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THE LEGEND OF THE MAD SHITTER

By Thomas J. Radke
C-Company 79th Engr (1974-77)

Each of us deals with the stress of pressures put upon us by people and situations beyond our control. Some choose drink, some choose drugs, or both and others exhibit odd behavioral traits. This is a story about one soldier who chose the last of these.

Stationed with the US army in Germany in the mid-1970’s, life in the barracks was a daily battle to cope. Building after building sitting end to end, each containing a company of 250 typically young men on 3 floors, assigned 4 to a room in most cases; men from every region, state and territory. All were a long way from home for a very long time and each was a unique story, bringing with them both good and bad remnants of a previous life. We were a human stew, heated by overcrowded conditions, spiced by drugs and alcohol and kept from boiling over by the heavy lid of military rules and regulations. Many times, try as they might, the edge of that lid opened and out we spilled.

Living in such conditions meant that any semblance of privacy was a rumor at best; nothing you possessed was safe from the prying eyes and grasping hands of roommates or strangers just walking by. The contents of your wall locker, the only place remotely safe from them, were subject to inspection at any time by your platoon sergeant. Truly, the only place where you could sit alone to contemplate your wretched life was late at night in the darkened confines of the latrine.

John Prine wrote of this loneliness in a 1971 song entitled Donald and Lydia on his first album "John Prine".

As a rule, what occurred behind those hollow, thin steel stall walls usually stayed there and to go into the details of possibilities here is to go where no man should go. One individual though, decided that he’d had enough of his miserable life and began a most unusual means of sharing that misery with his fellow soldiers.

I’d like to premise this tale with a review of the conditions we lived with in those days. Personal hygiene was always an issue and the extremes of this basic human condition would raise ugly heads from time to time. Unusually it was something as manageable as a guy who refused to shower and a late night visit from his "too close" friends to help him with a shower got him back on track. Occasionally, someone would develop something weirder. We were used to an occasional display of filthy people doing filthy things to get the attention of the brass, but if an ongoing pattern of dangerous filth stalked amongst us, it was time to take notice.

One such occurrence that comes to mind was the handiwork of a sergeant (who shall remain nameless in this tale); a black guy, possessing short and squat build, and growled his words in a low throaty voice. Not that he ever had anything noteworthy to say. Now this guy was just plain stupid when sober and while drunk, a preferred condition, he really slide down the scales. As an unmarried NCO he lived in the barracks, a room to his own. He had this odd quirk wherein late at night, awakening from a drunken stupor; he’d wander down the hall in his stained boxer shorts in search of the latrine.

Headlights on but no one behind the wheel, he bounce off the hallway walls as they guided him unnoticing past the door to his destination until he’d eventually hit the dead-end; a wall of window below which was a bank of cast iron radiators. Sufficiently satisfied that he was where he wanted to be, he’d drop his shorts and piss all over the painted hot iron, dreaming he’s scored porcelain. While this in itself was bad enough, occasionally his dinner would be knocking at the back door, requiring that he squat down and dump a warm pile on the floor. Then he’s pull up his shorts (did he forget to wipe?) and stumble back to bed, not remembering anything in the morning.

One night, a group of us returning drunk from a night downtown at the Piccadilly Bar, staggered up the barracks stairwell, the comforting rest of our bunks in mind. As we reached the third floor hallway we were treated to a live performance of this "misfire" one night. We stood motionless as he passed, his face a mask of booze infused dreams, bouncing along like an errant pinball, his home state of confusion apparent in his low grunting and mumbling; the soundtrack of this horror show. Well, we had us the experience of our young lives. I believe some people are willing to pay good money to witness these acts; we had gotten in under the tent flap for free. Laugh? My God I thought we’d die right there. Of course we hollered our disgust at him but he was drunk stupid and beyond reach, so it had no effect.

I dreaded the possibility of being assigned hallway cleanup on the next morning’s duty roster; restoring the hallways after a weekend was bad enough without that "extra" duty. Fortunately, I ducked that particular bullet. Now, as bad as it might have been to clean up his mess, nothing comes close to being an assignment to hell than having to clean the latrine after a weekend.

We were not fortunate to have separate bathrooms in the WWII era buildings we infested. Each floor was laid in a similar plan; a long stone floor hallway with doors opening into rooms along its length. Midway on one side was the white-tiled 4-room complex called a latrine in military jargon. A large room, with a high ceiling that would echo body functions like cannon shot, held rows of steel stalls on each side and a bank of sinks along a wall at the end. Off to one side was a changing room with wooden benches, from this room entrance was gained into a 10 showerhead tile room. Again, privacy was nonexistent. Lighting, when the bulbs weren’t smashed, was supplied by harsh overhead florescent fixtures, supplemented by filtered light through windows of glass block. Also in the latrine, another small room was opposite of the shower, containing a washer and dryer and mop sink. All together this was the place where we made ourselves clean; this was the place where the most unimaginable variations of individual habits were put on public display.

Toilet paper was almost non-existent in the barracks, therefore an item of barter. Even though the army ordered us cheap paper, it was still of better quality that the Germans used (their stuff being of that brown raspy hand towel quality), so most of ours was short-circuited in the supply chain, siphoned off for somebody’s black market selections. What little paper we did get have would inevitably get appropriated for personal stash (the metal dispensers kicked off the wall to free the golden rolls) or ruined by an inconsiderate user who would set the freed roll down on the always-wet floors (overflowing toilets were the norm) and the damn thing would swell up with a life of it’s own.

Therefore, unless you were lucky enough to get real toilet paper from home via a care package (I did; my mom thought I was nuts but I was a fast learner), you had to make due with whatever was handy. Comic books and the Stars and Stripes was a common standard, old used underwear or what ever one could beg, borrow or steal. This, on top of all the needle works the junkies would try to flush down the holes, would plug those suckers solid. This is not to say that the next guy who happened along would avoid a plugged toilet; hell, they’d just drop more load onto the plug until the level of death was at seat height (sometimes even higher if they possessed acrobatic abilities).

One would get so discouraged if the use of the facilities was required late in the 2-day season of latrine abuse. You would head into the latrine with the best intentions of getting much needed relief only to find all systems a no-go. Then, padding off to another floor, you would find the same disgusting condition. If you were getting desperate then you would have to walk outside the building and seek refuge and relief in the facilities of a neighboring company facilities, and provided that they hadn’t suffered the same fate as our own, beg the indulgence of the CQ as you came through their front door with a roll of toilet paper in hand. Often, they were not sympathetic. What a life we led.

So there you’d be on a Monday morning, just back from taking on a stomach-churning load of greasy mess hall slop, hungover like "four mother fuckers" from a weekend of drugs and drink, awaiting the posting of morning duties. Platoon sergeants would extract revenge on whichever poor soul unfortunate to be on his shitlist by assigning them to the latrine duties. If you were really his pal, you’d pull that nasty duty it as a rule. T-shirts tied around your face as improvised gas masks, Vicks jammed up your nostrils if you were lucky enough to have a jar, you’d go in; miserable souls assigned to a shitty version of hell on earth. Plungers, broom handles, hoses, bucketfuls of hot soapy water, cussing and swearing; all tools used as you attacked those 6-8 vessels of death. If you were lucky, your sergeant would find pity in his hard heart to allow the especially plugged ones to be overlooked; its wretched condition duly noted and later assigned to some schlep German maintenance worker with a power snake.

The toilets were just a part of the mess that awaited those unfortunate to draw this duty. On any weekday morning you only had to deal with the overnight bombers but if you drew Monday morning then the 3 nights (worse were the 3-day holiday weekends) of accumulated debris from a hundred guys per floor. Overflowing trash cans, if not already kicked over and dented, awaited hauling out to the dumpster, broken glass from beer bottles littered the floors, beer cans rolled around everywhere and sopping wet mats of newspapers and comics stuck to the floor. All this had to be removed; the stall walls washed of god-knows-what, toilets scrubbed clean and wiped dry, floors swept, mopped and dried. Then it was on to the adjoining shower room and changing area which also seemed to collect the oddest assortment of non-bathing related junk imaginable. Once done, everything had to pass inspection by your platoon sergeant with any required adjustments made. Then and only then you were allowed to go outside to fresh air and a smoke to await call to formation.

I had been accused by blue ribbon losers on numerous occasions of being a brown-noser. Yeah, I got along with my platoon sergeant but if that’s what you wanted to call me, call me that as you’re adding your breakfast to the pile of shit in some plugged toilet as you draw that duty because you are too stupid to get the game. As I said, I was a fast learner.

Now that I have established a baseline of the normal conditions of the latrine and our level of tolerance for personal hygiene, it’s time to introduce you to the Mad Shitter…

Rumors spread fast in crowed conditions. We lived in a place where erratic behavior was the norm so only truly aberrant behavior made the verbal headlines of the hallway hawkers. One day word arrived on the floors that someone was writing cryptic messages on the walls of latrine stalls, his finger the scribe, his shit the ink. Oh God, a new low! Handwriting analysis was out of the question; his words were just crudely spelled profanities directed at no one; we were still years away from DNA matching (besides, who would want to test all for comparative samples?), so we had few clues to his identity. Whoever this was certainly had a "case of the ass" with his superiors. These leaving were no one time fluke as they began to appear on regular basis; different stalls, different words but same MO.

Then he upped the ante by dropping piles of shit alongside the porcelain throne; his ass swung over to the side enough to allow deposit complete with the paperwork. This was really breaking new ground; creativity was rare and always welcomed in our bleak lives. Then he really turned up the heat. Nothing was sacred to this man; sinks in the latrine and the mop room off the hallway, corners of the hot, damp shower room (you damned near dropped to one knee when you inhaled the rarified air left after a night of percolation) and once, in show of his outstanding acrobatic abilities, he actually managed to place a large pile on top of the partition wall separating the changing room from the shower room. This 6 inch thick, ceramic tiled wall stopped 2 feet short of the 10-foot ceilings so one could only imagine how this was accomplished. A+ for effort though.

This discovery was left untouched and word quickly spread of its existence. Soon guys were stopping by for a chance to view this new "high" in creative placement. Then, one of the guys, "Montana Bob" decided to play a little mischief on our resident junkie "Scratch" (so named for that particular habit all junkies share of constantly needing to comfort their crawling nerves). Bob sought out Scratch’s and let him in on the location of "some shit" and pointed upward to the ledge high above the diminutive stature of his victim, the true prize out of his line of vision. "Shit" is an street word for heroin, (along with "horse, junk, smack and skag" to name a few) so old Scratch though Bob was doing him a favor and was just high and hungry enough to take a chance on somebody else’s hidden stash. Surprise! or as Bob always put it, "Shazam"! Bob later described it for me; the look at Scratch’s face as he pondered his withdrawn hand, his declaration of "aww… man…FUCK!" was simply priceless.

We continued to live our lives in our normal manner (huh? - normal?), doing a work-around his impact while the NCOs and officers struggled to find a solution to this plaguing dilemma. This definitely was something that wasn’t covered in the manuals.

I had my own personal exposure to his mid-deeds; we unfortunates on limited funds had our precious small collection of civilian clothes and these honored garments were laundered with utmost care to ensure their continued use. One Saturday morning, up early with eyes half closed, I made my way to the laundry room. With so many taxing the so few available machines, this was the sure was to ensure an opening in the endless line. I loaded the washer with a bundle of my precious unmilitary clothing, adding detergent as the water rose inside the tub. Returning shortly to check on my belongings (and to ward off thieves who were known steal entire wet loads of someone else’s clothes), I lifted the lid and stared blankly at the strange brown debris floating on the top of the cleansing foam. Thinking that I had left something in my pocket, perhaps an O Henry candy bar, I grabbed a handful up for inspection, only to experience that same sinking feeling old Scratch must have had. Apparently, the Mad Shitter had managed to make a deposit at the night window of the International Bank of Maytag. Left with no other choice, I washed and rewashed those same clothes until I had used up an entire box of detergent. Oh, I wore them alright, but believe me, I never felt quite as comfortable again in my old blue jeans.

With rare exceptions, those who choose life outside the law are eventually apprehended. Master thieves, bank robbers and petty con men; all find themselves sooner or later feeling the iron grip on their collar of John Law. We too hoped that soon our tormentor would find himself cornered, squatting over a steaming pile of his misdeeds, yet day after day, weeks blending into months; we endured our punishment. The brass was totally baffled on how to corral this character; even our internal system of suck-up rats had failed us. We were helpless against him and living in desperate times.

Then, one bleak rainy evening, shrouded by the ever-present fog of a German winter night, a lonely sentry walked his rounds. This half-stoned, half-asleep guard stumbled along, in his hand the latest high-tech weaponry issued to those of us entrusted to ward off infiltration of the Communist spies just luring outside our stone walls, a tubular length of grey metal; the dreaded bunk adapter, uniquely designed to allow stacking humans in our rooms like prisoners in a cell. As he made his way behind the fortress-like building that was Company C, his keen glazed-over eyes caught the strange sight of a long brown smear streaking the yellow stucco wall; running somewhat loosely from the nights drizzle. Searching for its origin, it appeared to be high above him, beginning on a window ledge. On closer inspection (think about Old Scratch again), he quickly determined that he had evidence of the "Crime of the Century" and ran (without washing his hands – he should of gotten a medal of valor) to the entrance door of the company, burst in and breathlessly announced to all that he knew the location of the lair of the Mad Shitter.

The Charge of Quarters (CQ to us) immediately called the home of the First Sergeant who in turn alerted the MP’s and soon a regiment of authority had amassed, master key in hand, at the 3^rd floor door of the suspect. A cursory knock followed by a quick turn of the key and they fell about the room. There on his miserable bed, beneath the thin cover of an army blanket, lay the evil tormentor… THEE MAD SHITTER!

I know well of his name, for it is burned into my mind and soul, but I will not divulge it here. It is pointless to embarrass him now. Perhaps is living the remainder of his twisted life in a cramped dank state prison cell, serving a lengthy term for misdeeds far beyond these of his formative years; perhaps he is a corporate head of a major fortune 500 firm; or even more likely a politician. As he faced his captors, the dark mask of anonymity was torn away (actually, they just turned on the overhead light), revealing to all the figure of a pale, thinly built private E-2; scared to insanity by the military machine that surrounded him; so utterly lonely for the home life he left behind.

Under the pressure of intense questioning (someone asked him if he had just crapped out his window), this broken man-boy sang like Enrico Caruso. Yes indeed, he had just slipped his baby smooth cheeks out over the ledge but alas, he had been betrayed by his last meal. The consistency of his cartridge had caused him to miscalculate the necessary firing angle and he delivered a sloppy load that left a trail of damnable evidence from launch site to ground zero.

I was present that evening, standing quietly with my stunned comrades along a wall off to the side of the scene unfolding before us. We quietly murmured amongst ourselves as they led him from the room, his head bowed low in shame, a dead man walking the last time down the hall of his home. We trailed the crowd down to the street and stood quietly as he was loaded into a waiting car. Watching as the convoy of escort vehicles whisked him away to the main MP station at Smiley barracks; we huddled together against the cold biting wetness, slowly realizing that at long last this thorn of evil had been ripped from our sides. We stood unable to comprehend our next move until someone suggested we go back in and blow a blow of hash. Soon the street in front of our beloved Company C was deserted again, wet cobblestones glistening in dim lamplight.

He was never seen again, his fate sealed by the machine that had driven him over the edge. The next day a detail of MP’s arrived, gathering boxes of his meager belongings that had been assembled by his all-too-willing–to-help platoon sergeant. Across town in a small cell guarded closely by his own tormentors, sat a frightened young man; his return to the world was but an escorted ride to the Frankfurt airport away. Calls had been made to the other home he had so longed for, setting into motion preparations to welcome back a soldier who had engaged in a tremendous battle and had emerged victorious despite his emotional wounds.

The Mad Shitter had indeed won his own war. For he stood alone against the strength of the mightiest army in the world and, using the cleverly crafted weaponry of his own forge, had had beaten back his enemy.

He had won his freedom.