Trump's Vietnam War story CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

November 29, 2019

I wrote my book for the heck of it. It's free to read.

When Donald Trump got his letter from his friends and neighbors at the local draft board* in Flushing Queens his dad immediately went into action.

The Organization was pretty much defunct, or apparently so in New York and wasn't showing its face or opening its mouth as such in public as but there was a network of people who went back 25, even 35 years together.

One of them was a proctologist. He wrote a letter that bought Donald Trump some time.

This letter actually held for about a year.

Then came another notice from his neighbors at the draft board to report for a pre-induction physical exam.

You see not everybody wanted to go into the army back in 1966. The Army doctors said Trump was good to go. His hemorrhoids had been cured.

Donald was on a train to Fort

Jackson, South Carolina that passed through Newark on the first night of the riots of 1967.

*Ostensibly the draft was managed by hundreds of local volunteer draft boards. When they sent out notices to potential conscripts the notices' would be headed "Greetings From Your Friends and Neighbors."

Trump went on with an amusing story of how he ducked Vietnam even after being drafted.

"There was a young lieutenant, he couldn't have been more than 19 years old. (You know an Army training unit is like the garage in Greenwich Village was. Gossip everywhere.) Everybody knows everything about everybody else, especially about the permanent party people. Those are the ones that stay in the company after the trainees move on.

“This poor guy, Ralph Cotton (I gotta laugh) was in ROTC in high school. He graduated when he was still 17 and he went straight into the Army. They put him in Shake and Bake School and 1 2 3 Bingo he's a lieutenant. He's a boss over sergeants that been in the Army for 25 years.

"Now he had a couple of problems. For one thing he was five foot six in his boots and he weighed about a hundred twenty-five pounds, also in his boots. Cotton had a squeaky voice and he had an attitude. Cotton also had a bad case of acne and that did not help him at all.

"They say that he once went into the supply room and got bent all out of shape because Sergeant Cascone didn't yell "ten-hut" and everyone who was working there just kept doing what they were doing.

"You see now by the book Cascone was supposed to yell "Attention" ("ten-hut" would do) and everybody in the place was supposed to stop what they were doing and stand at a rigid attention until Cotton says "at ease" or "as you were." All these guys in the supply room, the permanent party guys, were older and bigger than Cotton. Plus every last one of them had done a tour in Vietnam and were not very interested in happy horseshit. On top of all that none of them had severe acne and all their voices had changed. Oh, everyone called Cotton Lieutenant Clearasil behind his back.

"Cotton went storming out of the supply room. He was headed for Captain O'Higgins office. Now the company was in formation for mail call, the trainees that is. All lined up in neat rows.

"The company clerk, a Spec Four, I don't remember his name, was running the mail call - he was calling people's names and giving them their letters from home. The clerk did not yell ten-hut. He just kept on handing out the mail. Cotton got right in his face. He grabbed the pile of letters that the clerk had in his hands and he threw them on the ground. So the clerk says to the company of trainees that is standing there "someone pick up these letters." And someone did and gave them to the clerk. Then the clerk says 'as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted.'

"That night Cotton was Officer of the Day. That means he's supposed to be on top of everything in the battalion until reveille. So he's going up and down the stairs in the barracks when these guys sneak up behind him, throw a blanket over his head and wrap a belt around his legs. Then one of them pushes Second Lieutenant Cotton down the stairs.

"We never saw Cotton again. Rumor was he was assigned to a course at Command Voice School. There always has to be a snitch. I wasn't in the middle of it, I swear, but my bunk was the closest one to the staircase where it happened. Captain O'Higgins didn't want to make a court-martial out of this thing it looks like because he didn't make any court-martial about this. But he didn't want Neeffer and me to get away with anything either. So they put me and Igor Neeffer who had the bunk below mine (I slept in the top bunk) and sent us over to the Special Training Battalion, Attitude Company Alpha which I got to tell you was four weeks of Hell on mother fuckin' wheels. To the enth degree. They also had Special Training for fat guys and guys who couldn't do the PT drills. After four weeks of platoon forced marches in line with telephone poles across our shoulders, and the kicker "hanging around smoking and telling jokes." The barracks were old temporary barracks dating back to the Second World War. They had rafters hanging from the ceiling. Soldiers would hang from the rafters with their right hands, hold a lit cigarette in their left hands and literally tell jokes until they felt a burn. They had a pile of mattresses we fell down onto. They sent us back to the same basic training company we started in to start all over. The idea was to make us feel lucky to be starting day one back in Basic Combat Training and never want to see the Special Training Battalion again. I had already decided that a few months of basic mixed with special training beat the shit out of being a grunt in Vietnam. And fuck the GI Bill.

I learned something in special training. There was a couple of guys in our platoon who were doing their second and third time. I talked to one of them. I said "holy shit why don't you just stay out of trouble". The dude explains to me that the meter is running on his two years. He said that another dude told him that if you go through special training three or four times and you don't finish basic training they kick you out before day 179 of your hitch with an administrative general discharge. You aren't eligible for any benefits because you ain't been in there for a half a year but you are out, Home Free. These are the dudes that taught me Texas Hold'em. I saw how paddy whacked a couple of the permanent party guys who did their year in the 'Nam were. One of the guys that came back from Vietnam just finishing up his two years put his own gun, one he bought in town, put it in his mouth pulled the trigger an' blew 'is frickin' brains out. What a holy fuckin'mess his room was. Neeffer and me had to clean it out too.

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