Memorial Day is coming up. Time for some stories in honor of the fallen. Wherever they are, I hope they get a good chuckle.

When you join the military, there is a security/clearance form you must fill out. Before they hand someone a gun, they want to know everything about that person and their background. Questions like “In which timezone did your great-great-grandfather’s second cousin twice removed first use the potty?” could be expected. It took a week to research. I had to find and query relatives I did not know I had. Lots of crazy family history came out in the process. Should Dad’s sending guns to the IRA in the 1950s be mentioned?

After you are in the service, when you are mobilized to go overseas, there are checklists and a series of stations to make sure soldiers are ready. This is the “SRP” process (sandwich and apple in a brown paper bag for lunch included). There is legal to write a will, family to make sure your kids will be looked after, finance to make sure your ex-spouse gets their cut of your pay and so on. At the dog tags station, I told the solider my religion was Hekawi. He asked what that was. I explained the Hekawi are one of the lost tribes of Israel who lived near F-Troop in the Old West. If I croaked overseas, it would have been a mess. I hoped Don Rickles (Bald Eagle) was available to read my eulogy.

At the dental station was a long line of guys and gals waiting to get a 60 second look over by a dentist. When it came my turn, I sat down on the couch. The dentist made it horizontal and adjusted the overhead light.

He said, “Now open wide.” To this I responded, “Well doc, I seem to be having a recurring fantasy of me, my girlfriend, a donkey and a hammer drill …”

The dentist and his assistant froze. “Wait. … What? … What did you say?” asked the dentist.

Pretending to be confused I replied: “Is this Mental Health?” “No. It’s dental,” he replied.

“Oh, sorry.” I closed my eyes and opened my mouth. I could hear his laughter and the others on the line close by. There is no Mental Health station by the way. Should there be?

The night before we got on the airplane to leave, I was called into the HHC office. Remember that security/clearance form? They had no record of it. How could I be in the Army, much less mobilized without it? I was fuming. I took the blank form they had and filled it out right there at the table. It took five minutes this time. I wrote everyone’s birth date as Jan. 1, 1900. I used Chinese for the names (I know a few curse words in Mandarin …. never mind).

Screw it: they could boot me from the Army at that point for all I cared. I have a low tolerance for BS and high moral standards (except in bars after 1 a.m.). Months later, in Iraq, I was handed a letter saying I now had Interim Secret Clearance … which I never applied for … super duper spy decoder ring not included.

The next morning we all got on a charter airplane at Ft. Drum. No MPs pulled me off the line due to my literary master piece from the night before. The charter flight is exactly like any other trans-Atlantic commercial airplane you have been on except every seat is occupied by just military. It had all the amenities you find on any commercial flight: movies, meals, etc. When we boarded we all had our individual weapons. So there were M-16s, M-4, SAWs, 92FS, sniper rifles and who knows what else all over the place. Everyone was armed. Literally. We were in the economy class section so you can imagine us tripping over the hardware and crap.

I had a left-most isle seat. Hours later, I finished reading a book and the lights were turned down low in the cabin. I could hear guys and gals snoring. We were someplace over the Atlantic. A disruptive element, bored with too much time on his hands is a bad mix.

I tried to turn the overhead reading light to shine sideways (left) the best I could. I hoped that I would see the eyes of whoever bent down to talk to me. I spotted one of the stewardess way down the dark isle on my left. I waved frantically to get her attention. She saw my distress signal and fast trotted over. She bent her head down to talk to me. “Yes sir, what is wrong?” I remember her name tag said LAURA.

“Laura …” I began trying to look worried “… There is a man on the plane. … WITH A GUN!” As I said this I tried to watch her pupils. May have seen them blip just for a moment. She said nothing, socked me hard in my left shoulder and walked away. Man, that chick had a punch! I should have got her phone number.

The most true-to-life U.S. Army scene in any movie was a brief moment in “Forrest Gump.” In the film, everyone who Gump comes in contact with knows he is mentally challenged. Except his drill instructor.

“Goddamn it, Private Gump! You’re a goddamn genius!” and “… putting you in for OCS!” OCS is Officer Candidate School.

Just a thought. And … to all the fallen, from all conflicts, hanging out at the Green Beans in Valhalla: I hope you can read this and laugh even for just a moment.

——

Ira Weinberg lives in Saranac Lake.