For example, on the American board, a tank unit might be moved from one spot to another, and they would move the counter. The umpires moved the counter on their board, and since they had both sides showing, would be able to tell if the Germans saw them. If they did, the German side was told and shown the move, and they could then respond. It was cumbersome, but realistic. On each side, the teams were split along functional and unit lines. There was an overall commander, several subunit commanders (brigades and battalions), and other separations as well, so the students would only be responsible for what they ‘owned.’
I had played this game before, quite a bit, in fact, and knew a lot of tricks. I volunteered to be artillery commander, and made some of my own rules for my subordinates, speeding up the process and making sure we were always shooting somewhere at someone. This paid off repeatedly when my surprise fires would catch enemy units on the move or trying to deploy. The Air Force and Navy have a saying — ‘Fighter pilots win the glory, bomber pilots win the war.’ I told the others that ‘Tankers win the glory, gunners win the war.’ The teachers all agreed with me.
I knew I was going to be in the Army, but I think that’s when I decided to go for artillery. No matter what I did, I was going for combat arms. I should explain that. There are two types of Army officer, combat arms and everything else. Combat arms includes the infantry, armored, airborne, artillery, and engineers; other stuff would include communications, MPs, transportation, medical, supply, chaplains, and so forth. This stuff is pretty important when the shit hits the fan, senior officers are killed, and bullets are flying. It is not unheard of that a lieutenant in the engineers or infantry finds himself commanding units with much more senior (majors, colonels, etc.) non-combat officers, for instance if a headquarters position gets hit hard by artillery or gets cut off behind enemy lines.
This was actually one of the major differences between me and my father. He was a staff officer, and hated being a line officer. The same applied in civilian life. He loved being in a staff engineering position and hated being a line manager with final profit-and-loss responsibility. I’ve had both types of jobs. Staff managers are important; line managers get promoted and paid more. They also get fired more, but that’s the breaks. No guts, no glory.
That took us through most of January. The second semester was starting the last week of January, and we all needed a blowout party. Kegs had one scheduled for Friday night, February 8. Everybody was back from winter break and had a week of class under their belts. Now I got to see the mechanism for organizing a party and the most important thing of all — getting girls to come!
The Albany-Troy-Schenectady area has a lot of colleges. Aside from RPI, you had Russell Sage, Samaritan Hospital Nursing School, Albany State, Union, Siena, St. Rose, and probably a few I’ve forgotten, all within fifteen to twenty minutes. Every frat had a few selected colleges they found women at. Teke always hit on Russell Sage, for instance. Kegs liked Samaritan, St. Rose, and Albany State. It was a self reinforcing system. You were dating a girl at a college, she posted a notice a party was happening, girls would come to the party, some brother would start dating a girl there, and the cycle was repeated.
All the pledges were expected to show up after classes Friday and work on the house. Mostly it was a matter of cleaning the place up and putting shit away. The formal room, for instance, was gutted. The furniture was taken out and put on the porch under a gigantic tarp, and the carpet was rolled up and carried out as well. In the living room the foosball table was hidden and the furniture rearranged. The basement was shoveled out and a stereo system was set up. Most of the brute work was done by pledges under the tutelage of a brother. A fair bit of beer was consumed during this period.
My part was actually different. Marty was actually the Social Chairman, the guy who ran the parties, and he acted as a bartender. He grabbed me, since I knew a lot about drinks and booze, and assigned me to help setting up the bars. One was down in the basement in a cubbyhole off the side, where we actually had a real bar set up, and only served mixed drinks and draft beer. Upstairs, we set up a folding table. We had some mixed drinks, but mostly served punch. The punch was free; beer and mixed drinks went on your bar tab, which had to be paid monthly.
Every frat had a different signature punch. Kegs’ was mai tais, a rum based fruit punch. Crows served up the Purple Jesus, Welch’s grape juice plus vodka. Others I had seen around campus included screwdrivers, Bloody Marys, and a sangria sort of drink involving cheap red wine, sliced fruit, and vodka. No matter what the punch was, it was invariably sweet and heavily laced with alcohol, so that our female guests would enjoy it, get stupid, and take off their panties. Subtle flavors weren’t all that critical.
For whatever reason, I was kept working on the bars and booze when brothers were sent out to find hot and willing women. To be fair about it, willing was more important than hot. Tonight was a big party, the first of the semester, so we had put up notices at St. Rose, Samaritan, and Albany State. While the girls at Samaritan could just walk down the street to us, we had to send cars over to Albany State and St. Rose. These cars were known as ‘meat wagons.’ We weren’t very politically correct in 1974, and I suspect if you went back there today, they still wouldn’t be. Even though I had a car, I wasn’t sent out, probably because they figured a freshman would fuck up, and I never even knew they had left until long after they were gone.
I had just finished making a batch of mai tais and poured them from the kitchen kettle into a glass punch bowl, and was sampling one when people started coming in. The freshmen were fairly predictable. They concentrated on mai tais, since that was free, and they all drank too much too soon. That shit had a kick to it, and if you weren’t careful, you could get real stupid real fast. Some of these guys would have three or four within the first hour and end up passed out somewhere. I had one, but I was nursing it along.
The party was supposed to start around eight or so, and the first ones there were all the freshmen, the single brothers, and any brothers who had girls staying for the weekend. The meat wagons didn’t start coming back until around half past. Sometimes, if we were lucky, some of the girls would come over in their own cars and bring friends. This was one of the first parties of the semester at any of the houses, since most of the rest were having parties the next week, and attendance was high. I quickly found myself filling and setting out plastic cups of punch from behind the bar, with Marty supervising and taking the occasional mixed drink order. Somebody else was handling the basement, and the floor was already rumbling from the sound of the stereo down there. Led Zeppelin and the Stones seemed to be the order of the day, with a heavy dosing of Aerosmith.
Things were moving along quite nicely. I remember filling some cups, going off to the kitchen to make another batch of mai tais, coming back and pouring it into the punch bowl. Then I turned around, set the kettle on the floor behind us. I stood upright and faced the front of the bar. There she was, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.