeous and her breasts weren't all that big. They looked pretty nice, but not huge. I asked her for her name for two reasons. I needed a name to put in my report of the incident, and when she spoke, I'd find out if she was drunk. If she was drunk or under the influence of something, I'd ask if there was someone who could come get her.

"Ma'am, I'm Sergeant Bill Houston. What's your name?"

"I'm Sue. Are you going to help me out?"

I didn't smell alcohol, and I didn't detect even the slightest odor of marijuana like I'd smelled in the barracks every night in Korea. She was evidently sober. That probably meant she was a hooker.

"I can't do that, Sue. According to the Army regulations, using a prostitute is illegal."

"Oh, I'm not a prostitute."

"Well, Sue. It sure looks that way to me. If you're not, why are you here this late at night and why aren't you wearing any clothes?"

Sue looked afraid then.

"Are you going to call the MP's? Please don't do that. I didn't mean to get anybody in trouble. It's just that...Oh, just forget I was here. You won't understand anyway."

By then, I'd decided she wasn't a hooker. A hooker would probably have tried to talk me out of calling the MP's with the offer of a freebie. This woman hadn't. I was interested though, because she seemed to be a woman who might match the stories after all.

"I won't call the MP's if you tell me the truth. What won't I understand?"

"Can I put on some clothes before I tell you? They're in the seat beside me and I feel really naked. I need to get out to do it."

I didn't think I needed to tell her she felt naked because she was.

"Sure. I'll turn around and you tell me when you're done."

A couple of minutes after I heard her open her door, she said, "OK. I'm mostly dressed now."

She looked a lot different with a T-shirt and loose jeans on. I knew she hadn't put on a bra because her nipples made bumps in the T-shirt. She was also smiling, so that probably helped her look more innocent than I figured she was.

"OK, now tell me what's really going on."

She looked at the ground then.

"I had a boyfriend based at Fort Bliss until he got sent to Germany for two years. We were going to get married when he got back home, but I got a letter from him today. He's met some German woman over there and said he can't marry me now because he's going to marry her.

"I cried for a while, but then I got mad. I mean, we'd been living together before he left, and we'd promised not to do anything while he was gone. I haven't, but he's been sleeping with her for the last three months. That's what he said -- three months. That made me so mad, so I decided to get back at him somehow.

"I knew there are guards around all the buildings at night, and since I'm a manager at the PX, I have a sticker on my car so the gate guards wouldn't stop me. I just drove around until I saw one of the guards. I just thought maybe I could get someone to...well, I just wanted to be able to write to him and tell him I'd slept with somebody else too."

I felt sorry for her. I'd known two guys in Korea who got letters like that, and there was no way I was going to call the MP's now.

"Ma'am, I understand your situation, but this isn't a good idea at all. What you need to do is go home and stay there. You'll still be mad at your boyfriend --"

"Ex-boyfriend", she corrected.

"OK, you'll still be mad at your ex-boyfriend, but you'll be safe. If you agree to do that, I'll let you go."

As she drove away, I was happy I hadn't had any relationship with a woman before going to Korea.

That Saturday, I was off duty at noon, and decided to go to the PX for a new pair of jeans and a couple of shirts. I didn't have many civilian clothes in Korea because I didn't need them. Back at Fort Bliss, there were a lot of things to do off base, and I at least wanted to look like a civilian. People in military towns either like the soldiers or wish they'd just go away. I didn't need to get into any arguments.

I was looking at shirts when someone tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned around, there stood Sue smiling at me.

"Bet you thought you'd never see me again, didn't you?"

"Well, no, I didn't. How goes it?"

Sue shrugged.

"I'm living with it. I went home like you told me but I was still mad. Then I started thinking about what I'd done. It was a really dumb thing to do. It's just hard for a woman to hear that the guy she was going to marry found somebody he liked better. Thank you for understanding and keeping me from doing what I was going to do. I'd like to pay you back somehow."

I smiled.

"No need for that. I was just doing my job."

Sue shook her head.

"No you weren't. If you'd been doing what you're supposed to do, you'd have called the MP's.

"Well, I believed you were telling me the truth. You weren't out to hurt anybody or anything except yourself. Calling the MP's wouldn't have changed how you felt. It probably would have made you feel worse. I didn't want to be responsible for that."

Sue touched my arm then.

"Isn't there some way I can thank you? I'm not working tomorrow. Can I buy you lunch...nothing fancy, just a burger or something like that? Do you have a car? If you don't I can pick you up."

If she hadn't seemed so insistent, I'd have said I couldn't, but the way she stroked up my arm made me say I'd meet her at the Commissary at noon.

It was twelve on the nose when I saw the light blue Chevy Malibu drive into the Commissary parking lot. Sue drove up to the main entrance where I told her I'd be standing, and smiled and waved when she saw me. I walked out, opened the passenger door, and got inside.

"So, where's your favorite burger place", she asked.

There was a McDonald's not far from the gate, and when I suggested it, Sue started driving.

She didn't say much on the way, just that she liked the shirt I was wearing. I wasn't expecting her to talk much. We barely knew each other and this was just her way of telling me thanks for keeping her out of trouble. I figured this would be it. If I saw her at the PX, I'd probably say hi, but nothing else.

Once we had our food and were sitting at a table, Sue did start to talk, or rather, she asked me a lot of questions like what I did in the Army, was I going to stay in, and if I didn't what was I going to do when I got out. She didn't say anything when I told her I was a clerk. When I said I was getting out in about five more months, she frowned.

"I think that was what my ex-boyfriend should have done. He'd have been out in another three months, but he re-enlisted for four more years. I knew what was coming because I'm an Army brat, but I thought I could manage. Now that we're done with each other, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't a good idea.

I chuckled.

"The Army isn't bad if you don't like making your own decisions. I'm getting out because I do. The other reason I'm getting out is I need a place I can call mine, a place where I can come home to every night. In the Army, I could do that for only a year or two. Then, I'd be off to someplace else for another year or two."

Sue took a sip of her milkshake, and then smiled.

"So, what will you do when you get out?"

"Well, I went to school for four years to be a mechanical engineer. I figure I'm getting a late start, but that's what I'll be doing."

She asked me where, and I smiled.

"Probably Tennessee. There are a few companies starting up plants there. If not there, probably somewhere reasonably close. I still have family there."

Sue said she wished she still had family left and that made me curious.

"You don't have anybody?"

She shook her head.

"No. My dad was a master sergeant in the Army. This was his last duty station in the US. He went to Vietnam three years ago, and was killed when his artillery unit was overrun.

I said I was sorry, and Sue smiled.

"Thank you, but he and I weren't really close. He was gone somewhere all the time. If he wasn't overseas he was doing war games or going to school. I have all sorts of souvenirs he sent me from places I've never been, but that's about all I have to remember him by. I know I should miss him, but it's hard to miss someone who was never around."