Conscripted Soldiers

During my stay at Fort Polk, I became close friends with a fellow draftee named Tommy Picou. We went through Basic Training, Leadership Preparation and Advanced Infantry Training together. There were only four draftees in my AIT; all the rest were in the National Guard. Because of this, the four of us performed every KP and sh-t duty that came along.

During the summer of 1970 at Fort Polk, draftees were the lowest of the low, at least in the minds of our superiors – literally everyone, even the cooks. Picou and I became best friends because we had many things in common. We were both recently married and both from Louisiana, although I was from north Louisiana and he from south Louisiana.

Picou was of French-Acadian descent and spoke fluent Coon-ass French, a language we both assumed identical to the Mother tongue. A series of events that happened during AIT proved us both wrong.

We were at a rifle range, eating lunch when the MP’s brought a new addition to our training company. The young man, like all of us, was dressed in fatigues. None of us was very happy but this fellow seemed particularly indignant. When we tried to talk to him, he replied only in French.

”What’s he saying?” I asked Picou.

Picou shook his head. “Beat the hell outa me.”

“I thought you speak French.”

Picou grinned. “He damn sure don’t speak the same French I do.”

“Try saying something to him,” I suggested.

Picou rattled off a few questions for which he received only a quizzical look from the Frenchman, a universally understood open palm gesture and a shake of his head covered with thick dark hair.

He seemed to understand when I said, “Want something to eat?”

We got the young man a hot plate of chow and sat with him beneath the trees as he ate. When he finished, he said, in passable English, “My name is Charles and I’m from France.”

Charles just shook his head and grinned when I said, “Tommy’s French. Didn’t you comprehend what he was asking you?”

“Not a word,” he said.

Charles proceeded to tell us how he was a flight attendant for a French airline. On a layover in New York, the U.S. Army conscripted him.

“They have no right to do that,” I said.

“Apparently they do,” he said. “But I won’t stay here for long.”

“What’ll you do?” Picou asked.

“Escape as soon as I can.”

“Then what? They’ll hunt you down.”

“Make it to an airport where my airline flies and catch a flight back to France.”

“But they’ll just come after you,” I said.

“I’m a French citizen. They can’t touch me in France and I don’t intend to serve in your war.”

“We’re not too happy about it either,” Picou said.

“My brother was a soldier in Vietnam. He died at Diem Bien Phu,” Charles said. “My family has already lost too much to that damned country. I swear they won’t kill me too.”

True to his word, Charles was gone the next day. Picou and I both ended up in Vietnam, me in the First Cavalry and he in the 101st Airborne. We both made it home safely and kept in touch for several years.

I don’t know if Charles got back to France or spent years in an Army prison, but I know one thing for a fact – he was a man of resolve and had no intention of ever going to Vietnam and fighting another country’s war. I can’t say as I blame him.

Louisiana Mystery Writer