TALES FROM THE SANDBOX 3

Welcome to the Suck.

This is the part of the story where things start to get truly nuts. Before we begin you should know that basic training is and continues to be 1 part psychological torture, 1 part physical conditioning, and 1 part knowledge acquisition. It's specifically designed to take an average schmuck, reduce them to their basic self, and recreate them as a SOLDIER. Some of the things you are about to read are upsetting, involve threats, strong language, and some physical/mental violence.

Also, it took place nearly 20 years ago, and was very traumatic, so much of it will be from my best recollection. Now that we've established some things, let's proceed...

The bus.

The first morning that me and my new comrades moved from in-processing to actual basic training was a hazy one for many reasons. First, no one slept the night before. Second, the morning started hectically, with lights and screaming and rushing. We were roused at an ungodly hour, sometime around maybe 4am, and taken outside into formation. Many of us had yet to learn how to properly pack our bags so we were a disorderly lot with a bunch of crap in tow. Things we brought from home and duplicates that they forced us to buy at the PX.

The thing my sleep deprived brain remembers of that morning is the fog and cold; and the change in buses. Up to this point in my journey every bus I'd been put on was a fairly nice, luxury sort of affair, even for short journeys. This time we were all hustled onto a series of old blue bird buses. The type school districts in rural areas and churches use. It struck me as a stark change in where we were headed.

We counted off for the Drill Sergeants and then headed off to basic. It was impossible to know where we were headed because of the fog, so it seemed a bit mysterious and foreboding to me. We all sat in silence, tired but anxious. As those buses rolled along for what seemed like an eternity some people drifted off to sleep. Then we stopped and everything became loud and terrifying.

A man that I can only describe as The Linebacker, a Drill Sergeant of humongous size and wearing the crispest uniform I had ever seen, came onto our bus. He looked around and then started screaming. One phrase he repeated, as would many others in the coming weeks was, "HURRY THE FUCK UP PRIAT" (Army pronunciation of the rank "Private") Everyone jumped up and clutched their things to their chests to hustle off the bus. Once priats hustled past the Linebacker, there were other Drill Sergeants waiting at intervals, also screaming. All of them were in people's faces, flailing their hands about vehemently.

I got up and grabbed my stuff, took maybe 5 steps, and my duffel bag strap separated. I attempted to step aside and knelt down to fix it. Linebacker did not care for that. He came stomping down the row and grabbed me in one hand and the bag in the other. The next thing I knew I was flying through the air, having been bodily thrown off the top step of the bus. I sailed for a moment and then thumped down onto the grass thankfully. My bag hit me in the back and then thumped onto the ground next to me. I attempted to recover from the dizziness of my flight and someone else started yelling at me. This drill sergeant looked like a Miniature Sergeant Slaughter. He was twice as mean. He ran up to me and started screaming, nearly nose to nose, "Hurry the fuck up fuck priat. I will fuck you in the skull! move move move move!"

I frantically and clumsily made my way down the line of screaming drill sergeants with my stuff in tow. They lined us all up, then started calling out names, and sorting everyone into platoons. We were informed that we had arrived in the 447 Delta Company. I forget the motto now, cause a big part of the army is constantly learning new mottos and things, so it's been lost to my mind. A string of drill sergeants introduced themselves to us. Our main drill sergeant was not present, instead we were under the charge of a man that was the spitting image of Bill Duke. I will call him Drill Sergeant Duke. He yelled for a while about who he was and what he expected and we yelled back "Drill Sergeant, Yes Drill Sergeant" as loudly as we could. He commanded everyone to take the position of attention and then started walking up and down our rows. It didn't taken long for him to find someone standing incorrectly. All of us were told to "DROP!" That meant get into the push up position and stay there.

He left us in that position for what seemed like an eternity. Our arms ached, our breathing was labored, some idiots like myself had gear on their backs when they got down. We were not able to remove it. DS Duke walked the rows, correcting each soldier's positioning and height from the ground. It was a long sweaty, aching, torture, that lasted until he was satisfied. Many people started to fall onto their faces on the concrete and had to force themselves back up again. I would come to find that position was the favored way to make soldiers pay for missteps with "corrective training." We would all get to know it very well.

The types of buildings we would be living in are called "Star Patterns" because they pinwheel from a central hub of connected offices. They were brutalist structures, like many government buildings, and had a stark angularness to their design. Each of the pinwheels petals were 4 story buildings, each floor housed a platoon of troops. We were 3rd platoon, if memory serves.

We were hustled up the stairs to our floor and lined up alphabetically. We then started our first day of training.

We were assigned bunks and then had all our things tossed everywhere. Everything we'd brought with us that was "contraband" was separated out and thrown away or locked in a closet in the back until we graduated. Every time a piece of "contraband" was found we were taught another exercise and ordered to do it until the Drills were satisfied. Crab Walking is the worst one of all, it really jacks up your knees and hurts like a bastard.

Each of us had been given a handbook of things we'd need to know called an Initial-Entry Training manual with our gear. One of the chapters showed us exactly how we would arrange our possessions in our newly assigned wall lockers. It went from loud and hectic to extremely calm and quiet as everyone started their first task, putting their stuff away. Everything is done to very specific standards in training. It's part to condition you to pay close attention to things, it's partly to test your mettle and see if you can do as you're told. We were shown how to roll out socks and stack them in a specific way. Even where and how to store our deodorant. Even where to place our authorized reading material when not in use. Technically the only things one was allowed to read in basic training were few and specific: your manual and the bible, and anything military training or tactics related. If anything else was found there would be consequences.

I was not about to start reading the bible again and I knew manuals would only go so far. I knew that I needed to stay sane. I'd brought a copy of Stephen King and Neil Straub's Eyes of the Dragon with me and was not going to give it up. When our stuff was being tossed I devised a quick scheme. I pinned the book between my wall locker's back wall and the chest of drawers set within. There it stayed until I was able to sneak off to the toilet or we were given time by ourselves, then that book would come out. I would sit in my wall locker positioned with my door just so to make sure that no one could see me, and read each page with deep joy. I survived basic by escaping into that macabre fantasy for small moments whenever possible. I say with pride that while others went down for contraband, I never got caught.

After we put our things away we were told to don our PT uniforms and were taken outside to a red dirt field next to the barracks. We were formed up and then we were exercised for I don't know how long. By the time it was over the sun had set and we were taken back into the barracks, bruised, scraped, and so goddamn tired it felt like we were all dead. Then we were told how to bathe ourselves and marched through freezing cold showers before we were allowed to put on clean PTs and collapse into our bunks. I had never slept so well in my life.

It was short lived because next thing we knew we were all woken up, lights blaring, the drill sergeant that was in charge of the duty desk was bored. He wanted to entertain himself so he tossed all our stuff. He screamed. He then exercised, what we call "Smoking" in the Army, until he got bored and then left. We fell asleep again, only for his sudden visit to be repeated again at an irregular interval throughout the night. I've never seen more murderous looks in people's eyes than I did that night and I don't think I ever will again.

The next week would be a blur of standing in lines and sitting through briefings. We were given shots of who knows from that made golf ball sized lumps on our asses and made everyone mildly sick. We were taken from place to place and shown the ropes with a tempo verified from trying to stay awake and sheer terror.

At night, or any time a Drill found a reason, we were smoked so we were perpetually exhausted. Despite that we were expected to sit for long periods of time and stay alert. Everything was a test to see who failed, and who failed first, and who failed the worst.

Sitting through briefings was a gauntlet of trying to stay awake. Tons of dry information and things that one needed to remember was given at breakneck pace by a rotating cast of screaming Drills. If anyone fell asleep the whole class would be smoked. If anyone didn’t pay attention we got smoked. If an answer was wrong we got smoked. If one person screwed up, we all paid for it. People quickly got resentful and expressed their ire with those that repeatedly erred. Sometimes those people were privately threatened, some even beaten by their fellow soldiers for their missteps. It was all done in ways that avoided the Drills notice.

To me the one phrase that kept coming to my mind was, “Welcome to the Suck.”