A Stateside Tour of Duty

Book excerpt: Nick Moultrie is drafted into the US Army at the height of the Vietnam War. By dumb luck, the new lieutenant avoids being shipped to Vietnam and is assigned to Fort Benjamin McCulloch, Texas. As a pencil pusher for the military police on base, he is safe from the mortal perils of ambushes and booby traps in Southeast Asia, yet he faces other perils almost daily in his mostly desk job stateside. His poorly disciplined unit more resembles the Keystone Cops than professional law enforcement personnel. Lieutenant Moultrie finds himself surrounded by incompetent or corrupt commanding officers, and he never knows when the mind-numbing tedium of his job will suddenly erupt into a crazy, senseless episode in which people are killed and military careers are destroyed. Nick finds refuge and solace in a few friends and honorable commanders whom he can trust. Seeking relief from loneliness, he looks up a buxom girlfriend (Samantha Starr) with whom he had a fling in college, and, while on a few days' leave, proposes to her. Soon he finds himself enjoying the pleasures and tiptoeing through the minefields of matrimony. Gradually his lust for what he first regarded as a sex object turns into genuine love for a peer and an intelligent, intuitive friend. A terrifying dream six months into her first pregnancy convinces Samantha she will die if she gives birth in the ramshackle Army hospital. She goes to live with her parents, where the dream proves prophetic as she narrowly escapes death even in the better-equipped Phoenix hospital. When a callous Red Cross official refuses to inform Nick of these developments, he explodes in anger and retribution, resulting in persecution from his superiors in command. The final insult is his being relieved of duty for a very minor infraction committed while saving the lives of his men in a shootout with an antiwar terrorist group. Nick must somehow find a way to avoid ending his military service in disgrace. As he leaves Fort McCulloch a much wiser-and jaded-man, Nick looks back on the unbelievable events he has endured. His entertaining tale is humorous, eye-opening, and unexpectedly uplifting.