What Makes a Lifer

This is a rap with some guys at the SPD (Special Processing Detachment) Company at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The subject is, just what the fuck is a lifer? Is it a fly, an animal or the missing link? Nobody knows for sure.

Jerry: 'What makes a lifer? It's been bugging the shit out of me for a long time, I don't see how anybody can do it."

Pete: "It's the individual, he's so fucked up. Sometimes it, like fear, he can't handle the pressure on the outside."

Fred: "Maybe he's lust a person that digs pushing people. You know, the skinny little kid on our block, comes into the service after getting his ass beat for ten years, and they give him a little gold bar on his collar. Now he's not the skinny little push around on the block any more, he's gonna come around and start paying everybody back."

Pete: "Yeah, we got this lieutenant in our company, he looks like Humpty-Dumpty, he's so simple after four years of college. He tries to act like a bad ass, everybody laughs at him."

Jerry: "What blew my mind, like the other day at SPD, we were all marching down and it started raining. The fucking sergeant in charge, he says, ''Maybe we should go inside. Do you think we should go inside? Maybe we should wait. Maybe we should go inside and wait.' That just shows you that those motherfuckers are the kind of dudes that just don't know what to do."

Fred: "You know, in the mornings they have formation and you go one police detail. It was raining, I mean it was raining, anti everybody's out there. We figured we'd go down, and we went on police call. It's pouring you know, you're up to your ass in mud and everything, and they just don't know what they're doing. The MO was wet, and his clip board was dripping wet and the ink was going all over. He was having a grand old time. I mean like we started to sniffle and cough. Guys would get up in the morning like with chest pains and stuff. He got a kick out of that."

Pete: "This sergeant is there, Adam, E-5 Adam is going through a change. Like he tried to pull a lifer role end that's going to get him in trouble. Nobody will take that shit end he's going to fuck with somebody with his hard tucking hne. I think today he marched three guys lilt to the fucking stockade. Like he's doing it under cover right now. The minute that people start finding out that guys are going to the cell, people are going to stew tucking up royally. They're going to start letting him know that that shit just ain't going to pass. And that's the way it's got to be because he's playing a role.

I think one of the main causes of lifers is that they take out all their frustrations on everybody that they're in charge of. They don't care who they fuck as long as they're tucking somebody.

Jerry: "They're idiots really, and I feel sorry for them. The company tucking lifers are even 20 times worse than the SPD lifers. The company tucking lifers have nothing to do all day but start shit. The reason they do is to keep themselves busy, to keep their false sense of power going. And what blows my mind is like when they go home their fucking kids have hair 70 times longer than any tucking hippie I've ever seen in my life. They're ranting about the FTA shit to their pop. And he'll come back the following day and tall you what the tuck to do, that's a mind blower. This tucking kid can tell you more about his father and how much of a tucking pig he is. But he can't do shit about them, so he comes back the following day and takes it out on you."

Vietnam GI, June 1970

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What Makes a Lifer