It was Gizzard’s father who gave him that nickname when he was a baby. After they’d found him sitting on the floor in the living room with an overturned flower pot and a mouthful of dirt for the third or fourth time, his father said “I believe that boy’s got a gizzard like a chicken,” and ever afterward he was called Gizzard.
When I met him, he was in his mid twenties, a draftee serving in the army in Germany and not happy about being in either the army or Germany. His name was Dale Arnold Thompson, but he was still known as Gizzard. He was the gunner in our mortar squad. I was the track driver.
Gizzard tended to get seriously drunk when he went to town and a couple of times he didn’t make it back to the barracks until sometime the next day and he was counted awol. The first time, he got his pass pulled for a month. The second time, he got busted to Pvt, but the third time Gizzard went awol he was sentenced to thirty days in the stockade at Nurnberg. While his orders were being processed, he had to be under armed guard night and day. I had the duty on the first day.
“Why does he have to be guarded?” I asked Sgt. Leonard.
“So he doesn’t escape and go awol again,” he said.
“It’s Gizzard,” I said. “He’s not going to escape. and he doesn’t really go awol. He just gets drunk and passes out and doesn’t make it back to the barracks. He’s harmless. And where would he go?”
“I know,” Sgt Leonard said, “but he has to be guarded. I have to mount a guard on him and today you’re it. Those are my orders and those are your orders, got it?”
“What am I supposed to do with him?” I asked.
“Nothing, just guard him.”
“In the squad room?”
“Anywhere he goes.”
“Anywhere?”
“That’s right, anywhere. If he goes to the latrine, you go too. If he goes to the shower, you go too.”
“How about if he goes to the snack bar?”
“You go too.”
“Wait a minute. We can go to the snack bar? You mean we don’t have to stay in the barracks?”
“No. He’s not on duty and your duty is to guard him. Just make sure he doesn’t escape and at twenty hundred hours you turn him over to the CQ in the orderly room. Now go to the weapons room and draw a forty-five and ammunition.”
So I drew a forty-five and ammunition and I guarded my buddy so he wouldn’t escape. I went with him everywhere he went, and I turned him into the orderly room at twenty hundred. We had a pretty good day all in all. We hung around in the morning and then after lunch in the mess hall, we went to the PX and looked at records. I bought a Bob Dylan album; “Highway 61 Revisited,” and since I had to have my hands free so I could pull my .45 in a hurry and shoot Gizzard if he tried to escape, he carried the album.
We met Lonnie Carruthers from A Company and he asked us what we were doing and why I was wearing a forty-five. I knew Lonnie from basic training and I didn’t like him very much because about the second night I was in the army when I was still in a reception company, he came into the barracks while I was on fire watch about two am and he was on CQ duty and he had blocked his hat so he didn’t look like a recruit and in the dark I thought he was a member of the cadre there and he made me empty all the butt cans in the barracks; said they were a disgrace and if the captain came in I’d get court-martialed and then the next day I saw him in line at the mess hall and I recognized him and realized he was a recruit just like me and I said “Hey, man what the hell?” He denied it was him but I knew it was. I could see that he still had his hat blocked but in the daylight it didn’t look quite right.
I told Lonnie that Gizzard and I were taking this Bob Dylan album to battalion headquarters under guard. “Thompson,” I said. “Forwarrrd Ho,” and I counted cadence; hup hoop heep ho and Gizzard and I marched off and left Lonnie staring after us.
Gizzard and I took the album to our squad room in the barracks and we smoked and listened to it on my record player and had a couple of shots of Paul Jones that Savage kept in a clorox bottle in his wall locker. Gizzard didn’t like the album, but I did. Gizzard kept saying “He cain’t sing and I don’t know why the hell he’s a-carryin’ on about this here sweet Melinda the goddess of gloom” and, of course, with Bob Dylan sometimes it could be hard to explain, but I liked it.
After a while we decided to go to the snack bar and that’s when we ran into Col. Gleason. Col. Gleason was a real military man, a career officer, a disciplinarian; a real spit and polish kind of officer. He had this thing he’d introduced into the battalion called the red hand. The red hand was a cast iron hand about twice as big as a real hand. I was painted red and it weighed probably fifteen pounds. If the Col. happened to catch you with your hands in your pockets he’d tell you where the red hand was and who had it and you had to go get it and carry it around with you until he caught some other poor G.I. with his hands in his pockets and then that guy would have to carry the red hand around.
Gizzard and I were just walking past the motor pool when Col. Gleason came around the corner with his orderly. Gizzard and I both saluted and said “Good afternoon, sir” and the Colonel saluted back, but Gizzard, who after all, was facing thirty days in the stockade and was not in the best of spirits had been kind of shambling along with his hands in his pockets. I should probably have told him not to do that, but I didn’t really care and wasn’t paying attention, so when we came upon the Colonel, it was too late to do anything but hope he hadn’t noticed. He had. He said “Hold up there, troopers.”
To be continued…