Word: noncom
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Larry W. Brauer, 31, an Army E5, is a career noncom stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C. He served a year in Viet Nam. "What about the guys who died in the provinces? What did all those people die for? I'd like for Congress to tell me," he said. "We allowed the draft dodgers and deserters to return. We told them that we were the ones that were wrong. Who's to tell the mothers and wives of those who didn't come back that it was all a mistake-that we were wrong, that their sons...
...there is an un pretentious realism in Towne's script, and Director Ash by handles his camera with a simplicity reminiscent of the way American directors treated lower-depths material in the '30s. Quaid plays dumb with canny appeal. Young, as a black for whom a noncom's career is a big step up, makes you feel his sense of risk when he stops going by the book on this detail. Nicholson's bluster only partly masks his insecurity as he moves through the excess of options presented by the civilian world. It is attention...
...absence of the hat meant that Rollins' companion was, technically, in improper uniform. A command sergeant major hailed the G.I.s by shouting, "Hey, soldier!" The pair disregarded the call, which came from behind them. When the sergeant major caught up, a scuffle took place. Rollins decked the noncom. Charged with assaulting a superior and failing to obey an order, Rollins faced a sentence of six months at hard labor plus a reduction in rank...
Although some of the patches are still homemade, most now come from opportunistic manufacturers, who are spewing them forth in a dizzying variety; hearts, flowers, butterflies and a rainbow (usually worn across the hips) are popular. So are noncom stripes, Viet Nam insignia and Disney characters. There are metal studs and leather scraps, attached when and where the spirit dictates. There are even patches that reek (for a few weeks, anyway) of fresh fruit scents, while still others blazon credos: NOT TO DECIDE is TO DECIDE, for example...
Another witness, Major Clement E. St. Martin, told the subcommittee that when he protested the steam baths he was upbraided by former Sergeant Major William Woolridge, the Army's top noncom and one of six sergeants indicted for service club infractions. Woolridge menacingly asked St. Martin: "Don't you know you can get hurt?" St. Martin replied: "Let me remind you a major still outranks a sergeant." Not always. St. Martin is now executive officer of the armed forces induction center in Newark, N.J.-hardly the kind of assignment designed to further a career...