Crossing Paths With Paths

By TRB

The first time I encountered a true sociopath was in the Army. At first I thought he was amusing, maybe with a different take on reality, He was strange anyway, so just naturally he wound up in my office. I was a staff sergeant, editor of the newspaper of the largest division in the U.S. Army. He was a first lieutenant who was maybe 43 year old, the age of a major or lieutenant colonel. I didn't ask. But I instinctively knew he was trouble.

Then, when we were alone in the room, I did ask, I said something like, what's this lieutenant with the gray hair thing? I wasn't even 30 and I was on the sergeant first class promotion list, so I wasn't intimidated by this elderly lieutenant who always smoked in my office, always had to be asked to put them out, always said, "Oh, that's right you're trying to quit, with a knowing smirk, i,e. "I know you will never do it."

So he was basically taking refuge in my office. I knew this because the colonel had made him my secretary. All I can tell you is that things can be weird in combat divisions. rank and privilege don't mean much without real respect backing them up. And as most knew at the division level a lieutenant was just an over-paid private anyway. They had to give him something to do.

I didn't have to agree to go have a drink at a bar with him after we got off duty. We were actually located in what had been the headquarters for the SS in Ansbach, Germany. I was living in the city in a creaky old wooden house behind a bar owned by some brothers from Turkey. I took him to their bar, figuring I could have a beer, ditch him and I would be home.

He started in on the Vietnam story, like I hadn't seen it coming from a mile away. He was always wearing his greens and he was loaded down with medals. He had a Distinguished Service Cross that he had received for valor. He had two silver stars, two bronze stars, a purple heart that had tiny pin badges all over it, letting you know that it was a fourth or even a fifth awarded purple heart. And then the biggest non-surprise of all.

It had been a battle field commission. In other words a senior officer gave him (he was just a sergeant at the time) a commission because all his commissioned officers were dead, Don't ever believe you have made it because you have received something as a direct result of another person's death, Fate isn't passed out in neat little boxes.

So the story from there was easy. The Army was having something they called at "RIFT", which had to do with a total reduction in forces following the end of the War in Vietnam. As part of this reduction is forces, the Army was talking back most of those battlefield commissions, especially if the men holding them were not college educated. A good friend of mine was a major today, due to a battlefield commission given many years ago, would have to turn his rank in for sergeant first class stripes, just one grade higher than he was when he received the commission on the battlefield. But the U.S. Army had to make it even more weird.

So, when my friend had been busted all the way from major to sergeant first class, he also became of retirement age in just few years. He would be allowed to retire at the highest grade he had held. I was with him when he had to pull that major's uniform, blues no less, out of mothballs so he could retire as a field grade officer. So, yeah, it was a bad deal, but the Army tried to make it up to you in higher retirement pay on the other end.

The very old lieutenant in my office didn't like this. He believed that his status as a certified war hero should allow him to keep his rank and he shouldn't be converted back to a sergeant. Like any good staff sergeant I told him to never complain about being a sergeant in front of a higher ranking sergeant. That night he must have hit every club in the city. I didn't know what he was doing until my phone rang at maybe 3:30 in the morning. A young woman I knew who worked in G5 (community relations) told me that our aging lieutenant had been so drunk that, before leaving a restaurant that night he went over and urinated on the wall.

Well. My lieutenant wasn't working out.

Still, I walked to the police station, handed them a lot of money and released my lieutenant. He was almost sober by now. I told him what he had done. He considered that, it seemed, seriously. Then he burst out laughing. "Well, guess they won't want me back there, will they?" I told him, perhaps not.

The following morning I was called to the commanding general's office by my friend who was his driver and his enlisted aide. I complained bitterly about even having to talk to the general about it. This guy was an officer, like the general, let them handle it. What was I, a zoo keeper?

So I was sitting beside the general, who in just 6 more years would have four stars and be Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. On this day he had just two stars, but commanded the U.S. Army's largest combat division. As his division newspaper editor we talked for about half an hour a week at first, then the sessions became longer as we became friends. He was a nice guy, he cared only about the troops and that was it for him. I brought him a mock-up of our weekly newspaper once with a photo of Malcolm X on the cover for the start of the Army's "Black History Month."

He said, "Isn't that Malcolm X?"

I said yes.

He said, "But isn't he one of those guys like H. Rap Brown or Huey Newton or Eldridge Cleaver?"

I said, "Yes he was very radical during his time."

"What's the matter with Doctor Martin Luther King?"

I said, "Everyone's got King on the cover of their newspaper during Black History Month."

I explained to him that young black troops related as much if not more to Malcolm X, and that we would be acknowledging that if we ran the photo.

"It would give us credibility with troops," I said.

He thought about it for moment, looked up, tapped his pencil on his desk a few times and said: "Okay go with it,"

We were the first Army newspaper to print on our cover a large image of Malcolm X and reprint a good portion of his biography. Maybe some other military unit has done so since then - which I doubt - but we were the first. And the reason for that was an open-minded general who could usually counted on to take a chance on the troops.

Now I was sitting behind him on this separate occasion involving one of his officers urinating on a restaurant wall. He was under the mistaken impression that I had been with him. I cleared that up. So he says, "I think I already have it worked out, Michael." And he shows me where he has a space-available flight ready to take the lieutenant out of the county and back to the U.S. that afternoon.

"I just want you to drive him to the air base." Damn it, no matter what I did I always got screwed, etc.

"Yes general, I will."

Later, on the way to the air base, with the lieutenant, I ask him why so much effort is being made to get him out of the country.

"Probably because I flunked my psychological evaluation, he said, matter-of-factly.

I looked over to him. He was wearing the dress green uniform with all the medals. His face was bright red and he was drinking openly from a bottle of Schnapps.

"You 'flunked' it?" I said.

"Yeah," he responded casually, "afraid so. Said I was a sociopath . . ."

"A what?"

"A sociopath. Probably a narsacist, that I have a personality disorder. It's possible I am bi-polar."

Now things have switched around in my head, I had been delivering a passenger to the airport, Now I was delivering a drunken sociopath to a plane full of service members and their families returning stateside. We pulled into the military air base.

I took his booze away from him. He complained, but if he had not given it to me I would have knocked him out. He wanted to have breakfast in the food lounge. Coffee would be just the thing,

I had thought.

But also in the lounge was the two-star U.S. Air Force general who commanded the base and his very senior staff all having breakfast. I sat at a table facing away from them. My lieutenant sat so he was staring right at them. Minutes past and I could see my lieutenant was becoming very upset with something on the Air Force General's side of the lounge. Before I knew it my lieutenant is off his feet pointing and screaming "Are you looking at me?" His anger seemed centered on the general's elderly chief of staff.

For the first time I realized that my lieutenant was a member of the 25th Ranger Regiment, and that he was also wearing the shoulder tab that identifies you as having been successfully through the special forces training program. I would have seen the green beret and known this but the crazy lieutenant didn't wear a hat. Ever.

Now some MPs are coming from the other side of the room. They grab my lieutenant and put cuffs on him. He is rolling on the floor crying. He says. "I'm a war hero, Michael," I agree, and I feel someone tapping on my shoulder.

It is the Air Force general. He stares through me like I am not there. He asks, "What are you and this lieutenant doing on my base?"

I tell him the whole story mentioning the general I work for several times, because it is known that the general I work for might go straight to the top and nobody wants to do anything that might embarrass him or anger him. His entire demeanor changed when I told him who I worked for.

"If you want, we can just hold him until the plane is ready to leave," he suggested.

"Not in a cell though."

"No, not in a cell."

I just got out of there, I don't believe I even said goodbye to the lieutenant. I was walking by the general's office at our headquarters later in the day and one of his senior aides pulled me in and told me to go in and see the old man.

"So he was a pain in the ass all the way?" said the general.

We talked about the experience, had a drink and I left. Later that night I was driving past a base called Katterbach on my way to a town called Petersaurach where my girlfriend lived at that time.

I was mentally exhausted and depressed. It was the first time i had crossed paths with a sociopath and I just wanted to go home and take a shower.