For the Love of God!
For the Love of God! A memoir of Army Basic Training?
By Damon Ortt
Copyright 2011 by Damon Ortt All rights reserved.
Published by Damon Ortt at Smashwords
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All rights Reserved.
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Most names in this book have been changed to protect the identities of those who did not express permission for me to use their real names. If any person or name in this book resembles you, it’s unintentional. Some names are correct, however, namely mine. I gave myself permission to use my own name. I think it adds credibility to the whole “memoir” thing.
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To Mama
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Table of Contents
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Prologue
Other kids called the game “War” or “Army,” but we just called it “Guns.” We drew our inspiration from the Saturday-morning cartoon G.I. Joe; as soon as it was over, we would don our darkest Rustler jeans and greenest T-shirts, grab our toy assault rifles, and trudge outside into the moist heat while smearing dirt on our faces to better conceal our white skin. It was all just a game, but it was taken seriously. Usually, it was my older brother, Dale, and his post-pubescent friends against me and my hairless and high-pitched-voice buddies … and my sister. (If Duke had Scarlett, Dawn was likewise accepted.) You could kill or be killed in one of two ways in this game. One way was by throwing a grenade in the enemy’s direction so that it landed in his vicinity. Our grenades were strange potato-like balls that grew on vines in the woods. When this unfortunate event occurred, you had to count to sixty with your eyes closed while the murderer made his escape. The other way to lose your life was by being shot by a gun. If you were shot, you only had to count to twenty, as if being shot in the head were a less lethal way of dying. How you knew that you were shot by a gun that emitted no projectile was sometimes a contested subject. It was understood that if someone sneaked up on you and made the sound “bbbbttttttttttooooowwwwww” while pointing his rifle in your direction, you were dead; but in “Guns,” emotions created liars and cheats. Sometimes, when I would be caught in a booby trap in which thorny vines were rigged to slap me in the face when I fell into a brush-covered hole that was dug in the middle of the trail, Dale would hang upside down from an overhead limb and yell, “Bbbbttttttooooow! You’re dead!” This was when tensions ran the highest. I would redden with anger and scream, “No, you missed! There’s no way that you could hang upside down and shoot straight, Dale!” By the time I would say that, he’d be out of the tree and standing in front of me. He would say OK and put the gun in my face and, “Bbbtttooowwww. Didn’t miss that time, did I, punk? Ha ha ha haaaa,” and run off into the woods followed by curses and grenades flung at his head, all of which missed every time. The key to doing well in the mortal sport was stealth, and my brother was like a black panther wearing Realtree camouflage; if you saw him, it was already too late. He moved silently through the dense subtropical foliage, always popping up behind me just when I thought I had him on the run. There was never a clear winner—at least in my mind. To me, it was always more like a Mexican standoff, but to my brother, it was complete annihilation, with him and his sweaty, zit-faced friends emerging victorious.
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Time went on, and I grew in the ways of guerilla warfare. I had acquired a camouflage vest that fit my small body and a black bandanna that fit my large head. Everyone knows that when you look good, you feel good. Dressed for success and with several dozen G.I. Joe episodes and a Rambo movie under my belt, I became a worthier adversary. The day that I ambushed Dale and his friends, spraying them all with make-believe bullets and spit from my excited “bbbttttttoooowww,” I thought, “I was made for this!” I retreated to my preplanned rally point, deftly maneuvering through the battleground, dodging vines, and leaping over fallen trees with the skill of a mountain lion. It was then that a seed was planted. And it grew.
Soon, my brother joined the Army, and my new opponents were a band of brothers who were skilled in the ways of building tree forts. I needed an enemy, and the best way to turn them into my opponents was by destroying their forts. It was a scary thing at times because they were really bad kids. They once chased my marauders and me through the woods with aluminum baseball bats. But by that time, I was simply uncatchable. I was like a ghost in the forest—my friends, however, weren’t so lucky. The brothers caught all of my friends and locked them in a cage they had built in the woods, hoping that I would come back for them. And I did. But I lured the brothers just far enough away from the cage to have time to double back and release all of my friends—and a couple of cute girls who happened to be with us—from captivity. I was an inspiration to the boys and a hero to the girls. Not only did I save the day, but I saved myself from certain bludgeoning.
With my brother gone, there was no more “Guns,” and I found myself in other, more serious games of adventure. Some people would call it crime. I called it exciting. I was simply looking for a challenge, and a challenge just wasn’t fun if there wasn’t anything at stake. If I couldn’t get chased by police, parents, homeowners, golf course owners, or tree fort owners, with serious consequences if caught, I probably wasn’t doing it. Boys who are to become men need adventure, challenge, and perceived danger. If it is not given to them, they will find it themselves. My buddies and I found it by riding our bikes over the golf course hills, sneaking out at night to terrorize the neighborhood, “borrowing” our parents’ cars as they slept, stealing things from cars that didn’t belong to our parents, and last but not least, blowing things up, which became a theme in my life.
Jack, a friend of my family, had taught me how to make bombs out of common household products that shall remain unnamed. Oh, what a terrible thing to teach a kid like me. Jack’s bombs left a little to be desired, but through the inquiry of greater minds and home improvement store associates, my buddies and I perfected the art of backyard ballistics. Jack’s bombs made us say, “Wow, that’s awesome.” The new bombs made us exclaim, “HO-LY FUCK-ING SHIT!” as we furiously peddled our bikes to escape severely disapproving adults who would undoubtedly call the police. Fortunately for me, the pinnacle of the big bangs occurred while I was grounded. In the short period of one week, my cohorts blew a mailbox and half its post to oblivion and got caught by the police. Then, in a separate incident, RJ reached to retrieve an apparent dud and got his right hand blown to smithereens, requiring reconstructive surgery and physical therapy. It was tragic but necessary to the validity of the element of danger.
Some of these things were games, some were crimes, and some were just plain stupid, but they all created a desire in me to do something dangerous. And what could be more dangerous or exhilarating than war? Every man in the history of my family had been in the military, and I would be no exception. I felt like I was born for it, like I was made for it. I never entertained the thought of doing anything else. I didn’t care about my grades in school because I knew that as long as I got a high school diploma, I could join. College was something for the other kids. My plan was that as soon as I graduated from high school, I would join the military and live a life of adventure and danger, showing the world what I was made of.
As a teenager, I concerned myself with all things military. I joined JROTC, watched every war movie that I could get my hands on, went to military summer camps, competed in drill and soldiering competitions, read military books, and dreamed military dreams. I was totally prepared when my time came to ship off to basic training. I was practically a soldier already. I was reasonably sure that I would breeze through basic training and win the Soldier of the Cycle Award, coming back home a hero to myself and, more importantly, my girlfriend. The plan was going rather well. Everything was falling into place, everything was right with the world, and things couldn’t have been better.
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Chapter 1
In her hair she wore a yellow ribbon. She wore it for that soldier who was far, far away.
“It’s a grim world, kid, and for you, it’s about to get a lot worse”—that’s what recruiters should tell you when you sign up. Instead, they simply tell you that it’s going to be a challenge. If there were a record of euphemisms, this one would be at the top of the list.
Saying good-bye to my girlfriend was the hardest thing I did the morning before I left my home in Savannah, Georgia, for MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) in Columbia, South Carolina. I had never been away from home for any length of time before, and I was about to leave for thirteen weeks of OSUT (One Station Unit Training) in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. We had been together for about a year and a half and were planning to be married in the near future. She knew that being in the military was what I always wanted to do, and she supported me in my decision to join. We had dreaded that moment since I had enlisted five months earlier, but we knew it was coming and had talked about it many times before, so there wasn’t a lot to say. We said the things that everyone else says when leaving a loved one for a significant period of time. The words weren’t unique, I’m sure, but it didn’t change how we felt. It was a very bittersweet experience—we didn’t want to part, but it was what we had to do to continue our long-laid-out plan. The only thing that I can remember saying to her was, “Please don’t change.” She was going to go to college, and the possibility that it would change her outlook on things that we had in common was not far from my mind. She gave me a copper necklace with the Star of David on it. It was something important to her because she had recently visited Israel with her family. I told her I’d give it back when I returned. Hugs and kisses flowed along with a few tears as the mid-June morning sun shone through the cedar tree in my front yard, and then she was down the road in her car. I watched as she drove around the curve in the road and disappeared from sight. It was going to be a long three months.
My mom took me to the bus station where I boarded a Greyhound bus. She had been through this before with my brother, who joined the Army six years earlier, but I was her baby, the last one to leave the nest, and she was upset. But because I joined the National Guard, there weren’t going to be any overseas tours, so I would be back. I would come back home and train with my local engineer unit one weekend a month and two weeks out of the summer. I was going to be a weekend warrior, a member of the elite “Nasty Guard,” which is how the National Guard is known by regular Army soldiers.
I arrived at MEPS in Columbia without any problems, which is more than I can say for the trip I made home from there when I was sworn in. I was riding back to Savannah with a recruiter and another enlistee when the skies darkened and rain started flying sideways. We took refuge under an overpass to avoid the hail that began pelting the car. As soon as we got under the overpass, a tornado swooshed right in front of us. It was the first time I had ever seen one in real life. I joked that it was an omen. Nothing like that occurred on my trip to basic training, but all types of weather and instant changes of climate awaited me at Fort Leonard Wood—literally and figuratively.
Several people from MEPS got on the plane with me to fly to Saint Louis, Missouri. I remember two of them because they both wound up in the same company as I. The first one I met was Jergens. I only remember his name because I looked it up in my basic training “yearbook,” if that’s what they’re called. The book is filled with hundreds of black-and-white mug shots of sleepy-looking young men and a few young women. Most of us look like zombies staring into the distance as if we already had the mile-long stare that you hear about in war documentaries. But a few have ear-to-ear grins on their faces, which I have never been able to understand. What made them so happy? Did they have some sort of sick sense of humor? Nothing was funny. Nothing was even worth smiling about. Our photos were taken at what is called 43rd AG Reception Battalion, right at the beginning of our excursion. We all lacked sleep and were not even close to being used to the lack of physical comforts of home. We were getting yelled at constantly by what we only knew as “Army people.” They wouldn’t let us talk, they wouldn’t let us lean against the wall, and they wouldn’t let us slump in our seats. If I remember correctly, one of the Army people told us we were not even allowed to have joy in our hearts. So I assumed smiling was out of the question and went to wipe that smile off my face only to realize that, fortunately, I didn’t have one in the first place, which proved to be the only sense of relief that I was going to get. This made me happy, but then I remembered that I wasn’t allowed to be happy, so I returned to my preemptive zombie-like mile-long stare to avoid breaking another rule. The bottom line was that if we weren’t getting our heads shaved or being whisked through an issuing facility, we had to have our noses in what are called “Smartbooks.” These were given to us to read during any downtime (free time in Army lingo) we had—like before we went to sleep at night, while we sat on the toilet, while we stood in lines, between bites of food, and at the slight pause between exhaling and inhaling. We really had to think outside the box to understand what “downtime” meant to them. Smartbooks were pocket-sized books that contained all sorts of basic military instructions. We had to keep them in our cargo pockets at all times. They’re called Smartbooks because, well, when you read them, you got smart.
Jergens was a thirty-one-year-old middle school PE coach. He just barely made it in because, at that time, the Army didn’t accept non-prior service enlistees beyond the age of thirty-two. I wondered how it would turn out for him. I figured that he had a decent chance of making it through basic since he was a PE coach and, presumably, physically fit. I was wrong.
Barnett is the other person I remember from the flight. He was the same age as I was and was from Effingham County, which is adjacent to the county I lived in, so we became buddies. When you’re young and have never been away from home, you quickly become friends with those who have anything in common with you. Barnett and I stuck together as much as we could until alphabetical order separated us once we started our training. We ate together, slept in the same set of bunks, and were in the same room when something about as thick as peanut butter was injected in our asses. He even witnessed me falling to the floor the morning after the injection when I got out of my bunk. The shot had really cramped up my right cheek overnight, but I didn’t realize it until I stood up.
We were becoming good friends, but we didn’t leave basic training together. Barnett, like Jergens and many others, didn’t make it. Jergens didn’t make it because he couldn’t handle it physically. Barnett didn’t make it because he couldn’t handle it mentally. I don’t know all the details about why, but Barnett was put on suicide watch, which meant that he had to sleep in front of the drill sergeants’ office. So that he wouldn’t hang himself, they also took away his bootlaces, which was standard procedure. He wasn’t the only one during training who clumped around in laceless boots. When someone got his laces taken away, it always resulted in whispered discussion and sideways glances. We always speculated about how someone could kill himself there, but we never questioned why someone would want to do it.
I ran into Barnett one day at a church back in Savannah about a year later, and he told me he had joined the Marine Corps and graduated at the top of his class and was going to be a sniper. So I asked him what he was doing back in Savannah, and he said that he was being discharged due to a back problem. That’s quite a record, I think. Being booted out of two different boot camps, pardon the pun, is an achievement that most people can’t put on their resume. One kid actually ran away and made it to the bus station, where he got caught and returned. He was charged with going AWOL, and they made him sleep in the hallway outside of the drill sergeants office until they did whatever it was that they did with him. We never knew what happened to him; he just disappeared. Some people just aren’t cut out for the military, and it drives them to do crazy things.
I had never flown in an airplane before I flew to Missouri. We arrived above Saint Louis at dusk. I had just woken up from a comfortable sleep and looked out the window to see the warmest, most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. It was really quite settling. The deep oranges and warm pinks that stretched across the Missouri sky were simply magnificent. It was the last bit of beauty I was going to see for a long time.
As we filed off the plane, we met the first of the Army people. They seemed very ornery—even mean. They sternly ordered us to get in line, stop talking, and so on. I knew that we were going to be yelled at once we started basic, but who were these people and why were they being so pushy and condescending? It didn’t seem remotely necessary. At that point, we all still wanted to be there, so they didn’t need to be that way. After all, we were just at the airport; we weren’t really in the Army yet. Or were we? Looking back as I write this, I can now easily answer that question. Many Army people have inflatable egos, and they will blow them up at every chance they get. We afforded them that chance since we were completely ignorant about everything. What better place to flex their authoritative muscles than at the airport with hundreds of civilians walking around and staring at the poor unassuming souls who wanted to be soldiers? It all makes sense now. At the time, we just thought it was completely without reason.
From the airport, we got onto a bus that took us to Fort Leonard Wood. By this time, there were several buses filled with enlistees. We drove into the night not knowing which direction we were going or how long it was going to take to get there. We didn’t know if it was going to be ten minutes or two days. That’s probably the first thing that they do to start demoralizing you. As a civilian, you always have control of where you’re going and have a good idea of where you are, which is comforting. We had neither, which was not comforting.
There was a lot of talk on the bus about anything and everything. I didn’t talk much to anyone, though. I was fanatically religious at the time, and small talk with a bunch of kids who were relishing their newfound freedom of being adults by cursing profusely about their sexual experiences was not something that I wanted to be a part of. I was sleepy, too. So I just kept to myself and tried to drown out their chatter and get some sleep. When we arrived at Fort Leonard Wood at about one o’clock in the morning, we shuffled off the bus expecting to maybe get a bit of warm milk and possibly a cheese Danish to settle us into bed, but that’s not what happened. That’s not what happened at all. Instead of a hospitable greeting at a welcome center, we were herded like cattle into a large room with varnished backless wooden benches. There weren’t any cowboys riding horses; there were Army people and more Army people. Instead of whistles and whips, they used shouts and threats and rode around on our innocence and disorientation. It was very effective.
We quickly filled up the hard benches and quickly learned that what most people probably considered full and what the Army considered full were two very different things. Most people say the glass is either half full or half empty. The Army says it can get three times as much water in that glass; call it what you will. So we jammed and jammed until every single person was on those benches. You don’t need a back to lean on when you can’t move.
This was the beginning of our stay at 43rd AG Reception Battalion. In that room, they went over an exhaustive list of what we would and couldn’t do. No, not could and couldn’t, but would and couldn’t. There was no room for possibilities or options. Basically, we would do what they told us, and we couldn’t do anything else. That put me at ease. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about thinking anymore. They told us that we couldn’t have the obvious things like guns, knives, or any other weapons, as well as tobacco, marijuana, or alcohol. But they also told us that we couldn’t have many, many other things that you wouldn’t normally think of as being contraband—like mouthwash and nail clippers with the little file attached. The last time I checked, only homeless people drank mouthwash as an alternative to alcohol to drown away their sorrows, and only prisoners had a reason to use a nail file for anything other than its intended purpose. In retrospect, it all makes sense.
Whether we needed to or not, we all had to go to the amnesty room where we could get rid of anything that we weren’t supposed to have. I went inside the room and saw a red wooden box on a shelf. The box had a little slot on the top and was labeled “amnesty box,” as if it could have been anything else. I didn’t have anything to put into it, but I was curious if anyone had actually brought any of the stuff that they told us we couldn’t have. I picked up the box, which was about the size of a box fan, and gave it a little shake. Much to my surprise, the box was half-full of stuff. I couldn’t imagine who would have brought that kind of stuff with them. But then I remembered that we weren’t at Yale and the people weren’t exactly Mensa cardholders.
After the briefing, they marched us outside and up a hill in the dark. It’s still a little chilly in June at Fort Leonard Wood, and I could see my breath. I was cold and tired and just wanted to crawl under some blankets in a bed and go to sleep, but I wasn’t going to get any sleep any time soon. When we reached the barracks, they had us sit on the asphalt parking lot and wait. I had no idea why, but we waited for hours under the fluorescent street lights. Finally, they let us into the barracks. Once inside, I threw my bag under my bunk and lay down, quickly falling asleep—and then, it was time to get up. The lights came on and the Army people were there, gently waking us from our slumber. Well, not really, but what they did was very effective, to say the least. We quickly jumped out of bed and were led back down the same path that had taken us to the barracks maybe three hours earlier and got our first taste of cadence.
The purpose of cadence is to measure timing while marching to keep everyone in step. It’s vocalized in two ways, one of which is “left, right, left,” and the other is by singing songs. Cadence is, I suppose, the masculine word for song. One lead person calls cadence—that is, he sings the verse—and the rest of the soldiers repeat it. The Army would definitely not be the imposing figure it is if the rest of the world knew that it walked around singing songs, so the song singing is called cadence. I can’t remember how that cadence went, but it always ended with this: forty-third, forty-third AG, forty-third AG, hooah!
Hooah! Yes, hooah is a very common word that even civilians know. What civilians don’t know is that it can mean just about anything. I believe it is actually supposed to be a sort of motivating shout, but as we learned in basic training, hooah meant “yes,” “I understand,” “good job,” or an affirmation to anything that could be affirmed. We could get away without saying sir or ma’am to officers simply by saying hooah. That is very convenient when an officer’s gender is questionable. Saying hooah was more common than anything else that was said. When we were addressed in formation, we would always respond with hooah to everything the drill sergeants said, no matter what they said. “All right, privates, you will all pick out your toe jam with your teeth tonight!” to which we would enthusiastically reply, “Hooah!” It got ridiculous.
“Hey, Private Jones, did you like chow this morning?”
“Yeah, it was pretty hooah.”
“Hey, Smith, how’s that head cold of yours?”
“Oh it’s getting more hooah every day. Thanks for asking!”
In formations when the hooahs were the loudest, my best buddies in basic—Waller, Pearcy, and Webster—would give their hooahs in an operatic tone that could rival Pavarotti. I was always too afraid of getting caught, so I just listened, for hooah was not to be taken lightly.
Once we arrived back at the reception battalion building, they started issuing us our uniforms. The Army is a very efficient operation. Well, at times anyway. This was one of those times. Getting our BDUs (battle dress uniforms) and every other article of clothing worked very much like an assembly line. We started at one end of the building and conveyed through a maze of counters and walls where, at one station, as they were called, we were issued four pairs of trousers (Army for pants)—two pairs of summer-weight, two pairs of winter-weight. As we continued to shuffle along, we were issued our blouses (Army for shirts)—two pairs summer weight, two pairs winter weight. Farther down the line, we were issued our T-shirts, socks, briefs, and boots. One would never guess that the soldier they see walking around town in uniform looking all spiffy and shiny, dignified and diligent, is actually wearing briefs the color of the worst area of a discarded baby diaper. Yes, even the underwear in the Army is brown. It matches the undershirt. Who knew that the Army was concerned with color coordination all the way down to the skivvies?
New combat boots are really something to speak of. When they’re brand-new, they are, I think, modeled after Dutch clogs—only slightly more stiff. The boots are not comfortable at first, but once they’re broken in, they’re comfortable enough to play basketball in, which is quite a transformation. And like the boots, we, as brand-new soldiers, would experience a transformation just as drastic. The difference is that brand-new soldiers start off soft and, after being broken in, become hard, physically and mentally. Years after being in the Army, I wondered if the boots were made for me or if I was made for the boots.
After getting all of our clothes, we went to a separate part of the building where we were issued our BI (basic issue items). BI simply means Army gear. They gave us our Kevlar helmets, which we referred to with many different names like helmet, Kevlar, k-pot, headgear, and brain bucket. We were given our web gear—suitably named because at times, it was much like getting caught in a spider web while trying to put it on—which was most often called an LBE (load-bearing equipment). The LBE is basically suspenders that attach to a pistol belt. And to the pistol belt are attached ammo pouches and canteen holders, which are canteen covers that are supposed to insulate the canteen. And the list of gear goes on and on.
The first thing they gave us was a giant duffel bag, which, for reasons unknown to me, is usually called an A bag. We were told to stuff this bag with everything they gave us. After they finished giving us everything they deemed necessary, our A bags were packed to the top and weighed about forty or fifty pounds.
The next day, we saw the resident hairstylists. To say the least, they are good at what they do. You don’t even have to tell them which style you want because they already know: it’s called the “bald eagle,” which is a fancy Army way of saying bald. I sat down in the chair and was very glad to be doing so because the wait was very long and I, along with everyone else, was exhausted. On the floor lay piles and piles of hair. I had never seen so much hair in my life. The barbers might as well have been robots. They didn’t speak, and they didn’t seem to move anything except their arms. They just stood as if their feet were glued to the floor, and waited for the next customer to plop into their chairs.
Once I was in the chair, the barber snapped the cape to rid it of the previous previously satisfied customer’s hair and whisked it onto me, and then buzz, buzz, buzz,” and I was done. I was practically out of the door before the last of my hair had hit the pile of previous previously satisfied customer’s hair. We all had to wait for the rest of the privates, as we were now being called, to get their bald eagles. We sat down on a bench with no back and were told to read our Smartbooks. I opened mine and blankly stared at a page as I rubbed my hairless head and thought about Olivia’s beautiful long brown hair. When you’re physically and mentally exhausted, your emotions are intensified. If you’re angry, you’re incensed. If you’re happy, you’re jubilant. If you’re sad, you’re on the verge of tears. The two days I had been gone seemed like two years, and I had three months left to go. It was mid-June, and I was scheduled to get back home sometime in late September. It truly seemed like forever to me.
Reception battalion is tough for a brand-new soldier. Most new enlistees are just kids who have never been away from home. Going away from home or from your parents for the first time is quite an experience that I’m sure most people never forget. What makes it so memorable for civilians is that they experience adult freedom. In addition to the responsibility of paying bills and getting to work on time, they experience a different sort of relationship with their parents in which they view them as friends whom they can call if they have a problem, if they are scared, or if they just need someone to talk to who knows them well. It’s a very exciting time for most. Going to basic right out of high school is an entirely different experience. Your bills are taken care of, you have medical attention anytime you need it, you have three square meals a day, and you get all the clothes you need. That’s where the positives end. In basic training, the Army sees to it that you have everything you need to exist. Period. Existence doesn’t require a little bit more sleep. Existence doesn’t require pleasantries. Existence doesn’t require most of what we, as Americans living in the technology era, consider essential—like air conditioning, television, telephones, or even ice in our drinks. What’s more important is that existence doesn’t require smiles, words of encouragement, or even love. The few things that separate us humans from every other living creature are not required for existence. In basic training, you go from being a regular human being from “back on the block,” as civilian life is known in the Army, to being the most basic form of human life there is, virtually overnight. I liken this latter form to a blank slate. You are turned into a body, a vessel capable of becoming something else, and nothing else. It’s not that you are no longer who you are, because who you are is intrinsic. Deep down inside, you’re still the same person. So instead of forgetting who you are and what makes you unique, you are no longer allowed to be that person, which is far worse. There is no you. There is Private Jones, but without the Jones. During basic training, the ultimate goal of the Army is to mold you into part of a team. Several years ago, the Army changed its slogan from “Be all you can be” to “An Army of one.” That is an enormous contradiction. There are no individuals, there is no you.
The last thing that I remember doing before “shipping,” (making the transition from reception battalion to actual basic training) was going into an auditorium that looked like an old movie theater, complete with stadium seating, red seats, and red curtains. I sat near the top of the auditorium next to my new buddy, Private Sawyer. Sawyer was from Utah. We became friends after they put us in alphabetical order. We were in the n through x platoon. Sawyer was tall with blue eyes and rather large ears. He had a very calm voice and pleasant personality. I couldn’t have asked for a better “battle buddy.” A battle buddy is the person you are supposed to be attached to at the hip, so to speak. Battle buddies do everything together. I suppose they make you partner up with a battle buddy for moral support and general help. He was my closest friend there. He accepted me for my religion, which is more than I can say for a lot of people there. Sawyer was a Mormon, but we still prayed together on occasion.
It’s too bad that we weren’t supposed to be praying up at the top of that auditorium, because we were all bowing our heads, then raising them, and then bowing them again, only to shortly thereafter repeat the process. But, of course, we weren’t praying at all—we were falling asleep. To remedy this, the Army has a system: it’s called the “buddy check.” The buddy check is not a visual check but a series of sharp elbow blows to the ribs of the guy sitting next to you. Now picture this: looking from the top down, you see hundreds of brand-new privates below you, all with newly shaven heads. All of the heads are white because they have scarcely, if ever, seen daylight. We were getting some sort of briefing before we shipped and were supposed to be paying attention. Army people hate it if you fall asleep when they are addressing you. The problem was that none of us were used to the schedule that we had just been introduced to. So you can imagine how it must have looked when everyone’s head below you is either slumped down to their chests, or slowly falling into that position, or leaning left to jab an elbow to the right. It looked like everyone was bobbing for apples. I must credit the snapshot memory I have of this event to Private Sawyer. Without his buddy checks, none of this would be possible. Thanks, battle buddy! Friend!
We may not have been praying, but we should have been. The next day was shipment day. Say that to yourself like you would say “judgment day” from the movie Terminator 2 with your best Schwarzenegger accent. That’s the best way to say it because shipment day is every bit as ominous. Shipment day began with the thirty or so of us walking to some building where we would … well, at the time, I had no idea since we were never told anything. All I knew was that we were being shipped and I was carrying all of my bags, which included my personal duffel bag and my giant A bag stuffed with all of that “cool” Army stuff, to the Army bus station. Maybe. I remember being so relieved that we were getting shipped. Over the last couple of days, we had all been moaning and groaning about being there at reception battalion because the people there were such condescending assholes. I remember murmuring to myself, “Please! Just let us ship. It’ll be so much better. At least we’ll be doing some training or something. Let us do anything to get away from these … these … your children, Lord. Bless them.”
They took us to a building that was old but clean and crisp. Inside, it was oblong and large—and completely empty. We were told, as usual, to pack in as tightly as possible, which left a large portion of the building empty since there were only about thirty of us. So it made no sense to me when they made us stand in two separate lines, looking directly forward with our giant A bags on top of our feet and kicked up onto the heels of the guy in front of us. If someone had lost his balance, I’m sure we would have heard the cracking of ankle bones because we could not move our feet at all. Maybe the Army people were going to play a game of human dominos with us before the drill sergeants got there. That could have been the case, for all we knew. We were never told anything. At any rate, nobody fell and no ankles cracked. We stood there for a very long time. We weren’t allowed to make a sound; there was nothing but disturbing silence, like we were all mentally preparing ourselves for what was to come. If only we knew.
After an indeterminate period of time, we heard a vehicle pull up to the building, and then the front door opened. We were told to move from our current foot-locked position and turn sideways into a modified position of parade rest, with our ID card held between our index finger and thumb. The upper right “your left” (they always specified) corner of the card was to touch the bottom of our chins, so that we could easily be identified by he who would soon come through the door. The room was a bit dark since the only source of light was the early morning sunshine that had begun to filter through the blinds on the windows. When the door opened, bright light came bursting into the room like a ray of something divine, and all that we could see was a greenish silhouette, wearing a Smokey-the-Bear-type hat, enter the room. This was our first glimpse of someone we would hate very soon. This was our “daddy.” This was the physical manifestation of all the malice from all of your enemies combined, and he wanted to know your name, and he wanted to know your face. This was our drill sergeant. His name was Burkett.
Sergeant Burkett came into the room and exchanged a few words with the Army people and then proceeded down the line of us, recording our names as he went. As he got to each person, he would first write the name and social security number down on his clipboard and then look at the picture on the card. Then, he would study each face. This wasn’t a casual glance – he was etching our names and features into his memory. Nothing was said. He showed no emotion. The silence was almost eerie. It seemed very odd to me that he wasn’t saying anything. He methodically recorded our information, one person at a time, and looked into each of our eyes. Sergeant Burkett was about thirty-four years old. His one defining feature was a large red birthmark that covered nearly the whole left side of his face. He reminded me of the Batman villain Two-Face. I can’t say that he was intimidating, though. I was seeing only the human side of him. My idea of a drill sergeant was from the movie Full Metal Jacket. I expected yelling, threats, and insults. Instead, he was a sort of enigma. It’s easy to feel insecure when you don’t know what to think or feel. On the one hand, I thought the guy was going to be a complete jerk. On the other hand, I thought that maybe things weren’t going to be that bad after all. The former thought was much more accurate.
After Sergeant Burkett finished “getting to know us,” he told us to file out into the truck outside. File means that one line is to begin marching out and when the last man from the first line reaches the first man in the second line, the second line follows. I was in about the middle of the first line, and when I got outside, I saw a semi with what appeared to be a cattle trailer attached to it. The trailer was made of aluminum and had slots all the way around it to let air in. I had heard of these vehicles before. They were, in fact, called cattle trucks, but I always thought that was an exaggeration. Yet that’s exactly what they were. We were the cattle, and we were going to be shipped to basic training via a mode of transportation that was fit only for the bovine species.
As I entered the trailer, everyone was being told to “pack it in” over to the left side of the trailer. There was a bench around the inside walls of the trailer. The bench was about two feet wide and about three feet off the floor. We began packing it in by standing on top of the bench. On my way to the bench, I looked to my right to see who was giving the directions. Dominating a corner of the trailer was a figure as black as night and nearly as big. This was Sergeant Redding. He was grasping a handhold and leaning forward as he gave direct orders as to how we were to pack it in. “You. There,” he would say as he pointed to where he wanted us.
As I already described, drill sergeants wear a hat similar to the hat that park rangers wear. What you probably don’t know, though, is how they wear them. If you saw a park ranger wearing his hat, you’d probably notice that the circular brim is parallel to the ground. The wearer is casual, but the hat is stiff. Drill sergeants wear their “round brown,” as they’re called in the business, with a slight forward tilt. This tilt makes a world of difference in the aura those hats can project. You can’t see the drill sergeants’ eyes very well when they wear the hat that way. It looks like they’re always facing a strong headwind without flinching. Simply, the round brown projects power and authority. It says, “I’m strong, you’re weak.” Oddly enough, Sergeant Redding was being just as calm and clinical as Sergeant Burkett had been, which was cool with me. Sergeant Redding did not look like the type of man you’d want on your ass.
Getting packed in only took a few minutes. We weren’t allowed to use the straps that made it easy to hold our bags, so there we were, standing with our arms around our A bags and our personal duffel bags on top of those. We were all a little uncomfortable being jammed in there like that, but it was OK. It was OK until the door closed. All of my preconceived notions about basic training vanished as quickly as the exit had. The threshold of that door was the dividing line between hope and fear, dreams and nightmares, and ultimately, between boy and man. Nothing could have prepared us.
* * *
Chapter 2
Drill Sergeant standing strong. I pray to God he’ll leave us alone.
As the door slammed shut with a loud metallic clang, the beast in the corner came to life.
“Get your faces in the fucking bag! Did you hear me, you? I said get your face in the fucking bag!”
Immediately I shoved my face down onto my bag. I can’t tell you exactly what was going on because I couldn’t really see. But I did manage to get a quick peek and see that Sergeant Redding was jumping around and shouting into privates’ ears. I couldn’t believe that so much sound could come from one man’s mouth. Thankfully, he couldn’t get to me because I was jammed in the middle of everyone. I was very glad that I was shorter than most of the guys there—it helped me hide. Sergeant Redding probably never even saw me.
“Shut your fucking mouth, you! You don’t say a mother-fucking thing unless you’re spoken to!” he continued.
He never stopped. I couldn’t fathom what he was yelling about. Surely everyone’s faces were in their bags. Surely no one was talking. But he continued throughout the whole trip to the barracks. The cattle truck made turn after turn until we stopped about ten minutes later. I heard the door open, and a different voice began yelling at an alarming decibel.
“Get off the goddamn bus! You’ve got ten seconds, privates, to get your asses off my fucking truck and into that fucking gym. Ten, nine, eight …”
There was no possible way we were going to get into the gym in ten seconds. He wasn’t saying Mississippi between seconds, either. From the other side of the bus, I heard Sergeant Redding yelling, “Did anyone tell you to take your face out of that fucking bag? Fuck, no! Get your fucking face in that fucking bag and fucking move! Move! Move!”
As I stumbled out of the trailer, wondering how I was supposed to make it anywhere without looking up from my bag, Sergeant Grimm (yes, his last name was actually Grimm) was nearing the end of his countdown, and some people were literally falling out of the trailer door because they couldn’t see. My bags were beginning to get very heavy and started to slip out of my hands. I had to readjust my grip so that I wouldn’t drop them. As I did this, I realized that I could sort of get away with peeking every few seconds to get a general idea of where I was going and what not to trip over. I noticed that several guys were going in wrong directions. Sergeant Redding was there to help them find their way.
“Where in the fuck do you think you’re going, Private? Are you trying to run away? Do you not like me, Private?”
Grabbing the private’s bag that was attached to his face, Sergeant Redding steered the young man in the right direction much like a cowboy steers a calf to the ground.
Once we made it inside the gym, things got worse. I always thought that I would have one drill sergeant. That’s how it appeared to be in Full Metal Jacket. I was wrong again. Inside the gym there were about nine drill sergeants, and they were really, really pissed. Running onto the basketball court felt like running into an ambush. There was so much shouting and cursing. It was total chaos. Privates’ eyes flashed terror as fingers were shoved in their faces. We were ordered to run in circles around a giant mat on the court while still holding our bags. Around and around we went as the yelling got louder and more vicious. After a couple dozen laps, they told us to stop where we were. Some of us stopped on time, and some of us didn’t. Oh, the poor souls that didn’t stop on time. They were the first of us to get “smoked.”
Getting smoked is the real form of punishment that civilians only think they know about as a result of what they’ve seen on television. On television, soldiers are told, “Drop and give me ten.” Comparing that to what the punishment is really like is like comparing a hand grenade to an atom bomb. Getting smoked … well, let’s first just examine the word smoked. When you hear the word smoked, you think of barbeque. When you think of barbeque, you think of a grill. When you think of a grill, you think of fire. When you think of fire, you think of the words burned and done. The difference between the metaphor and the reality is that there are no flames while getting "smoked." There is sweat to replace the flames. There is no happy fat man in his backyard flipping beef with a spatula. Instead, sweat replaces the flames, and there is Satan himself flipping live cattle with forked-tongue verbal lashings.
Getting smoked means having to do any series of exercises that a drill sergeant can dream up. Most of the time, it’s “front-back-go.” “Front” meant push-ups. “Back” is flutter kicks, which means lying on your back with your hands either beside you or under your butt, and your legs doing a vertical scissor-like motion. “Go” is running in place with your arms extended in front of you, while raising your knees high enough to touch your hands. Each position of front, back, or go can be held for as little or as long as the drill sergeant wishes. You would think that holding each position for the least amount of time would be preferred. But that’s not the case, considering the chaos that ensues when you try to do each position for the split second prior to the drill sergeant’s ordering you to the next position. It’s more like a football drill with an extra position than anything else, only we did it more often and for longer amounts of time.
I watched in horror as one of the first privates got smoked. It was Private Roberts. Private Roberts was exceptionally fat when he first got to basic. When he left eight weeks later, he had lost a tremendous amount of weight. Eat your heart out, Richard Simmons. We didn’t sweat to the oldies; we burned to the rhythm of front-back-go.
Since it was so hot that day in Fort Leonard Wood, they made us take off our blouses. When Roberts got his blouse off, his fat rolls bulged inside his undershirt and hung over his pants, giving that venerable “muffin top” appearance. Roberts had two drill sergeants bending over him, yelling at the top of their lungs about how fat he was and how he would never make it to graduation.
“"Push, you. Push! Get off your fucking knees and push!”"
I watched Roberts’s arms tremble as he tried to lift his large mass off the floor. While he ground his teeth as he struggled to comply, his eyes showed that he was anything but confident: he was scared. I would have been scared, too. Everyone would have been. Everyone was.
They ordered us to line up so that we surrounded three sides of the large mat in the center of the gym. Roberts was to my right, and although we were told to stand at attention, we couldn’t help but glance at the others being ganged up on. I didn’t understand why at the time, but the drill sergeants were all biting into lemons as they shouted and yelled at us. Now I know that the lemons were supposed to keep their voices from going out. Sergeant Redding was in the middle of the mat, and suddenly he threw a lemon just above the head of a private a few feet away from Roberts. It really didn’t even come close to hitting him, but the mental effect of seeing a lemon being launched out of a hand that could easily palm an oversized basketball by a man who could easily slam dunk you was probably just as bad. The lemon exploded against the wall and fell to the floor.
“Privates! You will now drink water! You will not use the water fountain in the hall. As you file into the latrine, Specialist Myli [a young, dorky-looking Army person] will give you a cup! You will take that cup and fill it in the shower! You will notice that there are many showerheads! You will all use the same one! You will not use the sink! You have ninety seconds to be back here, standing at attention. Now move!”
It was a stampede. It was so hot that day, and we were all very, very thirsty. Specialist Myli basically threw the cups at us, but we didn’t care. We just wanted to get a drink and get back. Inside the shower, we resembled the Iwo Jima Memorial as we raised our cups to the showerhead. We were getting drenched by the shower, but it was welcomed. People were getting pushed and shoved. Cups were getting crushed, and cups were getting shared. As far as I know, we all somehow got a drink of water, and on the way out, we threw our cups in the trash can, making sure not to make a mess with them.
As we ran back out to the gym, I noticed that the drill sergeants weren’t in quite the same frenzy they were before. They made us run around the large mat back to where we left our bags. In the middle of the mat stood Sergeant Atkins.
“Privates, the temperature is now above ninety degrees. You will now convert your uniforms in accordance with heat category five. In addition to removing your blouses, which you did at heat category four, you will now unblouse your boots and roll your trousers above the top of your boots.”
Blousing your boots actually means blousing your pants into your boots. It’s what gives that military look that every military in the world has. The reason for this is so that bugs can’t get down into your boots or up into your pants. What’s funny, though, is that the boots come with a tag that specifically says not to tuck your trousers into your boots. The U.S. government even went to the trouble of sewing a nylon string into the bottom of the trousers they issue so that you don’t have to tuck them into your boots. Everyone does, though; even the drill sergeants. But they would make us unblouse our boots when it was very hot because it allowed air to circulate better.
There was something different about Sergeant Atkins, though. He didn’t yell and shout like the others. It seemed like he had done this many, many times before. He no longer got a thrill out of slamming privates in the face with excruciating decibels of authority. He had been “on the trail,” as they called a tour as a drill sergeant, for a long time. For Sergeant Atkins, this was business, pure and simple, and he had a monopoly. Sergeant Atkins was very tall and lanky. The other drill sergeants looked pretty fierce. We privates referred to the drill sergeants—when they weren’t around—with many colorful adjectives that likened them to any and all things evil. By sight, Atkins wasn’t very intimidating, though. He just looked like an asshole. He had a nasal voice and large silver-rimmed eyeglasses from the late eighties. But when I looked closer at his uniform, I saw that he had almost every tab and badge offered by the Army. He was airborne, he was a ranger, and he was Special Forces. He had been to Air Assault School and had the EIB and CIB (expert infantryman badge and combat infantryman badge) … and a cherry on top.