Yes we had beards. A rusty razor blade in the jungle was a deadly weapon.
I was once berated by a CLEAN, sharp-edged ironed creased green fatigues, spit-shined jump booted, firebase living NCO. We had been in the jungle for a month, were dirty, bug-bitten and sitting around a sandbagged hole with 1000 meter stares. I got out of the army a couple months later – mainly because of that NCOs lack of humanity on that day.
This memory of him surfaced 5 years later (I had returned to the Army after about 15 months) when I came across him. He was still an E-5 (I had leapfrogged him in grade) and was assigned to my Scout Section in the Canal Zone of Panama where I was a SSG. However he was working as the HQ Company’s NBC NCO (for 3 years) not in my Scout Section.
I was short a SGT and spoke with the HQs 1SG (I was CS Company Scout Platoon but he was a good friend of mine from my prior service) and told him I wanted him back from detached duty. That I had identified a PFC (2 year-in-grade rank-frozen) that had completed the ARMY NBC correspondence courses and needed a break due to family problems. He agreed and I got the NCO back as a Scout Team Leader.
It was frustrating and sometimes as I sat with my 1SG friend (he wasn’t my supervisor and we had stomped over bitter ground together) drinking beer at the NCO Quarters he would remind me that I had asked for him.
The SGT did improve and he did ‘resist’ becoming more human, but after 18 months as a scout team leader doing recon and security patrols in the jungles of Panama he had – changed.
I did recommend him for SSG before he rotated back stateside and the last time I saw him years later he was a SFC teaching officers at Fort Knox.
I was retired. We shared a beer. He had developed into a fine man and NCO.