Dollars and Cents

D Vautier
11/2006

        shortimer                            lifer
In the service, there exists a clear difference between career people, (disparagingly referred to as “lifers”) and the non-career people, or shortimers.  This is a matter of dollars and cents.  Let me explain.

Even though huge East German and Russian armies were stationed just 35 miles to our north, fortunately we didn’t get much chance to be real soldiers, (i.e. go out and shoot up some bad East Germans).  Instead we got to do all the war games and alerts and drills, and  we never even saw an East German or Russian soldier and probably wouldn't even know one of we did.

Instead we passed the time playing mind games and a kind of psychological war with the career man.  You see in time of war everybody works together, but in peace time there are really two types of soldiers; the career man,  who really wants and tries to make things work as if we were at war, or soon expected to be at war, and everybody else, those who were in the service only by chance or weakness, or because it sounded like a cool idea at the time, or because they got somebody pregnant back home, but mostly because they got drafted.

But a career man had quite a different attitude and wanted to go for the big 20 [years], for many reasons; job security or self fulfillment or self actualization.  He looked forward to reenlistment, with its great bonus, and his goal was to do a good job, get rank, follow AR (Army Regulations), maybe have a babe, and get drunk on weekends.

A shortimer on the other hand, (consisting of the vast majority of us), were drafted and/or didn’t want to be there, and could only dream of that wonderful day when Jesus Christ Himself descended from the sky delivering the much honored and anticipated DD-214 (discharge papers), the Holy Grail, the Arc of the Covenant, the way to freedom and riches, the great dream which was so universally dreamed about and talked about, the perfect state of bliss, wherein a guy had a beer in one hand, a DD-214 in the other hand and a chick next to him.  That was the super-ultimate state of Nirvana.

And the very last exercise in all this discharge process duty was to get paid in dollars and cents.  You see normally when we got paid, it was always in cash, but we never got change.  As a matter of practicality, the change was carried over to the next month’s payday, and the next, and the next.  Upon discharge the very last thing they did was pay you, and it was your first and last complete paycheck you were to ever receive and it was in dollars and cents.  I got 32 cents change when I left the service.

I wish I still had that 32 cents.