I really began to think it would have made more sense to join the French Foreign Legion. They had better uniforms and the thought of a posting in Sidi bel Abbes, Algeria, had a certain romance to it. I mean North Africa, check it out: the Atlas Mountains, desert sands, the pyramids, the Sphinx, Berber nomads, camels, date palms, and a policy of “no questions asked.” There was the tradition of General Patton, Field Marshal Rommel, and T. E. Lawrence. Of course all I know of Patton came after the fact, when I saw George C. Scott in the role, slapping some poor soldier across the face for cowardice in an otherwise boring movie. Peter O’Toole’s movie Lawrence of Arabia, which I saw prior to my enlistment, was a lot better. Lawrence, like Baker, seemed to have discovered the elusive Tao of the military arts. The harder things were, the better he liked them.

I decided the best way to murder Captain McQueen was by sleep deprivation. I heard it took about three months to kill a man in such a fashion. I would force McQueen to stand at attention in a brightly lit cell. Whenever he blinked his eyes more than twice in a week, I would order one of my legionnaires to hoist him up by his heels and whip the soles of his bare feet with a sackful of centimes. “How long are you going to make me stay awake, mon Commandant?”

“I’m going to make you stay awake until you die.”

In 1964, Camp Pendleton was nothing but a hundred square miles of Quonset huts and lots of scorched foothills with names like “Little Agony” and “Big Agony” and “Sheepshit Hill.” These were hills the Marines humped and were named accordingly. Big Agony was very bad, Little Agony could half kill you, and a run up Sheepshit Hill required rock climber’s gear. It was nothing but foothills and Quonset huts and one shade of green. There were no camels or palm-infested oases choked with humid vegetation. There were no magnificent sweeps of desert with buzzards flying high in the arid blue sky. There were no nights when you could see magnificent soul-inspiring constellations of stars. There was just the fucking pot shack where every day was a repeat of the day before.

Mississippi kept awake on Coca-Cola. I did so by drinking thirty-plus cups of coffee. I had my head in so many pots and pans for so many days, I was beginning to hallucinate. Once when I accidentally knocked over a full can of Mississippi’s sar’dah, he grabbed me by the throat with his left hand while he dug his thumb in my eye and squeezed my face with his right. “You ever do that again, I’ll kill your fuckin’ Yankee ass, you Yankee cocksucker.”

“Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” I said.