Happy Veteran’s Day
It has been about six months or so since the last post to this so called blog. There are a few entries waiting in the rumination stage, but I thought I might make an entry on this holiday for veterans. I would like to remember all my uncles and my father-in-law who served in the US Military during World War II. Also for my many cousins who served mainly in the US Army between Korea and Vietnam, including my brother, a radio man and infantry soldier for three years between those two conflicts. Serving your country seemed to be a tradition in the family, and one that seems not so much anymore.
For some reason I have lately had many thoughts about my own entrance into the Army those many, many moons ago. I do not have any tales of courage or bravery to relate, at least not on my part. I thought that I might put down some of the details of my first couple months in the Army before they dissipate into the mists of forgotten memories. Just a small historical record of what it was like and my impressions of those days. It might be interesting to some and not so much to others, but I thought I might relate some of it.
I signed up for four years at Ft Wayne, Michigan on my 20th birthday. It was a Saturday. I remember that I was called back by some sergeant to complete all my paperwork again that morning. It seems that all my signatures were not valid. After reviewing my birth certificate , it was determined that -Joseph- was not my middle name, in fact, I had no middle name. (It wasn’t on my birth certificate) Going forward I would be NMI, no middle initial, and Jr. after my name, as my father also had no middle name. All the hundreds of guys assembled that Saturday morning we’re going to be sent to Ft. Knox, Ky. But since I had joined the ASA, (Army Security Agency-thank you Teddy) myself and one other fellow, Don, were to be sent to Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo. We found ourselves at Metro Airport waiting for a plane to St Louis. I had never been on a plane in my life, so another new experience. My farewell committee was made up of my sister Margaret and cousin Stevie. Stevie was an enterprising guy and noticed a machine that sold flight insurance. For a dollar, he could insure me for $10,000 and collect, if I went down on the impending flight. He thought it might be a good return on his initial investment, just in case.
We eventually made it to our destination and were quickly immersed into the routines and duties of the U S Army. One night we heard a speech by one of the drill instructors (D I s) He said that they were going to break us down, make us forget everything about civilian life and build us up into soldiers of the U S Army. Well, they got some of it right. I was assigned to Charlie Company, 3rd Platoon, First Battalion, 3rd Brigade. We were eight of us in a room, with a bunk, foot locker and wall locker. When reveille sounded around 5 a.m. we scrambled to shave and shower, make our bunks so a quarter would bounce if dropped on them, and hightail it down to formation. I think we maybe had thirty minutes or less. The day would start with roll call, then some early PT, physical training, and breakfast in the mess hall. After that the rest of the day was spent in various forms of training.
One of the earliest highlights was learning how to march and perform dismounted drill. Each platoon of four squads of eight men had to execute the commands of the D I. Coming to attention, at ease, learning the basics of rifle commands, shoulder arms, order arms, present arms, attention, about face, and many more. All had to be down to the satisfaction of the DI. If he noticed that you were not executing it correctly, he might call you out and tell you to drop and give me twenty. Pushups that is. For some who were repeat offenders or wise guys, he might ask for forty or fifty pushups. You had to count them off as you did them, one sergeant, two sergeant, etc and some tried to catch them off guard. Ten sergeant, eleven sergeant, sixteen sergeant , twenty sergeant, if they were paying attention, the poor soul had to start over again. Then we would start marching somewhere. Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, everyone had to be in step, or else. As we marched, one of the DI’s might start some little marching song to see if we were awake. Some examples might be: I got a girl all dressed in red, makes her living in her bed, sound off, one-two, cadence call, one-two, three four. There were many other derivations, a girl dressed in black, one who lives on a hill and others more R rated. One memorable tune, was: I want to be an Airborne Ranger, living a life of guts and dangers, or something like that. Most did not sing that song with any conviction. Also they had a song about Jody’s got your girl at home. Don’t know who Jody was, but he seemed a despicable sort. If we passed another training company while marching, they might say — Look to the left and what do you see? You would shout out — a bunch of Wacs in misery. etc etc etc
One thing you hated to hear while marching out to the rifle range or wherever we were going that day, was the DI calling out, “DOUBLE TIME, Hoooooh!” No more marching, but now getting to run. We were in uniform with boots, pack, gas mask, rifle and our helmets on our head. The friendly DI usually might just be wearing a field jacket over his fatigues and his cute little Smoky the Bear hat. He was just on a nice jog. When double timing, you had to stay in formation, run fast enough to keep up with the guy in front of you, but not too slow so the guy behind you might trip you. At the front of the formation would be one guy who carried the company guidon (flag) and between the second and third platoons, we had a guy who had a drum and had to beat time when we ran, so that we kept together in that formation. You had no idea how long we might run, but you had to be sure that you would never drop out of that formation, as those unfortunates would be subject to some special treatment from the DI. The worst case that I experienced of this, was when we had to be trained in the proper use of our gas masks. We were assembled before a long, flat type of block building. I believe we were taken inside two squads at a time. We had our gas masks on when we entered. We were told that we would be given a sign and then to take off the gas mask, call out your name, rank, serial number and date of birth, and then make your way to the exit on the left. The room was full of what I guess was tear gas. By the time you got back out into the fresh air, you were gasping for air, your eyes were burning and your uniform was saturated with the gas. When we had all performed the requirements of the DI,s, we were again assembled. For some reason they were very unhappy with our performance. The First Lieutenant who was second in command of the company, looked on very scornfully. We began to march back when the officer called out to us to Double Time. Thus began a nightmare run for Charlie company.. Many guys were still suffering from the side effects of the gas, by running, our sweat mixed with whatever was in our uniforms only made it worse. As we ran, guys started falling by the wayside. Some were throwing up. After a little while, the drumming stopped as our drummer rolled down a hill with his drum. Eventually we were a ragged group of about half of the company. Returning to the company area, those of us who made it, thought, okay he is going to really congratulate us for having completed the run. The Lieutenant did not see it that way. I think he was a first generation German guy, he carried a swagger stick too. He started screaming at us, mostly from the profanity family of adjectives and adverbs. He wanted his men to be killers, he would not want to lead us in combat in Vietnam since we were such a collection of weaklings. To put it mildly. I was never at the top of the scoreboard on most of the physical tests, but this once I thought that we all had showed something. Maybe not.
There were many other experiences, infiltration course at night, how to lob hand grenades without blowing yourself up, obstacle courses, hand to hand fighting, bayonet training, many training films about everything from basic hygiene to treating a guy with a sucking chest wound, and even what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. We did learn some useful things and even how to stay alive in difficult situations.
Mail call was another favorite time to remember. The DI would distribute the mail each day to us while we stood in formation. Most of the sergeants were of limited mental acuity. and had a hard time passing out the mail. Any guy who had more than six letters in his last name would have their name garbled out or pronounced in some profane manner. Any poor guy who had a really long name, was christened – Alphabets- when they called that out, he had to respond – Here. If you were unfortunate enough to receive a package from your girl, your mother or your wife. you had to open it up in front of everyone. If it contained cookies, or brownies, that was not a good thing. The DI would look at the box and say: Jones, would you like to have a cookie? Sure Sarge. The guy would step up and take one and eat it. Then the DI would say, ok, drop and give me ten or twenty, depending on his mood. Usually the guy would say, okay Sarge, you can have them, I don’t really want them. After seeing this, I quickly penned a letter home to my mother instructing her to be sure not to send me anything other than a letter while I was residing here at Ft. Leonard Wood.
At times we might get called out to go on what was called Police Call. We would be taken to a spot around the Post Exchange or some other common area and were told to pick up every piece of paper, cigarette butt and anything else that wasn’t growing in the ground. As the old Sarge would scowl: All I want to see is assholes and elbows. Another example of how they solved problems of beautification was one evening towards the end of our basic training cycle. It was the night before Thanksgiving. A number of us were taken down to the Post Chapel. There would be a series of services the next day, and the big lawn in front of the chapel was covered with LEAVES! Apparently there were no rakes available at that time. We were given paper bags and ordered to start on our hands and knees and pick up all these leaves. When the lawn was presentable, we would be allowed to return to our barracks. A lesson we learned that night, was even if they did not have the tools to do the job, you always had enough candidates available to get the job done.
I do remember that one of the most important things was that we were all determined to take whatever they could dish out and make it through to graduation. When a guy screwed up on a drill, not making a run, failing a physical test, the DI would yell out, swearing, Johnson! you are looking to be one of my Bolos! A Bolo, was a trainee who failed basic and had to take it all over again. None of us wanted to be considered a bolo. One night, about the time we were preparing to go out to the rifle range to take our final tests with the M-14 and qualify, a number of us had come down with bad cases of URI, upper respiratory infections. We were kind of run down and susceptible to such things. We did not want to take any chances of missing out on rifle qualification. One guy had heard of a cure. So we gave it a chance. We got a jar of Vicks and spread it on some bread and proceeded to eat it. The thought was, that its vaporub formula was soothe our sore throats, kill the coughs and clear our heads. I am not sure it did much curing, but it sure left us with no taste buds for the next four or five days. We all made it through the rifle tests and eventually qualifying on everything else to graduate with the rest of the company. A few guys did not, some should have never even been allowed into the army in the first place and one or two guys did go AWOL, never to be seen again.
After graduation, we were assembled in formation one more time. We are all given our next duty assignments. Many were sent to Ft. Polk, La. which was the place of infantry training before going to Vietnam. Others went to Ft. Sill, Ok, for artillery, others to Ft. Knox for armor and myself and Don, we’re sent to Ft. Devens, Ma. for further training by the ASA. A number of guys were very unhappy, as their recruiters had promised them certain jobs in the army, and instead of being a truck driver, they were assigned to be a combat engineer. Just another life lesson for us. Later in the Army, I heard some guys say that they had such great DI,s that they had bought them booze or presents when they completed Basic. For the majority of the troops in our platoon and company, it was summarized by one guy who said: “if I make it back to civilian life, and I see that DI walking down the street, and I am driving my car, I will ride up the sidewalk and hit that __________________and then back up.” I still remember the names of most of the guys in our squad and many of the things we experienced together, but we lost contact after graduation and never saw any of them again.
I left out all of the x-rated and even R rated things that happened. Suffice it to say, that most of the DI,s were some of the most proficient masters of swearing and cussing. As long as a word had at least three syllables in it, they could interject one or two swear words into that word to make it into a much longer, but more descriptive word. There were so many people being trained at this time, that I am sure that there were not enough qualified leaders to do the training. Some were very good, I ran into some of those later in the Army, and some like those we had in Basic Training, were not so good.
One last thing. I remember when we were waiting in line to enter an older army barrack and were to see a Sergeant about something or other. There was a door to his office and you had to knock on the door to be admitted. A guy would knock on the door, and he would bellow out: “Knock louder, I can’t hear you!” This would go on a few times and the guy would gain entrance. One guy, and I can’t remember his name, had a different approach. He gently tapped on the door, and the Sarge screamed out his greeting. The guy responded, Sarge, if you can’t hear me, how do you know I’m out here?” That was fun.
Viglis Salutis
copyright 2019
