Without rhyme or reason

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.