Looking Death in the Eye I

I was in the Military. I was a Social Work/Psychology Specialist for the Army on Okinawa. It was a job I enjoyed and was very good at and decided I didn't't want to do as a career.

I worked for the Psychiatric Service in the Camp Kue hospital, and was among other things the Liaison Officer for the locked Psychiatric Ward at the hospital.

One of the things we did was do interviews to determine sanity for people going into courtmartial proceedings. This is where I had the misfortune of meeting Earl.

Earl was a Marine who had murdered his commanding Officer. He had served three rotations in Vietnam, and volunteered for a fourth. It seems he had discovered a talent for killing people, and wanted to get back where it was somewhat condoned. His C.O. had refused his new rotation, so Earl had gone into his office with a loaded M16 and tried to persuade the C.O. to allow him to return to ‘Nam. When the C.O. declined, he unloaded a clip into him.

We rotated duty on the front desk as Receptionist, and it was my day to man the desk

The brought him to the Psychiatric Clinic in chains and with four armed guards. Earl was a 6’ 2” black body builder, in active duty Marine shape. Probably weighed about 180. His arms were bigger around than my legs were. He also had a look in his eye that did not make for comfortable eye contact.

The head Psychologist, R. had the duty to give him the interview to establish his sanity. He was a real humanitarian, and insisted that they take the shackles and chains off of Earl for the interview, over the protests of the guards.

They went into the conference room off of the reception area. I was a little nervous about having a murderer alone with R. so I kept a half an ear open for anything. After a while I heard some thumping noises coming from the conference room and what might be a muffled cry for help.

I ran over and threw doordoot open, and Earl had R. bent over backwards over his desk and was choking the crap oft od him. R. was mostly unconscious, and pretty red in the face. I ran up behind Earl and grabbed him in a full nelson, and for the next couple of minutes it was a pretty wild ride around the office, with Earl trying to dislodge me. All I did was tighten my hold until I was afraid I would break his neck. Eventually he slowed down and told me "It's OK, I"m all right now", but damned if I was going to give up the only advantage I was ever likely to get.

After Earl quit flailing around, one of the guards peeked his head around the corner and asked "Is everything OK in here?" If I had a club I would have hit him.

Anyway, I had to testify at Earls Attempted Murder court martial. The entire rime I was on the witness stand, Earl sat there with this big shit eating grin on his face staring at me with these dead eyes that said "If I ever get out of jail, you are one dead mother".

I guess the point of all this is that, when faced with a situation that could have gone very badly, I acted even though I was scared to death, and handled the situation. Just knowing how you would act in that kind of a situation instills a confidence in you that you can't get any other way.

The Court commended me for saving an Officers life, but also chewed me out for not using the word "Sir" often enough during my testimony. Talk about having a twisted set of priorities.