Prompts - A Collection of Stories

By Tank Gunner

Tank Gunner is a pseudonym for a combat cavalry soldier decorated for gallantry. In response to classroom creative writing prompts, this collection of 60 stories includes ingenious and clever approaches to share non-fiction war stories as fiction. Following discovery of four combat daily operational reports he wrote 50 years ago, he knew more of the story than the three or four formal military sentences written for each daily entry over a four-month period and began adding detail regarding tactics, places, and people. Detail grew into elaborations, clarifications, and in some cases, corrections to the daily entries of these historical documents. He used his detailed work as answers for the 108 questions in The Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas Oral History Project questionnaire. For unexplained reasons the Center claimed their questionnaire was proprietary and denied his request to publish their questions with his answers. He respected their wish. Energized to write again, a community college class on creative writing gave the opportunity to present the non-fiction stories for evaluation and critique. Inspired by encouragement from the instructor and classmates, the odyssey began. From there, his answers, elaborations, and clarifications formed the nucleus for over 200 non-fiction war stories, and adding two albums containing over 350 photographs, images, and graphics, he published his non-fiction work. Prompts - a collection of stories is a mix of fiction from creative writing prompts and war stories based on real people and events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682221839

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Story telling dates to the beginning of time as human beings knows it. Before there was an ability to write, kinfolk painted stories on walls of caves or cliffs. Before learning to write, grunts and hand signals told stories. Sailors and Captains of ships told stories of their discovery of the new world. Native Americans and others passed along their stories as oral history.

A story reflects what a teller wants a listener to know. The story will be about a person, place, or thing. Stories inspire, motivate, educate, guide, or inform. Stories can be destructive. The story may be bland, interesting, exciting, or inciting. It may be long or short, funny or horrible, awful or devastating, sad or heartwarming, downright boring, or even crude. A story, of course, may not be true. We still learn that lesson every day.

Regardless the length of a story, the storyteller makes the story come to life in our minds, our imagination, and commands us to hang on for the ending. A good storyteller paints a picture; we see the scene, character, and action. We can be there, in the story, see the roiling clouds and flash of lightening, hear rumbling thunder, smell approaching rain, feel the swirling breeze, and taste drops of life touch our tongue. We are aware, caught up in the storyteller’s storm.

Paintings, pictures, poetry, books, plays, songs, magazines, pamphlets, brochures, blogs, movies, television, newspapers, telephones, and, god help us, ‘reality’ shows, give us stories. Many stories are poignant, beautiful, and moving. Some are terrible.

Bibles and similar books originate stories. A preacher, priest, imam, and rabbi can and do design stories. Religions and the Religious repeat stories. Anglers certainly construct stories.

Teachers and parents produce their story; it may be a different story about the same kid. Novelists and poets write stories. Bankers, security analysts, loan officers, CEOs, lawyers, car dealers, wives, and husbands fabricate stories. All politicians invent stories. People of all ages, cultures, and customs create ghost stories. Kids, teenagers, and adults love a good ghost story.

The world-wide-web, the Internet, and radio and television news programs give us stories in our world. Many stories have special agendas. Liberals, Conservatives, Right-Wingers, Left-Wingers, Split-Wingers, and Independents conceive stories. Presidents and Dictators fashion stories. We all, all of us, tell stories, because that’s life.

Soldiers, and our stories, are no different. In many respects, our story framework - our structure - is the same because we learned at the feet of relatives. In General George Washington’s Army, soldiers continued story telling traditions learned at home. Sometimes soldiers told stories to their Corporal or Sergeant to avoid trouble, sentry duty, or battles. The significant difference of a soldier’s story is in the title. Once upon a time, long, long ago, a cynical Sergeant named soldiers’ stories Sob Stories.

Subject of the soldier’s story, the Sob Story, - who, what, when, where, why or how - made no difference. One unique twist took hold of soldier stories, and that shape remains to this day.

The twist occurred when Sob Story turned into a War Story.

Like a nickname picked up in grammar school, War Story stuck. Oh, Sob Story is still around, but War Story is more prevalent. Whether a story is about a person, place, or thing, if it is a soldier’s story it automatically assumes the title of War Story.

A soldier’s story is always a war story, regardless if it has anything to do with war or combat. If something happened while the soldier was on KP (Kitchen Police) it is a war story. If something happened at Guard Mount or while on Guard Duty, it is a war story. If the truck has a flat tire, it will be a war story. Receipt of a Dear John letter will turn into a war story. Elaborating about how the parachute failed to open is an exciting war story.

Most of the time, a war story really is about bravery in battle. If someone tells the story about a soldier’s bravery, the listener accepts the story at face value and with admiration. If a soldier tells a story about personal bravery, the listener, most particularly other soldiers, may accept the story, but not necessarily at face value.

A war story told with great embellishment to other soldiers most often rings false. Soldiers who lived the experience deride the story and the storyteller. Soldier cynicism is alive and well where story listening and acceptance is involved.

Make no mistake about it. The soldier’s standing is at stake in storytelling. When stink gets on a storyteller, it is difficult to get the stink off. A storyteller with stink will never smell better. All it takes is one stinky story. Stink taints future stories. Stink ruins reputations and careers. Rolling of eyes and doubtful head shaking greet the beginning of a war story when soldiers know the storyteller’s character. They know the story is bullshit. They know.

Oral history is art. We all try but many of us believe we lack talent to tell a great story. Many brave soldiers lived their stories but rarely tell them, not to family, to their children, or to other soldiers. Their absence of sharing personal experiences, oral history, and their eyewitness accounts leaves open the door for others to use the war story, as their own.

War stories in this collection are fiction, but they are based on real people and real events.

THIS IS HOW IT ALL STARTED

I did not start out to write a book. For me, it is a collection of stories. A few are about actions in combat. These stories are fiction. Some are fiction based on true events, which I either was a part of, had knowledge of, or witnessed. Some have nothing to do with combat.

I began writing non-fiction war stories, when The Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas denied my request to publish the questions used in their Oral History Project questionnaire with my answers. For unexplained reasons the Center and Archive felt the questions in the questionnaire were proprietary. I respected their wish. I did not use any of the 108 questions in their questionnaire. However, while the questions belong to the Center and Archive my answers, my experience, my stories, do not.

Some of the pieces here involve military service. A few are about duty in Vietnam. That is because I was a combat soldier. I served two tours of duty in Vietnam. First tour was with the 101st Airborne Division, and the second tour was with the 1st Cavalry Division. I was a professional soldier and loved every minute of my United States Army career. I faithfully and honorably served my country and did my duty for more than a quarter of a century.

Discovered in 2009, on the Vietnam Center and Archive website, were four of my 1969 Operational Reports for the months of August, September, October, and November. The Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association had donated to the Vietnam Center and Archive copies of these operational reports, and several Lessons Learned reports, I wrote as a Cavalry Troop Commander.

I accepted an invitation to participate in Texas Tech’s Oral History Project and began work on their questionnaire. Unfortunately, before the interview I suffered a debilitating disease that shut me down for more than two years. Following two periods of hospitalization and while struggling three months waiting for special medication to kick in, I was able to return to the reports and questionnaire.

It was an opportunity for me to add detail and elaboration to the few military sentences written for each daily entry in the operational reports. Few combat commanders have been able to revisit what they wrote decades earlier about persons, places, and things, and tell more of the story. As I added details to these daily entries, recollection and memory blossomed and a fuller story developed.

One story led to 12, 12 led to 65, 65 led to over 200. I rediscovered old photographs and 35mm slides, which I used to flesh out characters, scenes, locations, and movements. My son acquired from a missionary stationed in Saigon, military map sheets like the ones I used. Google Earth’s fabulous images permitted a walk on the ground again, after more than four decades. I used Google Earth for visual amplification of locations recorded by map sheet grid coordinates in the operational reports. Then I combined Google Earth snapshots, military map sheets, and graphics to illustrate activities and movement in my non-fiction war stories.

I became more involved, motivated, and enthusiastic in this project as it progressed. I was on to something I believed to be historical, educational, and exciting.

So there I was, stranded with 200 stories, scores of pictures, and a questionnaire I could not use. I was encouraged to submit my stories to a publisher, but I knew no publisher would accept the material. Vietnam was in the past. I was the Johnny-Come-Way-Too-Lately. Nevertheless, to me, my war stories are unique and special.

All the months I worked on creating these stories gave me energy, vigor, and inspiration to write again. It gave me something to do besides thinking about and wallowing in my illness. Keyed up, I sought and found an outlet. The continuing education department of a local community college presented a creative writing class. In the fourth session, Cap’n Lee Sneath, the instructor, allowed me to hand out seven stories to classmates for evaluation and critique. Only one of the seven stories drew slight praise. I was grateful Cap’n Lee permitted the reading of my stories. My classmates’ suggestions and comments resulted in a serious reevaluation, and a dedicated rewriting campaign.

In class, there was a cursory discussion of avenues to publish the stories. Because of the length of the 200 stories collection, a vanity press outfit (vanity publisher is my customary term for what is now called subsidy or self-publishing) wanted a starting price of six grand, and up to $14,000 because of all the pictures, graphics, and images. I could not pay that kind of money for something that was of interest only to me. Cap’n Lee and a classmate suggested a blog.

I recognized the term but knew nothing about a blog, blogging, or a blogger. A friend provided guidance, steering me to Google Blogger. I jumped in. I struggled with the steep learning curve. I slid back to the start point a half dozen times. Through repeated trials and numerous errors, I managed to put together a good product. Looking back, the developmental process was fun and enjoyable. Creative juices flowed again as I built my blog. I got the hang of it. In less than two years I rewrote, revised, and posted in book form all my stories with pictures, images, graphics, and map sheets on my blog http://armedsavagesix.blogspot.com.

I enrolled again in a basic creative writing course to promote my blog and work on my hobby of writing fiction. I think Cap’n Lee was surprised to see me after a two-year absence. This go-round for creative writing, I use the pen name Tank Gunner.

Cap’n Lee often suggests I fictionalize my war stories and write a book. I resisted the temptation. I professed my book was in my blog, with 350 pictures and over 200 stories. Every now and then, though, a class assignment provides the impetus to use a war story for fiction. The more I do that the funnier it gets.

These stories were written over time, one by one, to stand alone.

The title of this collection originates from Cap’n Lee’s creative writing prompts.

THE CLASS

It had been 60 years since I sat in a wooden student chair. The blonde wood structure, with an extended writing surface on the right, was small and cramped, even tinier than I remembered - or, I was larger at 77 than I was at 17.

The musty smell in this high school classroom reminded of my senior high Journalism class, and my fussy, elderly teacher’s strange odor. Mrs. Evelyn Broadstreet was small, thin, and short. She stood about five-three. Without muscles, her skin and bones weighed 100 pounds. She was about 50 years old. At 17, I thought anyone over 30 was an old person, over the hill. Evelyn tried to hide her age by painting her lips bright red, using black eyeliner to accent shining black eyes, and puffing white powder on her face, neck, and armpits. Old people, then, seemed to smell different, with or without powder - especially without powder. I reflected on that for a moment, wondering.

Not all of her efforts and applications worked. It had the opposite effect. Evelyn wore a black skirt, black plastic belt, black stockings, black high-heeled shoes, black sweater, and white blouse with an embroidered collar. This daily attire accented her reputation and appearance. She was a spinster, who had turned into a miniature witch. The only missing items were the broom and pointed hat.

Mrs. Evelyn Broadstreet was a stickler for the journalism creeds of Who, What, When, Where, Why, and sometimes How. She could not resist beating her wanna-be journalists over the head with these six essential tenets of a story. She emphasized her desire of perfection by writing those six words in huge letters on the blackboard, often. Her chalk stick would shatter into pieces as she underlined each of those words. With a dramatic, theatrical flair, she would bang on each word with the chalk stub as she issued stinging reprimands.

Hanging from the ceiling in Mrs. Broadstreet’s classroom were two fans, which she never turned on even during late spring Texas heat. She chastised pitiful whining about how hot it was in the classroom, but she relented and permitted the opening of only the upper part of the rearmost two windows. She abhorred the fans because stirring air rearranged her salt and pepper stringy hair dangling across large, pierced ears. We enjoyed watching how she handled hair tips tickling her neck. It was an entertaining interlude. As kids, we imitated the way our matronly warden slung her head and brushed hair away with the back of skinny, bulging blue veined, skeleton fingers. We figured she learned how to do that from the picture show. We imagined she stood in front of a mirror and practiced the technique. We were impressed, sort of.

Now, instead of a blackboard covered with white chalk dust like it was in Mrs. Broadstreet’s class, the front wall of this small classroom where I sat sported a clean whiteboard with several colors of dry erase markers lying in its aluminum tray. Because of central air conditioning, no fans hung above; instead, a projector protruded from the ceiling. The regular high school teacher used this machine to cast images onto the whiteboard from the classroom computer sitting on a small desk. Videos on YouTube replaced film threading through a 16mm film projector.

Eight students were in my first creative writing class. Over the past couple of years in subsequent semesters, each class had between five and twelve students. Less than ten is better. That gives the instructor time to cover the important points of the craft, and allows each student a few minutes to read their story aloud. Reading aloud is a great way to proof read.

During introductions, I told classmates I was a retired Army soldier returning to writing after four decades. I wrote two novels dozens of publishers rejected, wrote a weekly column of satire for two years that was published in 20 newspapers, and was paid one hundred fifteen dollars when my one and only play was produced on stage in the Pacific Northwest. I bought an electric typewriter with my royalty check.

In one class, I wondered aloud how many ever used a manual or electric typewriter. They knew what a typewriter was. Only one person had used one.

I said a few of my pieces were published more than twenty years ago in trade and professional magazines, and I told them about creating a blog arranged in book form with over 200 non-fiction war stories.

I concluded by stating my goal: to have an enjoyable project designed to keep my brain active, fulfill my interest in creative writing, have a hobby, and have fun doing it.

When asked about the blog, I responded it was about military service and Vietnam.

A notable response by a classmate is worth repeating here. She admitted her knowledge about the military and about the war in Vietnam, came from watching the television show MASH.

That was revealing and heartbreaking.

Some of these stories are imaginary and pure fiction. Those are recognizable.

War Stories in this collection also are fiction, based on real people and real events.

Portrayal of personalities, characteristics, quirks, and language may seem familiar, but that occurs only because my fictional characters are shaped from first-hand experience, and observation of society.

All combinations of my characters’ names are from imagination. The use of an actual person’s given or family name is coincidental.

PROMPTS

(from slips of paper drawn out of a paper sack)

Who - environmentalist (is a minor character)

What - reminiscing on how things have changed

When - after a big meal

Where - a forest during a fire

Why - instructor said so

How - absolutely no idea

TRIPS

We sat at a table in Fifi’s, deep in the piney woods of East Texas, picking our teeth after devouring a big meal and repeated our war stories.

Old men do that.

Three elderly motorcyclists, we’ve retold our stories a million times. Each of us could repeat all the others’ war stories verbatim by now. It can get to be boring.

We seemed oblivious to the whiff of forest fire smoke floating through the room. Eventually our conversations would drift into reminiscing on how things have changed and that would lead to our fussing about who rode the best motorcycle. In a restaurant, we loved to argue loudly with each other, one on one, two on one, one on two, three on three. Our shouting and cussing disturbed eves-droppers. That was part of our fun.

Oliver Overdrawn was eighty-eight years old and our elder statesman. When we were motionless, he was our group leader. Since age fifteen Oliver had ridden only one make of motorcycle. He was a Harley-man, through and through. He had been the third most senior executive with Bank of America and retired only months before the Iranian Banking Corporation gobbled up every bank in the United States. He always bragged about his retirement package and his money but we knew the Iranian Banking Corporation had frozen access to all accounts and suspended all retirement and medical benefits for every banking employee and retiree. We knew Oliver lived off the two and a half million he kept under his mattress.

At seventy-two, Bill Bankrupt was the youngest in our gang. Bill was an entrepreneur. He had started over twenty-seven businesses, made a fortune in each one, and sold each of them at the right time. Bill always was the restless one of our crew; he could not manage to leave well enough alone. He had put every cent of his multi-millions into a social networking start-up and declared bankruptcy when the Initial Public Offering fizzled. Certificates he purchased on margin turned into worthless paper. Bill’s wife was a multi-millionaire fifty times over in her own right, and we knew Louise tolerated and funded her husband’s extravagant life-style. Bill bought a new BMW Cruiser every year even though his old motorcycle had less than three hundred miles on it. Money had never been important to Bill, mainly because Louise had plenty.

I was the Honda Gold Wing rider of the trio. I rode my first Honda two-wheeler at age eleven. I liked to tell the story about waiting at the end of Pat Young’s paper route in Deport with a Royal Crown Cola and a bear-claw to pay for the privilege of riding my schoolmate’s motor scooter up and down the street. As a touring rider, I had ridden in thirty-eight states and logged eight hundred thousand miles in the saddle of a motorcycle. I also rode extensively within Mexico and Canada. In sixty-five years of riding I never crashed. Later in life I was a Motorcycle Safety Instructor and trained over 5,000 people of all ages how to ride a motorcycle safely. I also taught bike riders who signed up for continuing education classes with a local community college. During the war, my cavalry troop captured a Honda motorcycle a Viet Cong paymaster abandoned in a rubber plantation when fleeing my charging scouts. Eight thousand Vietnamese Piasters was in the saddlebags on the motorcycle. My soldiers elected to donate bike and money to an orphanage run by Nuns in Song Be’.

Oliver leaned forward placing both elbows on the restaurant table. Oliver was a youngster at heart and loved to stir up trouble. So, Ace, how is your class going?

Not so well. I was cautious. I knew Oliver well, and suspected he was about to try to set me up.

Sweet smelling Fifi, in tight jeans, swished to our table. You little boys want love, or hot cherry pie and ice cream for dessert?

We all nodded with exaggerated enthusiasm, exclaiming yes in unison.

Tell me again the class you’re taking, Tank? Bill asked, eyeing Fifi’s butt as she sashayed away.

Creative writing.

So, what’s the problem, Ace?

My assignment prompt is to write about an environmentalist, reminiscing on how things have changed, after a big meal, and a forest during a fire.

Smoke in the air caused Oliver to sneeze twice. What’s a violinist doing in a forest fire?

Environmentalist. I didn’t say violinist, Oliver. I said environmentalist.

Damn, old man, you used to be able to hear a mosquito fart as far away as El Paso, Bill chastised.

A tree hugger in a forest fire, Oliver snorted. Par for the course.

Bill inspected a tidbit on the tip of his toothpick, licked it off and mashed it between his front teeth.

Who started the damn fire? Oliver asked his toothpick. Fiddler in the forest did it. Fiddler in the forest did it.

Sounds like a crazy assignment to me, Bill offered. He sucked the tidbit from his teeth and swallowed it. Your instructor must be out of his cotton-pickin mind. What can you say about an environmentalist in a forest during a fire after a big meal reminiscing on how things have changed? Where’s Fifi?

Damned if I know. I shook my head. I’ve got writer’s block. I’m stumped.

In the parking lot, we prepared to ride away, to escape the thick smoke.

We heard burning forest crackling.

A frog hopped by, escaping the fire’s heat.

That night I sat at my computer thinking about Fifi’s nice firm butt. My mind wandered. How was I to write about an environmentalist, reminiscing on how things have changed, after a big meal, and a forest during a fire?

Maybe I ought to write about Oliver’s violinist.

I pressed the keyboard, paused, and whispered the sentence I saw on the monitor. I hit the backspace key to delete those impossible words.

I pecked, pecked, pecked again, and watched my inspiration appear on screen.

I paused, admiring my creation.

I could not stop grinning.

I read aloud my first seven words.

It was a dark and stormy night….

PROMPT - Character’s word and action tags

DEADEYE

"Hot damn.