I originally posted this two years ago under the title Seventeen Years of Soldiering . In my continuing effort to rebuild the archives, now seems like the perfect time to reconstruct this series.
I joined the Army on May 21, 1987 and honestly, haven’t looked back, until now…
“Hello ladies, welcome to Alpha Company, First of the Thirty-Ninth Infantry Regiment, Fort Dix, New Jersey,” he calmly said with a warm smile and caring eyes.
We were thirty-three young men from all walks of life and all parts of the country, all with shaven heads, packed into the light blue school bus each with a duffel bag full of stuff that had been issued to us just hours before. It was hot inside the steel bus as we nervously sat, all eyes on the tall black man with the pencil thin mustache and wearing a very large brimmed brown Sam Bowie hat standing in the front of the bus, forward of the yellow line. He had stepped inside through the folding doors as the bus came to a stop in the mostly empty parking lot. He leaned on the bar closest to the front most seats as he spoke.
“We have a lot of work to do today ladies so I’ll ask for your complete attention and we can get these things taken care of quickly,” saying again with a warm smile.
“Now, once you get off the bus I’ll need you to line up in the parking lot so we can conduct an inventory of the stuff you got there in those bags and then we’ll introduce ourselves and explain some of the do’s and don’ts around here. After that, we’ll get you settled into your dormitory rooms and see if we can’t get some food in you,” he outlined pleasantly. “Are there any questions?”
“Yeah,” came a voice from somewhere behind me, “where’s the bathrooms man?”
“Uh oh,” I thought. I’d seen enough military movies to know that this is where they drag the kid out of the bus and beat him senseless for asking stupid questions.
To my surprise the answer came, “that’s a good question young man, for a couple of reasons.” “First off, we don’t say ‘yeah’ around here, we prefer to use the word ‘yes.’ We also like to be addressed by our titles; ‘Drill Sergeant’ will do for my staff and I, and we’ll address you all as ‘private.’ Lastly, here in the Army we call the ‘bathroom’ a ‘latrine’ and once we get outside we’ll explain to everyone where the latrines are.”
“If there are no further questions gentlemen, follow me,” he announced, turned sharply and disappeared down the steps and out of the bus. Conversations started as we stood and threw our duffel bags over our shoulders, some were laughing and others were expressing relief saying, “this isn’t going to be as bad as I thought.”
“What in the gottdamned hell are you ladies doing?! I said to follow me did I not?! You now have exactly ten seconds to get off my gottdamned bus and line up outside in the parking lot. Ten, nine, eight…”
All hell broke loose and we scrambled to comply with Mr. Hyde’s, correction, Drill Sergeant Hyde’s, orders. As I stepped off the bus I was accosted by my very own drill sergeant who was walking beside me, the big brown rim of his hat was barely an eighth of an inch away from my forehead and his dark eyes burning a hole right through me as he screamed into my face with the meanest southern drawl I’d ever heard.
“What in the hell is your major malfunction private?! What are you doing here private? Who said you could be a sojur in my Army private? You insult me and all the sojurs before you who’ve worn the uniform private! You ought to go home to your momma private!” And then he was gone to scream at someone else.
I stood as straight as I could with the duffel on my back standing in line next to the rest of my now sweating bald buddies. There must have been fifteen drill sergeants swarming around us taking turns yelling and barking at us. At one point I noticed out of the corner of my eye a short recruit off to the left, a Korean boy I had met the day previously, he was standing rigid while three drill sergeants worked him over. Then he dropped down onto the ground doing push-ups with his big duffel bag still on his back. Then back up on his feet. “Too slow Kim, get back down!”
“What are you looking at Private Hook?!” My head snapped back to the front only to find yet another drill sergeant in my face. “You think this is funny Private Hook?” he barked.
“No.” I said.
“No what?!”
“No, Drill Sergeant!” hoping I got it right this time.
“Well gottdamn Hook, you seem so darned interested in what’s going on with your buddy Kim why don’t you join him. Get your ass on the ground and do some push-ups NOW!”
And so it went for the better part of an hour though it seemed like six. We eventually shook out our gear and completed the inventory, all of us too scared to say a word. The senior Drill Sergeant came out to address the platoon. Drill Sergeant Velasquez was Hispanic and had a very thick accent that was difficult to understand. At the end of his speech he apparently announced that we were to grab our bags and bring them to the second floor of the barracks building behind him to obtain our room assignments. Nobody understood and we all remained standing, motionless, none daring to ask for a repeat.
We were saved by another Drill who started yelling at us “mo-rons” for standing there like “lumps on logs” and to get moving. We ran up the stairs and into our rooms. The rooms were long and narrow with the shiniest floors I had ever seen, they were like glass. Gray, metal wall lockers lined the walls, fourteen in all. We stood around talking about the activities of earlier, some tested the mattresses, and others picked out wall lockers. A Drill Sergeant I hadn’t seen before stuck his head into the room and said, “You’ve got 30 seconds to secure your gear and get back outside in formation,” and disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.
Remembering the pain from the bus we moved quickly, most of us throwing our duffels into a wall locker and running down the stairs and out the door. We fell into formation pretty smartly for our first day and a collective sigh of relief came from the group. We were starting to get the hang of this. So we thought.
Duffel bags began flying out of the second floor windows and landing on the ground in front of us with loud thuds. The sky filled with a flock of green duffels soaring majestically through the hot New Jersey air. In a matter of seconds the grass was covered with duffel bags piled knee high and Drill Sergeant Velasquez stuck his head out a window yelling down at us something undoubtedly important but totally incomprehensible.
“You heard him gottdammit, pick up your gottdamned duffel bags and secure them in your wall lockers now you mo-rons! Now! Let’s go, go, go!” came the translation from another Drill.
I thought, “It isn’t going to be easy to be all I can be.” Sgt Hook out.
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This post is filed under: Army Times & Reconstructed
