Transient Barracks

 

A transient barracks is like Purgatory. It’s not where you want to be, but it’s not the worst place to be while you’re waiting—and there a very real hope that things will get better.

 

 

My next stop was the transient barracks—something I was becoming pretty familiar with. I had slept in a transient barracks for a week at Fort Riley, Kansas, a cheap hotel in San Francisco that was probably no more than a step above a transient barracks, then more transient barracks at Fort Lewis and Cam Ranh Bay. 

 

The 1^st Aviation Brigade’s transient barrack was half of a building that also housed the company’s club, which was adjacent to the volleyball court. For the first time since joining the army I was in a permanent duty station and challenged with the task of making myself at home. The club was a natural place to do this, the volleyball court a less likely location but one never knows.

I met a clerk named Tom Reardon who quickly proved to be one of the more interesting characters I would meet in my year in Vietnam—and I hadn’t even been assigned a permanent bunk yet.

He was from Boston but fancied himself a kind of dandy for whom Boston was good but not good enough. He went the extra mile and fabricated as good an English accent as he could muster and continually made references to Leeds—home to a school he attended, wanted to attend or was going to attend someday. I was never entirely clear about what his relation was to Leeds but the important point to be gained from talking with Tom was that he was different from everyone else, including me.

That said, he was entirely likable and funny and interesting. And, it turns out; he was very influential in introducing me to the men I would be living and working with for the next year.

“If you want them to know who you are,” he coaxed me one day as we watched the volleyball match, beers in hand, “you’re going to have to put yourself in the game.”

“I don’t really play that well—just a few games in college with the fraternity and we were pretty drunk,” I replied, thinking there would be plenty of time to get to know the guys.

“Do these guys look sober to you?” he asked.

 

He had a point. “Next time someone comes out, tell them you want to go in and that you’re the new writer for the HAWK.”

I wasn’t really in a rush for everyone to know me but maybe Tom was right. It certainly didn’t look like any of them were sober and none of them looked much like volleyball players and maybe it would be fun.

I went in on the next break and took my position and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. Our team served and the return came right to me and I positioned myself under it and firmed my two fist together—content to just keep it in play and let the next guy set up the spiker who was moving in towards the net.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The ball careened off my fist and was launched on a trajectory that took it off the roof of the barracks. The response was what you would expect. There was some moaning and groaning by our team and some cheering by the opposing team and a spate of encouraging remarks like, “That’s all right, make yourself comfortable,” “Shake it off,” “Whataya expect, he’s a writer?” and the hopeful “He’s ready now.”

    I looked over at Tom but he was avoiding eye contact. I positioned myself now for the next serve. It came, to no one’s surprise I’m sure, directly at me like a cannonball with my name on it. Even I knew it would be coming not that it made any difference.

    Again, I shanked it, only this time the ball cleared the roof and the reaction was rather ominous. Someone went off to retrieve the ball and Tom approached me, turned me around so his back was to the players, like the advice he was about to give me was some kind of secret.

“I think,” he said, sounding less sophisticated but more like an actor playing James Bond with a fake British accent, “that it would be to your advantage to get yourself out of the game as quickly as possible.”

“I don’t want to look like I’m a pussy.” I said. “And beside, you were right, I think they are getting to know me.”

“Well of course I was right and they are getting to know you but the thing is you are getting dangerously close to them not liking you.”

“I don’t think they don’t like me—not this quickly,” I said rubbing my thumb, where the ball had been misplayed. “I’ve only had two balls—”

“Look at them,” Tom said. “They want to kill you. Do you want to risk a third ball going over the roof?”

    In time I would come to realize that Tom was a lot of things. He was full of himself based on an image of himself that he had created, worked very hard to sustain and which couldn’t possibly be accurate. He told stories that were beyond belief in an accent that was blatantly bizarre and unconvincing but, on this particular occasion, at this unique time and place for me, I realized that he was absolutely right.

It was good that I had gotten into the game and a lot of people who didn’t know me before knew me now and it hadn’t taken more than a few moments. But there was no arguing that these people who didn’t know me before but knew me now, suddenly found themselves not liking me. And I couldn’t blame them.

“That’s enough for me, boys. Maybe tomorrow. It was fun,” I said as I walked off the court and retrieved my beer.

Tom and I walked into the club, he bought two more beers and quickly the emphasis went back to him.

“Let me tell you about Elizabeth, my girl friend at Leeds,” he said. “She hated me. She hated me so bad that when I told her I wanted to take her out for dinner on her birthday she said she was too busy. She said she would rather go shopping with her mother.”

   “That bad, huh,” I said, not sure who was consoling who.

“She was hot, very hot, you know,” he said in his stuffy British accent, but her mother was even hotter. Truth is,” he said, “I would have rather gone shopping with her mother and I think she knew that. That may have been the reason she hated me.”

I spent the next two hours listening to Tom talk about Elizabeth from Leeds and her hot mom and never thought about or played another volleyball game for the rest of my tour—or for that matter the rest of my life.