honea byrne

We had our first remains. he was a Special Forces soldier. He got killed when on a training operation. He was the point man. He jumped from the helicopter when it was too high. Bones were sticking out of his leg. His peers stayed with him a long while. Then we had to wait for the hospital to release his remains. Then we were able to fill out the paper work and prepare his remains for evacuation. It took hours. Sometime in the monotony I remembered my trip home in October. I remember finding many things in my Mom’s garage. You have one or more relatives with a garage or something like it. Or you might have one yourself. It’s a place where you put items from a perceived painful past. Pictures of ex lovers, presents from the deceased, and other stuff that you’ll have the gumption to look at one day and realize the fact that many horrible events and horrible relationships in your life had great moments of happiness and fulfillment. You will have great empowerment in that moment. In my

If you tell yourself, choose to tell yourself something over and over again and combine that with alcohol the outcome can be explosive. Two days into our two weeks, of training to get us prepped for Kosovo, our sergeant in charge (E-7 Sergeant First Class, two ranks away from Sergeant Major) of us decided to take us all to a bowling alley. I took it upon myself to get drunk too quick and proclaim to em’ all that I was the officer in charge of the mission. No one outranked me. So damn convinced I was. If you tell yourself, choose to tell yourself something over and over again and combine that with alcohol the outcome can be explosive. Somewhere in the time we were there I fell down face first. Carpet burned my face. I learned sometime later that that the sergeant in charge (E-7 Sergeant First Class, two ranks away from Sergeant Major) wanted me off the mission and kicked out of the US Army. My platoon sergeant back in Fort Lee talked him out of it. Therefore, to keep me in line th

You might be a drunk if you get so wasted that you hallucinate you’re fighting satan ,cut your middle finger, then fall on your butt so hard that your teeth slam together. Then you look on the floor and see your two front teeth in pieces. And to make it worse you tell everyone you got into a fight with the devil and lost.  Thought I was entitled to be a sergeant, a shot caller. I worked hard at post details (like cutting the grass) and training. Kept my boots mirror shined and my uniform was starched so heavy it could stand on its own. Kept a bald head. I stayed drunk as much as I could without getting busted. Was fortunate to not have a car. I walked or rode a bicycle. Entitled, after all I had been a specialist, one rank away from sergeant, for over two years. There was just one other soldier in the 54 th Quartermaster Company who was a specialist longer. I was an assistant squad leader. Worked hard at my physical conditioning. Well, except for my legs; mostly jogged. Over t

Regardless of the warnings about Korean prostitutes inviting me into dark armpit rooms to get knocked unconscious to wake up in the morning in a bathtub full of blood with “call emergency we took your kidney” scribed on the ceiling; and the one about catching Black Syphilis and being forced to never leave Korea, I was in an area coined “Hooker Hill” in downtown Youngson going into bars and drinking Soju. Soju was like good ole’ creeper weed. You’d smoke and smoke and not feel anything. Then in a couple hours you are stumbling, slobbering everywhere, with juicy girls commanding “buy me drinkie” fondling more and more. Damn, went through about a hundred dollars in two hours. Lucky, I was to find a cab driver who had pity on me and gave me a ride back to base for free. At first I was stationed in the Youngson Morgue. I remember seeing the remains of a mother and child who were killed by their lover and father, a US soldier. My superiors thought I couldn’t handle working in the morgu

...for some reason the doctor there, a full bird colonel, didn’t think it was too cute when I answered, “To climb trees,” to his question, “Why do you keep your fingernails, and toe nails so long?” Around late 1998? Or, was it early 1999? Still can’t remember the exact date when I was shipped back to Fort Leonardwood Missouri to be prepped for active duty. I was cleaning out, so I convinced myself, my system from the hallucinogenic drugs, powder, and weed, with booze for three weeks. In my two months that I waited to go active duty I played creepy keyboards in a band that never left the trailer park. We called ourselves Credence Cadavers (Dead Losers). I have about thirty cassette tapes of our sessions. I also flunked out in my first semester with the University of Southern Mississippi . I brought an electric pick up ukulele, my drum machine, and my tascom four track music recorder with me to Korea , telling myself that I had till age twenty seven years of age to be