Categories > Cartoons > G.I. Joe > Origins of a Hero
FIC: "Origins of a Hero"
Genre:
Speculative Origin of Character
G. I. Joe fan fiction, not necessarily comic or cartoon continuity.
(Although I allude to Duke and Scarlett as a couple.)
Author:
"Wolfman Six" (Kurt)
Summary:
This piece will take us back in time to the Vietnam Conflict, exploring the military background of the famous G. I. Joe top kick, Duke.
Archived:
Wherever the heck I feel like.
If you want to refer it to somewhere I'm not familiar with, that's probably okay, but tell me first so I can give permission, and make sure I get credit where credit is due.
Plagiarists will be killed, eaten raw and then regurgitated for the vermin and vultures.
Remember, recycling helps the environment.
Rating:
Rated R for strong language, war themes and potential for graphic violence.
I haven't decided if there will be any adult situations yet.
No one under 18 is allowed to read without parental supervision.
Disclaimer:
G. I. Joe, its characters, and so on and so forth are the property of Hasbro International. I borrow them quite liberally, but only for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended. Nor do I profit from the distribution of this material.
Anything else considered an element of the story, especially the other non-Joe characters, are mine! I require and demand credit to be given if my story elements find their way into other people's work.
Any other mention of persons living or dead is coincidental, and I apologize in advance. Hopefully, I won't paint anyone in particular in an unfavorable light... But I won't make promises... (LOL)
-xxx-
"Origins of a Hero"
Prologue
-xxx-
From the Desk of
Conrad Steven Hauser
Sergeant Major, U. S. Army
Saint Louis, Missouri
04 July, 2004
War is hell.
But for some people, war is home. Perhaps that's what I've felt about myself ever since I started in this grisly business of killing. The fact that I've survived so long, across so many major conflicts and secret operations that the general public would never hear or read about, is as solid a testament as I could ever find. I still think back about the guys that I've served with, who didn't make it out of those far-flung hellholes around the world. Maybe through my recollections, their sacrifices can be given the honors they deserve.
I decided to start writing down my memories of these past thirty-plus years of military service when I was still a snot-nosed nineteen-year-old soldier shipping out to the Republic of Vietnam. Sometimes, when I read over the old notes and scrawls that I squirreled away in some rusty, discarded cal-50 ammo can, I can still picture my kick-ass buddies laughing and smiling. I can still smell the fresh nuc nom fish paste hanging in the dank air of the Viet Cong tunnels, and hear the screams of the dead.
All that's left of the battles I've fought and the departed friends I've fought with are these tiny passages from bygone days, memorialized on scraps of cardboard military ration boxes or shreds of salvaged paper from some enemy headquarters that I had raided.
I even have a note that I wrote to myself on the inside face of an old Marlboro cigarette pack from the very day I first ran into a certain guy named "Snake Eyes". I never thought that old pack of smokes would be worth so much to me now in the way of understanding life's circumstances.
Every personal story has a beginning. I guess mine started on the day I turned seventeen, in a blue-collar suburb of Saint Louis, Missouri. They didn't use the term 'blue collar' back then, to describe a neighborhood of regular, working stiffs. But that was where I grew up.
My mother, Charlotte Auberge-Hauser, was French. She grew up in a little wine-growing hamlet outside of Paris and met my father during the Allied drive across Europe in 1944. Yeah, that's right, readers. My pop was a soldier in the Second Big One. He fought in W-W-Two. Douglas James Hauser, Staff Sergeant, United States - frickin' - Army.
Dad was a second-generation German immigrant, the son of a steel worker, who almost had a very different life, had the government actually started rounding up ethnic Germans like they did the Japanese. Instead, they let him join the Big Green Machine and risk his life on the battle lines. I really admired my dad. I still do. After the Army, he worked in a local factory, making automobiles and a decent salary. At least he did everything he could to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. Dad was a good man.
Sometimes I wonder how my mom, pretty as she is, hooked up with a dog faced grunt like my pop. But then again, my own situation isn't much different. I can never say enough how beautiful Shana is, and how dumb that redhead must be to want a simple-minded, sonufabitch combat soldier like me to be her husband. I have told her more than once that despite my confidence and take-charge attitude, she's a girl who should've been way out of my league.
And if Shana ever sees this, I can also never say enough that I'm only joking about her being dumb. She's one person that can whip my ass into shape. And I'm the dummy for letting her get away with it. So I won't cross her... too often.
Anyway, my pop died in the mid-sixties, leaving my mom and me to fend for ourselves. We didn't do too badly; Mom worked in a beauty parlor while I did odd jobs around the neighborhood. I found that I was pretty good with my hands. Later I found out that my hands could get me into trouble. Although I was a decent guy, playing football for the local high school team, I also used to get into a lot of fights.
Winning at those early contests of brawling ability helped me to learn not to take any bullshit from anyone. But for a while, I strayed from the straight and narrow. I used to bare-knuckle box against the tough-as-nails Irish kids around the neighborhood and took cash bets to beat the shit out of other kids - mostly kids that were bigger than me. Once in a while, I would also kick the crap out of local bullies, so my fighting wasn't all for personal gain.
I didn't mind it. At least I didn't have to beg my mom for money to hit the corner store with. She never asked where the money train came from either. I hid my ill-gotten gains quite shrewdly by tucking them in with her mad money, in the kitchen cookie jar of all places.
Well, the fighting streak backfired on me when I was a sophomore in high school. The cops caught me in a bout of fisticuffs under the gym bleachers after school, and brought me before a judge who threatened me with a youth correctional facility unless I straightened out, and I had to do it pretty damn quick, thank-you-very-much. I credit the judge with being the asshole who changed my life forever. Because I decided that the Army was better than going to the kids' pokey till I turned eighteen.
When I hit seventeen years old, on the fifth of April in nineteen sixty-eight, I said my last goodbye to my mom for the next few years. I still recall watching her crying on the bus station's platform when my ride left Saint Louis to take me to Army Basic Training. At least the money I stashed in her cookie jar would help until I could send home my first government paycheck...
-xxx-
Genre:
Speculative Origin of Character
G. I. Joe fan fiction, not necessarily comic or cartoon continuity.
(Although I allude to Duke and Scarlett as a couple.)
Author:
"Wolfman Six" (Kurt)
Summary:
This piece will take us back in time to the Vietnam Conflict, exploring the military background of the famous G. I. Joe top kick, Duke.
Archived:
Wherever the heck I feel like.
If you want to refer it to somewhere I'm not familiar with, that's probably okay, but tell me first so I can give permission, and make sure I get credit where credit is due.
Plagiarists will be killed, eaten raw and then regurgitated for the vermin and vultures.
Remember, recycling helps the environment.
Rating:
Rated R for strong language, war themes and potential for graphic violence.
I haven't decided if there will be any adult situations yet.
No one under 18 is allowed to read without parental supervision.
Disclaimer:
G. I. Joe, its characters, and so on and so forth are the property of Hasbro International. I borrow them quite liberally, but only for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended. Nor do I profit from the distribution of this material.
Anything else considered an element of the story, especially the other non-Joe characters, are mine! I require and demand credit to be given if my story elements find their way into other people's work.
Any other mention of persons living or dead is coincidental, and I apologize in advance. Hopefully, I won't paint anyone in particular in an unfavorable light... But I won't make promises... (LOL)
-xxx-
"Origins of a Hero"
Prologue
-xxx-
From the Desk of
Conrad Steven Hauser
Sergeant Major, U. S. Army
Saint Louis, Missouri
04 July, 2004
War is hell.
But for some people, war is home. Perhaps that's what I've felt about myself ever since I started in this grisly business of killing. The fact that I've survived so long, across so many major conflicts and secret operations that the general public would never hear or read about, is as solid a testament as I could ever find. I still think back about the guys that I've served with, who didn't make it out of those far-flung hellholes around the world. Maybe through my recollections, their sacrifices can be given the honors they deserve.
I decided to start writing down my memories of these past thirty-plus years of military service when I was still a snot-nosed nineteen-year-old soldier shipping out to the Republic of Vietnam. Sometimes, when I read over the old notes and scrawls that I squirreled away in some rusty, discarded cal-50 ammo can, I can still picture my kick-ass buddies laughing and smiling. I can still smell the fresh nuc nom fish paste hanging in the dank air of the Viet Cong tunnels, and hear the screams of the dead.
All that's left of the battles I've fought and the departed friends I've fought with are these tiny passages from bygone days, memorialized on scraps of cardboard military ration boxes or shreds of salvaged paper from some enemy headquarters that I had raided.
I even have a note that I wrote to myself on the inside face of an old Marlboro cigarette pack from the very day I first ran into a certain guy named "Snake Eyes". I never thought that old pack of smokes would be worth so much to me now in the way of understanding life's circumstances.
Every personal story has a beginning. I guess mine started on the day I turned seventeen, in a blue-collar suburb of Saint Louis, Missouri. They didn't use the term 'blue collar' back then, to describe a neighborhood of regular, working stiffs. But that was where I grew up.
My mother, Charlotte Auberge-Hauser, was French. She grew up in a little wine-growing hamlet outside of Paris and met my father during the Allied drive across Europe in 1944. Yeah, that's right, readers. My pop was a soldier in the Second Big One. He fought in W-W-Two. Douglas James Hauser, Staff Sergeant, United States - frickin' - Army.
Dad was a second-generation German immigrant, the son of a steel worker, who almost had a very different life, had the government actually started rounding up ethnic Germans like they did the Japanese. Instead, they let him join the Big Green Machine and risk his life on the battle lines. I really admired my dad. I still do. After the Army, he worked in a local factory, making automobiles and a decent salary. At least he did everything he could to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. Dad was a good man.
Sometimes I wonder how my mom, pretty as she is, hooked up with a dog faced grunt like my pop. But then again, my own situation isn't much different. I can never say enough how beautiful Shana is, and how dumb that redhead must be to want a simple-minded, sonufabitch combat soldier like me to be her husband. I have told her more than once that despite my confidence and take-charge attitude, she's a girl who should've been way out of my league.
And if Shana ever sees this, I can also never say enough that I'm only joking about her being dumb. She's one person that can whip my ass into shape. And I'm the dummy for letting her get away with it. So I won't cross her... too often.
Anyway, my pop died in the mid-sixties, leaving my mom and me to fend for ourselves. We didn't do too badly; Mom worked in a beauty parlor while I did odd jobs around the neighborhood. I found that I was pretty good with my hands. Later I found out that my hands could get me into trouble. Although I was a decent guy, playing football for the local high school team, I also used to get into a lot of fights.
Winning at those early contests of brawling ability helped me to learn not to take any bullshit from anyone. But for a while, I strayed from the straight and narrow. I used to bare-knuckle box against the tough-as-nails Irish kids around the neighborhood and took cash bets to beat the shit out of other kids - mostly kids that were bigger than me. Once in a while, I would also kick the crap out of local bullies, so my fighting wasn't all for personal gain.
I didn't mind it. At least I didn't have to beg my mom for money to hit the corner store with. She never asked where the money train came from either. I hid my ill-gotten gains quite shrewdly by tucking them in with her mad money, in the kitchen cookie jar of all places.
Well, the fighting streak backfired on me when I was a sophomore in high school. The cops caught me in a bout of fisticuffs under the gym bleachers after school, and brought me before a judge who threatened me with a youth correctional facility unless I straightened out, and I had to do it pretty damn quick, thank-you-very-much. I credit the judge with being the asshole who changed my life forever. Because I decided that the Army was better than going to the kids' pokey till I turned eighteen.
When I hit seventeen years old, on the fifth of April in nineteen sixty-eight, I said my last goodbye to my mom for the next few years. I still recall watching her crying on the bus station's platform when my ride left Saint Louis to take me to Army Basic Training. At least the money I stashed in her cookie jar would help until I could send home my first government paycheck...
-xxx-
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