Selling Drugs Begins

This is me just typing as my dad talked; thus, some of it is choppy and poorly written. Enjoy!
Also being in base ops, we were very secure. You had to pass through 3 locked doors to get where I was; even then you had to have a general’s approval to come in. We learned that soldiers coming home from Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and wherever stopped there first. They gave them the speech that the next stop was Hawaii. If they had any contraband, now was the time to drop it.

So we learned that the Marines would escort them to their aircraft. At the time, the waiting area was left unoccupied for at least fifteen minutes. Two guys would leave our post and go down with paper bags and go through luggage or duffle bags that were left. We didn’t take everything, you know. We would take two or three pounds of marijuana at a time. Some of the guys, mostly east coast, were more interested in finding the heroin.

We would take it down to the bars in town and sell it to the bar owners. We would sell little match boxes full for $10. And of course, we’d eat and drink for free at that point. This continued for seven or eight months. Some guys were sending it home, but I was too afraid. Plus I knew my mom would open it up, and I didn’t want her to see it. I just kept my little stashes.

We were making a good profit. I saved quite a bit of money. I started buying camera equipment and nice clothes. Then one night, I was talking to two friends that I’d gone to school with. One was in Philippines and one was in Hawaii. Since I was in Base Ops, I could control that kind of communication…patching in multiple calls from wherever. My sponsor sergeant Dufus, had overheard me talking and turned me into the military police.

After I got off my shift that night, I went back to the barracks. My room had been stripped down, and everything piled in the middle. They said they wanted to know where my marijuana was. I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about, that I didn’t have anything. Luckily they didn’t open my folded socks because that’s where my baggies were. After that, I was under surveillance all the time.

If we were going to smoke, we would go to the roof, but we couldn’t do that anymore. We’d go hide in the tall banana leaves/plants, or whatever they were, and we made ourselves a little hut. We’d go one at a time before we went to the chow hall. At the same time, at home---my dad had a nervous breakdown. He freaked out pretty bad, and I wanted to go home on a family emergency leave. They wouldn’t let me. I rolled four joints and walked into my commander’s office. I said you guys are looking for evidence so here’s three joints. There would’ve been four, but I smoked one on my way to see you.

So they put me in what they call correctional custody. It’s not a prison, but more like a jail because I was a nonviolent criminal. All of us there had to clean the base, exercise, and whatnot all day. My friends on the outside would leave weed in the trash out on the base with orange tape or something, so I could find it. We’d pick it up and smoke it as we did our chores. They never searched us or did any testing. We smoked some and saved some. Another duty was washing all the MP cars. So, as we were washing them, we’d put joints under the floor mats. It was a good hiding place since we cleaned the cars every day.

Then we got really brave. We were playing volleyball. We lit a dooby and taped it to the volleyball. We just threw the volleyball around, taking hits.

After being in the corrections for 30 days and so-called house arrest for 2 months, I was discharged as an undesirable and sent back home.