Place of duty--5

Place of duty—5

        “There’s not all that much to it,” Kincaid said. “After I left the Americal, I did my thirty days leave and reported to Fort Riley. In the middle of Kansas. It wasn’t where I expected to go, and it damned sure wasn’t what I put on my dream sheet. There’s Belvoir in Virginia, Camp Pickett and A.P. Hill. But I get sent to Kansas. After a while, I got tired of Stateside duty. Regular army shit, you know? Spit shined boots and starched fatigues every morning. Inspections every Saturday morning. No training that meant anything. A notice came down, the army needed people for escort duty. I put in for it, got accepted.”

        “So,” Hunter prodded.

        “It was strange at home,” Kincaid said. “It wasn’t like I expected it to be. Everything was different. Everybody was different. It was like a place I’d been before, but it didn’t feel like home.” He took a long swig of beer.

        Billy D said, “You see any girls? Ones you’d been out with, I mean.”

        “Yeah,” Kincaid nodded. “I did. But they were different. I didn’t ask any of them out.”

        That was a thing we didn’t want to hear, the girls back home were different. What we wanted when we got home was for everything to be the same. Except maybe people would appreciate what we had done, look up to us a little. We didn’t want any of that war hero stuff like some of the people from World War II did when somebody mentioned a name and some guy would say, “Yeah, he was a hero in the war.” More than anything else, we wanted the girls to say, “Wow, you’re back,” when we got home.

        Nobody said anything for a while after Kincaid said the girls were different. I drank at my beer, lit another cigarette, then said, “What kind of escort duty did you do?”

        Kincaid looked at the dark ground. “Body escort,” he said. “Funeral detail.”

        “Shit,” Wizard quietly said.

        That was another thing we didn’t want to know about, didn’t even think about.

        Wizard quickly said, “I don't mean you were wrong to take that kind of duty, Man.”

        Kincaid nodded. “I know. It got me out of regular duty. Inspections, guard duty, field exercises.” He laughed. “The company I was in, half the guys had just got back, they’re waiting to get out, and the army had us pulling field exercises. I don’t know what war they were training for. It wasn’t this one.” He drained his beer, got another can and punched holes in the top. “It wasn’t bad duty, escort and funerals. Usually, there were eleven of us. An OIC or NCOIC, seven for the firing squad – three rounds each -- two flag folders and a bugler for Taps.” He laughed. “Remember what the drill sergeants used to say in basic? Fuck em all but nine. Six pallbearers, two road guards and one to count cadence? Sometimes we didn't need eleven. Sometimes the local VFW or American Legion provided the firing squad. Sometimes men from the guy’s family or his friends were pallbearers. Sometimes they’d have a kid from the high school band play Taps.”

        Billy D said, “My uncle J.T., his funeral was like that. The VFW did all that stuff.”

        “Yeah,” Kincaid said. “In towns where there was a VFW or Legion post, we were always invited for drinks. They wouldn’t let us pay. There were always girls and women, too. All dressed up. At the viewing and at the funeral. See, the service member’s body is never allowed to be alone. There has to be a soldier in uniform with the body at all times. That’s what the regs say, and that’s what we did. At least one of us was always with the body, even during viewing. That’s when it was worst, though. You get relatives there, and you know they’re asking themselves why it had to be him and not you. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, they’re always nice to you, but you know they’re wondering. I mean, we’re there, in Class A uniform, ribbons and all the accouterments, most of us with CIB’s, all of us with combat patches. We made it, why didn’t he? He couldn’t have done anything wrong that got him killed. Maybe somebody gave him an incorrect order, and he got killed following an order.