WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Dec. 18, 2014) -- Charley Lix became a "Soldier For Life" long before the Army ever used the term.
"We didn't have much in the way of transition programs for Soldiers returning to civilian life," said Lix, who was in the Army, from 1976 to 1979.
But despite a lack of assistance, Army life itself helped smooth his transition.
For one, the skills he learned in his 12B combat engineer job came in handy on the outside.
"They called us 'grunts with shovels,'" he said. However, his unit, the 317th Combat Engineers in, Eschborn am Taunas , West Germany, where he served for three years, also had trucks.
These were big, five-ton dump trucks, which resembled the toy dump trucks he played with as a kid in the sandbox -- and driving the real ones was even more fun, he said. He used them to haul construction material, ammunition and Bailey bridge parts.
The Bailey bridge is a truss span that can be put together, carried and taken apart by hand.
He recalled hauling these bridge parts to the 90-foot-wide Schlitz River, near the town of Schlitz, where the Soldiers would use the parts to span the river. They'd do this over and over again for training.
One of his most interesting drives was to the Fulda Gap, which was the expected route of a possible Soviet invasion. He remembered seeing a U.S. Army atomic demolition munition unit installing a tactical nuclear device about the size of a beer keg into a concrete railway viaduct.
"There were 270,000 of us, and 2 million of them (Soviet soldiers), and the idea was to blow up the nuke in their face if they ever decided to come across," he said. "We were playing hardball."
Off-duty time was spent mostly drinking. A lot of Soldiers did that, he said. "You could tell by the way they stood in morning formation," himself included.
There were still some draftees in the ranks at the time and many of the non-commissioned officers had served in Vietnam, he said, adding that there were also a lot of discipline problems.
Lix recalled a door being slammed in the barracks. The noise caused an NCO who'd served in Vietnam to dive into a corner. "We all laughed at him," he said. "But looking back on it now, that wasn't very funny."
When his three-year enlistment was up, Lix left the Army and got his commercial driver's license and started driving big rigs. He also used his G.I. Bill to get an associate of science degree in mechanical-electrical engineering, from Sacramento City College.
However, he was still hitting the bottle and it was beginning to affect his work. He lost his job as a wastewater treatment manager over his drinking. "It was a really nice job and I blew it," he said.
Lix was at a low point and he knew it. On his own, he sought help at an alcoholics anonymous group, and since 1988, he's stayed sober, even when things went sour, including family problems, periods of unemployment and muscle aches.
In 2002, Lix had saved enough money to buy his own 18-wheeler. Times were good, he said. Then in 2008 the recession hit, gas prices went up and he found it harder and harder to make ends meet.
Earlier this year, Lix was forced to sell his rig and work as a company driver. Today he's between jobs.
There's been a lot of ups and downs in his life, but one thing the Army has taught him that helped get him through, he said, is resilience.
The Army also instilled in him a sense of discipline. "If you were a slacker, they'd beat your [butt] -- literally," he said.
"You can tell the former Soldiers at a civilian job site," he said, "by their no-nonsense approach to getting the job done and their sense of teamwork."
UNIQUE HOBBY
It's not been all work and no play for Lix, though. As a kid, besides playing with toy trucks, he also enjoyed toy trains and visited abandoned mining railways with his dad and older brothers in the Sierras east of their home in Sacramento, California.
The hobby grew on him and he eventually began building his own model trains using wood, brass and other materials. He even built a live-steam engine.
This year, Lix took it one step further and built an 18-inch gauge railway on his property in Beatty, Nevada, which extends for 537 feet. A standard gauge railroad in the U.S. is about 3 inches shy of five feet between the rails, so 18-inch gauge is pretty narrow.
The locomotive is powered by a wheelchair motor. He uses the railroad to carry firewood, construction materials and even passengers. Residents of the town often come by to gawk at the railway and ask questions, he said.
During World War I, U.S. Soldiers, allies and even the Germans used miniature railroads like Lix's to haul ammunition, food and troops right up to the trenches. Thousands of miles were built. Little trains also were the unsung heroes used in constructing dams, sewers, roads and many other projects, so there's a lot of history behind these little workhorses.
Lix encouraged Soldiers today to use their valuable military training and education benefits to better themselves. He's also glad Soldiers today are getting better transition assistance than he got and said he's proud to be a Soldier For Life.
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