“Kids…Your Dad Got Orders”

–Mark Vosel

I’m reading ‘The Great Santini’ by Pat Conroy. It is hitting close to home, growing up as an Army Brat. My dad was nothing like LTC Meecham, however. Mine was the parent that snuck in a peanut butter sandwich on Sunbeam white bread when I was sent to bed with no supper. 

But the military family culture didn’t care if the dad was a softie or a hard ass. The wheels painted in OD green and camouflage rolled over all of us in the same mobile manner. I have read the snippet from Conroy’s novel several times (see above image). While a Marine family, they shared the same Gypsy experience as we did. “The Army Goes Rolling Along” is a perfect song for our nomadic life.

Orders. It was a word that you just didn’t want to hear.

I remember Mom calling us into the living room of our rental home in the St Mary’s community in Columbus, GA soon after Pop got home from Vietnam in 1966. 

“Kids, your dad got orders.” 

“NO!” I cried and ran to my room. 

The quote from Conroy regarding rootlessness wasn’t entirely true in my case. I had attended half of the 3rd grade and all of the 4th grade at St Mary’s Elementary. My excessively handwashing 4th grade teacher, a squatty soul with thick glasses and a thicker yardstick, left her reminder on my tricep. I had my first real fight with a real- life Scut Farkus. My first girlfriend was a cute, husky little thing named Cecilia. My best friend’s dad had been killed in action in Vietnam. My best dog, a Pug, had been hit by a car and survived. My brother and I shot up a couple snakes with our BB guns. My two-year old sister ended up in our tree house along with a tricycle. And Mrs. Dunn, my 4th grade teacher who constantly referred to us as a bunch of heathens? I showed her. I walked the aisle at Hillcrest Baptist during the alter call at high noon on a Sunday.

I had roots, dammit. We lived on McCartha Drive for a whole year and a half. We OWNED that rental. 

Yeah, I had roots. The kind of roots that exist on the cursed Bradford Pear tree. It will hang in there for a few stinky springs, but eventually, it’s going down due to those shallow roots. Army Brats lacked the characteristics of a White Oak—solid, secure, steady. We were the ones with the weird last names. The local kids knew we would be gone soon enough. 

The trip from Ft Benning to Ft Rucker was a short one. Still, we traveled those Southern state roads in tandem with a 1960 Ford station wagon and a slick little ‘63 Volkswagen ragtop. I hung my head and my hand out the window playing jet plane, catching updrafts and downdrafts as I moved my arm up and down in the humid air. We arrived to something new at our quarters on North Harris Drive, something so magical, so healing, so breathtaking. It was called central air conditioning. So…maybe this won’t be so bad. 

It took about a week for my emphatic “NO!” to wear off. Jack Spradley became my new best friend. We could almost reach out and shake hands while standing on our carports. The next two years were great. Ft Rucker was filled with adventures. It was the best elementary school out of the five I attended. The woods surrounding the housing areas allowed us to experience the holy red clay that addicted so many military families to eventually retire in the area. Nothing could be better than life on Ft. Rucker. 

“Kids. Your dad got orders. He’s going back to Vietnam. The Army is requiring us to move off Post. We are moving to Enterprise (a small town a few miles from the west gate of Ft Rucker) so get ready.” 

“NO!” I hollered. Another year without our dad. A new school, new kids, another foul Bradford Pear ripped up by a squall via some unknown entity with scrambled eggs on his cover at the Pentgon, or wherever these damn orders came from. 

What good could come out of living in Enterprise, Alabama? What good, indeed. Within a few weeks, there was Mike Tindol. Donnie Messick. Within a few years, there were hundreds. And in June of 2024, there will be a gathering of the class of 1974 from my beloved adopted hometown of Enterprise. 

Ironically, I was born in Alabama (Ft Rucker), have spent most of my adult life here, and will probably be buried here. It would make one think that I’m just a local boy. But the ‘orders’ prove that wrong. Honestly I’m glad they stopped when Pop retired in 1975. He was being considered as the Liaison Officer to the Shah of Iran, just a few years prior to the Islamic Revolution. 

We’d had enough of “America where nothing was permanent and everything was possible” and God knows Pop had too. Those orders to Iran would have made him a Full Bird. 

But finally, thank God, it was time to be a White Oak.