At Liberty but All Keyed Up

By Gregory Jaynes

"Good to see those clean-cut men instead of those dirty hippies"

Some 1,800 Marines and 2,200 sailors from the U.S. Atlantic Fleet descended on the resort community of Key West (pop. 24,000) last week for two days of rest and recreation. Here is one bemused observer's view of the event:

Then came the summer when you were sent home from the front, after the fresh troops got there, and the first thing you saw when you got to the States was the barefoot girls in their summer dresses pedaling bicycles past the sea. In your jacket you carried a photograph of the soldier that had been you, a keepsake of the afternoon you sank your boots firmly in the sand that slopes into the Mediterranean that lies beside Beirut. In the photograph you looked older than the cliche--older than the hills. You would fetch the picture from your pocket if the leggy girls truly wanted to see. But the girls you wanted later--the telephone you needed now.

No matter your situation, you had women to ring: your mother, your wife, the lady who played the lead in all those longing dreams. Some men had to make three calls.

Then there was the ever present pilot fish, the press, always asking how it felt, what you thought. Crazy. How could you tell them? When asked, "Are you glad to be home?" how could you curb your tongue from blurting out as your brain wanted to: "Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?" For four months, until the replacements came, you had been part of the multinational peace-keeping force in Lebanon, you and 4,000 other Marines and sailors. The Navy brought you back on five ships by way of Key West, where you were to have a fleetingly brief liberty before returning to base.

On the deck of the U.S.S. Fairfax County, while you waited for liberty to begin, you watched a press conference on the pier below. You thought it was a dog and pony show, and you would tell a reporter that later. Down below you could hear your commanding officer telling a TV woman, who wanted to know if you planned to tear the town apart: "Marines are always told to act in a disciplined manner. They will act like Marines." You ached to get off that ship.

Time and again you had been told to behave, and you had been reminded of venereal disease as only the military can remind you, and you had been warned about Key West. You had been told drugs were everywhere, but for the last four months you had thought that the only thing you could count on tickling your nose was the business end of a Kalashnikov. They said this was a strange terrain of suspicious sexuality--gays are all over. And they said to watch your self around reporters, who would probably offer to buy you a drink to loosen you up. A sergeant said this was the way to respond to all three threats: "No, thank you. No, thank you. No comment." Just about all the grunts agreed they would say what they damn well pleased, but they would keep their names to themselves.

Liberty. There was Eddie, the bosun's mate from Brooklyn, talking with a reporter before he even got well into his second sixpack. "You were so wound up, you'd be screaming at your buddy over nothing," Eddie was saying. "Your buddy! All you could think about was getting off that ship." Eddie wasn't any more conspicuous than anybody else on the streets of Key West. They made everybody stay in full uniform. And out on the Margaritaville scene, the military was the only presence with the posture of a T square. Standing there on Duval Street, where most of the bars are, how you longed to grow your hair. And yet there was the chief of police telling reporters, "It feels good to look down Duval and see those clean-cut men instead of those damn dirty hippies we always see."

Late in the afternoon, with the sky the color of diaper rash, you met Barbara Somebody from Tampa. She wasn't Cheryl Tiegs, but she was a woman. You were reminded a little of someone else, but that was in another country. You held her hand. She wore your hat. Then she got too drunk to talk to and you left her at Rick's Place, a saloon where Martinez was about to lose control over Seagram's Seven and Seven-Ups.

Martinez is a lance corporal and a hard case. He's from Anaheim, and he spends all his time telling people he's not a Mexican. Nobody really cares, but Martinez goes on and on saying he is a U.S. citizen with Argentine bloodlines. Martinez was growling that his recruiting officer sold him out. "I hate the Marines," he said. "I want my beard back! I want hair! My time is up in February 1985, and I ain't looking back, man. I wanted combat engineering. I wanted to be somebody when I got out. They give me infantry. So what are my skills? I could be a security guard, or I could be a janitor. You see, I spend a lot of time cleaning things. I know how to clean things."

You know how it is with a few belts after a long time without.

Well, you had to pack it all into a few hours because you were leaving for Camp Lejeune, N.C., on Thursday. And those that packed it in too quickly got packed back to the ship by the law. There were a lot of those. But nobody tore up the town. The police praised you.

And a lot of the men took care of their own. At midnight, with beer fairly boiling on the hot sidewalks, you'd see a sarge walking a sloppy corporal back to the ship, the sarge's hand cupping the drunk's elbow to steady him but not to make too much of a spectacle of it. The sight was almost tender.

--By Gregory Jaynes This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.