Montana Scribbler
 

Marching in Bozeman - 1965

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So… Bozeman. Haven’t been back in ages, but I understand it has become quite a fancy town for rich folks. I hope the locals can make out ok. I joined the marching band in 5th grade as a drummer because brother Bruce was a drummer. In the spring, I marched in the Memorial Day parade, playing the only song we knew: The Green Beret Song… “Fighting soldiers from the sky…. fearless men… who jumped and died…. men who mean….. just what they say…. these are men….. of the Green Beret. No kidding. Pretty sure that’s the lyric. Or not. Sounds bad, the ‘jumped and died’ part. OK, dammit: I’m going to the internet…. hold on. OK, I’m back. So, I was close. It’s ‘fearless men who JUMP and DIE’ not ‘jumped and died’. Then it’s not ‘these are men’, but rather ‘The brave men…’. I know it sounds bad to say this, but I did start to wonder how these fearless men could possibly mean just what they say after jumping and dying.

So, during practice for this song, we were in the band room, and my snare drum was niftily resting in front of me on a stand built specifically to do that. However (and this kills me to think about - killing me with a kind of laughing disbelief) it wasn’t until the day of the parade that we were given the drums that we were actually going to use to march in the parade. I’m here to tell you, these drums were mightily different. They were FIELD DRUMS. Big honkers that weighed a ton and were hard to handle. We were given these skinny little white straps to hold the drums around our shoulders like some kind of large paperboy bag or something. BOY WERE WE EXCITED. We lined up on the blocked off street with tons of people lined up on either side. Seemed like lots of cop cars everywhere. Well, this was Bozeman, Montana around 1965, so there were probably about 2 (2 was a lot to see at the same time in Montana then). The Green Beret Song is a bit of a dirge, but I just learned it was the only military song that became popular during the Viet Nam war. As a teenager in Montana, I marched in protest against that war. It was a bit dangerous to do that in a place like Montana but I had some buddies with me. People might laugh at that ‘dangerous’ reference, but Montana has never been a bastion of liberal thinking… whatever a bastion is. I got my head slammed violently into my school desk and the words ‘cut me’ written in ink on the back of my neck as Mr. Morris - my 7th grade science teacher - held me down. He thought my hair was getting too long. This was truly not a remarkable event. It was forgotten as soon as it was over. No one was ‘reported’, I didn’t complain to anyone (never occurred to me), students didn’t talk to me after, nothing like it happened again, I didn’t cut my hair. SO: We start marching finally and we sound good! Naturally. I and my fellow 5th grade drummers are marching proudly in our drum row, each of us pushing that big drum forward with each step in unison. Perhaps best of all: each of us has been issued an actual beret, yes a green one, to wear for the occasion - our only piece of uniform. Dang, I think we all look pretty good in them. Fighting Soldiers… the tune came to us from the trumpets, trombones, clarinets, saxophones, tubas and flutes ahead of us (for some reason, I’m thinking of Harold Hill, guys - look it up, listen to it). I think I heard people clapping at us sporadically. That felt great to hear. I and my comrades were whacking our drums mightily. You can probably guess right now that something bad happened, and you’d be right, boys. Those field drums had long, thin metal tubes running down the sides to help keep tension in the upper and lower heads of the drum. Those tubes rubbed hard against my upper left thigh as I pushed that leg forward to move the drum along with me. Pretty soon, that rubbing feeling on my left thigh started to feel painful. Eventually, it became a torrent of black, raging pain from the top of my left thigh, all the way down to my knee. It was truly agony, I was in agony with each step, pure misery ALL the way, but I WOULD NOT STOP, man, because it was the Green Beret song, it was MEMORIAL DAY for God’s Sake, and I had a duty, a responsibility to continue, no matter the cost. I HAD to jump and die. Musically? My left hand, cradling my now useless drum stick, was clutching the rim of the field drum with my thumb and forefinger, trying desperately with each lunge to prevent the drum from further ravaging my now half-useless, limping leg, while my right hand, clutching drum stick, supplied one whack per downbeat. I don’t remember how the misery finally ended, but it did. My leg was a mess. Strange thought, guys, and here goes (thank goodness you say?): The mangled left thigh from that 5th grade parade supplied most of the material (including an artery) that rebuilt part of my tongue during surgery after cancer. I have always supported recycling.