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by William Gritzbaugh
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One of the darkest nights I can ever recall was at a rural crossroads in south central Illinois when my Army buddy Rich and I were dropped off by a salesman who’d picked us up hitchhiking in East St. Louis an hour and a half earlier. As we climbed from the backseat of his car and shut the door, the sudden loss of the dome light made the abject blackness of our little patch of highway quite pronounced. We watched his tail lights disappear to the south and realized we could barely see each other, let alone the surrounding countryside. No moon, overcast sky, no ambient light from a nearby farm house, nothing. Very slowly our eyes adjusted and provided details of our surroundings out to maybe a dozen yards.
There we were, midnight, still a hundred and fifty miles from our hometown in southern Indiana, and the remainder of a four-day pass for me, and two weeks leave for Rich before he shipped out to Vietnam. I was headed to Fort Benning, Georgia, to attend Infantry Officer Candidate School. It was 1968, a particularly unpleasant time in American history.
Most people understand the desperate longing for home that arises after a prolonged absence. But few feel that longing more intensely than new soldiers. When military circumstance allows the freedom to go home, virtually nothing will stop soldiers from finding their way there regardless of the difficulty of the journey.
Rich and I had just finished Advanced Individual Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where our specialization had been artillery fire direction control (FDC). Following that we were to have attended Artillery Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Sill. A four-day pass was typically granted between those schools. The difficulty of FDC coursework, like using slide-rulers to calculate the rotation of the earth under an artillery round in flight, was profound enough that Rich and I (and other classmates) decided to seek alternatives to commissions in the Artillery branch. Rich requested out of OCS altogether, which meant an immediate assignment to Vietnam. I tried a long shot and asked if I could attend Infantry OCS in lieu of Artillery. It was almost comical how quickly my request was granted by virtue of the casualty rates among Infantry officers in Vietnam.
Twelve hours later we had orders for our respective pass/leave and began putting together our travel plans. Just in time we connected with two classmates who were driving to Dallas for their passes. They dropped us at Dallas Love Field where we planned to get a flight to Evansville. We had no plan B. If we couldn’t get a flight; we’d just wing it. At Love Field we ran into the proverbial good and bad news, we could get to St. Louis that evening, but a connection to Evansville’s small regional airport wouldn’t be until late the following afternoon. That meant we’d lose a day of our time at home. We decided to take the St. Louis flight and planned to figure out what to do when we arrived. Maybe take a bus?
In the bustle of the St. Louis’ Lambert Field, we searched out bus connections. No dice. Greyhounds in those days took serpentine routes, stopping at every small town. A bus home would kill an extra day as well. So, we decided to hitchhike. Lambert Field is at the western edge of the St. Louis metro area on I-70, and there was no way for us to hitchhike through the city. Taking a cab across the Mississippi River to East St. Louis was the logical next step. Once on the Illinois side of the river, we knew Highway 460 would take us to Evansville. Our driver warned us that race riots had been raging in East St. Louis and, indeed, a pall of smoke hung over that tortured city. We asked him to take us past the destruction to the eastern city limits sign where we’d stick out our thumbs. The cab driver was incredulous at our decision, and after a few moments asked if we’d pay him to drive us all the way to Evansville. We considered a multi-hour trip and watching his meter tick off the dollars. Since our funds were limited, we politely affirmed our choice to hitch.
It was 10 PM. when he dropped us off. It had already been a very long day, and now Rich and I were thumbing on the edge of the two-lane highway watching cars pass. We were in uniform, the old starched khakis with short sleeves and overseas caps. Our single chevron E-2 stripes were proudly sewn on our sleeves. After twenty minutes, a sedan pulled over and a young salesman asked our destination.
“Well,” he said. “I can take you part way but will be turning south to Pinckneyville.”
“Fine, let’s go,” we said.
Any distance closer to home was a vast improvement to standing by the highway. Our driver was a nice thirty-something guy and newly married. At one point he entertained us with a pistol he carried under the seat, passing it to us for examination.
“Got to carry a gun when you travel at night,” he explained. As a road appeared in his headlights, he suddenly pulled over.
“Sorry guys, but I have to head south here,” he said. We got out in the middle of nowhere without a visible light in any direction.
There was no traffic at all. We shook our heads at our assumption that a state highway would have a constant flow of cars and trucks at all hours. We threw rocks at a telephone pole, talked about what we would do when we got home, paced back and forth, and sat on the pavement for two hours hoping for a car to cruise by.
Finally, a glow appeared below the western horizon, then headlights cracked the crest. The telltale sound of rubber on pavement made it apparent that the vehicle was really flying. We stepped back from the road afraid of being struck by the speeding car, but not so far off that the driver could miss our outstretched arms and thumbs. The car flew past us with a rush of wind. Then we heard the screech of tires and saw the flash of brake lights. The car wasn’t stopped for more than an instant before it began backing towards us. Rich and I didn’t walk towards the car for fear it might careen into us. We stood back from the pavement and hoped for the best.
“Where the fuck you going?” the driver called out the open passenger-side window.
“Evansville,” we replied in unison. Then the passenger door flew open and the dome light illuminated three young men in Air Force uniforms. We climbed into the backseat, somewhat dazed by our sudden change of luck.
“Good thing you were in uniform or we wouldn’t have stopped,” the driver said. “Can’t leave fellow GIs standing on the road in the middle of the night.”
The men were stationed at Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois and were headed to Cincinnati on a weekend pass. They’d had to wait until midnight to sign off the base since their pass technically didn’t begin until 0001; one of those military protocols that has both enraged and frustrated soldiers for multiple generations. Unfortunately, the instant they rolled past the gate guards they’d begun pounding beers. Each was happily intoxicated, and having the time of their young lives flying down the deserted rural highway. The guy in the backseat with us handed us beers which we opened and guzzled as much to numb our fear of tire-screeching death as to celebrate our ride home. We drank and told military stories until we reached our destination and they dropped us at an intersection only a short distance from our respective homes..
We’d only been in the Army five months, but home already looked, and felt, different. We had grown and changed physically and mentally at a rate exponentially more rapid than had we remained the failed students and low-wage workers we’d been before our draft notices. Our futures stretched before us in only the most tenuous outline, one that would be altered repeatedly as our service progressed. Rich would serve in an artillery battery in Vietnam, putting his fire direction training to good use. I would make it through Infantry OCS, Airborne and Special Forces training and serve with the 5th Special Forces Group, ironically in the same Area of Operation as Rich, albeit after he’d returned home. After discharge we would be together again for a semester at Indiana University before our “different drummers” sent us on other sojourns.
The sixties were a volatile, terrible and poignant time for those caught up in its more intense aspects like the Vietnam War, the protest movements, and the racial strife. Many still haven’t been able to move on or get over it, as those not so affected, or born since, think they should. As we stood on the side of the road in the darkness, Rich and I were just beginning our journey through those turbulent days. Years later, thinking about that night, I had a fantasy that, should I become wealthy, I would find that lonely highway spot and put up a bronze statue of two soldiers, thumbs out, trying to get home.
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William Gritzbaugh is a Vietnam veteran (draftee), currently retired, and volunteers with the Red Cross, VA Hospital, and USO. He has several nonfiction works published in As You Were and is the author of a novel, A Long Day to Denver.
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