Falstaff's Revenge

I wrote this true event a few years ago.  It's true, it took place in 1968 or 69 in Germany, Falstaff here, is none other than Sarge, the One Angry Zebra.

--------And so it began------

Another car rolls in to a slot in front of the barracks. Blue VW doors ajar the occupants spill out laughing and bragging. Out of the dark comes a small group on foot, walking back from town. It will soon be 12:30, the night is cool and damp as the drunks from the off base bars converge and mix with the guys coming off swing shift at our white stucco home, a NATO barracks. Cigarettes and lies and friendly insults are exchanged as they filter into the building. Off to the side, through the humid halos of distant lights lie a dozen or more low earth covered hangers sheltering nuclear armed F-4’s through the razor wire.

Inside I live on the first floor, first room to the left off the entrance. The Squadron Headquarters is the first door to the right. It’s closed at night, but there is always someone on duty, to find people, report fires or trouble, answer the phone. This duty rotates amongst the 80 men living in the 3-story building. It’s a job all of us hate, for reason of oversight I have never been called on to do it, I keep that fact to myself.

This poor schmuck stuck with tonight’s duty is in a room on the other side of my room, for some reason it’s referred to as the “day room”. It has some easy chairs in it, along with some card tables, pool tables and fuss-ball tables. I look in the day room, a few pause at the pool table where a couple of tipsy airmen are heating up, pushing one another around and slobbering red faced insults. The schmuck and some others are trying to keep a lid on it. It’s pretty funny but I decide to stay out of it this time and go to bed. I head for the latrine and on to the room.

Five of us share a room. It’s a big room made for eight, with big swing out windows that open on the parking lot. I throw my clothes in the locker and fall in bed under a green wool military blanket.

I’m almost asleep and fear washes over me, I hear something. I could hear Falstaff’s breath rattling through flem in his chest. I froze in my bunk assessing the danger. What treachery is this? The beast has just returned from a trip to Ireland, arriving back waving a crude crooked wooden mallet. It's a shillelagh to bring down his foes he brags, a weapon of wild tribes, heathens, and sheepherding murdering raping wild men. And now I know he creeps forward amongst the bunks and lockers, an assassin in the dark, I smell him, I hear him shuffle slowly. I make the decision to try to escape with my life; I know he means me harm. He has for weeks nurtured and grown his hatred for me.

The root of the malcontents discontent lies in incidents too dim in the sotted past of gin and beer and poisons, in scuffles and insults to many to endure. But, if I can put a handle on the pranks which set him off the track of sanity and onto this path of sending me to hell, it may be two incidents, incidents and faults of mine, pranks.

The first event: From 6 stories up, in a glass bird cage packed with radios and phones I work as one of the air traffic controllers. We look out into the night, every night, and when dawn arrives, before us on a near hillock sets a hideous checkered box in the grass, the radar operators of the air traffic controllers work there, and this is Falstaffs domain. The winter is long here, not severe, but long. Snow comes many times. This morning a foot of snow covers the earth. Between the base of the control tower and the checkered radar unit stretches a 40’ wide 1.6 mile long concrete taxiway, parallel to the runway. A deep ditch is on one side of the taxiway.

Like moles from the earth the radar operators emerge from their checkered burrow into snow reflected glare and trek to the base of the control tower to enter. They seek sanitary relief, there’s no bathroom in their lair. A guy with a good arm and a supply of massive slushy snowballs on the catwalk 70’ up can rain frozen pain on these poor soles as they struggle through the snow in and out of the steep ditch. 2 or 3 people with good arms can hold them back until they can’t take it. Cursing and dodging Falstaff and others can often be brought to falling in the ditch, offering an even easier and bigger target. It was great fun from the tower, but rightfully garnered hatred from those floundering in the ditch absorbing the icy hail.

The second event: A scuffle after a night of drinking. Falstaff and I, having consumed copious amounts of alcohol during an evening which started a hundred kilometers away in Luxembourg City at the Green Lantern where we laughed till we cry at a male voice waling either in pain or thrill drifting down from a harlots torture chamber above. Back at the barracks at the end of hours of debauchery, for reasons I am sure unknown to us then as now we scuffled a bit in the room and Falstaff passed out, I could say went to sleep, but in those days he didn’t go to sleep, he passed out. I, reverting to the most base animal instinct of a prank, after all we spent the day and night being base animals, grabbed a bucket of red paint and wiped the soles of his boots, when suddenly as if an alarm sounded he arose cursing the world and walked to the latrine and back.

07:30, it’s a workday and the First Sergeant is in the room screaming. Falstaff’s tracks told a story, which urinal he stood at, the wobbly path he treads to and fro. For the next few hours the hall was full of sounds of his labor as he mopped and scoured and waxed, finally unable to completely remove all the evidence. As he worked, he mumbled threats and plans of revenge. It was going to be a significant event. I was doomed and slept light from that day forward.

But now, I breathe slow and silently in the darkness of the humid German night listening as my murderer draws near with his primitive weapon. I have to escape or get to the light switch. The room is dark, a rat maze of lockers and furniture and beds. I move towards the doors, bringing me closer to him. I fix his probable approach and skirt the opposite way. I will outflank him and get to safety. Suddenly the heathen is upon me, my path choice an error. He can see me against the back light of the window. Wham, I can scarcely comprehend what happened. A horrible cracking sound and impact pitching my head to one side and I almost fall, I lunge or stumble to the side and now I can see him. He whirls the war club overhead like a cowboy working a rope on a helpless calf. He means no less than to spill my brains on the concrete floor. Stepping closer he levels insults and smiles cruelly. Surely killing or crippling me with this knobby wooden mallet is his aim. Bam it thunders again but he misses my head and lands a dent in the steel locker door. The lights come on, others are startled out of bed and want to witness my death, such is the atmosphere. I pull my hand away from my throbbing head, no blood. My punisher roars with laughter and accusations devaluing my lineage. He faints another swing but I see the attack is over, I have survived. I amble to the latrine to brush my teeth and run cold water over the growing hot lump on my head.

The latest wave of drunks staggered in from town, hearing of the attack some gawk at me in the latrine holding my head while others fill the room to hear my malevolent aggressor issue an exciting account of the battle and the guile required to win it. While he glows in victory the drunks examine the dent in the locker and pass around the cudgel, marveling at what a magnificent implement it is while swinging it dangerously over one another trying out the feel of it.

Ah, to take a beating from a friend in front of my prize pinup, DeDe Lind, the hottest Playboy foldout of all times, that was a letdown. I took DeDe down the next day, folding it carefully for storage.

If ever you find a shillelagh, burn it.