OLD GLORY

         "I hate to see that evening sun go down." I really didn't sing that back in 1967-68 when, each morning and evening for one week a month, I had to walk a block up the street to Fort Jackson Boulevard and the big white mansion that was post headquarters. My job was to be part of a five man crew which would put up and take down the flag that flew over that little part of the 'land of the free and home of the brave'.

         The "five man crew" consisted of one stone-lifer sergeant, one bugler from the post band, and three draftees dragooned into action by a press gang that roamed the base. The sergeant was in charge. He would lead the way to the flagpole in the middle of the lawn and then stand solemnly at attention during the ceremony. It could be that he saluted. I never had the curiosity to check. He would then lead us back to the building, reach under one of the yew bushes that flanked the double door in front, pick up his cigar, re-light it and proceed back to the NCO club.

         The bugler, usually an enlistee rather than a draftee, had the rather obvious job of providing the music: 'Reveille' in the morning at 6 a.m., 'Retreat ' at five in the afternoon. Never once did he vary his choice of tunes. It might have been neat to hear 'Staying Alive" for morning wake up, but it hadn't been written yet. The only variety he gave came from the vagaries of music performed 'live and unplugged', as they say.

         Two of the other three draftees manned the ropes that raised and lowered the flag. The third man had the important job of firing the cannon. Don't laugh. "Reveille" cannot begin without the firing of the gun. "Retreat" contains a pause, a moment of silence where the bugler stops, and at that moment, the cannon fires. Undoubtedly were we to do the job today, a bagpiper would be added, but this was 1967, when the logical accompaniment would have been an electric guitar. I doubt that the General would have appreciated that.

         I started out as the artilleryman and only graduated to the ropes in my last months of service. I did not find the job, the job found me in the person of Specialist 4th Class Frank Somebody. His day of departure from the arms of Uncle Sam was coming soon, but he had to find someone to take his place on flag detail. I was the new man in the eight-man room in the barracks, so one day he asked, under his breath, if I wanted to escape KP duty. EVERYONE wants to escape KP duty, so I asked how. He explained the requirements of flag detail. I accepted his offer and we marched off to the orderly room to sign me up and take him off.

         For one year and four months I spent one week a month putting up and taking down Old Glory. I was joined on the detail by Mike Perlman, another draftee whose discharge date, or ETS as we called it, was six weeks in front of mine. Why Perlman chose flag detail was beyond comprehension; he was married and lived off base and was not subject to KP. I always wondered if he was paying off a gambling debt, or whether someone had photos of him and WAC Blackburn fooling around in back of the file cabinets in the office.

         Whenever I would broach him about the matter, he would shout out the number of days he had until ETS, a number forty-four less than mine. ETS dates trumped rank in the Service. Even after I was promoted to Specialist 5th Class, or ‘buck’ sergeant and Mike remained ‘Spec 4’ Perlman, I could never order him to divulge the secret. He would retort that as a Sergeant I did not even have to pull KP, let alone flag detail. He failed to see that I liked seeing the sun rise and hearing the birds sing, and seeing the lifer sergeant grope in the bush to find the stub of the cigar he had placed there. He hid it there so that the ceremony was not marred by a man with a stogie in his mouth.

         Perlman and I came from the Finance and Accounting office. We passed the job on to others in our office. Common Army survival customs told us to keep the good things to ourselves and amongst our immediate draftee family. Specialist Frank, who gave me the job, must have been a real loner in that he had no one in his family to take the torch and chose this total stranger in his bay. Thus the F&AO, as we were called, came to have stranglehold two to one majority on the duty. As hard as I try, I cannot for my life remember any of our Third Men, or where they came from.

         I also cannot recall how I primed the French 75 artillery piece that started each day. It was a working model and not a museum piece. I could aim it left or right, elevate or depress it, and choose my target for each day’s fusillade. It would not turn far enough to fire on my office two miles away, but I could pepper the WAC barracks, the Vendomat and the PX. In the evening, I preferred depressing the elevation and targeting the MP’s stopping traffic on Ft. Jackson Boulevard.

         At the proper moment, I would perform some act and the piece would go off, emitting smoke and a loud boom. One dark morning, I fired and, to the amazement of all, flaming toilet paper flew out of the barrel, to join the robins on the lawn. I admired the bugler, who played on without missing a beat. I wanted to ask him if his last job were on the Titanic.

         I left the cannon to take up the ropes with reluctance, probably on the same day our first Third Man handed his job over to his successor. Tradition must have said that you began with cannon so that you could learn the ropes. Aside from the day that the Stars and Stripes fell on top of me as Mike and I were taking down a flag which told us to ‘Buy Savings Bonds,’ nothing exciting happened lowering and raising the Banner. Perlman used the sight of me covered by the American Flag to tell me that he hated super patriots who covered themselves in Old Glory while they talked.

         In fact, nothing exciting happened in those sixteen months. I learned a lot about flags, and could probably still fold one with help. Today when I pass the Post Office, or a Federal, State or County building and I see a large flag flying on a rainy day, I ‘tsk tsk’ the powers that be for not flying the ‘storm’ flag which such a day requires. I also learned one other lesson: on the day that Specialist Frank and I went to the Orderly Room to add my name to Flag Detail and strike it from the KP roster, I found that my name had never been listed in the first place. For all my cleverness, I had forgotten Maxim # 1-2-3-4-5 of Army life: “Never volunteer”.