your bus parked right now?” he asked me.
“Just outside there in the parking lot.”
“Lock it up and come back since you’ll be leaving it here overnight. Let me see if I can figure something out for you.”
“Let me go outside and lock the bus. I’ll be right back,” I told him.
When I came back, he gave me a key to a private room and told me that he had set up a place for me to sleep in the airman’s barracks.
“I called a car to take you to the barracks.”
“Thank you!” I said, then went outside to a blue military sedan.
The driver greeted me and told me he would be picking me up later to drive me back to the bus whenever the flight arrived. After I got dropped off at the barracks, I sat around for a few minutes looking over the room before taking a nap.
Later that night I went over to the airman’s club to enjoy some drinks and talk with some soldiers. I got pretty hammered that night. I was one of the only veterans around, so the more stories I told about Vietnam, the more beer the soldiers would buy me. This continued for a few hours until I realized I only had seven hours left until the troops arrived. It was less than a block to my room, but I was snockered, so it seemed like a mile.
The cold outside was unbearable, which made getting into bed under warm covers even more comforting. I closed my eyes and felt myself drifting into sleep. As I was beginning to slip into a deep slumber, I heard a sharp knocking on the door.
“Bravo, there’s a staff sergeant outside who wants to speak with you.”
“Hold on a minute…” I growled, rolling out of my warm sanctuary.
I went with the driver to the car, and when I got in, I was greeted by an older-looking sergeant.
“Sergeant Bravo, the soldiers and I are ready to depart and head home.”
Oh shit, I thought as I got into the car.
I looked outside and saw all the snow building up around us. To top it off, it was also pitch black because it was still one in the morning. It was just my luck that the flight came in early. There was no way I was going to be able to drive the bus in this weather, especially because I was still wasted.
“We can’t leave right now. The snow is getting too deep, and it’s pitch black outside. We’ll head out in the morning.”
I felt like I was being responsible, but the staff sergeant was not having it.
“These soldiers have been away from home for two weeks. They haven’t seen their wives and children. We need to get them home as soon as possible. I am the highest-ranking NCO here, and I say we are leaving now.”
I felt empathetic with the soldiers who missed their families. I missed mine. I hadn’t seen them in over two months. I also didn’t want to disobey someone who outranked me because then I would be going home whether I successfully drove the soldiers back or not.
I smelled like a brewery, and I was sure that the staff sergeant and other soldiers could smell the alcohol on my breath, but sure enough we were all on the bus and ready to depart within twenty minutes. It didn’t take long before bad things started to happen. A few minutes after leaving the lot, I hit a patch of ice while trying to stop at a stop sign. I wrestled with the wheel and slammed the brakes but still ended up clipping the back fender of a Volkswagen Bug.
“You have got to be kidding me!” one of the soldiers yelled behind me.
“Shut the fuck up, ladies. I got this,” I yelled before getting out to greet the old German man who had stepped out of the car, with his wife waiting in the car.
“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve never driven in snow bef—”
“We’re never getting home, are we?” I hear someone shout from behind me.
“Shut the fuck up! As I was saying I’ve never driven in snow before. I apologize if I scared you and your wife,” I said, noticing her looking back at us from the passenger’s side window.
The old man looked at the fender and looked at the soldiers. I could tell he wanted to get out of the snow, and he could probably smell the alcohol on my breath.
“You should put some chains on your tires, so you have more traction in the snow. Don’t worry about it. Just be careful from now on.”
I thanked the old man and got back in the driver’s seat. A few soldiers in the back found a compartment on the bus that had chains. News to me because I was never taught how to do that. We managed to get some chains on the back tires and all piled back in the bus. Before I started to drive, the staff sergeant came up to my seat and asked me to let him drive.
“Do you have a bus license?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, a bit puzzled by my question.
“Then sit the fuck down and let me do my job. I’m the only one qualified to drive this bus, and if you fuck anything up, it’s on me.”
He seemed like he wanted to protest, but I started to press on the acceleration, forcing him back into his seat.
After a little while the lack of visibility from a combination of darkness and snow only got worse. I accidentally drove down a one way in the wrong direction and took at least ten extra minutes backing up to get out of it, taking out dumpster and a few trash cans along the way.
There’s more than one way to get to Schwabisch Hall from Frankfurt. Unfortunately for us, I unknowingly picked a path that led us down a road on the side of a mountain. I could only see as far as my headlights threw their light, and even that was fuzzy because it was still snowing.
It had snowed so much that the snow had begun to pile up as high as three feet, so I had to use the guiding poles along the side of the road to guide me along. Some of the poles were positioned too far out, making the road seem wider than it was, so I would occasionally veer too close to the edge of the mountain. Every time I veered close to the mountain edge, the men would start crying and screaming like little girls all in unison.
“Shut the fuck up, ladies. I’m handling this!” I yelled back confidently, slurring my words as I spoke. I understand that the threat of falling off a cliff a thousand feet high is something to cry about, but it was taking a while to sober up, and the yelling and shouting wasn’t helping my concentration.
It took a couple hours to finally get the hang of it, and I could finally function soberly. I was able to drive smoothly the rest of the way back and even nailed parking the bus correctly. As redeemable as that was, I knew that the sergeant major wouldn’t be too happy when he heard what had happened.
Nothing else came of it the next day. It wasn’t until the day after that that the sergeant major called me in. I thought I was done for. I would be sent home, dishonorably discharged with a court-martial. When I got to the office, I could tell he was not too happy to see me.
“Sit down, Sergeant,” he said to me aggressively. As I sat down he quickly started to talk again. “I got a report from Staff Sergeant Taylor, and before I decide whether or not I’m going to send you to Major Hoople, I want you to tell me what happened Sunday morning.”
