The tragic events earlier this month at Fort Hood, Texas, prompted me to reflect on my own experiences when I was stationed at that sprawling military post four and a half decades ago.
It was a different world then. The enemy was half a world in either direction, or so we thought. Security was relatively lax; you could come and go at any of several gates with no questions asked. Incoming cars were never checked unless there was an alert. We were supposed to carry passes or leave papers on us whenever we left post, but we rarely did.
That in spite of the fact Fort Hood then housed two armored divisions considered combat-ready members of the Strategic Army Corps (STRAC, always spelled with a lightning bolt through the A).
Of course, trouble carried a much lower profile in those days, civilian or military. Certainly nothing occurred at Fort Hood to compare with the 13 dead and 43 wounded, allegedly at the hand of an Army psychiatrist, reportedly a militant Muslim, who is believed to have gone over the edge after receiving deployment orders for Afghanistan.
The closest thing would have been the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy some 75 miles north of Fort Hood in Dallas. All scheduled activity was suspended for the weekend on that shocking occasion.
The military in those days was a mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds with education levels ranging from high school dropouts to college graduates. Unlike today, when everyone in uniform has at sometime or other decided the service posed a suitable career opportunity, a large proportion including yours truly were there because they had received a draft notice or had opted to enlist to avoid the draft.
Naturally there was a level of dissatisfaction. But most of it was a regret, to some degree unavoidable, at having to be there at all. Rarely did we see anyone strike out against their fellow soldiers, maybe fearing the consequences would be worse than the existing situation.
In those days, though our units included just about every ethnic background, I never knowingly came in contact with anyone of the Islamic faith, let alone anyone with terrorist leanings. Terrorism was regarded as something the Viet Cong conducted in the rice paddies and river deltas and prison camps of Vietnam, which was just then heating up as the chief U.S. military preoccupation.
I’m certain security is tighter these days at the Fort Hood gates, even before the infamous episode earlier this month. I imagine bumper registration stickers, printed orders and IDs are scrutinized before those entering are routinely waved past the checkpoints.
One would be hard-pressed to believe such an event could happen on a heavily fortified military base. Sadly, it goes to show that anyone with the twisted motivation and the means to cause harm to others can do so if they want to badly enough.
Jim Bailey’s column appears on Wednesday. He can be reached by e-mail at jameshenrybailey@earth link.net.
