The following is a rather painful recollection from my youth
I have a fascination with war, the weapons of war, and war's history. Over the years my mother had spoken many times of Lewis Wetzel. She mistakenly believed that he was a scout with the Lewis and Clark expedition. He was a distant uncle of mine. Upon research, I find that Lewis, fueled by revenge, was the scourge of the Wyandotte in the Ohio River Valley.
An expert woodsman and handler of firearms, his claim to fame was that he could reload a flintlock musket while maintaining a full-out run through brush and woods.
At one point he encountered three Wyandotte warriors who gave chase seeking a chunk of his forelock for their belt. He fired, dropping the closest figure, then turned and began loping through the woods, all the while busying himself with the many steps of re-loading a flintlock musket. First he had to pour gunpowder down the barrel, then using the ramrod, next came the ramming home of a lead ball wrapped in a cloth patch . Then, still running at top speed, he would turn the musket sideways and open the breach, exposing the firing pan, add powder to the pan and return the beach to the closed position.
He then turned, stopped in his tracks, and dropped the second Indian dead in his tracks.
The third Wyandotte, having never seen such magic before, turned tail and ran!
Sometime, if you have time, type Lewis+Wetzel in Google's search engine. Read up on the man. He might be part explanation for some of my "crazy" genes.
During World War II, My Uncle Raymond Wetzel died in the cockpit of a P-38 Lightning. Consequently I have no memory of my middle name sake, but I have graying photographs of a good looking lieutenant, in leather helmet and flight gear, reaching up to the cowling of the right engine of the aircraft in which he will meet a fiery death.
my Uncle “Frenchie” Francis Wetzel was a cook with the European Campaign. The family tagged Francis with the name Frenchie because he had black, curly, hair, a swarthiness, and a pencil thin mustache. Frenchie was devilishly handsome, a trumpet player in his Dad's All Wetzel Band before the war.
My memory of Uncle Frenchie? He had a boisterous laugh, loved to tell jokes, battled alcohol and the women in his life.
I remember turning 18 on April 15, 1959, and during lunch hour, leaving the high school building and making my way over to the selective service office on Main Street, which also served as the telegraph office.
The woman at the desk thought I was joking; this baby faced, pug nosed little kid couldn't possibly be 18. She even called my mom at home before she would let me sign up.
I immediately signed up with Company A, Menomonie, Wisconsin, National Guard, and soon after graduation, on a muggy afternoon in late July, said goodbyes to my family and boarded the “400” passenger train for processing in Chicago and then on to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training. I was excited about it. After all, I would learn to fire the M1 Garand rifle, the weapon that had defeated the Axis.
Once processing began at Fort Leonard Wood, my military career took a downward turn. Our NCO's were particularly nasty to all of us would be “college boys”. We would train for only six months, then return to our home units and begin higher education.
It wasn't long, about two weeks in, that events took a turn for worse. It was the morning we were supposed to go out on the firing range for the first time. No more blind- folded tearing down and putting back together my rifle .. Live ammo! Lock and load!
At 5 AM, the platoon sergeant enters my barracks, takes a stand at my bunk and begins banging a night stick on a trash can and screaming at the top of his lungs to get our asses out of bed. I am on the upper bunk, still mostly asleep, so I swing my legs out over the side, push up with my arms do a half turn in air, drop straight off the side of the upper bunk and most of my torso makes it. My still-virgin package does not. I feel white hot searing pain in my left testicle as I hit the wooden floor.
Shake it off I tell myself, this is not the first severe blow to that area and any farm boy can tell you how much damage you can self inflict on silage-slicked rebar ladder rungs coming down from the silo.
I make it through chow and we are assembled in full packs and steel pots, in the misery of Missouri July heat when I am aware that I have a throbbing balloon in my bloused combat fatigues. As we are brought to attention, I involuntarily go to my knees and moan.
This brings a fusillade of screaming from my platoon sergeant.
“What in hell do you think yer doin' boy?
“I hurt myself, Sergeant!”
“you did what?”
“I HURT MYSELF SERGEANT!”
“And jist how in the hell did you hurt yersef, boy?”
“My nuts, Sergeant!!”
“Yer Whut????”
“ITS MY NUTS SERGEANT! I BANGED THEM ON MY BUNK, SERGEANT!”
“Well, fall out, then. Get out of rank and get your sorry ass to the dispensary!”
And with that, the unit wheeled as one, marched past me into the dust and on to the waiting deuce and a halfs.
Somehow I manage to waddle into the dispensary where the obese desk sergeant sings out his one line to each entrant: “Take off your cap and uncover your troubles.”
I hesitate, gawking around the nearly filled waiting room at soldiers removing their boots. But the order was given so I unbuckle my brass and begin to “drop trou” which catches the attention of Jabba the Hut: “What the hell you doin, boy?
"You told me to uncover my troubles. I am uncovering my troubles."
"Well, don't do that over there, get over here!"
I reveal the damage, the left testicle now the size of a Florida orange.
“Goddam! How'd you do that boy?”
“Bunk, sir.”
“Shit! Sit down here. Doc better see you first.”
So I enter the spacious office of a medical Captain behind his big Captain's desk and we start again. (He's from GAWJA):
“Drop them shorts. OUUWEEEE! Umm, ummm, ummm. How the hell did you do that boy?”
“Banged them on my bunk, Sir.”
“Banged them on the bunk? Banged them on the bunk. God damn! You's got to take care a those boy, .. Those is your bauws!"
He assigns me high tech treatment. Go back to the mess hall, get ice from the cook, and keep the injury on ice for the day.
I have served KP under the rabid dog who runs the mess hall and this is an assignment to walk into the jaws of hell.
“Whaddaya want ice for? Get the hell out of my kitchen! You think you can come waltzing in here asking for ice that I need to get my job done? You are a dumb ass. You are scum! Don't stand there like you don't hear me, get the hell out of MY KITCHEN!”
Knowing I am going to need to get his attention, I drop my drawers and give him a good shot.
“I said get the hell out of … oh, Sweet Jesus! Get that boy some ice!”
I spend the rest of the day writhing in pain on the lower bunk in the oppressive heat of Missouri July, speaking in tongues and praying for death.
My fellow soldiers return from the field and one by one file by for the viewing as word spreads of what has happened to the diminutive Wisconsin farm boy that morning.
Dawn of the next day brings a worsening in the swelling and I am finally sent, under my own limping power, to the Fort Leonard Wood Hospital, a one floor, sprawling labyrinth of half mile long hallways and I finally drag myself into a chair in the office indicated on my papers. A pretty young nurse looks at my papers, blushes, and then tells me I have the wrong ward.
This is “heart”. So I waddle off again, but the nurse takes pity on me and phones ahead and soon a wheelchair is being run down the hall and I am admitted.
The recovery regimen? Subhuman. Ice packs for three days, then hot soaks for two weeks and a return to my unit.
Not my unit anymore. They are three weeks ahead of me and I have to start all over again, this time with the Deion Sanders of Cadre, who the first time he approaches me for dress inspection, fumbles with my tie and while tying it correctly he says: “you tie yo' tie like a farmer-ass Brown!”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
I complete my six months active duty and return to my unit in Menomonie. The first night we assemble for drill, Captain Hall is on a rant about delinquents who have not been attending drills and threatens to put their asses back in the regular army if they don't shape up. I am standing in the third rank, completely invisible, when he says it:
“You By God better be here every damn drill! There are guys who would give their left nut to able to belong to the Guard.”
How could he know that?????
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