Lieutenant Joe Carr

I'm not sure if this will ever evolve into a "bigger" thing, but it was a good character development piece.

Lieutenant Joe Carr didn’t appreciate war much, though he found it to be more of a minor inconvenience than a major hindrance to the overall progress of his life.

Lieutenant Carr had a system for everything. A system for digging his foxhole at night. A system for cleaning his Colt .45 ACP pistol. He had a system for planning what route his platoon would take upon daybreak. He had a system to shave his face. At all times of every day, Lieutenant Carr knew exactly where he was, where all of his duty equipment was, and where all of the men under his command were.

Just two years earlier Lieutenant Joe Carr was simply Joe Carr, a U.S. college student at the University of New England. He was studying history. As a student, he wrote many anti-Vietnam editorials in the school’s newspaper. So much for that, he murmured after his draft number was called. Reluctantly, he went to the draft office and just a mere year later he was in command of an infantry platoon under the 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam.

Lieutenant Carr was often described as bland, impersonal, and rigid. He had once heard Specialist Johnathan Carter describe him as being like “Lot’s wife after looking back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; a pillar of salt.” Indeed, he had also heard Major Rev. Al Douglas, the company chaplain, describe him the same way. He was secretly proud of it.

In between the monsoons that seemed to last for years, Vietnam was fairly beautiful. The tropical forests, though plagued with Viet Cong, seemed oddly peaceful. The roads were red and dusty. Most Vietnamese despised the American soldiers, mostly because where they went war was to follow. Lieutenant Carr knew this as he was preparing his platoon for the day’s march. Some believed Lieutenant Carr was unable to live anywhere but the present, and they resented him for that magical power.