He Was Still Wearing His Cap

Breakfast at the Best Western isn’t bad, but it’s nothing to brag about either. The scrambled eggs remind me of those served in any Army mess hall. The only interesting thing about breakfast is the waffle iron. It bakes waffles in the shape of the state of Texas. I made one of those for our grandson, Asher. He asked me to fill every divot in the waffle with syrup, and then he asked me where on this edible map of Texas we were staying.

After I finished serving Asher his waffle, an old man shuffled past me to make his own breakfast. I’m an old man, but this guy was much further along in years than me. He wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and shorts. He had cloth coverings over parts of his arms and legs. He had some dark bruises on the backs of his hands. He wore his hair in a ponytail, and he had wire-rimmed glasses. He had a beard that had long ago gone white. He wore a baseball cap that said “3rd Infantry Division” on it. That intrigued me.

I was tempted to tell him, “Thank you for your service,” but I hate that expression. It means almost nothing. It is one of those phrases that a person says when they don’t know what else to say.

Instead, I asked him, “Where were you stationed?”

He didn’t understand me at first, but then he told me that he had been deployed to Germany. He worked in the armory at Kitzingen in Bavaria. He had been in the Army in Europe from 1965 to 1968. He never went to Vietnam. I tried to get a word in edgewise, but the man wanted to tell his story, so I listened. He told me in his slow Texan drawl more than I ever wanted to know, but it gave him pleasure to do so. I have to admit that I sometimes do the same thing.

The old guy emphasized that being stationed in Germany gave him the opportunity to go places he would not otherwise have been able to see: France, Spain, England. He told me about arriving by train in some Austrian town during winter and getting a sleigh ride from the Bahnhof over snow-covered roads to wherever he was staying.

As I ate breakfast with Asher and my wife, I thought about the old guy at the next table. Why does a person wear a cap that broadcasts that they served in the military? The answer is probably because they want to talk about it. They want somebody to notice them and then maybe, just maybe, listen to their story. Here is an 83-year-old man who apparently considers his three years in the Army to be a crucial period of his life. That’s interesting. Obviously, this old Texan did many other things in his long life, but he wanted the world to know that he was a veteran. His time in the service must have been a peak experience in an otherwise flat and humdrum life.

The man made me think about our oldest son. We are visiting him and his family in Texas. He also likes to wear a cap that indicates his time in the Army. He went to Iraq. My son’s experience was traumatic, but still essential to his identity. For my son and for this elderly gentleman, the time in the military was fundamentally different from everything else.

As we got ready to leave the dining room, my wife went up to the man to tell him that she was raised in Germany in a little town not too far from Kitzingen. The old guy looked up from his waffle and noticed Asher. He smiled at him and said, “I wish I had even a bit of that boy’s energy. I can’t even remember being that young.”

Then he wished us all a good day. He was still wearing his cap.

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Frank Pauc is a former Army aviator, a longtime trucking-company supervisor, and a contributor to The Havok Journal. A West Point graduate from the Class of 1980, he completed the Military Intelligence Basic Course and flight school, served with the 3rd Armored Division in West Germany and the 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord, and left the Army in 1986. He later taught citizenship classes through Voces de la Frontera in Milwaukee, took part in peace and protest work, and writes largely about veterans, family, grief, and the long aftermath of military service.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.