J.T. McDaniel Official Website

The Army has always figured that entertainment is good for morale. If you keep the troops happy they're more likely to perform their duties efficiently, work harder and refrain from anti-social acts—such as shooting their officers.

So they tried to keep us entertained. They set up an outdoor theatre on the side of hill below the mess tent and Officers' Club, which meant the officers could watch the movie from inside the club, comfortably ensconced behind the screening. The rest of us sat on long benches made by laying a piece of PSP (Pierced Steel Planking, interlocking steel sheets used for temporary runways and helipads) on some cement blocks. For a stage, they parked an old lowboy trailer at the bottom of the hill, then put up a screen behind it. The projector was set up about halfway down the hill.

Most nights there would be a movie. We'd get the latest from Hollywood, printed on 16-mmm stock. There was even an anamorphic lens for the projector, for showing wide-screen films. There was only one projector, so there were a lot of "intermissions" while the reels were changed. A somewhat unneccesary problem, really, since those military projectors were equipped with synchronizers, allowing you to hook two of them together for a continuous show. Getting that second one was, naturally, the problem here.

I can't say we saw a lot of real classics. Mostly, what we got was the standard stuff, including the old John Wayne movies, mysteries, escaped TV movies and a fair amount of Disney. Stuff like "The Boatniks," though I can't remember if that particular flick was included.

Some nights, we'd get live acts. Obscure rock and roll bands, none particularly radical, and a procession of Filippino strippers who never actually got naked, much to the frustration of our merry band of dance aficionados. Bob Hope never showed up, though. There were a couple of groups that would later end up semi-famous, and at least one ex-Mousketeer, though I think she was at a different company. (No, it wasn't Annette.)

There were also the unofficial movie nights. Those could be a lot more entertaining. Someone would get his hands on an 8-mm projector, set up in the mess tent or EM Club, and charge everyone a buck a head to come in and watch a collection of old porno loops. And I do mean old. Lots of dumpy women and overweight men wearing Lone Ranger masks and going at it in their argyle socks and wingtips, all presented in glorious, grainy black and white.

Old and lacking in production values as they were, some could be entertaining. One film sparked a lively debate over whether the male star would actually be interested in women. No one back then, or in that place, was really what you'd call politically correct, so there were loads of comments about his rather buoyant behavior. In the end, we concluded that he must be interested after all, judging by what he did with his co-stars.

Sometimes you'd even get something in color. One classic featured a Filippino couple and was notable for being so totally passionless that they almost looked like a couple of robots. We weren't looking for complex plots, sparkling dialogue or artistic lighting, mind you. We were just a bunch of dirty young men and we liked to watch people fooling around.

All of this, of course, was strictly against regulations. If the officers caught you, you'd get in lots of trouble so, to prevent this, the officers got in free. This was just a courtesy, naturally—a way of showing appreciation of all they did for the men under their command. Only the cynical would call it a bribe.

As for where all this naughty stuff came from, well, the Army was quite innocent. We'd watch it, naturally, but we had too much class to actually go out and buy it. For that sort of thing you needed to turn to the truly depraved.

We rented the movies from the Marines.