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Chapter 9: Candy Raid
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Nine Candy Raid So put down your books and pick up a gun, Wereg01ma have a whole lot ofjim. - "'J Feel Like Jm Fixin' to Die Rag" -Country joe and the Fish After the top sergeant's announcemem and the night of calling home and being focused on the Christmas break, when the reality sank in that we still had three weeks to go before leave, the whole company sagged like a punctured blimp. I began thinking that I could take anything for three weeks to make it to that recess, but for some of the guys, thinking about going home pushed them over the edge. The next week was something called the Leadership Reaction Course. We were split up into groups and assigned to do various difficult and often ridiculous tasks with one person assigned as the leader for that task. We did things like moving a barrel filled with water from the ground to a platform twelve feet up or taking a table apart and recons[fucting it in a differetH shape. All of (he tasks required some dear planning and group work, with nothing particularly a military objective. Each goal could be accomplished ifyou had the time (Q think it through, bur in each case you had just less than enough time. The poim was (Q see how people reacted under stress, and it took almost all week for everyone in the company (Q have a turn as leader. The TACs roamed the course, scouring the place looking for weak leaders. They knew this assignment would weed out those who floundered under pressure. I was on the first day, before anyone knew much about what was going on, and my group caught the task of moving the water barrel. I listened to suggestions from my people, and we got the thing hoisted abour halfw-ay up before the time ran out. It wasn't particularly stressful or successful, but I made it through. As each day wore on, the guys who hadn't yet been tapped as a leader had time to chafe, fret, and get completely psyched Out. Thursday night the anxiety level rose and produced a casualty. I was on guard duty from midnight to 0200, which meant simply that I had to get up, get dressed, sign in at the guard station, check to make sure everyone was accounted for, do a couple of fire watches, and wake up the guy who was on duty next. Guard duty was routine, disruptive, but usually insignificant . Depending on how the duty roster went, I caught it for a couple of hours about every third night. It wasn't unusual to find guys out of bed. The latrine was almost always busy all night, bur I usually kept a count of the empty bunks and matched the number with the guys in the latrine. On my first run-through I found six guys out of their bunks, bur when I got to the latrine, I only found five men. I looked under the stalls but still could only account for five. I didn't think much about it, figuring I'd simply made a mistake in my count. On the second pass, Sugarman had gone back to his bunk, so I had only five empry bunks. When J gOt to the latrine, I counted four men. This time I was getting worried. I didn't want to be on dury when someone sneaked off, so I decided to go back through and find our who was missing. In the latrine were Trotter, Garcia, Livingston, and Shrode. The fifth bunk was Donaldson's, three doors down and across the hall from my room. "Where's Donaldson?" I asked the larr'ine crowd, but no one had seen him. I began to worry and wondered what to do. No one was supposed to leave the platoon area after lights our, but the guy on guard duty could check with the guards on dury at another platoon, or he could check in with the candidate who was on "CQ~ for the night in the first sergeant's office. CQ (charge of quarters) dury meant that someone was in charge at night to call the company to quarters in case of fire or attack. The assignment was done by roster for four hour shifts. I went down the long hallway that separated the firs[ from the second platoon. Some guy I didn't know was sitting at the guard table. The...