Crazy Charlie Lafitte (revisited)

Several long-time readers have asked if I'd do a rerun of Crazy Charlie Lafitte's stories from the old blog. The two posts were one of the few I managed to save before the host thoroughly fucked up the old blog, so here you go. I did combine the two posts into one for you.

Enjoy.

Fucking Crazy Charlie Lafitte….. man, I don’t even know where to start here.

Me and Crazy Charlie Lafitte got to our unit within a month or so of each other, but I don’t recall who got there first. No matter, really – he Section 8’d out of there within about 18 months but damn, anybody that knew him would remember him for the rest of their life. Not that he did anything really spectacular but because it was just a constant stream of odd shit when he was drinking.

You know the one friend you’ve got that when you two go out together, a third party holds the bail money? Crazy Charlie Lafitte was that friend.

Crazy Charlie Lafitte was a slow talking Cajun boy from Louisiana with just a slight accent. He seemed kinda slow but I think he just came across that way because of the way he talked – he always thought of what he was going to say before he ever opened his mouth and depending on the complexity of the question he was asked, it might take him a good 2 or 3 minutes before he’d start to answer. More than once we figured that he was just spacing out and then recovering a little too late. 

He was a Lineman (MOS 36C) in Cable platoon and he was a good soldier. He did a good job and did it without complaint. Doc, his platoon sergeant, told me once that Crazy Charlie Lafitte was one of his most dependable troops. Great guy until he got fucked up.

He never got above Pvt E-2 the entire time I knew him. He was a good soldier but his off-duty exploits ensured he was not cut out for an Army career.

Everybody from the Company Commander to his buddies called him Crazy Charlie Lafitte. If they needed him to do something, it wasn’t “Pvt Lafitte, take this over…”, nope, it was “Crazy Charlie Lafitte, take this over…” or “Hey Crazy Charlie Lafitte, let’s go get fucked up and pick a fight”.

*

Check this shit out: I was walking down the hallway and the mail clerk sticks his head out of the mailroom and he’s laughing hysterically. Hollister used to be my team chief until he jumped off his girlfriend’s second floor balcony when her husband decided to come home unexpectedly, breaking both of his ankles and landing him a permanent job as the mail clerk because a tower man with weak ankles just ain’t doing anybody a whole lot of good, right? It all worked out though - he ended up with a sham job and I became team chief by default.

Anyways, Hollywood told me that Crazy Charlie Lafitte had asked him to write his mama for him and explain that he had broken both of his hands on the job and that’s why she wouldn’t be getting her regular one letter a week from him. Partly true – he did have 2 broken hands, but it was because he had tumbled down the stairs of a bar and landed badly. The guys he was with said he bitched and moaned about his hands the rest of the night until they got tired of it and took him home.

Okay, Hollywood writes the letter and he thought he’d be nice and tell Mama Lafitte that we all liked him and what a hard worker he was, all that good shit that mothers love to hear about their sons, only thing was he called him Crazy Charlie Lafitte in the letter – hell, it just came out naturally. He saw what he did but decided to leave it in for grins. He popped the letter and a Polaroid of Crazy Charlie Lafitte’s casts as proof in an envelope and mails it off.

A couple three weeks later, Hollister and Crazy Charlie Lafitte both get letters from Mama Lafitte. Hollywood’s letter was what he was laughing so hard about. He’s reading this motherfucker to me and we’re both laughing so hard we’re crying. Mama Lafitte is concerned for our mental health and we all need to be checked if we think that highly of Crazy Charlie and yes, that’s what she called him, then went on to tell us that she’s always worried about that boy because he ‘wasn’t hooked up right’ and she was surprised that they even let him in the army to begin with. Then she wished Hollywood a good day and good luck and told him to watch his back when her boy Crazy Charlie Lafitte was lurking about.

Just when I couldn’t take anymore and I was starting to get the dry heaves from laughing so hard, Hollywood shoves Crazy Charlie Lafitte’s letter under my nose. Mama Lafitte had addressed it:

Pvt Crazy Charlie Lafitte

B Co 44th Sig Bn

APO NY NY 09266

*

Crazy Charlie Lafitte decided that the end of the basement hallway where all the team rooms were located needed painting. I can personally attest that they did not seeing as I had painted them a nice beige color the month before when I was working off some extra duty.

Apparently I didn’t do a good enough job because he got started Friday night and by Saturday morning about 1/3 of the hallway was painted, about as far as he got before he ran out of pink paint.

The First Sergeant came in that morning, saw that and about shit and when he was done shitting he ripped into the Charge of Quarters wanting to know why what the fuck happened and more importantly how did it happen? The CQ said that he didn’t think he needed to check the area out because he knew Crazy Charlie Lafitte was working down there. Fuck man, him working down there is the reason you need to check down there.

*

Three or four of us had decided to go to the movies one night and we were waiting on Crazy Charlie Lafitte. There’s a sharp rap on the door and when I opened it up, Crazy Charlie Lafitte is standing there at attention and the motherfucker is in khakis, shiny brass and everything. “At ease. What the fuck are you doing, man?”

“I’m ready to go to the movies.” He’s still standing at attention.

“At fucking ease, man.” He goes to Parade Rest. “I’m not going anywhere with you dressed like that.” The other guys are voicing their objections as well but not in such a courteous manner.

“Are you ashamed of our uniform?” Crazy Charlie Lafitte asks.

“Seriously? This ain’t the 1950s army, bro. We can now wear civilian clothes when we're off duty.” I was trying to explain it as nicely as I could, but Bill throws out a logical argument “Hey you stupid fuck, it’s January and khakis are a summer uniform.” Brilliant. It confounds Crazy Charlie Lafitte momentarily then he snaps back to attention, says that we’re right and he’ll be right back as soon as he changes. He executes a right face and then marches himself down the hallway calling out his own cadence, leaving us shaking our heads.

About 10 minutes later he returns – dressed in his Class A uniform, complete with overcoat. Fuck. Bill shrugs his shoulders – he gave it best shot. We smoke another bowl and top off our flasks and half pint bottles and head over to the movie house, ignoring the cadence.

Okay, in military theaters they play the National Anthem before every showing and protocol demands that when it’s played you rise to your feet and place your hand over your heart. Crazy Charlie Lafitte decided to level up and sing along with it. Loudly. Then to make sure that everybody in the place knew who was doing the singing, he stood up on his chair. Then the silly motherfucker starting motioning upwards with his arms trying to get everybody else to join in which was damned near impossible because he’d forgotten the words and started improvising shortly after ‘by the dawn’s early light’ which nobody really noticed because he wandered off key as well as losing time. Hell, the recording ended a good 5 seconds before Crazy Charlie Lafitte was done.

People were outraged. I didn’t know if it was because of the desecration of the song or because his singing was so bad, but they were pissed and they were fixin’ to whip his ass. While they all had a good reason to be upset, Crazy Charlie Lafitte was one of us so we had to back him up, gathering around him and then bulling our way to an exit.

Yeah man, we got outside and the MPs were pulling up out front and every one of us has at least a bottle of whiskey on us, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t jump out and swarm on Crazy Charlie Lafitte, knocking him to the ground and then loading him up before roaring off, completely ignoring the rest of us.

That was the night we found out that if you get into some shit with Crazy Charlie Lafitte around, you’re golden. He was so fucking notorious that he automatically got blamed for any disturbance. He could be walking past a riot and he’d get arrested for inciting it.

*

Crazy Charlie Lafitte was the only case that I knew of who’s annual marksmanship scores were falsified. His scores were consistently in the middle of a marksman score, yet he never touched a rifle after basic training as far as I know. There’s no way in hell anybody in their right mind would trust him with even an unloaded weapon.

*

My sweetie Shelby had a booked a learn-to-ski trip in Berchtesgaden between Christmas and the New Year, me only finding out about it on the 23rd when we rolled in from the field which pissed me off to no end – I’d been out since Thanksgiving living and working in the snow and now she wants me to go play in it? Are you fucking kidding me? I slowly resign myself to my fate, thinking that at least I’ll be able to drink there, unlike the tour of the Hummel figurine factory she forced me to go on.

The night before I’m supposed to go on this trip, there’s a poker game going on in my room which was no big deal because of the way the room was set up – bunks on the hallway side partitioned off from the living area by a row of lockers. I’m laid up in my bunk trying to get some sleep and the guys are on the other side playing cards and being fairly quiet.

We had a new guy in the company, a black dude from some inner city, that thought he was hot shit. As soon as he hit the company area he was picking fights, trying to prove himself. And for some ungodly reason, he’s wanting to play poker with Bill, Wally, Crazy Charlie Lafitte and Juan. I remember thinking that motherfucker’s gonna get stomped tonight because neither Bill nor Juan took no shit off nobody.

They deal him in. This silly asshole is just digging and digging trying to pick a fight, but the boys are just ignoring his talk while they’re taking his money. I’m lying on my bunk watching this whole thing through the walkway between the lockers. Juan sees that I’m still awake and asks if I had a bottle of whiskey I could loan them until I got back. I told them yeah and seeing as it was still early (it was maybe 10 o’clock) to just grab that jug of Kessler’s. That oughta get them through the night.

That bottle didn’t make 4 or 5 passes before Dude said something and Crazy Charlie Lafitte said just as he was being passed the bottle, “Motherfucker, I can take your bullshit all night long, just like I can ol’ Julius here,” and he hefted that bottle. Remember, Kessler’s half gallon jugs had a full handle on the side. Then Dude jumps to his feet and jabs at Crazy Charlie Lafitte, pulling it right before it hit him. Fucking Crazy Charlie Lafitte doesn’t hesitate one bit and nails him right in the cheekbone with a hard right. He still had that bottle in his hand. It crashed right into that dude’s face and broke, throwing whiskey, glass and blood over the top of the lockers and splashing me. I jumped up screaming,“THAT WAS MY LAST FUCKING BOTTLE ASSHOLE!!!” and grabbed my towel off the end of my bunk.

Man, the blood… I started to try to stop the bleeding by shoving his face into the towel, but then saw that he had a shitload of glass still embedded in his face. His face was just pouring blood from a dozen deep cuts. We picked out what we could and tried to stop the bleeding until the ambulance got there.

They arrested everybody in the room. It’s fucking 10 o’clock on a Friday night and I’m going to jail, for trying to take a fucking nap or some such shit. Not only that, but I am stone cold sober and completely innocent. Unfuckingbelievable. They let us cool our heels off in separate cells for a couple hours then took everybody’s statement except for Crazy Charlie Lafitte – he had admitted right up front that he was the one that did it.

Hey, I just told them what I saw – Dude was being belligerent all night and took a swing at Crazy Charlie Lafitte and it looked like a clear case of self-defense to me. Only problem was, my tour bus was leaving in a half an hour so I needed to be in custody for at least an hour just to play it safe. I stretched that statement out as long as I could with as much detail as I could remember. I mean, I included what everybody was wearing, where they were sitting and what brand of cigarettes they were smoking. I shouldn’t have worried about it – we didn’t get released for another couple of hours.

Crazy Charlie Lafitte got an Article 15 with 7 days in CCF – Correctional Confinement Facility – basically just picking up trash and beautifying the kaserne.

Dude got a shitload of stitches and some serious facial scars. I don’t know about his eyes. He never came back to the company.

Upshot? I was right. Somebody got their ass stomped. I just didn’t have the right person and don’t ask me why. That shit was right up Crazy Charlie Lafitte’s alley.

Oh, and would you believe Shelby actually accused us of planning all that just so I’d get out of that ski trip? She was serious until I started laughing at her with “Yeah, we’ll just maim a motherfucker to keep me from having to spend a few days with you.”

*

Crazy Charlie Lafitte was banned from the whorehouse downtown. Now I’ve been evicted from there, an accomplishment I’m quite proud of, but he was banned. They even had a full frontal picture of him as well as frame captures from security cameras printed out and posted near the door.

He pissed them off on two back to back visits. The first visit he had taken his Bible with him and was trolling the hallways, try to ‘rescue’ the girls. What he was going to do to them after he rescued them was anybody’s guess. I shudder just to think of it. Anyways, Security comes out and tries to get him to leave. He refuses. They beat his ass and physically threw him out the door. No hard feelings, come back next week when you remember your manners.

The next weekend he went down and took off his pants and started beating off in the hallway. Some days he blows hot, some days he blows cold….. But that was it for the Red Door for him.

*

Crazy Charlie Lafitte decided that our site defenses weren’t up to snuff so he decided to set up an LP (listening post) outside our site’s perimeter.

Now let me explain something about a signal site out in the field. We were just kinda clumped together wherever we could find space under the trees. There was no perimeter. There were no armed guards roaming around, no wire defenses, no guard gate, none of that shit. Why should we? There was no threat and in a war time situation we’d have a company of infantry guarding us. But the one thing we did not for sure have was LPs.

By the way, Crazy Charlie Lafitte didn’t tell anybody about his heroic lone wolf mission.

There was a gasthaus a short hike down this little one lane road, it was maybe 2-3 miles away and that evening Bill and one of his buddies were coming back from a nice dinner. Sneaking back in was no problem, like I said there was no perimeter, you just wandered back in, except this night they got captured. Crazy Charlie Lafitte jumped up from the ground, face painted and fucking leaves and bunches of grass sticking out of his helmet, and does a diversionary attack trying to draw the enemy away from the main site. He swings at Bill’s kneecaps with this fucking club he’s got and Bill just raises one foot and blocks it, then commences to pummel Crazy Charlie Lafitte severely.

When Bill was telling me about it later he said, “You know, I’m starting to get a little irritated at that fucker.”

*

He would try to buy kids from their parents. Not all obnoxious like in the Blues Brothers, but he’d go up to parents in line at the fucking grocery store or whatever and make an offer on one of the kids. Motherfuckers would get outraged. At first it was just disbelief that this nice smiling American soldier would actually ask such a thing, but it quickly turned to outrage about the time he’d ask if he could examine their teeth for wear.

Yeah man, he actually bought German phrase books so he could barter if the parents wanted.

He offered what he considered to be a fair price, 500DM which was 250 bucks US and considering that if he were successful in buying a child he’d be taking responsibility for its maintenance and upkeep for the rest of its short life so he was really the one taking the hit here. At least that's the way I understood it when he tried to explain it to me when I asked about it the first time I saw him attempt to buy one – actually, I think what I asked him was “What the fuck was that all about?” as we were making our escape.

I remember one time he got turned down on the kid so he offered to take Grandma off their hands at a lesser price of course because she was old, or as Crazy Charlie Lafitte put it “All tore up and wore out.” Apparently Grandma understood a fair amount of English because that’s when she attacked. Now German widow women dress in all black so here we’ve got this 4 foot tall widow woman dressed in mourning even though her husband died ten years ago, one fucking black knee high stocking down around her ankle and she’s just wailing on Crazy Charlie Lafitte with her cane and kicking him with her sensible shoes.

Bill asked him what he wanted with a kid and he said because it was the Right Thing to adopt a war baby. When it was pointed out to him that a war baby actually would be old enough to be his father his response was, “Better late than never.”

Crazy Charlie Lafitte walked into my room one morning and announced he was going into town to kick pigeons and would I like to tag along? Kick pigeons…? I was almost afraid to ask, but sure, why the fuck not.

He told me that prime pigeon kicking time was mid to late afternoon, so we had plenty of time. Why not stop and have a few beers on the way?

Man, we must’ve hit 8 or 9 gasthauses and bars drinking beer and cognac along the way and I was fucking lit. We went into a bakery and I assumed it was to get some bread for me to soak up the alcohol in my stomach, but Crazy Charlie Lafitte said it was for bait. I had to buy my own bread.

I kept asking about this pigeon kicking deal but all he’d say is, “You’ll see.”

We get to the city plaza right smack in front of the Rathaus (City Hall) and I sprawl across one of the benches. I'm seriously fucked up. These pigeons all see Crazy Charlie Lafitte’s carrying bread so they swarm him and the only thing you can hear is the whirring of wings and the plop of pigeon shit. I can’t even see him because there’s this 10 foot tall wall of pigeons flying all around him. After a few seconds, a few of them settled to the ground. All of a sudden this fucking pigeon shoots up backwards out of that cloud of birds and he’s hauling ass considering that he wasn’t even flapping his wings. “What the fuck?”

Boom, there goes another one accompanied by maniacal laughter. Then another and then all the birds take wing leaving Crazy Charlie Lafitte covered in feathers and shit and giggling like a little schoolgirl. “Give ’em about 15 minutes and they’ll get over it and come back. You can take your turn then” he says. Then he explains that you don’t actually kick them, but you lure ’em in close with bits of bread and then you slide your toe under ’em and then kick up real quick, basically just launching them, kinda like JATO on a cargo plane, right?

A little while later a bunch of people came out of a building across the plaza and headed our way with a flock of pigeons pestering them for a handout. “Go start throwing bread now, they’ll come to us if you do that,” Crazy Charlie Lafitte leans over and whispers to me with all the seriousness of a Great White Hunter.

Well, he’s the expert so I stagger out there and start throwing bread and bigger than shit those fucking pigeons jammed over to me. “Throw some on the ground at your feet!” he hollers, so I do that and right away there’s a pigeon about 6 inches away from my boot. I slipped my boot up against its ass, actually nudging the little fucker, then slid it under and kicked it straight up as hard as I could, rocketing that motherfucker straight up and in full view of all those people that attracted them in the first place.

Their reaction was not quite what I expected. Instead of laughing and clapping and offering to buy me a beer, these motherfuckers got all indignant. They surrounded me and held me there until the polizei was summoned, who promptly arrested me for public drunkenness with a pending Cruelty to Animals and Crazy Charlie Lafitte because that motherfucker was notorious and they figured they just best arrest him then to save themselves the trouble later that night. Typical German efficiency.

They arrested us, took us down to their cop shop where we were processed and then later that evening gave us a ride to the MP station on post where we were promptly locked up until the next morning at our request – no sense in having the CQ rousting Top or the CO in the middle of the night and pissing them off seeing as they’ll be the ones administering our punishment first thing Monday morning.

Come Monday morning I was standing tall in front of the First Sergeant to plead my case and all he could do was shake his head. “Public drunkenness. Fucking lightweight. 10 hours extra duty at my discretion. Dismissed.”

“You gonna ding me on the pigeon kicking too, Top?” I could see the report on his desk.

“No. That shit’s funny. Don’t do it again. Beat it.”

*

Crazy Charlie Lafitte’s room was on the first floor right across from Top’s office and right next to the Charge of Quarter’s desk so that they could keep an eye on him. He had a 2 man room but he had it to himself for obvious reasons. 

Now Crazy Charlie Lafitte had taken tinfoil and taped it to his windows like a lot of the shift workers did so they could sleep better during the day, so nobody walking past the barracks would think it was out of the ordinary.

One day Bill comes up and tells me, “You gotta check out Crazy Charlie Lafitte’s latest,” so we head down the stairs. On the way past the orderly room I got a glimpse of Crazy Charlie Lafitte locked up in front of Top’s desk. If Top had him standing at attention he must’ve really fucked up good because Top was more of a Parade Rest kinda guy. Of course, Crazy Charlie Lafitte might have just assumed the position of attention on his own – he’d been known to anticipate commands before. He'd done an about face on his own during morning formation more than once.

Anyways, we pushed our way through the gawkers and Bill pointed with “Check this shit out! Is that fucking killer or what?”

Crazy Charlie Lafitte had bricked in his entire window.

Why he did it wasn’t the big question. He did it because he’s Crazy Charlie Lafitte. That’s what Crazy Charlie Lafitte does. The $100,000 Question was how did he do it? How did he get all those bricks in past either the First Sergeant or the CQ? One at a time? No, his room had been inspected just a couple days before and there weren’t any bricks in there then. Hell, I’d been in there a couple days earlier and I didn’t see any bricks laying around. Were they passed in through his first floor window? Possible but extremely doubtful – our barracks was right across the street from the MP barracks and station. That shit would’ve been noticed.

The cement could’ve been smuggled in a little at a time, but where the fuck did he get the water to mix it? He’d have had to carry buckets all the way down the hall to the latrine and nobody recalled seeing him make even one trip down there with a bucket, much less several.

Once he got the materials in, it was no big deal. His window was tin foiled over so nobody outside could see what he was doing.

And last but not least, where the fuck did Crazy Charlie Lafitte learn to lay brick like a journeyman? That shit looked like it was done by a pro.

*

It wasn’t too hard to figure out who mixed plaster of paris into the toilet bowls in the latrine nearest Crazy Charlie Lafitte and the orderly room one night, only to be discovered when a second lieutenant reached in for a wipe and buried his hand in a turd sitting on top of a mountain of plaster in the bowl.

The shrieking had barely subsided when Crazy Charlie Lafitte exited his room with shaving kit in hand and hung a hard right towards the stairwell to use an upstairs latrine instead of his own, 50 feet away. Top, investigating all the noise, saw that and snatched his young Cajun ass up right fucking then and frogmarched him in the office.

He never did cop to it, not to Top and not to any of us, but he always had a grin on his face when he was denying it.

*

He painted his room camo – for an IG inspection. We could paint our rooms any color we wanted, within reason of course, so he stayed up all night and painted his room camo. That one wasn’t too hard to pull off. We painted our vehicles camo, all the motor pool and barracks paint was stored in the paint shed in the motor pool and there was a big inspection coming up. Everybody was painting something. It was more unusual to see somebody without a paint can in their hand than not.

The fucking lifers about shit themselves when they saw it. Here they’ve got a IG inspection coming up in a few days and this fucking oddball goes and paints his room camo? It was a pretty good job too – all the colors were proportioned in correct sizes and everything.

They ended up moving Crazy Charlie Lafitte and all his shit into an unoccupied room under guard down the hall and locking the door to his room praying that the inspector didn’t ask to go in there.

*

I walked out of the barracks one Friday night and there was Crazy Charlie Lafitte sitting on the rail fence by himself and dressed pretty damned nicely, like he was going out. “Hey man, what’s happening? Want to grab a few beers?”

“Nope, I’m waiting on my new car” he says. Right on, I didn’t know he was buying one. Oh well. Time to go grab a bite to eat and something to drink.

About 4 or 5 hours later I came back and there he was, still sitting in the same spot. “Hey, did you get your car? Come on, show it off to me.”

“Nope, I’m still waiting on my new car,” he said.

He hung out there the entire weekend, leaving only to eat and use the latrine. I don’t know if he got any sleep at all but every time I looked out my window he was there. We’d take him drinks and snacks and try to get him to talk but all he ever said was he was still waiting on his new car.

Come Monday morning he was fucking gone. He was gone and when we came back from doing our PT and morning run, his shit was packed out and it was gone too.

Come to find out that they were giving him a ride in a jeep over to the dispensary so he could catch an ambulance run to Stuttgart for an evaluation. There was no cover on the jeep and as they’re going down the road doing about 35 mph, Crazy Charlie Lafitte tipped his hat to the driver and stepped out.

The talk was heavy with was he really crazy or was it an act to Section 8 out of the army? We were all pretty much in favor of him being certifiably insane, hell, even Mama Lafitte verified that, and there was just way too much everyday weirdness. 

Gregg swears up and down though that right after Crazy Charlie Lafitte got to the company they got fucked up together and he told him his plan to Section 8 his way out. Not only that but Gregg was standing right there when they loaded him in the jeep he jumped out of and he says Crazy Charlie Lafitte looked him dead off in the eye and winked at him.

So who knows…

*****

About 3 or 4 years ago I got to wondering about Crazy Charlie Lafitte and decided to do an internet search. It took me about 2 minutes to land on his FB page complete with a profile picture and everything. Wow. That motherfucker's actually still alive. He looks older but it's definitely him with those crazy-ass eyes and he's with somebody I have to assume is his wife which got me to wondering if she was a willing participant in this union or was she abducted?

I went and showed Lisa his picture and having been regaled with Crazy Charlie Lafitte tales before, she asked if I was going to contact him or send him a friend request.

"What, are you kidding? I haven't been arrested in over 40 years and I'd like to maintain that run." No fucking way was I going to contact him.