Saturday, January 5, 2013

Fort Wadsworth (Part I)





The story of how it was I served two years in the US Army and got out with a good discharge without going to Vietnam and without having a guardian angerl or a rabbi is here in my long story of my encounters with a certain NYPD family.

How I tripped over a wrinkle in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. i've started to tell the story of me and Fort Wadsworth. It's pretty incredible, people who hear it usually say it's bullshit, but it's the truth, I've just started it in this video and I will be putting up more as I recall the rollicking good times I had there.

To set the tone I want to shre a recollection of an incident that made the news back in the Vietnam war days centering on the corruption of Fort Wadsworth under its then commander who I won't name here, ogther than to tag him Colonel Italianname, but you could probably find it out. IT seems that a couple of hundred GI's who were sent home following their Basic Combat Training in various forts each got a letter containing orders not to report to their next duty station but to await further written orders. The source of these very strange orders was Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island and the recipients wer various (random? I doubt that) residents of Brooklyn and Staten Island.These further orders never arrived and at the termination of their various active duty obligations these guys started showing up demanding back pay and honorable separations, which they got, as the story goes.

So, you see, Fort Wadsworth was a jovial sort of place undeer the regime of Colonel Italianname. I spent eight months there and I had an intersting time.

Yu might also like this post called My Biloxi Blues, and Ours.