My first encounter with a real First Sergeant came after and exhausting 10 day journey that started at Fort Dix and went through Brooklyn Army Terminal, Bremerhaven Port, Frankfurt Bahnhof , Fulda processing point and ended in the hallway outside the Headquarter Troop Orderly Room, 2/14th Cav in Bad Kissingen, Germany. I had been told to wait in the hallway and someone would come out and retrieve me. I waited for some time, trying to stay awake and trying real hard not to listen to the building volume of the conversation that was going on behind the door I was waiting to enter. I couldn't make out any of the words, but the voice was clearly male, pissed, and gaining in velocity as well as volume. After a bit, the door flew open, a buck sergeant flew out...I mean he FLEW out, feet off the ground and almost horizontal in aspect. He slid across the floor into the opposite wall, right next to me...he jumped up, took off at a dead run...and I turned to the looming shadow that was filling the door. First Sergeant Aponte was about 6'3", couldn't guess his weight, his neck was wider at the base than his head, his head was sort of bucket shaped...he looked BIG...If you took a bucket and set it upside down on the rear of a bull, you would get a pretty acurate estimation of the siloutte I saw in the door. His eyes were wide with residual anger...they softened just a little and he asked me, "What do you want?" I think that is what he said...I was so scared, the only answer I could think of was that I just wanted to go home. His accent was so thick that I really couldn't swear to anything he said, but fortunately he pointed alot and quickly turned me over to the clerk.
I say that " was my first encounter with a real First Sergeant" because all through basic and advanced training I never spoke to a first sergeant. Basic was run by what they called a "Field First"...ours was an old master sergeant with honest to gosh Japanese bayonet scars on his hands and face...a very scary man, indeed. If we had a First Sergeant in AIT, I never saw or heard of him. I heard soldiers speak in muted, fearful tones about some dealing or other with the "Top".
I never learned what ethnic heritage produced 1SG Aponte...some sort of hispanic or islander...I don't think any one knew. He didn't pal around with junior enlisted and none of the platoon sergeants or other NCOs seemed to know much about him, either. I do know that I wasn't the only one who had trouble understanding him. And the angrier he became, the worse his accent got. I remember many formation where the 1SG stood in front yelling and ranting about something or other and seeing the platoon sergeants look at each other and shrug after the 1SG walked off. They couldn't understand him either.
Although I tried to steer clear of him, there were a few ocassions when I got the pleasure of visiting him in his office. One time on the way out to formation, I saluted a lieutenant with a cigarette in my mouth...A young buck sergeant yelled at me to get that fag out of my mouth when I saluted...I did...and saluted again...with the cigarette in my right hand (just as serious an infraction as having it in my mouth). The First Sergeant witnessed the affair and invited me and my platoon sergeant to visit him in his office after formation. My cigarette trick earned me a week on the coal pile. At some point the coal fired boilers in the basement of our building, which provided hot water and steam for heating, had automatic hoppers and feed belts installed. 1SG Aponte had a concrete pad poured next to the chute opening to the hoppers and made the coal trucks dump on the concrete...which required someone to shovel the coal into the chute. He always had several shovelers...we were an infractious bunch.
Puking on the sidewalk behind the formation one Monday morning earned me another trip to the 1SG's office and a week on KP. Later visits produced TWO weeks on the coal shovel and two weeks straight on KP. At no time was I read my rights (come to think of it, I don't think we had any then)...no charges filed...no seeing the Captain...everything disciplinary was handled in the 1SG's office with no complaints from anyone...except my platoon sergeant who didn't like being in there any more than I did.
Aponte was a big, powerful (in many ways) seriously scary man that NO ONE challenged. I wanted to be just like him."