Pre-Veterans Day Ramblings Things I get... I get the feeling of signing a piece of paper in a recruiters office and subletting three years of my life to the U.S. Army... I get standing at the Armed Forces Entrance & Examination Station in Chicago in my underwear, following the green line here, and the blue line there and the yellow line yet another place, with the freezing cold tile floors beneath my feet, emphasizing the regimented impersonality of the ritual... I get standing up, raising my right hand and swearing and affirming that I would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, while at the same time basically waiving my own constitutional rights for three years... I get the terribly empty feeling of leaving a good family of loving people and travelling via three modes of transportation for seven hours to get to Ft. Polk, Louisiana, with nothing more than a satchel containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, razor and shaving cream... I get the feeling of being transported in cattle trucks, very much like the ones we shipped cattle in, to my basic training company after spending the night sleeping on the pews of the Little Church and listening to the cockroaches the size of mice scurry across the floor... I get the feeling of being greeted by a seemingly very angry man with a stiff-brimmed, oddly shaped hat, who welcomed me and everyone else on the truck to beautiful Ft. Polk, Louisiana, with the kind words, Get your dog smelling asses off that truck...the last man off owes me 25 push-ups... I get the collective sinking feeling so prolific that it could almost be heard, of 80 young men of every walk of life..., from 80 different neighborhoods, telepathically saying to each other, What in the hell have I done?... I get the constant feeling of sitting on a razor blade anticipating I would be the next terribly unfortunate soul who would perform some unfortunate act that would place me on the Drill Sergeants radar screen for the next couple hours or days or weeks... I get the constant pressure of not wanting to be the terribly pitiful individual who did something ridiculously stupid enough to cause myself and 79 others to endure a group punishment of one of a variety of sadistic, yet mentally and physically demanding feats... I get the strangely mixed feeling of being utterly enraged at some unlucky individual who caused me and 78 other trainees to do push-ups 126 through 150 of the day--perhaps of the morning, while at the same time thanking the Lord above it wasnt me who caused it to happen... I get the cold, hard realization after just the first week, that we were going to do multitudes of push-ups and other physical tortures throughout the day and night whether somebody had truly screwed up or it was just a part of the diabolical time tried, regimented process... I get why there was a tombstone that was engraved with the words Here Lies I Cant, in front of a regulation 6x3x6 grave on the side of our barracks that was filled with rocks the size of a shoe--it was a training device, that I imagine was only used once per eight weeks ... I get why, after watching a sacrificial lamb who uttered the words I cant within earshot of our Drill Sergeant, spent the next two hours of his life taking the rocks out of the grave one at a time by hand, with 79 of his fellow soldiers in attendance and ordered not to help--and once done he was required to lie at the bottom of the grave and utter the words I cant for the next hour--it was disturbing, educational and cathartic--all at the same time... I get why I completely removed that word from my vocabulary and my mental headset--if you think it, you might say it, and why every time to this day when I hear the phrase, or God forbid say it, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up... I get why when he was told to get out of the hole and put back the rocks the way he found them, that a dozen or so of us helped him without being asked or told and not a word was exchanged between any of us, including the Drill Sergeant--lesson learned--enough said... I get the feeling of seeing someone perform a major fail of one type or another and using that other persons fail as a lesson and a personal incentive to not ever make that mistake... I get the feeling of coming to a point as an individual and as part of a group, where we could deal with and withstand any amount of whatever they threw at us, for however long they wanted to throw it... I get the feeling of why, when we got to that point, we would be able to smile at the same time, and in the same vicinity as the Drill Sergeant, and they actually smiled too... I get the feeling of personally enduring those weeks of intensive, life changing training, as well as sharing the times with 79 other people, and the feeling of individual and collective pride that occurred in all of us when we marched past the reviewing stand and did our eyes right at graduation--it was also obvious that the Drill Sergeants shared that pride--they had succeeded and we had succeeded--mutual victory, and we feared them no longer... I get the feeling of being on the bus leaving for the airport in New Orleans and looking out the window at the back of the Welcome to Ft. Polk sign and my head following around like an owl to get one more glimpse of the sign from the front--and it looked amazingly different than the night we drove in-- although the sign really hadnt changed a bit... And I really get why, whenever veterans of any age or branch of service, are in the same venue together, there is almost a surreal bond and comradery brought about by that first eight weeks we all experienced together in different places and different times and possibly different branches of the service... If you get what Im saying! Now to concentrate on the things I dont understand ☺
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 14:26:45 +0000
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