When Boy Scouts Knew What Duty, Honor, and Responsibility Were All About

You’ll never find a more ideal time and place to do your Boy Scout time than where I did mine; Okinawa in the early 70s. All of our Scoutmasters were active duty military; most had been to Vietnam, some had been more than once. They were men who knew what duty, honor, and responsibility were all about, and taking those things just as seriously as they did wasn’t really optional. They were American warriors, full grown MEN, every last one of ’em.

A good chunk of my personality can be traced directly back to those summer camps deep in the Okinawan boonies: Daily runs to the target range where we had access to every personal issue firearm in the United States military’s inventory. Taught self defense by men who can kill you before anyone knows they’re even THERE. Playing capture the flag by starlight in a sho’nuff southeast Asian jungle, led by combat veterans. Yeah. Top THAT.

One specific morning has stuck with me all these years, though I don’t know if it counts as a memory or flashback. I was jackassing around with a couple friends, waiting for breakfast, when one of the Marines snatched me clean out of line. I don’t think my brain even registered a transition; I was telling a joke then all of a sudden boom, I’m looking at an extremely displeased jarhead leaning in to me nose to nose. The man was built like a fireplug, and every little bit of his focus was lasered right between my eyes. This was 1972 and I can STILL hear his bark like it happened 20 minutes ago:

“You WILL police your act and square yourself away most rikky tik or I will personally turn your health file into a fuck story.”

I didn’t even know what the hell that MEANT, but I knew I didn’t want any of it. And of course he didn’t tell me what I’d done wrong. I just had to retrace my steps and pray I spotted it. And I did; I’d forgotten to roll my sleeping bag before I left my tent for breakfast. So I rolled it up tight, then triple checked that nothing else was out of line, just in case.

From what I’ve heard the Boy Scouts have become – and from what I see society has become – Sgt Lewis would never get away with offering that kind of guidance today. And that’s a cryin’ shame. Yeah, he scared the absolute hell of me, but it was my own damn fault. We were required to roll our bags in the morning; I knew that, I didn’t do it, and he wanted to make the correction memorable. Simple as that.

Once I got a little perspective on it, I realized he probably didn’t make that lesson unforgettable because I broke a rule, he made that lesson unforgettable because the jungle is home to about a jabillion things you don’t want to share a sleeping bag with. I could remember to always roll my bag because he yelled at me, or I could remember to always roll my bag because the last time I crawled into one I’d left one open there was a habu in it (a nasty little indigenous pit viper, the only snake I’ve ever heard called “spiteful”)

Yeah he was a little harsh. But this happened 52 years ago, and to this day I’ve never walked away from an unrolled sleeping bag.

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on January 16, 2024.

Bama has been a rodeo cowboy, a professional stuntman, and, for 39 years and counting, a bouncer at various biker bars and redneck rat cage juke joints through the Deep South. He makes cool stuff as Crimson Tied Paragear, using knots his Army Ranger Scoutmaster taught him at Boy Scout summer camp deep in the Okinawan boonies back in 1972.

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.