JJA #5 - Basic Training

Well, I first have to start with one more thing that should have been included in the Reception Post.


My very first Army photo. They take this photo before you even get to basic training, which I find odd, because alot of people drop out, so it should really be a graduation photo. Not only that but some folks lose ALOT of weight in Basic Training, so the picture just becomes a reminder of the pitiful excuse of a human being you were before you got all strong and manly and fit.


Anywho, here it is.

(click to enlarge)
The thing I remember about this morning is that they woke us up around 5 AM, shaved our head, then lined us up for the picture. The other funny thing is that the dress uniform has velcro in the back, so I walked up to the photographer in my jeans (I hadn't even gotten my Army issue clothes at this point), they slapped the uniform over my torso, plopped a hat on my head, and took a snap.
If I recall, I actually tried to smile, because I was feeling grumpy from waking up so early. I guess it didn't help much.

Anyway, on to Basic Training.
In the movies, you see fresh recruits get off a bus, and start to get immediately harrassed by their drill sergeants. I don't remember (big surprise) my first contact. I don't think it was as explosive as the movies, though.
I had the unfortunate displeasure of having 3 drill sergeants. Most of the platoons had just 2, but our class was the last for one drill sergeant, and the first for another. So, to help the new drill sergeant transition in to his new role, they had him in a platoon where one drill sergeant was "retiring".
Being a drill sergeant is a very tough job. They have to be up and perfect when they wake you up at 5 AM, and they are with you until 9 or 10 at night. The standard rotation for a drill sergeant is 2 years. Generally, the Army singles out people it thinks would do well in the position, and asks them to go through the Drill Sergeant school. Yes, there is a school for it. You have the option of refusing, but the refusal goes on your record, and it's not good for your career. Also, drill sergeants get a cool little patch that they can wear on their uniform for the rest of their Army career, so you can readily pick out the people who are or who have ever been a drill sergeant.
Back to BT.
One of the DSs was from Trinidad. This was bad, because no-one could understand his instructions. He would shout something, then we would look at each other in a panic, and start doing just something so we wouldn't look like we weren't trying. Also, it was only several years later that I actually learned the correct words to the cadences he would sing. We just mumbly shouted whatever syllabic approximations we thought he said without actually understanding anything. It was quite humorous.

Anyway, one of the first things they had us do was to learn their names. I remember we were in the barracks, in the "front leaning rest position" (that is basically the up position of a push up, except you just stay there not doing push ups) trying to shout their names in unison. Now, we couldn't all see each other, because there was a row of lockers in the middle of the barracks bay, so we just had to coordinate and eventually say their names in unison, loudly. I don't remember how long it took for us to get it. This was just the first of the mental torture devices they imposed on us.

More next time.




PS
Before you ask...no, its not done yet.

JJA #4 - Reception

From Harrisburg, they flew me to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for Basic Training. Now, in the movies, they show recruits arriving only to immediately encounter their screaming drill sergeant immediately. Well, in reality, they have to do some housekeeping before you can meet your drill sergeants.

This is called Reception.

I think I spent a total of 3 or 4 days in Reception.

They had us spent alot of time on "the mat".



They would have us wait here between the different stations that we needed to visit.




Some of the things they had us do here was get a haircut.


And yes, they actually made us pay $4 for it. The barbers were so fast that they cut one guys forehead while moving the shaver towards his head.



They also gave us all of our immunizations here. This was a very interesting experience. They used no needles for the shots. They had these hydraulic pressure guns that squirted the medicine in a high-pressure stream so that it would pierce your skin. They warned us not to flinch while getting the shots, otherwise we would have a gash in our arm. I got 3 shots in one arm, and 2 in the other. I saw some of the other guys flinch...





Then came the best shot. I think they stored this thing in the refrigerator, because the medicine was VERY cold. It was also so thick that it took 30 seconds to get it all in you. And they gave it to you in your butt.



Here was where we had to relinquish our civilian clothes and go all military. They took away everything that you brought with you, except your toiletry bag. They gave us new everything down to brown Army underwear that didn't quite fit, and horrible itchy hot green wool socks.

The elastic band of the underwear was so unelastic that a week into basic training it had cut into my sides so I had perpetual raw skin around my waist.


Here's a photo of the clothes line.




The boots also did not fit very well.

During the course of Basic Training, I got blisters on my feet. Then I got blisters on top of my blisters. Then I got blisters on top of those. To this day, I have large pads of skin on my toes where I got those blisters that were not there before the Army.




The guys who wore glasses had to give up their civilian glasses, and get Army issue glasses. We called them BCGs, or Birth Control Glasses. They made you so ugly that, well, you get the idea.


One other memorable experience from my time in Reception was the acclimatization process. There was record heat that summer in South Carolina, and right before I arrived, someone on post had died from heat stroke.
So they made us drink, and drink, and drink more water. 1 quart per hour if I recall correctly. I never peed so much in my life. They made us drink so much that one guy puked water all over the floor in front of me. No chunks, just water.

Next stop - Basic Training!

JJA #3 - Shipping out

Well, the long year wait was over, and all I needed to do was go. From what I recall, the recruiter gave me a report date, but it was actually before my high school graduation. I think my mom called to complain, and my report date magically moved to 3 days after graduation. June 21, 1993. I reported to the local high school bright and early and the recruiters drove us to Harrisburg for stage 1 of our inprocessing. 2 notable events happened while I was at Harrisburg: the big lie that I mentioned in a previous story, and the physical.

The Big Lie
I had already signed my enlistment papers a year prior. However, when I got to Harrisburg, they told me that my job required a 5 year enlistment. So, they ripped up my 4 year commitment paper, and had me sign a 5 year commitment. I was too naive/lazy to protest so I went with it. In hindsight I should have protested. When I got to language school NOONE had a 5 year enlistment. I was the only one.

The Physical
This was actually quite a funny experience. Imagine 60 guys in their underwear duckwalking around a big room. Part of the physical was making sure that everyone had a full range of motion in all of their limbs and joints. They had us do other weird things like hold our hands out and flick our fingers. I don't know how the Army was in the years past, but at least they didn't make us do the "turn your head and cough" in front of everyone else there. So they called us one by one into the doctors office for the more personal exam. The doctor was a small oriental man who had an accent. After examining the front parts, he needed to look in the trunk, so he said the phrase I will remember for the rest of my life: "BENN OHVAH AN SUPWHEDD YAWW TSEEEK". I winced expecting a finger, but thankfully none came (that happened later in my Army career and will be the subject of a future blog post).

After Harrisburg, they flew us to Basic Training.
Next stop: Arrival at Ft. Jackson.
Stay tuned!

JJA #2 - Recruitment

Recruiters are so notorious for lying that one line in a popular Army cadence goes:

My recruiter told me a lie
Join the Airborne and learn to fly

(for the unaware, the Airborne corps is composed of people who jump out of airplanes, which, technically speaking, is controlled flying)
My recruiter actually didn't lie to me too badly. It was only after I signed the papers that the big lie came, but I will get to that in a later post.

Anyway, I was the one that approached the recruiter. I chose the Army, or rather fate chose the Army for me, because it was a toss up between Army and Airforce, and the Airforce recruiter was out to lunch, so I talked to the Army recruiter. The rest is history. BTW, I had ruled out the Marines, cause I thought they were all nuts, and the Navy was out of the question for 2 reasons: they have a rank named after a bodily fluid, and their uniforms look stupid.
So, the Army it was.
I had one simple demand: I wanted to be a linguist.
Well, they said, not so fast. I needed to pass a couple of tests first.
The first test was the ASVAB. Kind of a general knowledge test. If you kept your eyes open for maybe one day in your high school career, you could pass this test, but there were some who tried to join along with me that had to "study up" cause they had failed it once or twice before and they REALLY wanted to join.
Anyway, having passed that with flying colors, I then had to take the DLAB: Defense Language Aptitude Battery. It supposedly measured your potential for learning a language. All I remember is that I scored a 112. Out of what I do not know, but it was high enough for them to accept me. This test was very difficult, probably more difficult than the SAT, although I took the SAT and DLAB about 6 years apart, so it is hard to really compare.
Well, with the tests under my belt, I was assigned the job code of 98G. You can look at this list to see all the job codes and descriptions that the Army has. My official title was Electronic Warfare Specialist or something like that.
All of this occurred the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. Now all I had to was graduate High school, and ship off once I graduated.

Next stop: Shipping off for Basic Training.
Stay tuned!

JJA - #1

Jeremy Joins the Army. - Episode 1

I was the type of kid who like to do ... nothing. Really. My idea of the perfect day was lounging around doing nothing. If you consider playing computer games and dissecting small forest fauna nothing, then you'd get a pretty good idea of what I spent my time on. So, you can imagine everyone's surprise when I announced out of the blue that I was going to join the military. This was the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. Somehow, I was smart enough to know that I would not have done well in college right out of high school. And, since I despised doing anything that I did not want to do, as evidenced by my A in German and F in Calculus, I thought I would go to the place where I would learn how to do one that I wanted to do...learn a language. My sister's friend had joined the Army language corps a year or 2 prior to my decision. That is what gave me the idea of joining the Army to learn a language. Everyone that I told at school laughed at me because I could barely do 10 pushups, and I ran the mile in just under 12 minutes.

Next stop...the recruitment process.