Well, between January and March of 2020, the pandemic caused most things at Fort Gordon to go on standby. It was difficult to maintain fitness will all the gyms closed, me being off mission for weeks at a time, and a curfew that kept me from taking my habitual late-night walks. And with all the boredom and free time, my drinking increased. I invented a drink which I called the quarantini and another called the Typhoid Mary. There was nothing special about them; I just like puns.

I had to switch to the day shift for a while and overslept several times. Not sure why it’s so hard for the Army to keep people on consistent sleep cycle, especially when they’re not deployed in a combat zone. I was able to switch to the night shift again for a while later, but it did not last long. In August, after realizing my alcohol consumption was out of control, I did my best to quit and was booze free for about 20 days. About the same time, I was doing paperwork so two of my subordinates could go to BLC. My platoon sergeant yelled at me for not doing the equipment layout with them, to which I replied I didn’t see the point of making sure they packed the stuff they don’t need for the class that shouldn’t exist which they’re not actually going to because of Covid. He did not take that well and wrote me a negative counseling.

Near the end of that month, I got in an argument with my platoon sergeant over, you guessed it, a counseling. After spending several hours been shown examples of counselings from other sergeants, I got annoyed and asked him ‘how many words do you want me to put on this form?’ He got angry, yelled 5,000, and when I pressed him, he threatened to convene a board to demote me. So I went home and wrote a 5,000-word rant over the next four hours. I called it the Bible of Harty and it was mostly a list of gripes of all the dumb things the Army bureaucracy had inflicted on me despite my best efforts to be a good soldier in a job few are smart or motivated enough to do.

There were some tense moments at meetings, but my First Sergeant, who has a heart of gold, smoothed things out. A few days later, I was awakened in the middle of the night with an urgent request to print some rosters for a training event. It seemed odd. Our headquarters has printers and there would have been plenty of time to print them in the morning. I suspected it was some kind of under the radar punishment but shrugged it off. A few days later, it was Friday at I was preparing to enjoy some Oktoberfest beer to celebrate my self-control in the prior month. Oktoberfest beers are among my favorite, though generally speaking, if it’s wet, I’ll drink it.

Alas cruel fate, I was informed that if I didn’t do a bunch of online classes that night, I’d have to come in to headquarters at 4 AM the next day to finish them. I did my best to finish the classes, but only got a few done. All the while, I drank 13 beers while steadily growing angrier. I had done these same classes three times already in previous years and would have done them on time this year had my usual workstation been open instead of partially closed because of the pandemic. Well, 4 AM rolled around and I got a call asking why I had not come yet. I responded that I needed to finish my last beer. I then took the last four beer I had in a cardboard carrier and took to my car.

I figured I was a little drunk but under the legal limit given that more than 12 hours had passed since I started drinking. I drove 25 MPH on a straight, flat road for about 2 miles at 4 AM on an Army base on a Saturday. I was the only car on that stretch of road. Well, I showed up, plopped down the beer carrier and said something like ‘OK, I’m here. Let’s have a cert party!’ Another sergeant gave me a breathalyzer and I blew 0.18, three times the legal limit in Georgia. The sergeant was flabbergasted and couldn’t understand why a guy like me would do something so dumb. Why indeed.

My company commander and First Sergeant came in and I went to their office. I told them that if I’m being punished anyway, I might as well deserve it. They replied that there had been some DUIs in the battalion recently and demand was growing for a crackdown. My commander took the beer, had me fill out a statement where I confessed to my misdeed, took the beer I brought, and had another soldier drive me home. A few days later, it was decided that since I had been a good soldier otherwise, there would be no punishment, but that I would have to stop drinking and enroll in a treatment program. It was nice to get a lenient punishment, though I was taken off mission and sent to shuffle paper.

At the same time, I was desperate to lose weight again, so I bought an exercise bike and rode it 1,200 miles over the next 3 months. I lost about 20 pounds, and my personal best was riding over 100 miles in a single day. Alas, in late October and more than 50 days of sobriety under my belt, I was hit with another crisis, my new squad leader.

I had a bad feeling from the beginning. In our first phone called, he insisted on reading every single word of a long-winded counseling to me. Later, when I woke up late again, he said if it happened again, he’d write me a negative counseling. He also said that once when he was at Fort Meade, he went to the home of a soldier who failed to call in only to find him dead on the floor apparently by suicide.