"Surviving the Cut"--female Captain gets Sapper Tab

I was watching a rerun of this show on the Military Channel just now; the Sapper Tab is awarded to troops who make it through the Sapper Leader Course. Combat engineers--the ones who build bridges and battlefield fortifications, lay and clear minefields, and that sort of thing.

The training looked grueling--rappelling down a tower and a cliff, basic survival training, anything the instructors could throw at them.

One of the graduates was a captain, a woman. You know, one of those delicate flowers the conservative military experts say are too weak and fragile to make it in battle?

Oh wait--most of those conservatives are cowards who dodged the draft themselves. That "delicate flower" outlasted most of the big, tough manly men in her class.

Google Earth, Basic Training: GRENADE!!

I always seemed to miss out on the "fun" days in Basic.

I was on KP the day our Company went into the gas room; we kitchen-cleaners were run out to the site about the time everyone else was staggering out of the building, a line of poor bastards with their gas masks off and snot, tears, puke and phlegm pouring out of them in varying amounts.

I got a whiff of the stuff, but for whatever reason we KP warriors didn't get to play. I don't feel bad.

I can't remember whether it was KP or Company Driver duty that nearly made me miss grenade day. If I wasn't enthusiastic about the instant sunburn and mucus overload, I can't say the same about the grenade range.

A handful of us were driven out to the range and given the sketchiest walk-through of the care and feeding of the various grenades. We could hear the efforts (BOOOM!!) of the group ahead of ours. Thumb goes on (BOOOM!!) the "spoon," pull the pin, throw (BOOOM!!) the damn thing and duck. They shuffled us out (BOOOM!!) to the range, where we lined up in a concrete (BOOOM!!) bunker, put on heavy flak vests, and led us (BOOOM!!) out in (BOOOM!!) twos.

Now I and my "buddy" were in a big concrete box taller than our heads (or maybe we were just ducking and covering?), open to the sky. The sergeant reminded us how to hold, how to pull, how to throw. My "buddy" yanked the pin and did a straight-armed John Wayne toss over the wall...BOOOM!!

My turn. Thumb goes here, pull the pin--

The impatient sergeant grabbed the baseball-shaped grenade (the "spoon" flew off...and now the damn thing was armed) and hefted it over the wall...BOOOM!!

It's not like I was taking my damn time with it. Maybe he just wanted to be done. *shrug*.

We were herded back to our jobs and that was that.

A few nights ago, spying on Ft. Jackson, I found a pair of grenade ranges side by side, one looking unused and maybe falling apart, the other much cleaner. The older one is scarred mostly by rain runoff from the higher ground surrounding the pit. The newer one is pocked with craters:

Haven't found the gas house yet.

Google Earth and Basic Training

I haven't been back to Fort Jackson, South Carolina since I finished Basic in 1987. I've visited a few times via Google Earth, looking for memories. The barracks building was easy enough, and the site of the church we got frog-marched to because some zealous sergeant wanted to watch a holiday gospel concert. The church isn't there, anymore.

I didn't do it.

It was more of a challenge to find some of the firing ranges way out to the east, places where we spent most of our time when we were learning the M-16, M-60, LAW anti-tank rocket, and grenades. The basic rifle ranges are arranged in a loop. The last time spied around, Google Earth's low-altitude imaging wasn't very good. This time, though, I could see foxhole positions on each firing line, blasted cars and trucks, and bleachers where green trainees are taught the basics of killin' stuff.

But I hadn't been able to find the Big One, where we'd had our "live fire" exercise.

For this one, we had to sit in the bleachers after dark, waiting for our eyes to fully adjust to the night. Then we marched along a dirt road and found our way into a long trench. I was somewhere near the middle.

"You're going to climb this wall and hit the deck," we were told. "If you stand up, one of those M-60's at the other end of the course might take the top of your helmet off, so stay the hell down! There's a barbed wire obstacle--all you have to do is roll over on your back and shimmy under it. Just remember NOT TO STAND UP."

Right around then, the 60's started firing, every 5th round a tracer. A bright red flare rocketed into the sky and burst, casting its light on everything (so much for night vision).

Showtime! We went up over the wall, yelling and crawling in the dirt. I could see a low line of sandbags ahead of me. There was a flash and a gut-liquefying BOOOM that earplugs didn't do much about. Those of us near those damn sandbags crabbed sideways in case those ball-breaking bastards set off another blast.

Stay low, keep crawling, rifle slung across my forearms...there's the BOOOM barbed wire (shit! there's another sandbagged pit to the right, so the guys on that end of the line get to crap themselves this time). My knees and elbows felt sandpapered. Stay low...keep crawling. Damn helmet kept riding down my forehead.

No idea how long it took to negotiate the course. It always seems like forever. Everything distilled down to staying low and crawling, ignoring the sand working its way down my sleeves and grinding into my knees. I could see the towers from which the machine guns were firing--and then I was past them, getting to my feet and leaving the course.

I never laid eyes on the place again until last night, when I finally found it in Google Earth. Not as big as it had seemed from a worm's-eye view:

(click to largify)

It's only 200 feet wide and 600 feet long; the starting trench is about 200 feet up from a long, high pile of red dirt (the bullet catcher); the three sandbag-ringed pits, zigzagged obstacles, and machine gun towers stand out much better in daylight.

I got a chuckle out of one detail in the picture: from the trench line, you can clearly see a few dozen belly tracks. It looks like quite a few trainees headed for that middle pit only to have it blow up on them--you can even see where they damn near backtracked to get around the thing.

Song of the Day: Burn in Hell (Twisted Sister)

One of my favorite torture devices for the fundie mind.

When you're done with Basic Training, your next stop is AIT--Advanced Individual Training--where you learn the skills of your specialty. In my case, it was a Signal Corps (communications) job, 31N or Patch Panel Operator.

I was one of only two 31N students in the barracks building; most of the guys in my 8-man dorm were 31M radio operators, but we only ever had 7 guys.

One of them was sane for the first two weeks...but then the Dear John letter arrived that turned him into Private Preacher. His girlfriend left him for someone else. Pvt. Preacher melted down and found religion and in the grand tradition of religion-finders he wanted the rest of us--the entire Army base--to find it, too.

I wasn't digging, which made me into Pvt. Preacher's project. He couldn't understand how I could fail to be enthralled by the great sales pitches, impressed by the promise of Life Eternal, and all that. I patiently explained each time that I didn't believe in that stuff, and had the dog tags to prove it (granted, the Army in its wisdom only authorized me to be NO REL PREF, instead of ATHEIST, which is kind of close but not really accurate...like many other government situations).

So Pvt. Preacher rebuked me each time, only to come back for another go.

Then I discovered Preacher's kryptonite.

I'd picked up a tape of Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry album (1984), the one with "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock," which were still getting pretty heavy airplay in early 1987.

Not a bad album--but that one golden track, the one that made the Preacher scurry around, was "Burn in Hell."

He tried several times to get me into deep philosophical discussions over this one song. DEEP?! Twisted Sister, deep?! Bahahahahahahaaaaaaaa! Thoughtful, maybe, but not deep.

"Aren't you afraid you're gonna go to hell, listening to that?"

He couldn't understand the song's message even after I pulled out the lyrics and read them to him. Sad:

You can't believe all the things I've done wrong in my life
Without even trying I've lived on the edge of a knife
Well, I've played with fire, but I don't want to get myself burned
To thine own self be true, so I think that it's time for a turn

Before I burn in hell
Oh, burn in hell

Take a good look in your heart, tell me what do you see?
It's black and it's dark, now is that how you want it to be?
It's up to you, what you do will decide your own fate
Make your choice now for tomorrow may be far too late

That looks like a cautionary tale to me, not a "Hey, come join me, let's eat some Christian baby BBQ and piss in the holy water fountain!"

After a few weeks, Pvt. Preacher gave up on his mission to convert me, rebuked me a final time, and moved on to annoy other people. I still get a chuckle out of the song.

Kind of a pity, though, that Marilyn Manson wasn't scaring fundies yet.

The more they stay the same...

Why can't religious pricks just leave others alone?

I've been reading about the Virginia army officer prick who's established his own little glee club called the Spiritual Fitness Concert Series and the troops who got punished for not being on fire for the Lard.

I am so pleased that I got the hell out of the military before this shit got as bad as it has. It's bad enough that one can't escape the stupid fundie zombies who shamble around or stand on street corners, desperate to infect others with their idiocy. But here we have such an asshole with the power of military rank (what amounts to the weight of government backing of the asshole's religion) and the ability to penalize troops whose religious beliefs (or lack thereof) aren't acceptable.

This fundie shitbird needs to lose his commission and get drummed out.

I got lucky. The Army I and the guys I trained with wasn't as infected with the fundie sickness. There were a few run-ins with overzealous NCO's, like the moron who frog-marched my entire company of Basic trainees to a gospel concert, the idiot who confiscated my deck of Tarot cards to "save my soul" (I got them back in a couple of days from a higher-ranking guy), and the goofball who told me that Jeeebus is my Lard and Savor when he found out I planned to play rock music with my shiny new guitar.

Yes, there's a lack of respect for rank. That's another reason I am pleased to have left that crap behind 20 years ago. I firmly believe that rank should go to those who are worth a shit--and not to useless morons who turn that rank into a megaphone for their own little agendas, political, religious or otherwise. I've seen enough of such people in the workplace, in the dojo, in the family, and elsewhere that I go for contempt first and respect later--when it's earned. Not really a team player.

We didn't have the resources to fight this creeping religious stupidity that are available to the troops today:

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Still...it's going to be an uphill fight to bulldoze all the stupid out of the military. One of my favorite lines in the original M*A*S*H movie sums it up for me: "Goddamn Army."

Me and Sergeant Allstate

My time in the Army National Guard was 6 years of me counting down the remaining time. I enjoyed Basic and Advanced Individual Training (AIT--where you learn your "specialty"); I just remembered that it was all a mind-game.

I've got some deep-set objections to external authority, so the "obey-me-because-I-outrank-you" mindset isn't a good fit for me. It didn't endear me to the insurance salesman they brought in to be my supervisor (I won't call him my superior)--not when I had to train him. Let's call him Sgt. Allstate, for the insurance salesman thing and because I was supposedly in his good hands to be molded into a proper soldier.

Heh.

My specialty was 31-N, "Patch Panel Operator" (though the military preferred "Tactical Circuit Controller" because it sounded more important and technical). Bare-bones, I plugged patch cords into jacks on one of three panels, troubleshot them if communications from Officer 'A' couldn't reach Officer 'B' 30 miles away, and counted down the days 'till I could go Echo Tango Suitcase.

Sgt. Allstate made me his project: I would be promoted from Spec-4 (basically a Corporal) to Sergeant! He started by writing me up for carrying a clipboard around. It's not part of the basic uniform.

I ALWAYS have a notepad, notebook, scrap of paper, something I can scribble notes and ideas on.

The write-up sheet (the Army calls it a "Counseling Statement") had a block for my comments right under the block where Sgt. Allstate wrote, "Specialist [me] is impairing his chances for promotion by being out of uniform." In my block, I replied with "I'm not interested in promotion."

Seriously. I wasn't interested. I wasn't being a wise-ass, trying to fight The Man over taking my clipboard away. I don't consider myself management material...and going to E-5 would be a step in the managerial direction.

Sgt. Allstate didn't like that. He kept at it for the next 4 years!

His Operation Big Sale happened one evening during a field exercise. He tried to make it conversational, casual, building up to his triple-pincer attack, whereby he would have surrounded his quarry and rendered me defenseless to say "No!"

First prong: "You'll have more responsibility." C'mon. I was STILL training him in his job while doing my own--and training a couple of newbies to be my replacements. I was The Man, the only one trained in operating the Patch van. It seemed to me that already had plenty of responsibility.

Second: "You'll make more money!" I was making $130 a month for each 2-day weekend drill. Taking that promotion would have put me around $150 or so. Not enough to make me want to join Management.

Third: "You won't have to do K.P. anymore." Hah! He really didn't understand. If you had K.P., you got there when everyone else did, around 7:30 a.m., helped the Mess Sergeant, washed the pots and dishes, and went home a couple hours early. I always looked at it as an escape from Sgt. Allstate.


I just shook my head and told him, "No." He couldn't understand that. I didn't try to explain.

His final attempt was almost insulting; this time not only was he trying to sell me on promotion, but my time was getting short and he was trying to get me to re-enlist. He mentioned the re-up bonus, but his Big Bonus was...a cheap-looking Swiss Army Knife, complete with cheap-looking gift box. Two blades (short and shorter), I think a can/bottle opener, and a plastic toothpick.

Sheesh.

Columbo!

No, not the detective.

Back in 1986, just before I went into Basic, I had to go to the Fitness Training Company. I couldn't pass the minimum on the sit-ups test.

All we did was work out--jogging, push-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, weights, push-ups, and push-ups. Our Assistant Drill Sergeant was a cool guy from Kingston, complete with the accent, mon, but without the Eddie Grant dreadlocks. One afternoon, he took us out on a little hike and called a "cadence" that was...frowned upon by the powers that be.

This is a cleaner version of it--not nearly as raunchy as the one we did:

In eighteen hundred and ninety four,
in the streets of old Bigotti.
There lived a young Italian lad,
selling hot tomalies.
He said the world was round-o,
he said it could be found-o.
The hypothetical, navigatin', son-of-a-bitch Columbo.

The queen she gave him three tall ships,
they all were triple deckers.
The queen she waved her handkerchief,
Columbo waved his pecker
He said the the world was round-o,
he said it could be found-o.
That hypothetical, navigatin', son-of-a-bitch Columbo.

His first mate was a cabin boy,
a dirty little nipper.
They lined his bunk with broken glass,
and circumcised the skipper.
He said the world was round-o,
he said it could be found-o.
That hypothetical, navigatin', son-of-a-bitch Columbo.

It was a welcome change from stuff like this:

Here we go again
Same old stuff again
Marching down the avenue
Six more weeks and we'll be through
I'll be glad and so will you

This was the era of the "New Army"--the cadences had to be cleaned, the Drills couldn't touch you (to administer attitude adjustments), couldn't curse, lots of new rules. I don't think I missed out, really, given my attitude toward authority types. The people I trained with in Basic were smart and knew their stuff, and they were some of the few authority figures I've ever actually respected. I don't think I'd have made it, though, with the R. Lee Ermey approach to Drill Instructors. Still, it makes for great cinema, seeing him in "Full Metal Jacket."

Basic Training was the most fun I've ever had--but when my ETS date came up on August 3, 1992, I walked away and haven't even considered going back: the authority figures in my home unit were lacking. My immediate superior was an insurance salesman who had to be trained by yours truly before he could do his job. More about him...later.

Basic Training & Private Key's hair

I went into Basic on October 1, 1986. I didn't pass the Physical Fitness test, so I got sent over to the Fitness Training Company for a few weeks of pushups, sit-ups, weights, jogs, and the dreaded exercise bike.

Once I was fit enough to leave there, I was assigned to B-Company 6-2-4 (6th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 4th Platoon).
We awoke daily at 4:30, hit the mess hall by 5 a.m., and were ready to head out by 5:30, Monday through Sunday.

Sundays were more relaxed--no regular training, but those of us who didn't go to church services ended up cleaning the barracks (if I remember correctly, they had a share of cleanup when they came back, so it worked out). You could talk, hang out, whatever, as long as the work was getting done, but sleeping was a no-no.

Private Key sagged down between lockers and fell asleep.

Drill Sergeant Driscoll came out of his office to check on things. He got this grin on his face and held a single finger to his lips, then whispered: "Sshhh! Someone get me their shaving cream!"

Thus armed, he made a good-sized pile of the stuff on Key's head, then snuck back to his office. "Give me a minute."

Silence for a few moments.

"PRIVATE KEY! Come to my office!"

We had to wake the sleeper up--careful not to disturb his decoration. Key un-assed the floor and went to the office. We followed as quietly as we could.

"Sergeant Driscoll, Private Key reporting as ordered!" (I assume he saluted)

Silence for a few moments.

"Private...what is that on your head?"

Confused--then shocked--silence, then a stammered, "I--I don't know, Sergeant."

"Clean it up--and give me fifty for sleeping."

Frog-Marched to Church!

In the waning days of Basic Training, in mid-December [actually, it was November 11--J.] of 1986, there came a Sunday evening when some religious-type sergeant on CQ duty ("Charge of Quarters"--he's basically handling the administrative stuff, managing the troops on guard duty, etc.) decided that since he was stuck on CQ, EVERYone had to come with him.

He wanted to go to the Christmas chorus concert being held up the hill in a local church. The entire Company (Bravo 6-2) had to suit up, form up, and march 2,000 feet so this goofball could enjoy himself. There weren't many objections aside from mine and one other guy: both of us were nonbelievers. And since all the higher-ups who didn't have duty were gone for the night, there was no one to stop it.

So we marched. At some point I started up that mental tape deck and cued up Def Leppard's "Pyromania" album. "Rock! Rock! Till You Drop" got us across the parking lot. It might have been "Too Late For Love" by the time we got to the church doors.

As we filed into the little building, we filed into the pews. My platoon ended up about three-fourths of the way back, on the left side. If I looked straight up and little to the rear, I could see the people in the balcony seats.

The minister came in to mumble some prayers. Everyone else stood up.

I stayed seated. Yeah, maybe it was "rude" (I don't think so), but it'd be hypocritical of me to stand up and go through the motions just to make everyone else happy if I don't feel the same way. I'd be lying, and lying is wrong, isn't it?

So I sat.

I sat and looked around me. There were some offended faces glaring at me from the pews behind, and looking down upon me from the balcony. I glared back and stayed put.

The choir filed in and started their gig. They made so much noise I lost my place in Def Lep's "Rock of Ages" and had to start over. For two hours they danced and sang, the audience clapped and stood and prayed and amened and glared at the asshole who wasn't playing along.

The asshole ran out of Def Leppard songs and started on John William's "Star Wars" soundtrack, from the 20th Century Fox Fanfare to the droids' walk in the desert to Luke's finding his dead aunt and uncle to being captured by the Death Star to freeing the Princess to blowing that thing and going home to everyone but Chewbacca getting a medal to the final notes of the ending titles.

If I'd had a laptop and wireless Internet, I'd have been reading Pharyngula, if it had existed in 1986.

Finally all the sectarian turmoil wound down and we lined up, formed up, and marched back to the barracks. By this time it was between 10 pm and 11 pm, and the evening was shot. A waste.