The Liquor Talking

But, my office has air conditioning (that works) so I shall fear no evil.

There are some people who just beg to be messed with. For me, they’re usually arrogant, pompous jackasses who somehow got it in their head that the sun rises and sets in their coffee cup. For my buddy Matt (we called him “OB”) it was our new crew chief, Sergeant Hudson.

I don’t know what it was about Sgt Hudson that set OB off. Other than having the personality of a cabbage, he didn’t go out of his way to annoy anyone. I have had crew chiefs who pretty much viewed their part of the missile field as their personal fiefdom and generally made life hell for anyone unfortunate enough to stumble into their dominion.

Hudson wasn’t like this. He didn’t like small talk, he didn’t like watching shows on the satellite TV, he never wanted to play cards and he didn’t play pool. He would come on duty, pull his shift, interacting with us ONLY to the degree absolutely necessary and retire to his room when the shift was over. While most of the crew were content with this arrangement (our last crew chief was an overbearing, kiss-ass scumbag) OB could not abide Hudson’s attitude. He made it his personal mission in life to “draw Hudson out of his shell… and then destroy him.”

It was during our first ride out to the site that Hudson let us know exactly what he thought of the whole situation. Wanting to get to know the guy we would be spending 4 out of every 9 days with, Joe asked him about his previous assignment. Hudson’s response was probably the longest utterance he made in the four months we had him with us: “Look, I don’t know you guys, I don’t want to know you guys. I don’t want to be at Malmstrom and I damn sure don’t want to be working in the missile field. All I want to do is do my job and get back to Korea as soon as I possibly can. I don’t know why they couldn’t leave me where I was happy, but now we’re stuck with each other and if you leave me alone, I promise to do the same.”

Needless to say, we weren’t used to being told to **** off right out of the gate. It usually took three, sometimes 5 tours before we had the complete contempt of our crew chief and usually only after one (or more) of us had made him “stand tall before the man” to explain our sundry hijinks. However, it looked like we had a crew chief who would leave us alone and (most importantly) not initiate a 4-day reign of terror every time we posted out. While we were all pretty much content with the arrangement, OB was livid.

About halfway into our two-hour drive to our site, John Denver came on the radio singing “Country Road.” One of the things OB was good at was making up his own lyrics to songs. These he would sing with no small measure of enthusiasm. I forget the exact lyrics OB belted out, but “country road” was replaced with “Tokyo Rose” and his version was pretty much about how great Korea was and how much Montana sucked. There was also some part about munching kimchee while searching the brothels for mom that made Joe spew coffee all over the dashboard.

By the time we arrived, Hudson was pretty pissed and as soon as the off-going crew was gone, he called OB into the office to chew his ass. OB came out a few minutes later, sporting a huge grin and about the chewing out, would only say; “Oh yeah Hudson, you are mine.” For the rest of the tour, OB was pleasant to Hudson, bordering on being a kiss-ass. We all knew this was just a set up and begged OB to let us in on the gag, but he would only grin and repeat his claim of ownership.

One of the rules of missile field life is that you see to your own gear. No matter your rank or position, you hefted your own bags and made sure your weapons were exactly where they need to be. When Hudson went to lift his bag to heave into the truck, you could actually hear Hudson’s spine crack. A normal A3 bag of missile field gear weighed in at about 60 pounds. For some reason, Hudson’s was a good deal more. Because someone (OB) had slipped about 80 pounds of rocks into it.

Yeah, he wasn’t at all amused. The next tour out, Hudson kept his bag under observation the whole tour to include packing it back and forth on latrine breaks. It didn’t matter though, OB was through with Hudson’s bag. Once more, OB was nice to Hudson, but on the last night out, OB took Hudson’s field jacket and sewed the sleeves shut at the elbow from the inside. Again, Hudson was more than a little annoyed, but said nothing.

This sort of thing went on for several tours until our flight chief pulled us in on training day to raise hell with us about the pranks. He knew full well that OB was the sole culprit, but his hope was that we would put some peer pressure on OB and get him to dial it back a little.

Our next tour out was Hudson’s last with us and as far as I know, his last in the missile field. On the last night out, OB came out of the office with his .38 revolver tucked into his waist band. He walked up behind Hudson who was reading the paper while waiting for his chow. Much to our shock and surprise, OB suddenly grabbed Hudson in a headlock, put his pistol against Hudson’s face and announced that he’d had all he could stand of Hudson.

We sat it abject terror while OB blathered on about how much he’d tried to get Hudson to like him and how everyone except Hudson loved him. Finally, OB released him and said “I’m gonna let you run for it, Huson! On your mark, get set, GO!”

Hudson took off like he’d been shot from a cannon. OB took aim with his pistol and went click, click, click with it as Hudson fled the room. We all sat there, now knowing it was another prank, but clearly one that was over the line. Instead of reporting the incident, Hudson spent the night locked in his room and only came out when our relief had arrived.

Rumor had it that Hudson spent some time in the Mental Health clinic and was eventually re-assigned to base security. Our flight chief broke up our crew, somehow thinking this would dissipate our ability to wreck havoc on the missile field and those who there did toil, but this only had the effect of spreading our chaos over a wider area.

I met up with OB some years later while I was stationed in Turkey. He had been posted at one of the more remote bases there and managed to get to Incirlik (where I was) about once every couple of months. It was there that we nearly started a war with the Turks, but that’s another story.

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Happy Tuesday to all and if you’re like most folk, a glorious 3-day weekend is just that much closer!