Other units balk at our existence. We are intruders, a sign of the End Times, the feminist-driven social experiment that will bring about the ruin of the US Army, and they will not abide us quietly. Running in the morning, we pass another unit, all male, as all the units seem to be. Their drill sergeant halts mid-cadence, taking in the dirty hair buns peppered throughout the platoon, the telltale sign of a woman beneath all that green. He’s silent for a moment, as if we’ve rendered him speechless. Then he grins, rolls back his shoulders, and calls out a new cadence.
“We’re going to rape, kill, pillage, burn!” he calls.
“We’re going to rape, kill, pillage, burn,” his soldiers shout back.
“Gonna rrrraaape, kill, pillage, burn!” he sings, a predatory purr, and they growl back, all teeth, grinning at their drill sergeant’s joke, at the balls of it, rolling out the word, prolonging the sound of it into the Oklahoma air.
Another day, another platoon rushes past us, filled with angry eyes, chanting, “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Catch a virgin by the toe. If she hollers, let her go. On the other hand, hell no!”
Our drill sergeants are better. They don’t make us sing about rape, but that’s as far as concessions go. This is Fort Sill, after all. Instead, it’s just the dick jokes that are prolific. Drill sergeants never pass up a chance for a good homoerotic slur:
“Take that dick out of your mouth, Private! I can’t hear you!” a drill sergeant screams into the face of a male soldier.
“Why you looking at me, soldier!” The drill sergeant rounds on a teenage boy, standing so close that his lips must brush the Private’s ear. “You’re looking like you wanna fight me or fuck me. Either way, I’m on top!”
“Privates, you’re more ate up than a dick at a gay bar!”
“Private, if it were raining women, you’d get hit by a faggot!”
“Private! Why are you waiting for cocks to fall out of the sky? Close your goddamn mouth!”
And then there is the degrading of anything feminine or female:
“Goddamn, Privates, you’re slow! What, you got sand in your vaginas? Keep moving!”
“Why do you sound like a hysterical woman when you sound off, soldier? If I wanna hear a bitch scream, I’ll visit your mother!”
We’re all ladies, pussies, bitches.
And “Suck my cock.” “Eat my dick.” “Taste my Johnson, Private!”—all of which is perfectly unremarkable when screamed male-to-male, but even the best drill sergeant squirms when he inadvertently demands a female recruit get on her knees and take his dick six inches in. His eyes flare wide, his jaw clips shut, and he rounds on a male soldier instead, spouting off the same demand, as if to show he’s not serious, he’s really not propositioning her. Some drill sergeants have a harder time aligning themselves with the reality of women in their ranks.
Then there is the degrading in general, not gender-specific, but always innovative and unique:
“Soldier, you better get your shit together before I time-travel and kick your mom in the stomach.”
“Beat your face till you turn pretty, Private!”
Another drill sergeant chimes in, “We’ll all die waiting!”
“Never have I seen so many abortion survivors!” or “Private, I can see the hanger scars on your face.”
The perpetual order to “Unfuck yourself.”
* * *
Drill sergeants are made to break you, these monstrosities that never eat, never sleep, never laugh, uniforms flawlessly pressed, pristine, as if the Army birthed them into perfection. They are well trained in how to dismantle our brains and rebuild them as they see fit. Break, break, break, they whisper, and we do, in a thousand different ways. The brain snaps under the stress until it simply reacts, all training, no thinking, because that is what a good, effective soldier does. We shave precious seconds off reaction times. Basic training isn’t about reforming the body but instead, the mind.
“It’s all a mind fuck,” we’re told by everyone who came before us, and it is. It is and we bond in our shared misery. Embrace the suck. Embrace the suck! Until our brains are stripped of the civility of civilian life and we realize it’s all fucking hilarious. Because come on, it kind of is.
And the drill sergeants we should hate, who glory in watching us crack and spill open onto the floor, we love. “As long as you live, you’ll never forget your drill sergeant’s name,” promises Drill Sergeant B, a tall, lanky man, graying at the temples. He’s salty, old-school salty, rejecting the evolving Army, and hard, from the muscles lining his chest to the severe cut of his eyes and the way his black eyebrows angle down across his forehead. “Fifty years from now, some asshat will ask your drill sergeant’s name and you’ll know it better than your own.” And I do, Drill Sergeant B, named here by the first letter of his name because no other name will do.
In scant moments between formations, the men and women in our platoon secretly practice our marching, adding an extra step into a cadence, a little flair performed in unison, and we show it off for him on the way to the mess hall, dragging our left foot in perfect time, our little surprise for him. He stands with fists at his hip. There is something like a smile on his face, fast and fleeting. He turns to one of the other drill sergeants.
“You see that? That’s my platoon,” he boasts. We swell at his pride, throwing our shoulders back, voices loud in cadence, eager to perform, ready to bleed for Daddy’s approval.
There’s a reason they like us so young, with our teenage brains, so malleable, so ready for indoctrination. Humans have a natural aversion to killing, and that just won’t do. The recruits are desensitized to violence; we breathe, eat, sleep, shit around the concept until it’s ever present. It becomes second nature.
Through the field he was walkin’.
In my sights I was stalkin’.
It’s a One Shot Kill from the top o’ the hill.
Stalkin’ in a Sniper’s Wonderland.
In the town there is a lady.
In her arms there is a baby.
You lock and load one round, baby hits the ground.
Stalkin’ in a Sniper’s Wonderland.
In the meadow we can plant some claymores.
Camouflage and bury ’em real well.
Kill the Commie bastards while they’re sleepin’.
And blow their God-less souls straight to hell.
Later on, in the village.
As we burn and we pillage.
It’s a One Shot Kill from the top o’ the hill.
Stalkin’ in a Sniper’s Wonderland.
We sing awkwardly at first, stumbling over our new boots, the words spilling out just to appease drill sergeants. I internally writhe a little, staring up at the faces around me as we sing of murdering children. But it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. And in the beginning it doesn’t matter because I’m an awful little soldier. I gasp and gag during the runs. My arms shake during push-ups. At the range, in the prone position with an M16 tucked into my left shoulder, my foot keeps jetting upward.
“What the fuck is this?” Drill Sergeant B kicks my ankle when it swings up into the air.
I grunt at the pain and try to tuck my foot back down. I’m sprawled out on my stomach, squinting to see the green, man-shaped targets. One pops up. I shoot.
“Dostie! Stick that foot in the air one more time and I’ll shove my boot so far up your ass, you’ll taste Kiwi till the second coming of Christ.” He shoves the toe of his boot hard into my upper thigh, hard enough to nearly flip me over. I gasp in surprise, trying to hide the pain, slamming my foot back to the soil. He hovers there, boot pulled back, ready to deliver more physical guidance. I grit my teeth, concentrating on keeping it on the ground, and miss the target entirely.
Drill Sergeant B stares down the line, at the green man target wavering slightly in the wind, and simply shakes his head. “What the fuck, Private.”
I’m no better at grenades. I shiver in the live-bay pit, grenade clasped to my
heart with both shaking hands. My knees are weak. Drill Sergeant T, the stupidly sexy drill sergeant with the barrel chest and Disney Prince cleft chin, stands beside me in the cement pit.
“Prepare to throw,” he barks. I pull the grenade back near my head, the other arm held out straight for sight guidance. “Pull the pin. Come on, soldier, pull the pin!” My fingers fumble with the tiny ring pin. “Prepare to throw. Throw!” And I hurl that live grenade downrange as hard as I can. It leaves my fingertips, twirls gloriously in the air with a hopeful arc, and then buries itself straight into the ground a few meters away.
“Well, fuck,” Drill Sergeant T grumbles, and grabs me, throwing me down, his heavy body pressed over mine as we wait a span of seconds for the deafening explosion that rocks the cement pit. I feel the vibrations in my chest. My ears ring. At least I threw it far enough not to kill us, I think, but he’s still annoyed.
“Are you trying to kill me, Private?” Drill Sergeant T screams down into my face. I stare up at him, my gums still pulsating. “I’m not trying to die in a shithole with you,” he adds, dragging me to my feet.
I suck. I suck. I suck.
* * *
And then I don’t. One day I bang out push-ups, up, down, smooth and quick. I move up a group on morning runs. In the evenings, sitting in formation on the hard pavement, my boots shine the best. Drill Sergeant R strolls up and down the line, bottom jaw jutted out, lower lip pressed out over the top, as if her face is at war with itself, the lower territory slowly invading the north. She pauses as she inspects my boot-shining skills. The black toes gleam like cut obsidian. She grunts in approval.
“Five minutes of phone time,” she begrudgingly awards me and I leap to my feet, running to the pay phones to call my mom.
In first aid I shine. It’s simple memorization and recitation but I outperform others in my platoon. I can spout off signs, symptoms, and treatments at will, in perfect order, and I can’t figure out why some of the others struggle with the information.
In the mess hall line, drill sergeants quiz us on the chain of command as we wait for our food. I never miss a question. Memorize and recite: Enlisted: Private, Private First Class, Specialist, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Sergeant First Class, First Sergeant/Master Sergeant, Sergeant Major, Command Sergeant Major, Sergeant Major of the Army. Officer: Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General, General, General of the Army. I know them all.
“You’re one of those smart ones,” Drill Sergeant T says one day, pulling me out of line. This is news to me. In my old life I was ballsy, an outlier, but I’m not used to being one of the smartest people in the room. He sits on the edge of a table, one leg half up, elbow braced against his knee. “One of those Military Intel people.”
“Now, there’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one,” Drill Sergeant B chuckles, almost a laugh. He stands to the side, arms crossed over his chest, examining his nails.
“Drill Sergeant, yes, Drill Sergeant.” I’m one of a tiny few Military Intelligence soldiers transferred here. Fort Sill is better known for its artillery training than its intelligence.
“What’s your MOS?”
“Drill Sergeant, Japanese interrogator, Drill Sergeant.” I assume. I’m not promised a specific language at the Military Entrance Processing Station when I enlist, although my recruiter makes sure DLI is written bold and proud on my contract.
He whistles low, leaning back a little. “You speak that Ching-chong?”
“Drill Sergeant, I speak some Japanese, Drill Sergeant.”
“Well, go ahead then.” He gestures vaguely at me. “Speak some.”
“Drill Sergeant…what, now? Like, what do you want me to say—”
Drill Sergeant B looks up from under his Smokey Bear campaign hat. “What you stuttering about, soldier? You heard him. Say something in Japanese.”
So I spout off a few lines, talking about how I hope to become proficient one day, a casual conversation with myself about my love for the language and its complexities. The two drill sergeants stare and I stutter out, mumbling the last sentences.
Drill Sergeant T rocks back slightly, brow high. “You sound like one of those Jap cartoon characters,” he says, and his voice is just a shade different—not as deep, not that terrifying rumble in the chest that stops Privates dead in their tracks. Then he remembers himself, crinkling his brow. “Did you just cuss me out in Oriental, soldier?” But he lacks conviction. His heart isn’t into it.
“What are you doing standing here, soldier?” Drill Sergeant B saves him. “Get back in line.”
But it’s said perfunctorily, and I trot back to the mess hall line, grinning because this is the closest thing to honest praise I’ll get from them, and I love it.
I love it. I love it. I embrace it all; I embrace the suck. I gobble it all down, the dirt, the anger, the power, that fucking power. I am greater than me, I am one of many, one part of a whole, an important toggle in the well-oiled machine that is this glorious Army, the best goddamn military this world has ever seen. I am bigger than me, fist up in the air, chanting kill, kill, kill.
Went to the playground, where all the kiddies play,
Pull out my Uzi, and I begin to spray!
Left, right, left, right, left right, KILL!
Left, right, left, right, you know I will!
Go to the mall, where all the ladies shop,
Pull out my machete, and I begin to chop!
Left, right, left, right, left right, KILL!
Left, right, left, right, you know I will!
It rumbles from the toes, shivers up the spine, sits at the back of the lips and pours out with vigor and zeal. I am fierce, I am fire, kill, kill, kill, head thrown back, screaming with delight to the skies. Kill. Kill. Kill. I am the happy convert.
Mostly.
Because we’re sitting in the deck hall, casually testing the journey of a dud bullet from magazine to muzzle by running through all the motions of live fire without the live bullet, and one of the M16s behind me goes off, a live round whizzing past my ear with a quiet little hiss, and embeds itself into the ceiling above.
Drill Sergeant B stands there for a moment, staring at the round nuzzled deep into wood and stone above, a little shocked. “Drop your weapon! Put it down, NOW!” And he rushes us outside, into the parking lot, far from our abandoned rifles.
I keep bringing my hand up to my ear, to where I could have sworn I had felt my hair stir, to where that hiss still burned in my ear canal, and I do the unthinkable. I burst into tears.
Drill Sergeant B turns to me from the front of the platoon. The other drill sergeants linger behind in the hall, examining the smoking weapon, the ammo, clumped together in what might be misconstrued as fear, as if perhaps they realize they almost just killed a Private or two. “Dostie! Why are you crying?”
I clench my fists, try to be hard, to be the better version of me, fat tears rolling down my flushed cheeks, but all I can think about is how my muzzle hadn’t been facing up toward the ceiling. They weren’t treating the activity that seriously, they didn’t keep on us to make sure our muzzles were pointed upward for gun safety, and mine had been lazy, trailing a little down, in the direction of the heads in front of me. “My weapon wasn’t pointed up,” I sob; I hiccup. “If it went off, I would’ve shot someone.” I could’ve killed someone. I could’ve killed someone.
The girl next to me rolls her eyes. There are only a handful of us girls here and I’m embarrassing her. “Don’t mind her, Drill Sergeant. She’s soft like that.” I raise my chin, trying to turn off the tears, to not be soft like that, but I can’t.
“Dostie.” Drill Sergeant B shakes his head slightly at me. “We’re in the business of killing people.” His stare is hard and serious. “You better get yourself right.”
Get right. Get ready to kill. I want to hate that part of me that cries at the thought, but I’m not sure I do. I want to hold on to this tiny bit o
f softness, the softness that has no place here in the world where we sing Christmas carols to the lyrics of murder and plunder. I want to keep that little bit of me. I won’t be like that, I think. I will never want to kill, I will never burn for it, I’ll never shimmer and shine with uncontained violence.
How naive I am.
Cry “Havoc”
Fog shrouds the hills of Monterey, obscuring the Army base from view. I arrive at night, just out from basic training, alone, worn threadbare from memories that still ache with bitter winds, frozen uniforms, and the dark glares of drill sergeants. “The fog is a government experiment,” someone once said to me, pointing up at the white, dense cloud cover. “From World War II, so Japan couldn’t bomb the Japanese linguists.” It’s laughable, or plausible. It certainly has an otherworldly effect as you stride up the hill, rising above the clouds, the fog parting and giving way to the open gates of the Defense Language Institute. Despite the swirling mist, you can periodically catch a glimpse of the sharp, craggy coastline of Monterey Bay and Marina, the white foam cascading over black rocks and the baritone bark of sea lions splashing up the hills, echoing across the bright white-brick buildings.
Monterey is paradise. “The best place you’ll ever be stationed,” they promise, and I can’t think of any other post where the sky is perpetually blue, a cool seventy degrees year-round, with running trails weaving between giant redwood trees, over dark wooden boardwalks and past the round, curious eyes of sleek harbor seals, who balance on tiny rocks, silver fins flipped up in the air.
That first night, though, I unfold from a taxi in front of the barracks. I feel a bit lost, white-knuckling the strap of my duffel bag. “Let me help you with that.” A soldier materializes from the gloom and reaches out, trying to grab my bag.
“No, that’s okay, I have it,” I protest, tightening my hold, but he smiles too widely, prying it from my hand. I trail reluctantly behind my bag, feeling off-balance already without its weight. He drops it in front of the charge of quarters desk, the small lobby washed in yellow light. I hug myself with one arm as they find my name on the list, glancing up at me casually, assessing, their opinions quartered off and weighed upon invisible scales.
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