The Mickey Mouse Club song
is playing in my head
as I climb the fire road
up the mountain.
Not the who’s the leader part, I hear
the marching part at the beginning.
“Mickey Mouse Club, Mickey Mouse Club”
Over and over. That bit gets stuck in my head
now and then going on sixty years.
A good cadences can carry you along.
When I arrived at Fort Ord for basic training,
I had never fired a gun, but I knew how to
march from high school marching band.
I knew how to wield a clarinet, spitting out
notes instead of bullets.
Drill Sergeant said your M16 is a weapon,
not a gun, your gun is in your pants.
The fact that I knew marching drill,
how to turn, how to stop, do a crisp
about face in step, immediately earned
his respect.
So I became the company guidon.
That’s the person who carries a swallow-tailed flag
on a tall brass-ttipped pole and marches or runs
at the front of the company or platoon.
When the sergeant gives an order,
the guidon raises the flag staff straight up
with the first part of the order “Companeeey…’
and then sharply straight down in time
with the second part...“Halt”.
There are various visual signals to coincide with
and emphasize the verbal commands.
We didn’t sing the Mickey Mouse Club song
"Forever let us hold our banner hiiigh"
as we ran to the rifle range.
We sang soldier songs:
I wanna be an airborne ranger
I wanna live a life of danger
I wanna go to Viet Nam
I wanna kill the Viet Cong.
or
They say that in the army
the biscuits are mighty fine
one rolled off the table
and killed a friend of mine
I don’t want no more of army life
gee mom I wanna go
gee mom I wanna go
but they won’t let me go home.
Well I could sing and twirl that guidon
pretty damn good. But I had a lot
more to learn about shooting a gun,
I mean weapon. Because we’d
never had guns in our house.
When I was four, my friend
down the alley was killed by his
brother when they were playing with
their duck-hunting dad’s shotgun.
So we never had any guns,
but my baby brother got one
when he was old enough
to own one. A powerful revolver
which he used to kill himself
at the age of fifty two.
