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Seventeen Turning Black Vietnam, Vietnam, Every night while you're skepin' Charlie Cong comes acreepin' Ali around. -marching song sung to tune of"Poison Ivy" by the Coasters The twelfth week party began to take on mythic proportions. It meant dates for the single guys and the married ones would get to spend the night with their wives coming from out of town, either at the base guesthouse or in the apartments, rooms, or houses the ones who'd come to live in Columbus had rented. True to rumor, Trotter had been assigned as date officer, mainly because he was from Atlanta and had been a frat boy at the University of Georgia at Athens. Most of the guys would end up with nurses or nursing students from a school in Atlanta. A uniform company came in and sized everyone for dress blues and damn near everyone bought them, even those who were still on the bubble and knew it. 1even bought mine, as ambivalent as 1 was about the thought of ever finishing OCS. Even less understandable, I bought the hat with the light blue Infantry stripe and asked for the Infantry stripes to be sewn on the uni~ form. We were all Infantry, bur I still harbored the secret idea that r might be able to branch transfer into Artillery, Signal, or-hope of hopes-the Adjutant General Corps, the paperworks branch of the Army for the d erks and safe-haven base campers. But when I u ied on that dress blue uniform and the Infantry hat, I couldn't keep from drawing on all those years of John Wayne in cavalry blues and even my troubled heart swelled, and r wrote the check for almost $100, most of a month's salary. Troner got photographs ofthe nurses who'd signed up as dates. It must have been like a mail order bride service as we crowded around gawking, judging, and critiquing the girls' pictures that Trotter laid out on the lavatory in the latrine. ~Ooowee! That looks like a hot number. Sign me up for her,~ Stringer yelled out at one of the fi rst girls he looked at. On the backs someone had written the names and vital statistics of the girls, and someone else turned in over and read, "'5' 10", 1951bs.' Hell, Stringer she'd bounce you to the ceiling and then you'd get lost in folds." String, who was about 5' 6" and 140 decided to keep looking. We had drawn lots for choices, and String had first shot. The only stipulation was that we had ten minutes each to look over the pictures and make a selection. Someone had a tell minute hourglass that Trotter placed next to his clipboard with the names and numbers of the girls. Out of the twemy-five men who were left in the second platoon, eight werc married and the rest of us were peering over the shoulders of the others. J had drawil number seven, so I had to wait a while, but I had already spotted aile picture that appealed to me, a darkhaired girl wearing her hair in a flip and a wry expression on her face. "C'mon, dammit, String! Make your move. Ain't got all day." "Keep it in your britches. 1 got three more minutes," said String and looked at my girl, as I began to think of her. He turned her over and read "S' 6", 1251bs. Too tall," and laid her down again. He finally chose a short blond, and Trorter wrote down "Stringer" by the girl's name on a list he carried on a clipboard and removed the picrure from the lavatory. "Hey, 1 wam that," Stringer shouted as Trotter started to slip the picture under the list on the clipboard. Trotter thought for a minute. "I guess it's okay. We'd didn't promise to give 'em back. But don't jerk off on 'em in case the girls want 'em back." Stringer snatched his prize, holding it high over his head and dancing around the latrine. Sugarman was next. Like Stringer he wa~ short, so he eliminated all of the girls over 5' 4". But he also had some specific requirements-he wamed a red-haired girl with freckles, because he had red hair and light freckles sprinkJed over his nose. There was only one photo that met his criteria. He looked her over carefully, [timed over the picture and...

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