Fat Camp lasted three weeks. The smaller portions paid off and I lost enough weight to move on to basic training. Prior to the weigh-in, I swallowed various laxatives and wore saran wrap around my waist for a full day. Private West and Private Major also received their walking papers. Together we mounted a cattle car that carried us to a new desolate part of Fort Leonard Wood.
The heat in the cattle car choked me. Before leaving Fat Camp, I'd made the mistake of eating a large lunch. I stood next to Private West and rubbed shoulders with her.
"Gross," she said when a burp escaped me.
"West, what's up?" I asked her. "Think we'll be bunking together?"
She played hard to get. "You stink worse than a shoe, Sprungli."
"See, I told you," said Private Major, waving his hand under his nose. "You gotta start showerin'. It's getting nasty. Dog-god, I told him to scrub his crevices and crevasses, but do you think he did? Hell no."
Private Waters, the confused soldier who liked books, said, "Hey Sprungli. Is that you?"
The cattle car had so many people in it, I couldn't face him, but I turned my neck far enough to get a glimpse.
"What are you doing here, Waters?"
"I got recycled. Sprained my ankle on the first day. Be careful getting out of this truck. I had to sit out a few weeks and now I'm starting from day one."
I ignored him, favoring Private West's company. "West, let me know if you need anything. I've got some connections."
"If I need what?"
"Anything." I winked.
"What," she said, "like a blubber transfusion?"
"Sprungli, it's hot out," Private Major said, "but it just got cold in here. Brr!"
When the truck stopped, we heard boots outside on the sidewalk. The doors opened with a sudden jolt, reminding me of entering a room in a first-person shooter game, like HALO. Actually, more like Wolfenstein 3D, since the graphics of a Missouri Army base had fallen way behind the video game industry in terms of design.
But outside of the cattle car awaited a strange obstacle course of authority. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw twenty Drill Sergeants. They all began shouting at once, moving like programmed cyborgs, attacking Privates and pulling them out the cattle car door. We tumbled out like rubber balls, weighted down by our duffel bags. Private Waters fell to the curb, this time hurting his shoulder. As I ran away, I heard him groaning.
The noise, the stinging sweat, and the trampling boots made the heat worse. The whole scene was so confusing that I stopped to drink water from my canteen and collect my thoughts. Even warm water tasted good, but on my first swallow, six Drill Sergeants assaulted me, shouting words that didn't even make sense.
"Get your dog-gone nabbit cover straight now move what is this the water-trough into the dad-gum gym."
Inside the gym, we lined up and dropped our bags. Someone spoke on a microphone that echoed and I'm certain that no one understood him. The alignment of our duffel bags irritated all of the Drill Sergeants, as if the alignment of the bags meant life or death. We had them aligned, but had to do it again. And again. Again. Then suddenly, the lead Drill Sergeant on the microphone ordered us to "Drink water!"
A minute ago, I was doing just that - drinking water - and I was yelled at. Now they were commanding it.
"Drink the entire canteen. Start drinking, now!"
I sipped on the water and wiped sweat out of my eyes. It was hot. Prior to joining the Army, I rarely ventured outside on days like this one, except to hit Kentucky Fried Chicken or Dairy Queen. I started to pour water over my face to cool off.
"Drink water, don't dump it on your head!"
Drill Sergeant Pint showed up. He stared up at me like a closely-shaved shih-tzu.
"Drink it. Drink it all. And then hold the canteen upside down to show me it's empty."
"Huh?"
"Learn to listen!" He pointed to his head. "Are you on dope or something?"
"I wish," I said.
Suddenly his hand seized the canteen and tipped it into my mouth, hard enough that he gave me a fat lip. I guzzled hard, guzzled until I nearly hurled on the man, but luckily only dry-heaved.
"Unbelievable," he said, looking down at the clipboard in his hand. "You're on my roster, Sprungli. You're in my platoon. God have mercy on you."
Three other Drills hustled over and scolded me for dry-heaving without permisson. The stress got to me. I could not help myself.
I started blowing bubbles.
Three bubbles wafted out before I even realized it.
"What are you doing?" They screamed. "What in holy hell? Are you blowing bubbles? What are these bubbles doing floating in my gym, Private?"
They didn't understand. I will forever blow bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. Unless they take my tongue out, I will never be able to stop myself from blowing these bubbles when the mood strikes.
"Blow one more," said Pint. "Blow one more and I will smoke you until next week."
On the edge of my tongue, a new bubble teetered, and I couldn't help but set it free, into the atmosphere, where it belonged. The bubble escaped, ascending into the gymnasium rafters.
The smoking did not last until the following week. After rolling me for some time, Pint handed me over to another Drill Sergeant, who promised to "personally deliver my carcass" to the platoon after he took a turn smoking me. The dusty gravel and sweat made everything about me a mess, right down to my standard issue tan undies.
I arrived at my barracks dripping in sweaty mud. When I entered my barracks, standing between a tall female Drill Sergeant and an even taller male Drill Sergeant stood Drill Sergeant Pint, arms akimbo, like a life-sized Mario or Luigi.
"Up here, Private Sprungli," Pint barked. "It's a bad sign when I know you're name on the first day."
Dragging my duffel bag, I bumped into several people and jarred them out of their stiff position of attention. When I reached my spot, I sighed relief when I realized I stood right behind Private West. She stood ramrod straight and made me do the same.
Drill Sergeant Pint began an eternally long and dull speech, showcasing his ability to say the same thing in many different ways.
Pint gave a command.
"Parade, Rest!"
"The first thing I am going to talk about today," said Pint, "is fraternization and Gender Integrated Training. Let me inform you that there will be no relationships, no note-passing, no finger-fondling, no prolonged eye-contact, no lewd remarks, no verbal abuse, no casual touches, no consensual sexual relationships, no dating, dancing, dining, no interaction of any kind between males and females beyond what is necessary for training. The penalties for this will be severe under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I will lobby for the full penalty to be asserted against any member of this platoon, company, or battalion that violates this, for the purpose of basic training is to create warriors. The purpose is to become soldiers, not sweethearts. Love and relationships do not belong to this period of your life. For those of you with relationships back home, forget about them. Even if you have a spouse at home, your focus is here, not there. Your summertime boyfriend or girlfriend is already on your best friend's lap, so don't worry about her. However, for those about to be dumped, don't look to satisfy your urges here. You will find no pity from me or my staff."
The tall man said, "That's absolutely right, Drill Sergeant Pint."
"Don't even think about it, Privates," the woman added.
Pint continued. "If you come to me with complaints about home, if you tell me you are missing your brother's wedding, your grandma's hair transplant, or your dog's birthday party, I will make my response to all those requests right now: too friggin' bad. I just finished a second tour in Iraq - maybe you noticed my tan. Like me, you are here for the duration of basic training. Any legitimate excuse to go home will be evaluated, but most likely you will not see anyone besides the people in this
room until your graduation day, in nine weeks.
"Your world is about to get small. Smaller than you've ever imagined. Focused, and puckered tight. Starting today, you need to get motivated to become a soldier and forget about everything else, and I reiterate - especially forget about relationships. As for myself and the other Drill Sergeants, we will have no contact with Privates for anything other than training. If you need to report an issue, if you feel pressured sexually or romantically, in any way, report it to me, and I will suffocate and kill the source of the problem."
He paused.
"Actually, I can't say kill anymore. This is the kinder, gentler Army these days. I will resolve your issue by passing the complaint up the chain of command for investigation. Be advised: if harassment is happening, I want to know. If feelings crawl into this barracks, I am their exterminator."
At some point in the speech, I lost track of what he was saying, because in front of me, a curvature of camouflage hypnotized me under the spell of Private West. In her uniform, she seemed oddly sexless (or genderless, I don't know which). I forgot where I was, until the sharp voice of Pint startled me like a flash grenade in Resident Evil. But for once the subject of his scorn targeted another.
"Private West!" he snapped. "I'm going to correct something on you right away. You are standing at what is called Parade Pretty. Do you know what Parade Pretty means?"
"No, Drill Sergeant."
"It means don't tilt your head, don't smile at your superiors, don't bat your eyes, or do any of the crap that worked in high school on your teachers. This ain't the night club. This ain't the block. This ain't cheerleading practice. You're not here to get sympathy or entice anyone, just stand at Parade Rest and look straight ahead. Don't blink or push a hair out your face, don't fix your collar or wink or adjust your cover or shrug or flirt in any way. If you are thinking about anything other than what is straight ahead of you, then you have the wrong answer. Understood?"
"Yes, Drill Sergeant. But I wasn't..."
"Don't correct me, Private West."
"But I wasn't..."
"Platoon, Attention!"
For that remark, Pint dropped the whole platoon.
"Front-Leaning-Rest-Position. Move!"
Although the "Front-Leaning-Rest Position" sounds relaxing, it is the opposite.
Pint shouted. "Now when I say 'down,' you reply, 'Attention to detail,' and lower yourself to the floor. Down!"
I said, "Attention to detail!"
"Now when I say 'Up,' you say 'Teamwork is the key.' Up!"
"Teamwork is the key!"
"Down!"
"Attention to detail!"
"Up!"
"Teamwork is the key!"
"Down!"
"Attention to detail?"
"Up!"
"Teamwork is the key?" How long could I go on like this?
"Down!"
I saw stars.
"Up!"
Fork me, I was done. Three push-ups were enough to flatten me. The previous smokings rendered my arms useless. I started lifting my head only, doing my best impression of a bear rug. Everyone around me kept going but I was quite wasted from my earlier dustings.
Pint said, "Get your belly off the ground, Sprungli." But he moved on to another Private after he realized that I could not even loll about on the floor without moaning.
When the last person reached muscle failure, Pint ordered us back to our feet. Then he made us do an exercise called "The Overhead Arm Clap," which consisted of holding your arms straight out and then, yes, clapping them overhead.
"Oh my God," I whispered to West, "this is easy."
Two-hundred repetitions later, I realized that I had spoken too soon. My shoulders seemed to be cracking like walnuts. Splitting pain from my neck to my feet, all from clapping my hands over my head.
The rest of the day, a blur. Somewhere along the way, I think I blacked out. Every meal was shoved down our throats. Even though we ate, starvation set into my belly. In the civilian world, my evenings did not function like this at all. Usually I took a good three hours before bedtime to wind down by watching reruns of South Park or playing Quake. God, how I missed Quake. To master that game would have been my greatest achievement. I played the game so much that my TV at home had an Ogre permanently burned into the screen. Some might wonder why Quake was worth so much fuss, but I would say to them: the constant destruction was a daily thrill. Inside that game, I had but one hundred lives to give for my country. There I could set the high score for enemy kills against the Death Squads coming through the Slipgate. Every night I wreaked havoc until the streets bawled in retribution and then I would push pause for some nachos and cheese. I took my snack with dignity, in my pajamas. Then after a quick hit off the bong, I pushed play and rushed back into the bloodless throng.
Here, cheeseless and sober, I had to prepare my bunk for sleeping. It was then that I met my bunk mate, who introduced himself.
"My name is Darius Shipman."
"Congratulations," I told him.
He wanted to talk, too, of all things. I took the top bunk, hoping to stash future contraband. He took the bottom bunk without argument and somehow he made his bed in about three seconds. He helped me make my bed, a task I despised as beneath me, unworthy of my skills.
As I tucked myself in, he started to talk to me about his life. I think he took the battle buddy thing seriously. I just wanted to sleep, but Darius Shipman oozed the kind of boredom that did not allow sleep, and once he got started, a sock and ball-gag could not stop him.
I knew I shouldn't have asked.
"So how come you joined?" I asked, and cringed when he started talking again.
He smiled at me. "I was working at a bank before this. The idea of joining the Army did not excite my co-workers. I was a junior loan officer, very junior. My friends at the bank said, 'Don't do it. You could be sent to war and die.'"
Darius paused and pursed his lips before going on.
"But I fully understand the dying part. That part is fine. The response that I wanted to tell my good colleagues was this: 'Worse than dying, I could stay here in Champaign... and live!'"
The way he laughed at his own joke, I yearned for him to stop...
"To my way of thinking," he said, "if adventure meant the risk of death, then it also meant the risk of life. I'd been indoors for three years. I needed an outdoor memory. And not the Peace Corps kind of experience."
"Wow," I said, "that's interesting and all but..."
"I almost joined the Marine Corps," he said, "but my father, who was a Marine, said I had half a brain, which was too much. At first he said, 'don't join at all,' meaning no branch of the service, for reasons he would not articulate. To steer me off, he urged me into finance and banking, hoping it might take. But before long, after a few years in that sterile and polite place of soft-spoken men, I felt the pull toward the military again. I needed to punch my ticket of life in a barracks. The fear of lost time threatened my every waking moment. I felt the state of being young and strong waning in me. At the bank they tried to talk me out of joining on several occasions. 'Are you sure you want to join? It's not like you,' they said. 'It's imprudent. You seem more sensible than that.' I argued with them, quoting Blake: 'Isn't prudence just a rich, ugly, old hag, courted by incapacity?'"
Again he laughed at his comment. I think he expected me to do the same.
"Honor. That's what I'm after, Sprungli. Not for college money, not for benefits. Maybe there is no good way to describe it. This will seem strange to you. To most people, it makes no sense at all."
I wanted to push mute.
"I enlisted in the Army," he said, "to understand all that I had learned in books. As early as Sunday school, when I learned about the great generals and leaders, Joshua and David. Actually, the idea to join came even before those Bible stories and ideas of rank,
when someone told me that Grandpa died at the Battle of the Bulge. Regardless of how he died, there in our living room, mounted on the wall was an engraved case that held a purple heart. In my childhood, I looked at that case every morning while I ate my cereal. If it was supposed to scare me away from joining, it didn't work. It made joining that much more inviting.
"But in the end, Sprungli, it was stories that recruited me, the books. Everything my teachers stuffed into my eager little hands encouraged my enlistment. All of them invited me down to this party in Missouri. The Red Badge of Courage. A Farewell to Arms. For Whom the Bell Tolls."
"Wow, the memories," I said, "but I need to get some sleep..."
He intervened. "I mean, isn't Hemingway is the greatest recruiter of all-time? Anyone who wrote about how war is hell, somehow at the same time made it glamorous to me. Another recruiter, I remember, named Graham Greene, he got me here. And Tom Clancy. And well - let me think…."
I waited. I thought he might be finished...
"Then there was Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Achilles sitting in his tent while his countrymen fought and perished. Hector fighting for his worthless brother, Paris. Odysseus, Alexander, Aeneas, Charlemagne, Patton. I could go on and on."
I waited for Private Shipman to go on, but he stood there gazing over my bunk like he had just cashed a bowl. I asked him, "Are you a preacher or something?"
"No, I'm not a preacher," he said and snapped out of his trance. "I'm no preacher. Just a member of the Church of Christ."
"I've never met a Mormon."
"No, Church of Christ, not Church of Latter-Day Saints. And you?"
"Baptist. Is that the end of your...ah...story?"
"For today." He rubbed his hand over his shaved head. "The journey continues tomorrow."
"Ok, goodnight," I said, and rolled over and shut my eyes before he could think of anything else to say.
Chapter 6. POSH