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“Me?” he answered, pointing at himself. “Johnson, sir.”
“Don’t you sir me, trainee. I work for my pay. Where you from, Johnson?”
“Lickskillet, Kentucky, Drill Sergeant.” The rest of us were attempting to suppress our laughter.
“Lickskillet! What kind of place is that?”
“That’s a small place, Drill Sergeant,” Johnson answered with a thick Southern drawl. Some trainees could not suppress their laughter on that note.
“Well, in the interest of equality, you’re the second squad leader. Any military brats?” Staff Sergeant Ford asked.
I raised my hand.
“Yo’ daddy Army?” He walked up to me.
“No, Drill Sergeant. Navy, submarines,” I responded.
“Well, you is now the third squad leader. Hope he taught you something. What’s your name?”he asks.
“Cory, Dan, drill Sergeant,” I respond.
“Well, which is it? Dan Cory or Cory Dan?”he asks with some frustration.
“Dan Cory, Drill Sergeant.”
He wrote my name on his clipboard. “Why didn’t you join the Navy?”
“I want to go to flight school,” I answered.
“Another flight school wannabe! Anyone else here a wannabe flight school peeloot?” He looked around the room. Over half the guys in the room raised their hands, to include the three selected squad leaders.
“You too, Johnson?” This surprised all of us. Johnson just didn’t seem that swift.
“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” Johnson answered.
Staff Sergeant Ford looked down and shook his head as he started laughing. Looking up finally, he said, “Let me tell y’all something. You learn real good here in basic, because over half of y’all are going to fail in that there flight school and find yourselves in the infantry, humping a rucksack in Vietnam. So, y’all learn good here. Understood!”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” the group responded.
After selecting his fourth squad leader, Staff Sergeant Ford stated, “Now when I tell y’all to fall out, y’all do so quickly and line up on yo’ four squad leaders with yo’ toes on the cables. Normally, we would go to chow now. However, I do believe y’all need some exercise, so we will be going to the Hill on the way to the mess hall. Crawford!”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” he responded.
“Crawford, when y’all get back from the mess hall, I expect you to show these ladies how to set up their wall lockers, footlockers and bunks. They did teach you that in the Navy, didn’t they?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”
“Now, fall out on the cables!” And we bolted out of the barracks and fell in a platoon formation.
The Hill was a hundred-yard dirt-and-gravel field with a steep slope of fifty feet at one end. We were lined up by squad in four ranks of ten. On command, we had to crawl to the top of the slope. When I reached the top, my hands, knees and elbows were raw. For the next three days, we revisited the Hill each evening before chow. On the third day, I was really feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly, I had a come to Jesus moment. Hey, dumbass, you volunteered to be here. You weren’t drafted, you quit college and “volunteered” for this shit, so stop your crying and suck it up!
And I did. Suddenly that crawl wasn’t so bad. In fact, I found myself enjoying it. I picked up my pace and reached the top in record time, whereupon I became a damn cheerleader, screaming words of encouragement to my fellow soldiers. If I’d had pompoms, I would have used them, I was so fired up. Next thing I knew, everyone who had made it to the top was yelling words of encouragement to the guys still coming up. That was the last time we crawled the Hill.
The mess hall entry entailed an interesting exercise as they moved two hundred trainees through there for breakfast and dinner. Lunch was usually served wherever we were training. We lined up by platoons outside the mess hall on the cables. Never missing an opportunity to conduct physical training, the drill sergeants would have us doing pushups, flutter kicks or sit-ups until it was our turn to enter. However, before entering, one had to negotiate the overhead bars and then do six pull-ups. Those who did not accomplish these tasks received extra training from the drill sergeant supervising the chow line.
As we entered the mess hall, we grabbed eating utensils and a cafeteria tray that was also our dinner plate and moved along the cafeteria line. The mess hall dining area was about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide with a center aisle. Tables with bench seats for ten trainees on each side of the table radiated from the center to the walls. We didn’t talk; we just moved, and other trainees that were on kitchen police put food on our trays. No one cared if the food was appetizing or eaten; that was up to the recipient.
We quickly found a seat and started to eat. A drill sergeant hovered around the room, and if we took longer than two minutes to consume our food, we were told to get out. “Eat fast and haul ass!” was a common command. We didn’t even consider having a cup of coffee or a cigarette after eating. Generally, we started eating before we sat down and kept shoveling food in as we moved out the back door.
