In December 1994, my battalion was on what’s called DRF-1 (Division Readiness Force 1). Under those conditions we had to be prepared to deploy anywhere in the world in 18 hours. We were all on two hour recall, which means that we weren’t allowed to drink on the weekends in case we got a telephone call telling us to be in the Company Assembly Area in two hours with our bags packed and ready to deploy.
Prior to assuming DRF-1, we all received a briefing in which we were notified of all the potential geopolitical situations that might cause us to be activated.
The briefing officer told us we had nothing to worry about and we’d be Stateside for Christmas.
Fast forward two weeks and we got emergency deployed when Cubans, fleeing Fidel Castro’s Communist paradise, were intercepted at sea and taken to New Jersey or Panama until the Clinton Administration could decide what to do with them.
When the Cubans later learned that President Clinton intended to return them back to the loving arms of the Castro Brothers, they engaged in a terrifying riot later dubbed the “Panama Rock Concert.”
(As an aside, I’m probably going to have to devote another post to that event, which actually had major implications on both U.S. foreign and military policy because it was a formative event for a young Army lieutenant named Jason Amerine, a remarkable man with whom I later corresponded and whose story I later used when I was teaching.)
In order to suppress the riot and ensure that no further violence towards U.S. military personnel took place, our battalion was deployed via private chartered aircraft. We landed at Howard Air Force Base a few weeks before Christmas 1994. (It would be my only overseas deployment despite my juvenile dreams of combat glory.)
We will fast forward this story to January or February 1995 when we were preparing to move the Cubans out of their camps and ship them back to Cuba.
We had been training on riot control techniques and had all been issued protective equipment, including face visors, plastic shields, and catcher’s shin guards, as well as black plastic batons. I was wearing my issued flak vest and we’d been told to cammo up our faces as an intimidation technique.
I’ll never forget shortly after we arrived, a Cuban saw us stroll into their camp and came up to a veteran soldier and in heavily accented English taunted, “Whatchu think you boys are going to do to us? You think you can scare us? Did you see what we did to your buddies last week?”
The paratrooper spat out a concise stream of Copenhagen dip from his mouth onto the ground in front of him, looked the Cuban square in the eye, and replied, “Yeah, but those were Air Force pussies you did that to. This here’s the 82nd Airborne. You try that shit with us and we’ll stick our boot up your collective asses.”
So, we were preparing to go into the Cubans’ camps and round them up and I put a bit of cammo under my eyes like a baseball player might because I thought it was comical that I was wearing these catcher shin guards. I also didn’t want to put the cammo on because I was already hot and sweaty and having paint on my face was going to make it even more miserable.
Then I asked someone to take this picture.
Shortly thereafter, our Battalion Commander, Lloyd Austin (recently nominated as President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Defense), saw me and in a low, gravely voice said, “Uh-uh, Airborne. Unacceptable. Get some more cammo on.”
I saluted and replied, “Roger that, sir.” And I went and got my face cammo’d.
Only time he ever directly spoke to me.
Song Of Ajax 