Specialist Waters approached me and said “Hey L.T., Jones has a knife and he’s going after Willie.” — “What?” — “Sir, Jones is here in the Club and has a knife. He’s looking for Willie Kimbrough.” I looked where Waters was pointing, and sure enough, there was Jones walking through the Club with a partially hidden knife in the hand by his side. “Shit.”

It was 1980 and Cath and I were stationed in Würzburg, Germany. My unit, the 123d Signal Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, occupied Hindenburg Kaserne (barracks) across town from the Division Headquarters. We were the only unit on the Kaserne, which had both advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages was as a Lieutenant, or Captain who wasn’t a Company Commander, you pulled Duty Officer about every three weeks.

As Duty Officer, after everyone else left at the end of the day, you would do another 12 hour shift, along with a Duty NCO. Your main jobs were to make sure everything stayed peaceful, address any issues that came up, and if an alert happened, start the telephone chain recalling officers and soldiers living off post. Two hours after an alert was called, we would start rolling our units towards the East German or Czech border.

The post Vietnam Army in Europe was a bit of a wild west show. We were migrating from a draft Army to the all volunteer force. There were still drug and alcohol problems among several of the troops, sometime morale issues, and certainly maintenance and training issues. The result of all of this was you never knew for sure what kind of night you were going to have as Duty Officer. Weekends and paydays were typically worse, as everyone was letting off pent up energy from the week. While most tours as Duty Officer were calm, I’d previously dealt with a soldier who slashed an artery in his arm from punching out a window. That was certainly a fun night, watching the blood spurt out with each heartbeat. We stopped the wound with pressure and he survived after going to the hospital. I’d also broken up a couple of fights, but there was nothing too serious.

On this particular Saturday evening, things started out calmly enough. I’d made a couple of tours of the Kaserne and things were fine. Around midnight, I walked around again, and went into the All Ranks club. That’s when Specialist Waters approached me and said “Hey L.T. (Pronounced ELL TEE), Jones has a knife and he’s going after Willie.”

“What?”

“Sir – Jones is here in the Club and has a knife. He’s looking for Willie Kimbrough.” I looked where Waters was pointing, and sure enough, there was Jones walking through the Club with a partially hidden knife in the hand by his side. “Shit.”

Waters and I watched as Jones completed circling the room. No one else seemed aware he was holding a knife. He left by the exit and I followed about 15 feet behind. It was dark out and no one else appeared to be around. After crossing the motor park area he entered one of the barracks. I told Waters (he was still with me) to get the Duty NCO and tell him to get his ass here ASAP.

In the barracks, Jones walked down the hall and entered one of the rooms. I followed him in and there was no one else in the room. Jones circled and I called his name, but he either didn’t hear me, or didn’t care. On his way back to the door, he passed by me and I could see his eyes were glazed and unfocused.

“JONES!”. No answer. “JONES!” No answer.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

As he reached the door, I launched myself at his back and we both slammed into the closed door. I wrapped and locked my arms around his arms and chest and as we struggled, I could still see the knife in his right hand.

We tumbled onto a nearby bed, and he fell on top of me, with his back to my front. I wrapped my legs around his waist in a figure four and was squeezing for all I was worth. At the same time, I pressed one of my arms across his face and throat, keeping him from moving. At some point he passed out, and the knife fell from his hand to the floor.

I relaxed my grip, and the figure four. As I got up, I looked around the room and saw several soldiers, including the CQ (soldier in Charge of Quarters for that company) and told him to call the MPs. He ran to his station to do so. The MPs would come from across town, and were at least 10 minutes away.

I was looking for the knife when Jones came to and started struggling towards me. I slammed my arm across his face and neck again, put a choke hold on him, and rewrapped my legs around his waist in another figure four. This time, I was on top of him. He eventually passed out again and I relaxed my grip. I looked on the ground for the knife, but it was no where in sight. I looked at the 7 or 8 soldiers now in the room and called out “who has the damned knife?!” Several people looked at the ground, but no one said anything. “Get the hell out of here. NOW.”, and they slowly left the room. About then, the duty NCO showed up and I explained what happened. Jones was still passed out. As we were talking, the MPs arrived, and of course there was now a crowd in the hallway of the barracks.

Jones was starting to wake up again. This time he was disoriented and not struggling. The MPs put cuffs on him and led him away through the crowd in the hallway. His eyes were still glazed. The Duty NCO then dispersed the gathered crowd.

The NCO and I went back to Battalion Headquarters and I filled out the incident report. We still had 6 hours until our shift ended, but the rest of the time passed quietly.

I don’t know if I was smart or stupid, but at the time, I thought lunging at him was the right thing to do. When it was over, I didn’t really give it anymore thought. Of course word of the incident spread around the Battalion. Several of the troops mentioned it to me in the coming days, and I think they thought what I did was a bit crazy. I also heard guys from my platoon talking with others in the Battalion about “Our L.T.”.

As I thought about the incident over the years, I decided a little crazy wasn’t always a bad thing. If all of life is a learning experience, I learned a few things about myself that night.

Addendum:

⁃ I remember the knife was a 3 inch folding Buck knife. Switch blades were totally outlawed. If you owned one and got caught, you were in big trouble – you’d typically get busted and lose pay. We just never saw them. For other knives, no blades longer than 3 inches were allowed. If the blade was over 3 inches, it would get confiscated. The Buck Knife Company happened to make a knife with a locking blade exactly 3 inches long. Everyone carried one, particularly when you deployed to the field. They were incredibly useful for any number of things. The knife in the photo is my own Buck knife from that time frame.

⁃ High School wrestling served me well – the figure four I used when we fell to the bed was from my wrestling training.

⁃ My language at the time of the incident was probably a bit rougher than reflected in this retelling. There’s a good chance anytime I used a shit, damn, or hell in this story, I was probably using some conjugation of the F-bomb at the time. Back in the day, Cathy said when I returned from a field exercise, it would take me three days to clean Up my language.