by Jim DiCillo
Friday, March 9, 1984.
74th Warhead Detachment, Schwabstädl Kaserne, Lechfeld Air Base, Bavaria, West Germany
I entered the mess hall building and peered through the window of the inner door. A third of the detachment, about sixty people, were watching the movie. The Day After had come out the previous year and the Group Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Grandino, had sent a copy down to Major Wilson with the directive that all personnel had to see the movie. It was about survivors of a nuclear war struggling to stay alive in eastern Kansas. I guess he thought it would be good for us to see what it would be like if we ever had to do what we were trained for.
Quietly, I opened the inner door and took a seat at the first table. The only other person at the table was Captain Steve Barrett, who was the commanding officer of my Team, Bravo Team. I’d gotten to know him after six months of pulling duty with him and didn’t particularly like him. He struck me as someone who could easily be a cult leader, or have his own survivalist group, or be in command of some right-wing militia.
The movie reached the point where cement slabs slid sideways to allow Minuteman ICBMs to blast out of their silos and streak skyward. It was a chilling scene. A buzz of voices filled the mess hall. To my left, I heard very quietly,
“Go baby go! Go baby go!”
I glanced in that direction. The captain, who looked like he could be Ed Harris’ brother with a western twang in his voice, was leaning forward in his seat. His eyes were fixated on the screen, mouth hanging open, hands splayed out on the table. His breath was fast and shallow.
A hand came down on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the face of the Sergeant-Major. He cocked his head towards the door and went out. I followed and we walked to the Headquarters building in silence. We went past the duty sergeant, who was reading a comic book and entered the Sergeant Major’s office. He closed the door and pointed me to the seat across from his desk. Parks sat down behind his desk and just stared at me for an eternity. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle and some glasses. It was Asbach, the German version of cognac. Filling both glasses, he pushed one across the desk.
“I’m going to ask you something, and I want the truth out of you. I don’t want you to tell me what you think I want to hear.” Parks had hard, flinty eyes that drilled holes through people. They were drilling through me now.
I just nodded in reply.
“You’ve been pulling duty with Barrett for six months now. Do you think he’s mentally stable?”
Normally, one would not expect a Sergeant Major to be asking the opinion of a corporal who was an acting sergeant. In the past year, I had gotten to know Parks and had worked for him for six months when I was assigned to Headquarters Team. He lived in the barracks upstairs and I was often a player at his weekly poker game.
His question still took me by surprise. I thought for a few seconds, then I gave him the truth.
“No. You saw him in there. He strikes me as someone who could be running some survivalist militia up in Montana or Idaho. I think he really wouldn’t mind launching the missiles.” I don’t know what Parks was thinking, but I was visualizing nine Pershing missiles descending on their targets in Eastern Europe to incinerate troop concentrations, railheads, Backfire and Badger bomber bases as well as about two-and-a-half million people.
Parks raised his eyebrows. “I’m from Montana. Do you think I’d be in a militia?”
“You’re from Miles City. That’s cattle country, not crazy country.” I took another sip.
Parks chuckled, “You’re right about that. That’s why I joined the Army, to get away from the cow shit.”
He sipped his Asbach. “For some reason, Barrett likes you. I see the duty roster. Normally, the Team Leader pulls duty with the Team Sergeant or one of the Staff Sergeants. But Barrett schedules duty with you most of the time, so you spend a lot of hours together.”
“I don’t mind pulling duty with him. We both like to read. When I was in Charlie Team, I was with Lieutenant Baker most of the time and he wanted to play cribbage for twelve hours. I don’t even like cribbage that much.”
“My point is, that with you two spending so much time together, you’re in the perfect position to keep an eye on him.”
“What are you saying, Sergeant-Major?”
“I want you to monitor him. Somehow, he’s managed to fool the shrinks every month. But we both know he’s nuts. I just don’t want him to do anything stupid.”
“Okay.” I finished my drink.
Parks finished his and took our glasses and the bottle and replaced them in his drawer. “Keep this between ourselves. We should get back to the movie.”
That Friday, our duty schedule changed. Alpha Team, which had been at the Firing site, officially known as the Quick Reaction Alert Site, Q for short, returned and went into Relax mode. My Team, Bravo, went from Relax into Kaserne duty. Charlie had been in Kaserne duty, went into Training, and Delta, which had been in Training, went to the Q. The cycle lasted two weeks.
Kaserne duty was simple. We had storage bunkers on the airbase where all the extra warheads were kept. There were guards required for that location, four for every eight-hour shift. We also had an A-Man and a B-Man on duty in the duty officer’s room as well as a radio operator in the signals room. They were responsible for coordinating mobilization in an emergency. Additionally, there was a Staff Duty Sergeant for any other types of emergencies. The A-Man also served as the Staff Duty Officer.
On Monday Captain Barret, four guards, and I went over to the storage bunker accompanied by two warrant officers, Mr. Reed and Mr. Kapalski, We had received three new warheads that weekend and they had to be inspected to see if the ablative coating had sustained any damage during transport. The warrant officers had come down from Group Headquarters to assign each warhead to a specific target and then set the appropriate yield. These three were the new dial-a-yield warheads, ranging from sixty to four hundred and forty kilotons.
Inside the bunker, the first warhead was out of the container and was hanging above it in slings. I watched as two of the guards began removing the cover from the second warhead container. My roommate, Kevin Delany, was one of the guards who was starting his shift. We were talking when his eyes narrowed and he slid his M-16 off his shoulder and shouted, “Captain Barrett!”
Everyone in the bunker had frozen in place. The guards had stopped mid-action and the warrant officers sat at the desk staring across the bunker. I turned around and saw Barrett standing next to the exposed warhead with his hand extending towards it. The barrel of Kevin’s M-16 was leveling and I heard him click the selector lever to full auto.
I put my hand on the barrel, stopping it, and yelled, “Step away from that warhead! Right now!”
Barrett looked at me blankly, then came out of his reverie. He withdrew his hand and stepped back a few feet. Turning to me, he sputtered, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
I took a deep breath. “It’s okay Captain. I just didn’t want Delaney to have to shoot you. Then we would have to break in a new Team Leader.” The two-man rule, the purpose of which was to preclude sabotage or worse, maintained that no one could be within three feet of a warhead by themselves. The guards had standing orders to shoot anyone who violated that rule.
After the rest of the covers had been removed, Barrett and I began our inspection of the warheads. Then we stepped away to let Reed and Kapalski make their modifications. The whole process took about three hours. When we were finished, I called the Duty Sergeant to send the courier van back to pick us up.
Later, I was eating lunch in the mess hall when Reed came up to my table. “Mind if I sit?”
I waved a hand at a chair, unable to speak with a mouthful of toasted cheese sandwich. Warrant Officer Reed had once been Staff Sergeant Reed. He had been my Assistant Platoon Sergeant when I was stationed at Fort Sill. Three months after I arrived, he left to go to Warrant Officers School. Though I did not get to know him well, I had a lot of respect for Reed. He was detail-oriented and a strict disciplinarian.
He fiddled with his food for a few seconds before he spoke. “What’s up with Barrett? I’ve never seen anyone do that before and I’ve been in Pershing for ten years.”
“I don’t know. He’s been acting strange lately. Well, stranger than usual.” We both laughed at that.
“You know, Jim, besides Barrett, you were the senior man in the bunker, even though you are just an acting sergeant. Kapalski and I don’t count because we’re outside of the chain of command. You have a responsibility to report what happened.”
“I know. I should have done it the minute we got back. I just didn’t want to.”
“You feel like you are being a fink or a snitch?” I nodded.
He pointed his fork at me. “I’m going to say something and I hope I never have to tell you this again. We are working with nuclear weapons here. It doesn’t get any more serious than that. Those rules are there for a reason and no deviation is acceptable. It’s your duty and your responsibility to report any incident that violates those rules.”
After lunch, I went over to the Headquarters building. In the main office, Melvin Jones, the Detachment Clerk, was seated at his desk outside of Parks’ office. I pointed to the door and asked, “Is he in?”
“Yeah, but be careful. He’s in a bad mood today.”
“When isn’t he”?
I knocked on the door and heard, “Enter!”
I went in and closed the door behind me.
“What’s the problem?”
I told him what happened in the bunker. His eyes went cold.
“You should have let Delaney shoot him. That would have solved everything. Who else was there?”
I told him who was present; the other three guards and the Warrant Officers.
“I’ll take this up with the Major. Now, I want a written statement from you. You can do it right here.” He pushed a notepad over to me with a pen, then picked up the phone and dialed the Weapons Shop. “This is Parks. Let me speak to Reed.” A few seconds of him drumming his fingers as I wrote out my statement. “Hi. I want to see you in my office before you leave today. Bring Kapalski with you.” A few seconds of silence. “Yes. It’s about that.” Then a few more seconds. “Good. He needed that.” After another minute of listening, Parks hung up.
I finished my statement then signed and dated it and handed it over. Parks read it, then asked. “How well do you know Reed and Kapalski?”
“I don’t know Warrant Officer Kapalski at all. Mr. Reed was my Assistant Platoon Sergeant when I was at Fort Sill, so I got to know him fairly well.”
“Okay. Reed thinks highly of you, and I have a lot of respect for Reed’s opinions. I’ve known him a long time and he’s rarely wrong about people. I don’t want you to say anything about this to anybody. Not yet. I have to see how the Major wants to handle it.” He grimaced at the thought of Major Wilson. I knew that Parks didn’t think very much of the Major. Hell, no one did.
When I got back to the barracks, I checked the duty schedule again for that week. I had B-Man duty during the day on Tuesday and Wednesday with Lieutenant Meiers and Thursday night and Saturday night with Captain Barrett. Our duty shifts were twelve hours, from eight to eight.
At seven forty-five on Thursday evening, I went to the Duty Officer room. After inventorying all the classified documents, I relieved Staff Sergeant Miller and Lieutenant Dunne from duty. Captain Barrett showed up just as they were leaving.
“Sorry I’m late, Jim. I was in the latrine.”
“No worries, sir. I took care of all the paperwork.” I noticed a new book in his hand. “What are you reading?”
“The Civil Wars, by Julius Caesar. How about you?”
“A Farewell to Arms. You know, it has been debated if it was Caesar who wrote that. Some historians think that it was written by one of his Generals, Hirtius.”
“Have you read it?”
“Sure. My Dad was a history teacher. I read everything I could about the Roman Republic and the Empire.” That set off a half-hour discussion about Rome. We talked about the various ruins we had seen, the Roman museum in Augsburg, and the general influence the Romans had on Western European culture. He may have been crazy as a loon, but Barrett was very knowledgeable about history.
At ten o’clock he put down The Civil Wars and announced, “I’m going to make my rounds. Who has Rec Room duty tonight?” The duty Team had the responsibility of cleaning the Rec Room every evening.
“Simmons. I already gave him the keys, sir.”
Barrett made his rounds and when he returned, I gave up the chair at the desk and laid down on the bunk, determined to get through at least one more chapter. I woke up when he shook me.
“What time is it? I must have fallen off.”
Barrett grinned, “Two. I always found Hemingway to be a good cure for insomnia. I have to make the rounds again.”
I got up, stretched, then looked through the printouts of the radio traffic. Nothing critical, although the Navy seemed to have a training exercise going on in the Western Mediterranean.
“Nobody declared war while you were sleeping, but I think the Navy is trying to intimidate the Libyans with that training exercise.”
“Could be, sir.”
He strapped on his gun belt, grabbed the duty officer’s key ring, and left.
I sat down at the desk and started reading again. Only a few minutes had passed when I heard, Bang bang bang bang bang. Gunshots! Not loud, but definitely gunfire. The only other person in the compound who had a weapon with live ammunition besides me was the Captain. I grabbed my .45, not even bothering to take the belt and holster, and ran out the door, chambering a round as I went.
Staff Sergeant Fernandez, who was the Duty Sergeant, was standing at the front door of the building. He turned to me as I ran up, “Those were gunshots!”
“No shit! Watch the duty room!” I shouted as I burst out the door.
Across from the HQ building was the small building that housed the rec room. The front door was standing open and the lights were all on. The building was supposed to be locked up by ten o’clock on weeknights.
I ran across the road and when I was about ten feet from the door, Bravo Teams’ door flew open and Kevin ran out in his jockey shorts and a t-shirt. Lights were popping on in the other barracks as well.
“What’s going on?” he shouted at me.
“Stay here. Keep everyone out after I go in.”
I edged through the front door. The inner door to the rec room was wide open and the light poured out into the hall. I walked up to the doorway and saw him. Captain Barrett was standing there with his .45 pointed to the ceiling, gun smoke hanging in the air. He was looking at something out of my field of view. I stepped up beside him and followed his gaze.
There was an arcade game against the far wall, its screen shattered by bullets. The game was ‘Punch Out’, a boxing game that used prerecorded insults to goad people into playing. Looking at Barrett, I saw he had a blank look in his eyes and his jaw was hanging open. Making sure my weapon was safed, I slid it behind my belt. I took his .45 from his unresisting hand, cleared it and ejected the magazine. Gun, magazine, and ejected round went into the side pocket of my fatigues. I put my hand on Barrett’s shoulder and gently, but firmly, guided him into a chair at one of the card tables. I quietly said, “Sir, why don’t you sit down for a minute.”
“I thought there was an intruder.”
“I know, Captain. Just sit there for a minute and take it easy. It’s not a problem.”
I heard the outer door bang open and Parks appeared and took in the scene with a glance. He was in pajamas, robe, and slippers. I burst out laughing. The pajamas had a ‘Snoopy on top of his doghouse’ pattern. “What happened? What are you laughing at?” Both he and Barrett were staring at me.
I pointed and sputtered, “Your pajamas . . .”
“Forget about my fucking pajamas! Answer my question!”
“Captain Barrett thought there was an intruder. At least now, we can get rid of that damned ‘Punch-out’ game.” I pointed to the ruined machine.
“Where’s his sidearm?”
“In my pocket.”
“Give it to me.”
Trying to calm myself down, I took a few deep breaths as I retrieved the .45, the magazine, and the ejected round from my pocket. I handed them over.
“Stay here with him. Don’t let him leave. I’ve got to make some phone calls. Who’s watching the duty room?”
“Fernandez.”
“Okay, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He turned and strode out the door.
If Barrett decided to leave, what was I supposed to do, shoot him? I did the only thing I could think of. I sat down across from him. “You know, sir, now that I think about it, I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“The Civil Wars.. Caesar did write that chronicle. It was the latter three that there were doubts about the authorship. Those were the Chronicles of the Alexandrine, the African, and the Spanish campaigns.”
“I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. Did you know that Caesar’s armies killed over a million Gauls during the Gallic war?”
That started a discussion about the details of various aspects of the Gallic War. Parks returned, now dressed in his fatigues, and sat down, mesmerized as we reviewed the major battles of that war. We were discussing Caesar’s tactics during the siege of Alesia, which was the final battle of the war. A deck of playing cards represented the various units; face up for the Gauls and face down for the Romans.
We had almost finished when Major Wilson came in, followed by an MP Major and two other MPs. We all stood up and Major Wilson looked us over and said, “Captain Barrett, you have to go with these MPs. You’re not under arrest, but they are going to take you to the hospital in Wiesbaden for evaluation.”
“I understand, sir.” He turned to me, smiled, and held out his hand. “Thank you, Jim.”
I shook it and he turned and walked out with the MPs, Major Wilson following them out the door. Parks turned to me.
“I’ve been in the Army for twenty-two years and this is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.”
“Who’s going to take over the Team?”
“Probably Baker. He’s getting promoted next month. You’ll have to come over to the office and write out a formal statement. Then I want you to go back to your room and get some sleep. I’ll have Fernandez cover the rest of your shift. The Colonel will be here later and will want to talk to you about this. You need to be alert for that.”
“Okay, thanks.” But I wasn’t thinking about my statement or getting some sleep or the Colonel. I was thinking, strangely enough, that now I would be pulling duty with Lieutenant Baker again. Damn it. Cribbage.
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Jim DiCillo served in the Army from 1981 to 1985 working with special weapons. He is a physicist who has, until recently, written primarily scientific and technical articles for journals. Now that he is close to retirement, he is now delving into the realm of storytelling. Jim’s stories are all true and are based on his life experiences. He is also working on a cookbook that combines his Italian heritage with an American influence.
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