a leader of our group who spoke of me once as “the silent partner.”)
With the telling of these brief histories, I hope my conviction will be evident that this is not only tremendously worth the chaplain’s time but worth the time and effort of the military service as well. It costs thousands of dollars to recruit and train a replacement for the alcoholic who gets kicked out. It costs a great deal to rehabilitate a prisoner who has broken the law or violated the military code of justice. There is a huge investment to restore to duty the injured and ill. It costs only a few cups of coffee and time spent at meetings to reclaim a man whose sickness is alcohol. True, not all can be reclaimed, and some who start out on the program fail. But to make the program available on the installation, even closer than an off-base telephone number, is to point the way to possible retention of good men whose only failing is the bottle.
Like the old Sarge himself, Andy was on his way out when he came to my office on the fourth of April 1957. Here is the picture: Take an airman with almost 18 years’ service, 13 as master sergeant, married, with four children. Now reduce him to basic airman, add a couple of court-martials, and tell him if he gets drunk again he will be discharged under other than honorable conditions. Give him an alcoholic wife, bad checks out against him, and heavy indebtedness. Put him on K.P. sick with a hangover, broke, disgusted with himself, and almost ready to give up. He comes rather reluctantly into the chaplain’s office—almost as if this is the last straw.
You can imagine that it would take a lot of convincing to get him to see that it is possible for him to do something about his plight. He still doesn’t admit he is an alcoholic, but he finally agrees to give it a try. It takes almost as much convincing for his commander to give him the chance. Finally, it is agreed. Andy and his wife go to the AA meeting on base. They keep going. They go to meetings in two communities as many as four times in one week. He begins to straighten up. Much of the credit goes to his wife, Lucile, who believes in the program and encourages him to continue.
Finally, after several weeks, he gets enough courage to speak at a meeting. For a rough-and-ready, hard-fighting, hard-drinking, six-foot Texan to get up and say, “My name is Andy, and I am an alcoholic,” and to admit that he is powerless over alcohol and would go to any lengths to overcome it, is almost a miracle. From then on Andy was a talked-about airman. From April to November his progress was marked from disgrace to airman-of-the-month and rewarded with stripes from basic airman to staff sergeant. I was present when the squadron promotion board skipped airman first class to make him a noncommissioned officer again.
The other member for whom it meant holding back other than honorable discharge papers introduced himself at meetings by saying, “My name is Eric K. I am an alcoholic and an Eskimo.” Shy, confused, lost in a society he had only recently joined, Eric K. had found sociability in drinking. From high school in Alaska into the Air Force and what was “foreign service” for him down in Florida, Eric had drifted into more and more drinking. He was a risk down on the line, of possible danger not only to himself but to a crew taking off in an aircraft which might have a maintenance error under the wrench-wielding of one so undependable.
Eric K. justified the 90-day extension period granted him to prove himself by staying sober. Word of his AA activity was reported weekly to his commander. He was put back with his maintenance crew. He began to attend church regularly under the emphasis of AA upon spiritual help. The group helped him to overcome his shyness and the feeling of being an outsider in the realization that this had been a basic factor in his drinking. Eric K. is an accepted military serviceman today.
To recognize an alcoholic is not very difficult for most chaplains. The pattern has been pretty well established. If the chaplain can help a man to face the facts and admit that outside help is necessary, he will lead the man to the only hope there is.
The little group in this account was disbanded when the base closed. But it is now worldwide in its outreach. Sandy Z. went to a Midwestern base to continue his activities. Ken S. and his wife started a group in France, where the last report tells of nine airmen joining AA through their efforts. Andy has helped six men to find sobriety in the Philippines. The old Sarge retired from military service with honors and continues his work through community groups. The story of these and others may never end. But they are remaining sober—24 hours at a time. We ought to think soberly about making this help available to others.
Spencer D. McQueen
Mail Call for All AAs in the Armed Forces
March 1945
It is becoming increasingly apparent that AA is going to be called upon to perform a real job in aiding many veterans of this war during or, more particularly, some time after their reentry into civilian life. We believe, therefore, that the following piece, written for Grapevine by an AA who is himself in the process of undergoing this readjustment, following Army experiences that included participation in the invasion of Normandy, is extremely timely.
-The Editors
Becoming acclimated to a tailless shirt—assuming you can find any at all—is a small but symbolic problem that every veteran of the military forces encounters in making the transition to civilian ways of life.
The tailless shirt is not the only reason for feeling shorn. The veteran also feels that a number of other things besides the tail of his shirt are missing. The Army—or the Navy, or whatever his branch of the service—is no longer taking care of him. The privileges and protection that the uniform provides, along with the responsibilities, have come to an end. Your assignment, whatever it may have been, has been finished. There’s no longer somebody on hand to tell you, whether you were officer, soldier or sailor, what to do next. You can’t even get cigarettes when you want them. You’re just another short-tailed civilian, mister!
The dischargee not only misses the things he found enjoyable while wearing a uniform. Strangely, he also misses some of the things he disliked the most. He may yearn for the very things that used to draw his loudest and longest gripes. If he happens to be a veteran from a combat zone, he may even miss some of the gadgets and conditions that scared him silly while he was in the middle of them. When, for instance, in New York he hears the weekly Saturday noon air raid sirens and, after an involuntary tightening of nerves, he remembers that they’re only practice, he may wish momentarily (only momentarily) that they were the real thing. It’s not that he ever liked robots or enemy raiders; it’s that his nerves are still attuned to the excitement and tension that a combat zone produces in generous quantities as a daily and nightly fare. War in one phase or another has been reality to him. That has now been removed and what’s left seems, at times, unreal and even empty.
Another void becomes apparent in topics of conversation in normal circles. What the veteran has been talking about morning, noon and night for however long he has been in uniform is scarcely suitable now. People just aren’t interested in what Sgt. Doakes said to Capt. Whoozit. And you certainly can’t blame them for that. Even when they are genuinely interested in hearing something of his experiences, the dischargee discovers that there’s a great deal he can’t express in a way that is understandable to someone who has not felt what he has. So he tends to avoid the subject—and he certainly does avoid it after one or two encounters with the occasional person who reacts to war anecdotes with a look in his eye that says, “What a line this guy’s got!” In such cases, the dischargee learns that what may be commonplace in theaters of war may sound fantastic and unbelievable elsewhere.
All of these factors add up to an emotional disturbance involving lonesomeness, injured vanity, loss of poise and direction, fear of the future and resentments. For many persons, of course, relief at being permitted to return to normal pursuits offsets the other factors. But reconversion from the military to the civilian world calls for considerable readjustments for anyone. For an AA member, the readjustment may be especially difficult—and dangerous.
