Man and Pistol
One evening at Chu Lai I got off radio watch and went behind the tents to the little illegal club we'd built for ourselves. Every man there was drunk. Minutes after I'd leaned my elbow on the plank we used for a bar, grabbed the church key that was always handy and popped open a can of beer, Sergeant Williams, who was standing about five feet from me, pulled out his .45 semiautomatic pistol and worked the slide. It slammed home, steel on brass on steel.
There was a sharp scuffling sound of bootsoles leaving rough lumber, then a collective oof of the breath being knocked out of everyone but Williams and me as they hit belly-down on the shipping pallets we'd laid as a floor. Williams was so drunk he could barely stand. He waved the pistol, now loaded, cocked, and off safety, from side to side. Since I was standing directly in front of him, it was pointed mostly at me.
Several things became jarringly clear to me. The first was that I was looking my own immediate violent death in the face. The second was that it was entirely up to me to resolve the situation, because I was the only sober person there. The third thing was that if I made a mistake about how to relate to Williams...see realization number one.
I studied him as though my life depended on understanding him, since it did. He did not seem particularly angry; he did not seem about to shoot. At least, not on purpose or at anyone in particular. He was just a normally harmless guy with a loaded pistol and something to prove. He did seem to have so little physical control of himself that, since his finger was on the trigger and the safety was off, an accidental discharge was highly likely, especially if he were bumped. Or challenged.
He seemed...well, lonely. He seemed to want attention. Military outfits are like all societies; they have their cliques, their insiders and outsiders. Williams was a Sergeant, but no one respected him very much. He wasn't particularly good at his job, or brave, or funny. He didn't stand out in any way or have any special claim to anyone's loyalty. He didn't have any close friends. I remember one time when he tried to be friendly. He was sitting on the ground outside our tent, drinking with Martin Luther Ealy. Ealy was a laughing, generous man, a 250pound cook from New Orleans who was particularly proud of his black heritage. Sgt. Williams draped his arm around Ealy's powerful shoulders and said, in all sincerity, "Y'know, Ealy, for a nigger, you're a pretty good guy." Ealy convulsed with sobs, having chosen that reaction instead of killing Williams.
Suddenly Williams seemed at once dangerous and pathetic to me. This guy wants respect, I thought. He pulled his weapon because he couldn't get respect or attention any other way.
I began to talk to him, with one elbow leaning on the bar in as casual a pose as I could manage, but with my nerves firing as if I had two fingers plugged into a wall socket. The pistol's muzzle was three or four feet from my gut. This was the M1911A1 .45 caliber semiautomatic, with which I’d qualified on the firing range, becoming familiar with its heavy recoil. I’d been told it leaves an exit wound the size of a man’s fist, by at least one man who had inflicted such a wound.
I asked him how things had been going, how things were back home. He began to talk a little, still waving the pistol, not all over the place, but just back and forth in front of him as he reeled, which meant mostly at me, since I was so close. His concentration, such as he had, was on the cigar stub he was puffing. When he mentioned something, I would ask his opinion about it. I was very respectful.
I began to admire his pistol. My first tentative compliments seemed to please him, so I committed in that direction: "A very fine weapon, yessir, a very fine piece. You must take mighty good care of it. Can I see it?"
He proudly handed me the pistol, muzzle still towards me. I slowly turned it to point at a spot on the floor where no one was lying, let the hammer down tenderly, slipped the magazine out, and cleared the chamber. There was a sucking sound of air re-entering lungs as Marines began scraping themselves off the pallets.
