Fort Hood, Texas in 1971 was a dump...literally.  Soldiers returning from Vietnam who had more than six months left on their enlistment were sent somewhere to finish their time.  If they had less than six months left they were just given a "drop" (early discharge) and sent home.  Many posts in the States were full of soldiers who fit into the first category.  And many of them were bitter because sometimes it was only a matter of a few days that decided if they went straight home or not.  Fort Hood was one of those places where there were way too many recent returnees.

I was the Support Platoon sergeant in Headquarters Company, 4th of the 46th Infantry.  I got there in November of 1971.  When I got there I found a platoon that had no mission, a lousy maintenance program, morale in the toilet, and no real purpose.  I had one truck driver in the platoon (should have been more than twenty), a kid just out of training.  I had almost thirty soldiers in the platoon, infantrymen who had just returned from Vietnam.  Half of them were good people who had done a good job in Nam and came back as buck sergeants;  the other half were soldiers who didn't do well in Nam for one reason or another (mostly drugs) and came back as privates.  The former would do whatever I asked of them, the latter would not do anything unless threatened and constantly supervised. 

The whole thing was exascerbated by the fact that there really was not much going on.  There was little money for manuever and training.  Most of the time was spent in virtually care-taker mode.  We would go to the motor pool, do the daily "motor stables" - the pre-op inspection of the vehicles and equipment - and then the rest of the day there was not a dang thing to do.  Oh...we had duties to perform:  picking up the trash, guarding the motor pool and ammo holding areas, "area beautification" (mowing the grass, planting shrubs and flowers, sweeping the sidwalks, etc), and things like that.  For a while we got real busy training for crowd control.  There were riots in various cities across the country in them days and if something got nasty in the central United States, it was possible that soldiers from Hood would be used to help secure sensitive Federal facilities.  We were issued plastic face shields for our helmets, those big man-sized shields to hold in front of us, and we practiced shuffle-stepping up and down the streets, shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield, grunting in time to the steps and pushing the shield forward.  We never were called to go anywhere.

I had a number of interesting people in my platoon.  The good guys were really good;  I could assign one sergeant to one private and feel comfortable that something might actually get accomplished.   The problem children were very challenging.  Some of them were just incorrigible.  I had a couple of fellows from New York City of Italian descent who threatened me daily with visits from their cousins or uncles.  Some of them were surly and unmanagable and a couple would do nothing without protracted arguments.  I came from an Army where that sort of thing was not tolerated.  But the first time I tried to bring one of my mouthy subordinates up on charges, I was informed that I had to be tolerant, had to consider what they had been through.  No charges were accepted, I was told to work it out. 

One of the soldiers was a huge black man who always looked like he had dressed himself in rags and dirties.  His boots were only laced half-way and the laces dragged dangerously on the ground, and they were never shined.  I sat down with him one morning and insisted that he lace them up.  He was not argumentative, not insubordinate, but gently resistant.  He said the laces hurt his leg (which was probably true, his legs were as thick as most men's waist) and his clothes "wasn't fit right", and so forth.  It took me a couple of days of close supervision before he started making an effort.  He couldn't march;  he shambled.  He was slow and deliberate in every movement.  He created the impression of some sort of mental impairment, if you didn't look in his eyes.  His large dark eyes were expressive and bright.  He was very smart, just not interested in the Army any more.  His name was Mickens.

There was a lot of crime going on at Fort Hood.  Drug-fueled robberies and muggings, smash and grabs, barracks thefts,  related assaults and the like.  Armed guards were posted at all the PX's and the commissary.  One night Mickens and a couple of his buddies were walking back to the barracks and got too close to the PX building.  The guard that night was a new private who was afraid of his shadow.  He challenged Mickens and his friends.  Mickens was immediately upset that this FNG was pointing a rifle at him.  He yelled at the guard and threatened to beat him to death if he didn't put that gun down.  The guard's response was to fire his rifle.  Fortunately, for Mickens, the bullet hit the ground about five feet in front of him.  Unfortunately for the guard, the bullet did nothing to deter Mickens;  it just made him madder.  Before the rookie guard could recover from actually firing his rifle, Mickens had closed the distance between them,  slapped the rifle out of the guard's hands and commenced to make good on his threat.  His buddies pulled him off at about the same time the MPs got there.  It took a few weeks of arguments between a couple of different Chains of Command, but it was settled with the guard and Mickens both receiving minimum punishment under Article 15.

When I was brought up to speed on this story the morning after it happened, I had trouble believing it.  Mickens had to cover ten yards between the time of the first shot and the time the guard could fire a second shot.  Mickens was not that kind of mover.  But a few weeks later, an incident opened my eyes.  I had been in the platoon for a few months and had made some in-roads into improving the behavior of most of my problem guys.  I had convinced several of them that it was better to work with us than against us;  I can be very persuasive at times.  But there were still a few hard-core problem guys who challenged everything everytime.   Waking them up in the morning was the worst.  One particular morning I was having an especially hard time getting my New Yorkers motivated when they puffed up and looked like they were going to make a physical challenge to me.  I didn't like the odds too much;  almost everyone who was worth anything was already out of the building leaving me alone with five or six malcontents who seemed ready to make a point.  I was hoping that if I could take out the mouthpiece quick enough, I might be able to diffuse the whole thing...if not...well, it was going to be a really bad morning.  At the point when I figured it was time to act, a green and black blurr came between me and the others.  In seconds the mouthpiece and two of his closest supporters were laid out on the floor and the others were backing away in haste.  I heard Mickens tell them, "This is my sergeant, don' be raisin' no han' to him".  I was surprised...I didn't realize I was Micken's sergeant...I mean I knew I was his sergeant;  I just didn't realize I was his sergeant.  The malcontents got up and out of the barracks and I thanked Mickens for stepping in.  He smiled and winked and told me he was sure I didn't need no help with trash like them but he couldn't resist the chance to whup up on them I-ties.  I asked where he learned to move like that and he told me about his golden gloves career and how he had just gone pro when the draft board called him up.  I pointed out that Ali didn't go when drafted and Mickens seemed upset.  He said that one of these days he (Mickens) was gonna whup up on that draft-dodgin' Monkey.

In a lot of ways, my looooong, loooooooong year in Texas was pure misery.  But it did have its moments.  I won't pretend that I wasn't concerned that morning, but because of it I learned a lot about one of my soldiers I wouldn't have otherwise known.  I never heard of any of them after they left Hood.  I don't know what happened to Mickens; I don't know if he ever had a boxing career, but I am pretty sure he never got the chance to "whup up" on Ali.   I am not so sure that Mickens wouldn't have done the job.  But I am glad I knew him, not just because he saved my bacon, but because he was a real person, a very highly talented person who never once bragged about his skills.  I liked him.