I’d grown up with Vietnam as just another television show and was disappointed when the war ended before I got a chance to fight. Watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. influenced my plan to join the CIA as much as reading Harriet the Spy and Kipling’s Kim. I began consuming histories of the clandestine services and espionage novels, studying them as textbooks for my future occupation. I invented secret codes and practiced the use of invisible writing with lemon juice and milk. Spies trusted no one and disregarded authority. They often came from a family in which duplicity was accepted and normal, thus easing the transition to professional skulduggery. My insecurities were an asset: I wanted to be liked. I needed to believe in something larger and more important than myself. Patriotism was as good a fit as any.
My motivation for military service was unrelated to family tradition or duty. I was reckless and young but mainly angry. I wanted to jump out of airplanes with a rifle and shoot people. I wanted to get out of Haldeman and far away from my father.
Though determined to leave, I felt like I was abandoning my siblings. I became anxious about my future letters home. I didn’t want to worry them, but failing to correspond would increase their concern. I began planning countermeasures, settling on disinformation as the best strategy.
The periodical area of the Morehead library contained several years’ worth of Reader’s Digest, which had a monthly section called “Humor in Uniform,” composed of anecdotes contributed by veterans. I stopped attending school and went to the library, where I read dozens of these stories. Basic training was ten weeks long, and my plan was to send two letters home per week, relating incidents from Reader’s Digest as if they were mine. Most had the ring of truth and a lighthearted intimacy that would ease my siblings’ worry. I subdivided the brief narratives into specific categories—lousy food, clothing that didn’t fit, bad weather, hateful chores, and the sergeant’s unreasonable anger. Within two weeks, I had compiled a notebook of humorous episodes, transcribed and organized into sections, complete with a title page that said “Letters Home.”
Because I was underage, my parents needed to sign the induction papers. After supper one night, I told them my plan and presented the legal documents. There was no discussion, no suggestion of finishing high school or going to college. My mother said nothing. Dad asked if I was sure. I nodded. He signed the form with his customary and well-practiced flourish, as if inscribing a book to a fan, and left the table dramatically. Mom silently watched him go and avoided looking at me.
I’d been an honor student throughout high school, with straight A’s in English, history, and science. Teachers had fawned over my intelligence since first grade, even the ones who beat me. I was a strong candidate for scholarships to top colleges around the country. But no one—not a single teacher, parent, or family friend—encouraged me to further my education. My future lay exclusively in my own ignorant hands and that of the U.S. Army.
In May the recruiter drove four of us boys to Lexington for the induction physical. We didn’t talk in the car, all of us nervous, the recruiter abruptly serious. We hadn’t seen this side of him. Gone was the jocular charisma, replaced by grim purpose. We joined a hundred or so other boys in a large facility the size of a gymnasium with an array of medical personnel. Metal racks covered by cloth were separated into sections for various tests. We stripped to our underwear and moved in slow lines: pulse checked, blood taken, mouth and ears examined, testicles squeezed while we coughed. We laughed our way through all of it. Occasionally an examiner culled someone out and sent him to get dressed. We looked at him with scorn—he wasn’t up to snuff, no longer one of us. Those boys appeared sad, walking with their heads lowered in defeat. We speculated as to the reason: too fat, too short, too dumb, too fucking ugly! Our jokes concealed the lurking fear that any one of us could be next.
After a few hours I was pronounced extremely fit: good heart, vision, and hearing. My upper and lower extremities functioned with no defects. I was disease-free, with fine circulation. A doctor pulled me aside, and for the next two hours I urinated into a plastic canister again and again. I thought it was a special procedure reserved for future spies, a test of endurance, and I refused to complain or ask questions. The other boys in my group moved on, leaving me alone to supply samples. The last doctor said: “Albumin in your urine. No branch will take you.” Standing in my underwear, I became so upset I began to cry, then felt humiliated for having done so. I didn’t cry again for fifteen years.