A bad taste in my mouth

I was thinking of making a career out of the Army for a while in my life. Thought I’d perhaps get to officers school, pick up a degree with the GI Bill, and decide from that point how I would proceed. I was stationed at Ft. Sill in northeastern Oklahoma. There was a lot of wilderness out there so naturally there was a lot of troop maneuvers and night missions. We trained to learn reconnaissance missions and battlefield maneuvers all the time. This was before the military was using UAV’s so most of our observations were made with binoculars, infrared scopes, or thermal imaging at night.

The Colonel, as we called him, was our commanding officer, and we were ordered on another  recon mission. Typically, we were to spot the enemy, which were aggressors consisting of our guys on the other side usually another company at the fort, and report as much as we could about size of the unit and what kind of support they might have, and get back without being detected. However, this also involved being possibly ambushed by the aggressors so things got pretty interesting each time we went out. It was like a cat and mouse game, but it wouldn’t be a game if we were ordered suddenly into combat somewhere in the world.

We were well into fall that year and most of the woods aside from the Cedars were yellow. The grasses were tall and dead so anything of a dark color would show up more easily from a distance. We had moved into position when our Lieutenant raised his field glasses and apparently spotted something because he was watching it for some time. He handed the binoculars to me and didn’t say a word he just pointed silently. I raised the glasses and scanned in that direction and focused on what he was seeing. At first it looked like a bear on two feet, but it wasn’t!

Whatever it was or whoever it was they were tall! Covered in some kind of dark hair or fur, from that distance I couldn’t tell. It was as if whoever it was had sensed our presence and was waiting to see what would happen. At first, I must have thought what my lieutenant would have thought. “Well, hell if that’s the enemy we found the dumbass really quick leaving himself out in the open like that without even wearing a camouflaged uniform!”

But, that wasn’t the case. The lieutenant grabbed the binoculars from me again to confirm what he was seeing, handed them back to me, and went to get to our radio man to contact headquarters. I raised the field glasses again and increased the resolution. I’ll be damned if the thing wasn’t looking right back at me as if he knew I was watching him. It was eerie! We locked eyes! I was looking right at the expression on his face. It was the face of a thinking being, not some ape or gorilla. The face seemed almost human, but this thing was about five feet wide at the shoulders and massively built. I could only guess at its height, but I’d say at least 7 feet tall! The face I would have thought resembled that of early man maybe a Cro-Magnon as the face was not completely covered in hair at all. The skin was leathery and dark. I have to admit I was shocked and intimidated trading looks with this mysterious being.

“Just got word from high command,” Lieutenant Halpern said. “We’re not to engage and to pull back. Inform the men!

Being that I was the squad leader I motioned to the men to egress from the area to the rear and we quietly exited the field, but what the hell was that thing and why were we acting as though either it didn’t exist or that we had encountered an unmentionable situation! That really ate away at me. When I asked the Lieutenant about it all he said was, “Follow your orders!”

When we got back to Fort Sill, after unloading my stuff back in my locker I made a big mistake! I went and requested a visit with “The Colonel” actually it was Colonel Wright. He was the kind of guy that didn’t invite open discussion and looked like he was ready to chew up a puppy if the opportunity presented itself. I entered his office and he quickly barked, “At ease, Corporal! What do you want?”

“Sir, out on maneuvers today we encountered something unusual and I don’t understand, Sir.”

“You’re not supposed to understand, Son. You are to follow your orders and you are not to speak of this to anyone not even your Grandma! Do you copy, Soldier? Or, I’ll bust you down in rank so fast it’ll make your head spin, and you’ll be on KP duty for weeks! Got that?”

“Yes, sir!” I shouted back saluted and clicked my heels.

“Dismissed!” The Colonel snorted as if he’d been talking to a dog.

Well, I had considered becoming a junior officer through the warrant program for the sake of the pay. There was nothing to go back to in my little town, but Mom and Dad with jobs scarce there so I had to reconsider. That incident left a bad taste in my mouth about being in the US Army having to worry about who I might slip up and talk to and have it get back to whoever was implementing the truth embargo! I had an option in the coming weeks to enlist further for a career or apply for a discharge. I applied for the discharge!

Normally, when you’ve served a number of years they assume you’re wanting to make a career as a noncommissioned officer or to attend officer training school and become a commissioned officer so they bring you in for a conference and your commanding officer blows smoke up your ass, makes you feel good about yourself, and urges you to sign up for more years. They didn’t do that with me. It was if I’d washed out or something. I hadn’t even done anything bad or been busted for any offenses in all my time in the Army, and, yet, they really, really, wanted to get rid of me! So, I accommodated them! I wish I’d never seen that damn thing! It only caused me trouble, and all because I wanted to find out what was going on! Now, I know that everything is not as it seems, and how it can change your life forever.