Darkskinned Warriors 1

Darkskinned Warriors 1

     I was sitting in the waiting area of the Colorado Springs airport, watching people walk by on the concourse. 

      Some soldiers were walking from my right to left. They were black, wearing dress green uniforms, with Combat Infantryman Badges on their chests above their ribbons, and, on their left shoulders, the gold shield with black horse's head of the First Air Cavalry. 

        A similar group approached them from the opposite direction. Something passed through all the men that was visible to me. It was the way they walked, and the way they recognized one another. They emanated a pride that fairly crackled in the air around them. Though all wore uniforms of the United States Army, the uniform very definitely was not the source of their pride. Rather, it seemed to come from deep inside the uniform. Their walk was not a regulation, head erect, shoulders-stiffly-drawn-back walk. It was a rolling thing, with shoulders turning in front of the body with each step, right shoulder with left foot, left shoulder with right foot. And the body dipped slightly with every other step, a kind of willful breaking of the rhythm, a sassy falling-behind only to quicken the last part of the step in order to arrive in perfect time. 

     I had learned to recognize the walk in boot camp, when our drill instructors told us to watch another platoon in our regiment when they were on the "grinder," which is what Marines call the parade ground. That platoon had a black drill instructor who had a certain lilt to his cadence, and a slightly swooping march step that he was able to impart to his whole platoon. His cadence and step had so little difference from regulation Marine Corps drill that his superiors couldn't make him stop doing it because they couldn't describe the difference in words or point to a regulation which it violated. Besides, the man was a squared away Marine and an excellent drill instructor. So he got away with his little one man cultural revolution. 

     At least one DI snickered about that Sergeant and his "dittybop" platoon, and some of the recruits chimed in. Phrases like "jigaboo outfit" tumbled into the ice plant around the Quonset huts. But there was respect too, even among the mutterers, when the seventy-man platoon, mostly white boys, took the grinder and performed a close order drill that had a rhythm, a visual musicality, that was beautiful to watch, and which no other platoon on the grinder could match. 

     These black soldiers in the airport had that walk, with an added edge: they were all back from Nam. It was a black man's walk, but also a black warrior's walk. As the two groups came abreast, a couple of soldiers in each group raised small, black enameled swagger sticks, each with a chromed .50 caliber cartridge casing capping one end and a chromed .50 caliber bullet capping the other end, in smart salutes. It had nothing to do with Old Glory or the United States Army. It said, I salute you, brother. We have been through the fire. We have lost some brothers. We have kicked some ass. 

     And this black warrior's walk also said, Don't nobody fuck with us. 

        And it said Watch out, Whitey.