And God leaned down and said, ‘Boom’

DAVID SILVA

The first of two parts.

Angel and I had just moved from Santa Ana to Costa Mesa when our

relationship began to fall apart.

It was one of those frustratingly mysterious relationship dilemmas

in which neither of us could quite figure out what was going wrong.

But whatever it was, it was serious, because it kept us so on edge

that everything -- bills, car problems, my breathing -- had the

potential for starting a major argument. We were arguing so much that

we eventually decided to just skip the arguing part and be generally

mad at each other at any given time.

And just when it seemed like things couldn’t get any more

uncomfortable, my annual summer training with the National Guard came

up. I had been so preoccupied with my troubles with Angel that I had

forgotten I was due for a drill. Then I flipped the calendar early

one evening, saw 2 1/2 rows of big red Xs across the month of June,

and realized that I had to show up for formation in an hour.

“Well,” I said, turning to Angel. “Bye.”

And I grabbed my duffel bag in the closet and left.

The drive from L.A. to Fort Hunter Liggett in Central California

is long by any standards, but particularly so when you’re riding in a

bus of 50 extremely grouchy National Guardsmen. Almost everyone was

feeling put out over having to leave their “real” lives behind for 2

1/2 weeks of dusty tents and Army food.

The only one among us who seemed to be having the time of his life

was my squad leader, a ferociously jolly pit bull of a human being

named Sgt. Stump. Stump was 6-foot-6, 350 pounds and had one of the

most massive necks I’d ever seen. He was the kind of guy you wanted

next to you in combat because if he were shot in the head, it would

take his body an hour to figure it out.

It was my misfortune to be seated next to him the entire trip.

“LOOK at Silva!” Stumps said, his voice booming at me like a

megaphone in a walk-in freezer. “Actin’ like we’re goin’ to the NAM

or somethin’! Silva’s gonna have some FUN! Eighteen days of FREE

meals and BLUE skies! LORD, Silva’s gonna feel GOOD!”

Stump also had a disturbing habit of addressing people in the

third person. For some six hours, Silva was a captive audience as

Stump boomed on and on about two things he simply couldn’t get enough

of: drinking and fighting. As such, his singularly favorite activity

was the barroom brawl.

“So I tell this clown ... heh heh, Silva’s gonna like this ... I

tell him, ‘What you gonna do with that pool stick? I KNOW you can’t

shoot pool!’ Heh heh ... .”

I used to wonder how a drinking, brawling loudmouth like Stump

could have managed to get three stripes on his shoulder. Then I found

out he had been in the National Guard for 15 years, and it began to

make sense to me. I understand my old Guard unit takes itself a lot

more seriously now, but back then, it was standing proof to Woody

Allen’s theory that 80% of success in life is just showing up.

Nearly all my officers and noncommissioned officers believed that

if they just showed up and called as little attention to themselves

as possible, time and bureaucratic ambivalence would steadily push

them up through the ranks. And since the fastest way to call unwanted

attention to yourself was to have someone under your command get

injured or killed, my unit’s commanders spent 49 1/2 weeks out of the

year instructing their troops to do as little as possible. I became

quite the solitaire player in the Guard.

But the result of all this inactivity when we arrived for our big

summer drill -- the 2 1/2 weeks we were actually expected to do

something because the Army brass was there to observe -- was

disastrous. Rusty and undisciplined, my unit descended on our

training grounds like a frat-house cruise to Ensenada. Armored

personnel carriers rolled up steep hillsides and overturned. Mortar

crews dropped their rounds hundreds of yards off range. Everywhere,

soldiers were breaking their arms or cracking their skulls or losing

their teeth, and the Army observers watched on and shook their heads

in dismay.

As a mortar man who spent most of my time surrounded by cannon

tubes and explosives, I found this lack of military professionalism

troubling. One minor slip-up and I could find myself punching a hole

in the ozone with the top of my head. I vowed that no matter what, I

would get through the next two weeks without getting killed or

injured.

I managed to keep that promise for two straight days, and then my

platoon was sent out on a nighttime live-fire exercise. I was

standing on the top of a tank-mounted mortar and had just finished

handing a live round to the gunner when my sergeant called my name

from below.

“Yeah, sergeant?” I shouted to him, taking out my ear-plugs at the

exact moment the gunner dropped the round into the mortar tube.

It was as if God himself leaned down from heaven and said, “Boom.”

I would never hear the high notes on a violin again.

I rolled on the ground for 15 minutes clutching my ears, while my

platoon sergeant stood over me and -- I assume -- asked me if I were

OK.

“--- ---- ----?,” the sergeant asked.

“WHAT?”

“---- ---- ---!” he repeated angrily.

A medic turned up and checked my ears. Seeing neither blood nor

brain matter coming out of them, he pronounced me fit and sent me

back to my unit.

My platoon sergeant was furious at me. How was he ever going to

get that next promotion if his men kept blowing out their eardrums?

To impress upon me his displeasure, he ordered me to gather, rinse

out and sterilize every water canteen in our platoon.

“Maybe my time might be better spent getting some safety training,

sergeant,” I said. The pain in my ears and the subsequent dressing

down had me in an insubordinate frame of mind.

“You know, instead of cleaning the platoon’s canteens, you’d

better make it the whole company’s,” my sergeant replied, and walked

away.

It took me half a day to gather up all those canteens, many of

which had been left lying all over the place by their careless

owners. I was six hours into washing them when I unscrewed the cap

off one and recoiled at the smell that rose from it. I lifted the

canteen cautiously to my nose, sniffed and shook my head. Someone had

filled it to the brim with Peppermint Schnapps.

Since I had no idea whose canteen it was -- all of them had

numbers inked on them instead of names -- I dumped the contents on

the ground and through it in the soapy water with the rest.

It was just past midnight when I learned the identity of the

canteen’s owner.

“WHO EMPTIED MY CANTEEN? I’LL KILL ‘EM!” Sgt. Stump’s boomed

across our bivouac site, loud enough to jar me out of my slumber 50

years away. “WHO DID IT? HE’S MINE, WHOEVER IT IS! HE’S MINE!”

Oh no, I thought to myself as 40 fingers pointed toward my cot. In

a second, Stump was standing next to me. “SILVA? SILVA DID IT? I

CAN’T BELIEVE IT! WHO TOLD SILVA TO EMPTY MY CANTEEN? WHO?”

“Uh, the sergeant,” I replied.

“THE SERGEANT? SILVA THINKS HE’S BEING SLICK! LET ME TELL YOU, I

GOT SOMETHING FOR SILVA.! SILVA BETTER JUST WAIT, ‘CAUSE I’M GONNA

GET ‘EM!”

Next week: Sgt. Stump and the fast track to heaven.

* DAVID SILVA is a Times Community News editor. Reach him at (909)

484-7019 or by e-mail at david.silva@latimes.com.