CHARACTERS BY F. P. SIEDENTOPF

CHARACTERS
BY F. P. SIEDENTOPF

I’m positive that James A. Michener never told the complete or totally true story of Bloody Mary in South Pacific and Joseph Heller had a real prototype for Major Major in Catch-22. A writer will often change the name of a real life person, or create a character that is a composite of two or more people, but here’s always a germ of truth in what is written. Anyone who was a contemporary of the author should be able to identify the character or characters in the story.
If you spend time in any of the military services, either for a single enlistment or for a twenty or thirty year career, you can’t help but come away with a humorous anecdote or two. You’ll also meet and remember for life at least one character who couldn’t be created by the most adept author. People reading about that character will know in their heart that he or she has to have been real, and they’ll be positive that the prose only scratches the surface of that gem of a human being.
I remember many characters from my Marine Corps career. There were some who were tragically flawed and some who were seemingly beset by demons; their lives could provide for years of daytime Soap Opera scripts. They seemed to make every bad choice that came along and bad luck found them just like tornados find trailer parks. These unfortunate individuals often were unfortunate enough to marry someone as unfortunate as they were, they begat unfortunate offspring, and chose unfortunate pets. They would even have unfortunate cars that lived down to, or up to their initials: Fix. Or. Repair. Daily. These characters are too depressing for me to write about. It would be quite similar to creating characters for a daytime soap opera and later hoping to apply a plot.
Often, due to a single incident or because of a single circumstance, someone became etched in my memory as a character. But the characters that are most indelibly printed on the mental parchment that often scrolls through my mind are those characters that had innate traits of “weird” that controlled part of their everyday lives. These people were just as incapable of acting any other way than the sun is capable of voluntarily rising in the west and setting in the east. It just wouldn’t happen.
To those readers who have known Sailors and Marines, be assured that the recollections that I’m sharing are not “sea stories.” These people really exist, or at least existed, although I’ve changed their names to prevent law suits or a possible smack down, limb breaking, uninvited reunion for revealing their foibles to the world.

During my first tour in Vietnam I was assigned to a helicopter support squadron. Our unit provided the repair services beyond that which could be performed by the flight crews, and our maintenance personnel would fill in for flight crew personnel when operations were really heavy and people needed down time. In a lot of ways it was like having a 9 – 5 state side job; particularly if you came from a city where you could get shot at. We had a day shift and a night shift, 8:00am to 4:00pm and 4:00pm to midnight. In the Avionics shop from midnight to 8:00am we had two caretakers who performed maintenance on the maintenance and test equipment and maintenance spaces, and made sure there was a pot of fresh coffee for the senior NCO in charge of us sinners when he got to work.
We alternated the caretaker crew as often as possible, but and when “Bo’s” turn came; things got a little strained at work. Our NCOIC was not his usual chipper self that first morning after Bo’s first night, and things started going downhill after his first cup of coffee. I think he said something along the lines of, “This tastes like shit.” To this day, I wonder how he gained the talent to discern what shit tasted like. We also noticed an odd smell at work in our vans and shelters, which were butted up to a plywood shelter that served as a storage area, office area, and a receiving area for equipment needing repair. It smelled a bit like ammonia, bleach, and incense combined. The troops’ first pot of coffee every morning didn’t taste quite right either, it seemed a little “off.”
Our first thought was that old Bo was smoking "Wacky Tobaky" on the job and covering it up. By the end of the first week things hadn’t changed, so our NCOIC decided to make an unannounced, 3:00 AM inspection on the work space. Sure enough, old Bo was engaged in odd, but not necessarily illegal, behavior. Bo was the unit hustler, always involved in some scheme to put cash in his pocket. He must have been exposed to endless hours of Sgt Bilko reruns during his formative years and was incapable of not coming up with a hair brained scheme. The most amazing thing about Bo was the fact his schemes did put money in his pocket, he’d never been the subject of legal action because of them, and his pigeons never pecked him to death. He always provided some value for the money he scammed.
It seems old Bo once again needed some spare cash, though where he was going to spend it we had no idea. To generate this revenue, Bo had set up a make shift diner. From 12:30 to about 4:00 AM, he was cooking stew in the NCOIC’s Party Perk coffee pot and selling bowls of stew with bread for a buck a pop to the grave yard crew on the flight line. Bo would then quickly clean the coffee pot and then start cooking breakfast! He used the NCOIC’s coffee pot to make “sausage gravy” out of C-Ration canned ham and C-Ration powdered milk. He used the troops Party Perk coffee pot to make poached and soft boiled eggs. He sold breakfasts for a buck a pop to the flight line crew and the oncoming flight crews who were getting their helicopters ready for dawn launches. The smell we encountered was the result of Bo cleaning equipment afterwards.
The combination of a bleaching sink cleaner, an ammonia and water rinse, and residual chicken crap on the eggs being soft boiled in contact with the aluminum pot left a bad taste in the pot and in the mouth. In fact, Bo’s whole scheme left a bad taste in the NCOIC’s mouth.
Bo’s partner on watch never really knew what was happening. He spent most of the watch in the ground support equipment shop rebuilding a moped.
Two weeks later Bo filled in as a door gunner on an afternoon medevac flight. We never saw him again. When the helicopter landed, Bo was just…gone. He was officially listed as missing in action. It wasn’t until several years later that I learned that Bo had been recruited by the CIA’s private air line, Air America. I’ve often wondered whether he was recruited to work in Avionics or to run a diner in Laos for hungry CIA flight crews.

Back in the US of A, the land of the Big PX after that first tour in Vietnam, I was assigned to a similar maintenance unit. At one point I was picked to deploy with a helicopter squadron to provide intermediate avionics maintenance support. One of the members of that squadron was a corporal of Croatian or Slovakian heritage though he never did tell us what country his family came from. His first name was “Enoch,” but his last name was indicative of the hardships his family faced, which undoubtedly spurred their emigration to the New World. His last name consisted of seven consonants, proof positive of his family’s economic misfortune…they couldn’t afford to buy a vowel.
Enoch had a talent that kept several of us swilling free beer and pocketing cash whenever we would go on liberty with him. He could drain a twelve ounce can of beer in less than five seconds. Our favorite prey was the unwary and slightly tipsy sailor we’d occasionally meet in Caribbean ports while on cruises away from home port.
We’d start whetting our marks’ appetite for a wager by talking about Enoch’s skill; about how only the Marine Corps could produce the King of Beer Guzzlers. The first bet was simple: a round of drinks against a round of drinks and maybe a few dollar side bets. The opposition was required to pop the top of a beer and punch a hole in the top opposite the pop top opening. With the beer sitting on the bar or table, and with Enoch standing with hands at his side, the opposition yelled Go! Enoch grabbed the beer, upended it and slammed the empty can back down. He could pour that beer straight into his stomach without going through the swallowing process.
Once we won the first bet, it was time to step up the action. The same bet was offered with one exception: Enoch would start with an unopened can of beer, upside down on the bar. Now the side bets got serious. We’d insist on 20 - 1 odds and settled for odds of 10 – 1. The average bet was our five against their fifty, but I once saw a sailor put up a thousand against a hundred and, of course, lose.
Loss by the opposition was inevitable because Enoch had exceptionally large lower canine teeth. They were also exceptionally strong. To win the bet, Enoch had to pick up the beer, impale the bottom edge on a lower canine, pull down quickly on the can to tear the bottom out, and then swallow it down in less than five seconds. I never saw Enoch lose a bet. His personal best was just a tad under 3.0 seconds for drinking from the bottom. I hardly ever saw Enoch sober, either.
The only drawback to betting on Enoch was that he quickly reached a point of diminishing returns. We needed to make our money quickly on the first four or five bets and then quit. By the time Enoch had finished five or six beers in the course of a half hour or so, he was barely mobile. We had to drag him around with us. There was never a thought of letting him sober up and starting the scheme again later on. Enoch loved his beer, even the thin, watery, American version of lager. He would chug a beer every time he woke up or until he ran out of money, whichever came first.

It’s rare that thinking of one character automatically conjures up the image of another. But I knew two who I will always recall as the “Twins.” The Twins weren’t related, they never even met, and I encountered them some ten years apart. One twin, who I’ll call Lester, was 6’ 8” tall and weighed well over 250 lbs. I met Lester while I was on Sea Duty, stationed aboard the USS Boxer. The other twin, who I’ll call Mac, was a mere 5’ 5 ¾” tall and even soaking wet wouldn’t tip the scales above 140 lbs. I met Mac during my first tour of Duty with MACS-5 at MCAS Beaufort, SC. Long before the movie “Twins” came along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito as disparate Twins, I’d met my own.
To me they became the “Twins” because of their similar backgrounds. Both came from the South, both came from mountainous areas, and both were barely literate. Neither man had more than an 8th grade education, although both were quite clever and picked up on things quickly. Their reading and comprehension skills improved dramatically in the short time I was stationed with each one and both were able to pass their High School GED’s.
The Twins didn’t have addresses in their Service Record Books for contacting next of kin in case of an emergency. Both had directions and hand drawn maps. Directions would read something like, “Starting at Jones’ Market, head west on Willow Road for about two miles, and turn right onto the dirt road when you get to McMurray’s burned out barn. Keep on the road until you get to the fork that goes around the borrow pit, taking the fork to the right for about a mile. There will be a house on the right with a big oak tree in the front yard, a barn leaning to the left behind it, and a rusted out Ford tractor on the right.” For phone numbers, one had the local General Store’s number; the other had the local Constable’s number.
Both had similar problems with uniforms and civilian clothes. Mac couldn’t find grown up clothes and uniforms small enough and Lester couldn’t find them big enough. Both had their uniform items made to order from the tailors at Marine Corps Base, Albany, GA. For civilian clothes, Mac was lucky, he could find things to fit in the Boy’s section of department stores, but Lester wasn’t as well off. He could come close to getting a good fit in the waist, chest, and shoulders, but sleeves and cuffs always came up short. In civilian clothes Lester looked like a cross between Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies and Lurch the Butler on the Addams Family.
Lester decided to go home for Christmas, dressed in his best civilian clothes and wearing an old Navy Pea Jacket he’d bought in an Army surplus store. The sleeves were a little short; the hem came down only to the tops of his pant pockets…not to the top of his thighs as a well fitted jacket would. He hitchhiked from Norfolk, VA to Kentucky, and back. Upon his return, he had a duffle bag with civilian clothes that his mother, sisters, and aunts had made, or had altered to fit. The sleeves of his Pea Jacket had been lengthened and an extension had been sewn on the bottom converting it to a quite serviceable and remarkably good looking overcoat.
We noticed that Lester was walking a bit jerkily and taking small slow steps. We immediately thought that he’d gotten his toes frost bitten. That wasn’t the case. Lester was walking oddly because of alterations to his Pea Jacket. Besides being altered for fit and warmth, the extension had pockets sewn into the lining. Lester had returned with a dozen quart Mason jars full of homemade whiskey, a Christmas present from his father, brothers, and uncles. His stilted ambulatory motions were an effort to keep the jars from clanking. Needless to say Lester was the center of attraction for those of us on watch that New Years Eve.
Mac had one flaw in his makeup besides his diminutive size. In the cartoon strip Peanuts, there was a character named Pig-Pen who was perennially dirty and unkempt. Straight from a bath and dressed in clean pressed clothes, Pig-pen could stand unmoving in one spot and would slowly unravel, frame by frame, until he was his old dirty, messy self. Just like Nature abhorring a vacuum, Nature could not allow Pig-pen to be neat and clean. Mac had a similar problem. He was so small that even tailored-to-fit uniforms didn’t look crisp and neat on him. Pockets on uniform shirts are the same size, whether they are on extra small or extra, extra, extra large uniforms. In Mac’s case the two pockets on his uniform shirts almost met at the buttons and extended damned near to his arm pits. They ran from just under the tips of his collar to his belt. Ties are a standard length, and on Mac they would hang down about two inches below his belt buckle. No matter how well he dressed, after two steps Mac looked as if he had been caught in the same tornado that deposited Dorothy and Toto in the Land of Oz. He was often referred to as Raggedy Andy.
Both Lester and Mac were destined to be single tour Marines. They were good natured about their short- or tall-comings, and realized that they didn’t quite fit in. Both were hard workers, always available to lend a helping hand to others. They were never ridiculed by their peers. Neither Lester nor Mac were comfortable in the Big City, nor were they impressed with the Caribbean Islands we visited in Lester’s case, or the European cities we visited in Mac’s case. Both were looking forward to going home. Hopefully McMurray’s burned out barn was still there so they could find their way home.

Several years later I met “Chuck,” a career Marine with a peculiar talent and a very droll and dry sense of humor. He also had a Zen like stoicism, a dead pan Buster Keaton persona that made demonstrations of his talent all the more impressive. What may appear as a smirk on some faces was a full blown “Jokers” grin on Chuck
When you think of flatulence - wall rattling, glass rattling explosions of noxious gas - you usually think of an unkempt, beer swilling, Bubbaesque individual with a three-day growth of beard and a large belly slowly raising one butt cheek off a bar stool and cutting cheese. Chuck was the antithesis of a Bubba: neat as a pin, slim and trim at 190 pounds, six foot tall, with the build of gymnast. In or out of uniform, Chuck was the epitome of military bearing, never giving a hint of his amazing talents by word, though he was quite expressive by deed.
If farting were a quadrennial Olympic event, Chuck’s peculiar prowess would have guaranteed him a position on the team, quite possibly as the team captain. Chuck was a master of the “Sustained Fart,” producing farts of amazing duration that never changed in volume or tone until the last fraction of a second when pressure collapsed and his sphincter snapped shut. He could consistently produce blasts of five seconds or longer without an embarrassing or disconcerting side spray of either liquid or lump.
Chuck was also capable of short, loud blasts of surprising volume. These could be delivered in staccato bursts of three in rapid succession much like an assault rifle in burst mode of operation, although Chuck was never able to quite match the rifles cyclic speed or decibel level though he tried.
One of Chuck’s tricks was imitating a deflating balloon. He could fart imitating a balloon being held with its neck stretched while the gas slowly escaped causing that high pitched wining sound. He could also pass gas imitating a fully inflated balloon that when suddenly released, produces that “blubbery” sound as it rockets around in eccentric arcs and circles.
But perhaps Chuck’s greatest accomplishment was the perfection of the silent fart. His ability to maintain an absolutely expressionless façade made his delivery of a silent fart all the more impressive. Let loose in an elevator, it was amazing to watch the silent but redolent emission spread, affecting the shorter passengers first. Their watery eyes, flaring nostrils, and involuntary gag reflexes would at first puzzle the taller passengers until the invisible cloud finally spread to envelop them also. While this ability and talent was amusing, Chuck had a variant that was utilitarian: the Ambulatory Anal Ambush.
Chuck was able to walk and disperse a silent but noxious cloud without breaking stride, with no telltale twitch or hitch in his gait. The unsuspecting people moving in his wake would be engulfed by a wall of fetid fumes. Even the most determined of muggers would be discouraged.

The characters I’ve chosen to share with the reader are those who I particularly enjoy remembering. These few stand out in my memory because I knew them fairly well and they brightened my day when I was around them. I only wish that there had been an unofficial “Character Exchange” set up among the mid-level leaders of the Marine Corps. Think about all the likeable loonies my peers may have run across who I will never know about, since we hardly ever shared vignettes.
I’m sure after all these years I’m on someone’s “Character List” and I wonder how I’ve been perceived. This year I celebrate one milestone in my life, the 50th anniversary of my enlistment in the Marine Corps (Thank you Judge! I had no idea the car was stolen), and I know I’ve left some impressions on people, both positive and negative.
I would hope to be remembered as the guy that seemed to thrive as the perennial SLJ guy, who had a lot of fun converting the SLJ into a job to be proud of and worthy of merit. (By the way, SLJ means Shitty Little Job) Although I was a technician, first as an Avionics Technician and then retrained as a Marine Tactical Data Technician (MTDS Tech), I actually spent comparatively little time working on equipment. I spent a lot of time in management assignments not related to my job specialty. Suddenly we have no Communications Chief? Have Sied take over the Communications shop. Inspection coming up and we have no Supply Officer? Have Sied take over the Supply section. Enlisted Club Manager in receipt of emergency transfer orders? Have Sied take over as Enlisted Club Manager.
There were enough assignments of this nature during my last twenty years of active duty that many of the MTDS Technicians I had spent a year in school with had no idea that I was still on active duty. Nearly twelve of my last twenty years on active duty I spent in either Supply Chief/Supply Officer; or Logistics Chief/Logistics Officer billets, working on special assignments. As mysterious as I may have been within the Marine Air Command and Control System as an MTDS Technician, I was even more mysterious in the Supply and Logistics communities. Breezing in and out of conferences, disrupting the flow of presentations interjecting questions that were hard to answer if at all, I wonder what was said when I left. I hope that the Lone Ranger and I had something in common, but I never wore a mask.
I’ve often thought about faking my own death in order to find out what people would be saying about me after I’m gone. The thought of getting my hands on my insurance payoff and spending my remaining years as a beach bum on a tropical island crossed my mind also. Of course I’d never do that…it’s not in my nature. My father always said that the reason I made a career out of the Marine Corps was because I was too lazy to work and too nervous to steal. He was at least half right!