Dust swirled into the back of the moving truck from white clouds blown up from the gravel road.
“Where’d you get that idea? They aren’t trying to humiliate us. They’re giving us experience under live fire.”
“Sergeant Akeana said he’s lookin’ forward to watchin’ a Tennessee hillbilly crawl in Kentucky dust.”
“Good Lord, Carson! That sorry-assed Akeana’s just egging you on. You can’t let him—”
Carson turned and glared at me.
We sat without speaking to each other until the truck stopped. We waited our turns to jump to the ground.
Baked clay at our feet reflected the blinding sun.
Drill instructors directed us down wooden steps into a narrow trench eight feet deep. We walked single file in the trench to the far end of a field they called the infiltration course. Then we turned left into a wider trench that ran the width of the field.
A flat roof, two feet higher than the surrounding ground, covered the trench. It was open in front so the men could climb over the edge of the trench onto the individual lanes of the infiltration course.
When Carson and I turned the corner into the wider trench, six trainees already stood facing steps that lead, with a leg-up jump, to six lanes laid out across the field. We moved in behind two of the front trainees.
At the other end of the field, facing us, machine guns started firing in a sequential pattern down each lane, one after the other. Each gun was attended by a two-man team.
This was the first time I’d heard real machine gun fire, and it seriously unnerved me. I could get killed today if something went wrong.
A drill sergeant, midway down the trench, yelled, “First line, up and over! Keep your heads down and stay in your own lane!”
The six men ahead of us, separated by white stripes painted on thick wooden steps, hiked up a leg and scrambled to the surface and out of sight.
“Rear line advance to the steps!”
We moved to the bottom step. The muscles in my chest and arms tightened.
Carson suddenly vaulted the steps and landed on the top edge of the trench. He looked down the lane he was about to crawl.
“Hey, trainee, wait for the order!” The sergeant charged past the other men. He grabbed Carson’s belt and yanked him down.
“Damn.”
“Get your ass back on line with the rest of the men!”
I called to Carson, “What’d you see?”
“Buncha damned dirt, not much—”
“First line, up and over! Keep your heads down and stay in your own lane.”
We scrambled up the steps and over the edge of the trench and onto the field. At first I was blinded by the sunlight bouncing off the hard, white clay. Our respective lanes, each about eight feet wide, were marked with powdered chalk like a football field.
As I low-crawled, I cradled my rifle in the crooks of my arms. My helmet kept sliding down over my eyes, and I kept stopping to push it back. The sandy, baked clay quickly abraded holes in my fatigues and bloodied my elbows and knees.
At the far end of the field the machine guns continued their metallic chattering. Tracers, like taut red strings, snapped four feet above my head. Simulated mortar explosions in sandbagged emplacements shook the ground. The concussions shook my body and deafened my ears. Stones and sand rained down all around me.
I crawled until I reached a barrier of barbed wire that covered at least eight feet of ground ahead of me. It was constructed of taut, crisscrossed layers of barbed wire held fifteen inches off the ground by metal posts. Coils of wire rose up in the middle like a three-foot pyramid. The barbed-wire barrier extended across all six lanes.
After removing my helmet, I rolled on my back, as I’d been trained, and placed my M14 lengthwise on my stomach. Pushing my helmet ahead of me, I inched forward under the wire. Flat on my back, I was unable to sit up or turn over. Barbs caught on my shirt and rifle, and gouged my hands when I felt around to unhook them. To push myself forward, I cocked my arms and legs sideways and pushed against the ground. Each time I cocked my legs sideways, I snagged a few barbs. I could not reach down to my legs to unhook my pants or my skin, so I ripped my legs free.
After clearing the barbed-wire barrier, I remained on my back and watched the tracers snap overhead. They were fearsome and fascinating to watch. They moved so fast—every fifth round a tracer—they gave no appearance of motion. Sharp red lines, four feet above my head, zapped into existence and then disappeared. Then they stopped appearing and reappeared above the lane on my left.
Rolling on my left side, I looked up and down that lane for Carson. Was he fascinated by the tracers, too? But the lane was empty. He wasn’t there.
I yelled as loud as I could, “Carson! Where are you?”
A sharp explosion from a nearby mortar emplacement bounced me on the ground. I curled in a ball and covered my neck and head. Clods of dirt and stone pelted me.
When I looked again, a trainee in Carson’s lane, who had completed his crawl under the barbed wire, yelled back at me. But my ears were blown deaf. I heard only “… passed im … ack … tarted.”
“Yell that again!”
He pointed behind him.
“What’s he doing back there?”
“… ead up … ooking—”
We both looked back through the barbed wire and saw Carson running toward us up the lane. He belly-flopped in front of the barbed wire. Moments later, red tracers streaked over my lane for a few moments and then his lane.
He inched his way under the barbed wire. I watched, mesmerized by his reckless courage. Then a trainee in my lane emerged from under the barbed wire, rolled back on his belly, gave me a thumbs-up, and low-crawled past me.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at Carson. “You wanna die out here?”
“… running … lane … Fuck ’um. Fuck ’um all.”
“Yell louder! Why aren’t you getting shot?”
“… firing … sequence.” He made sequential chopping movements on the ground. “… jump up … down….” His hand rode a sharp wave up and down.
I squinted at him. “What if they change their firing patterns?”
“Don’t dare. They see … running … pointing at….” He pointed at himself and rolled on his back, kicked up his legs, and let out a, “Whooee!”
He calmed down and lifted his head waist-high to watch the machine guns firing at the end of the field. Red tracers snapped above him. The moment the tracers stopped, he jumped up and ran the next section of lane.
After I finished the course, I discovered Carson in the loading area beside the transport trucks. He was on the ground surrounded by drill instructors and trainees. Sergeant Akeana was stomping his feet and swinging himself around Carson, wild-eyed and swearing, almost tongue-tied. “You … you fucking Dirt Dog! You did crawl in that goddamned dust! You had your fucking nose in it! You Kentucky dirt dog! Had enough push-ups?”
Carson was in the upright position, supporting himself on trembling arms. “More, Drill Sergeant,” he wheezed. “I want more.” Then his arms gave out and he fell without catching himself.
Every obscenity and swear word I’d ever heard came out of Akeana’s mouth in those next few seconds. His lips curled back and he gritted his teeth and hauled off as if to kick Carson in the ribs, but he stopped in mid-swing.
The rest of us didn’t know whether to cheer or run for our lives.
That night, when Carson returned to the barracks from Captain Edmunds’s office, we gathered around to find out what they planned to do to him.
“Nothin’. Not a damn thing. Said he’d throw me in the brig if I did anything like it again. Said he’d be happy to share a foxhole with me if I learnt not to be so reckless.” Carson grinned as if he’d just thrown the winning Super Bowl touchdown pass.
Everybody was silent for a moment. Then we all, even Beavers and Geason, whooped and danced and slapped each other some skin.
Several days later we heard tha
t Captain Edmunds recommended to the base commander that operators of the machine guns should randomize their firing, and trainees should be alerted to that fact.
****
Monday, Oct. 14, 1968
Dear Janice:
Guess what? I was one of only a few men chosen to qualify with a M16 rifle. We chosen few went to a four-hour class this morning and learned how to tear it down and fire it. We’re talking real status now! Ha.
Love, Andrew
Tuesday, Oct. 15, 1968
Dear Janice:
The other night one of the guys got a Playboy Magazine in the mail. We’re not permitted to have anything like that anywhere on the training compound. We all gathered around the guy who was holding the magazine. Some guys got on upper bunks so they could see better. Other guys stood on top of foot lockers. We were jammed body-to-body hooting at pictures of naked women.
But then Corporal Eagan came in the barracks before we realized he was there. We scattered, of course, and somebody hid the magazine under a bunk mattress. But Eagan found it. The guy who owned the magazine and the guy who sleeps in the bunk where it was hidden were both given extra KP. But they said it was worth every minute of KP to see those pictures.
Everybody here is horny. In the morning, when the drill sergeant comes in and yells for us to get out of bed, we’re scared we won’t have everything ship-shape in time to make formation, so morning erections don’t last but seconds. At night we often hear bunks squeaking, but nobody ever said anything or laughed about it until something happened that broke the ice.
It was in the evening. Who cooked this stunt up I don’t know. But after they got ready (hiding under their bunk covers), three guys lined up naked from the waist down and a couple guys tried to whistle Dixie without laughing while these guys kept time with their stiff bobbing peckers—maybe five seconds worth—until everybody lost it from laughing.
Now when we hear a bunk squeaking at night, somebody always calls out, “Get it on, Bro, get it on.”
That’s probably more than you wanted to know.
Love, Andrew
Wednesday-Thursday, Oct.16-17, 1968
Dear Janice:
Yesterday morning (Wed) a guy named Lundquist—a tall, fleshy guy who bunks on the ground floor and always looks sad and mopes around a lot during our free time—he was next to me when we lined up at the arsenal to pick up our weapons for target practice. He said he was going to kill himself on the firing range.
I figured if he was looking for sympathy and I gave it to him, he might think he could get more sympathy by actually shooting himself. So I told him Basic Training was a very small part of his life. He could tough it out if he wanted to. But if he killed himself, he’d simply give the rest of us something to write home about.
He didn’t kill himself.
Lucky me. Lucky him.
I did well firing the M16. The gun looks and feels like a plastic toy, but it quickly demonstrates it’s anything but.
Firing on automatic at 600 rounds a minute is an absolute trip. That’s ten rounds a second!! You can empty a twenty-round magazine—zip—just like that. Nudge the trigger and you can’t help but shoot three or four rounds like a loud sputter.
The recoil isn’t bad. One shot gives a little bump on the shoulder. But firing on automatic, you have to hold the rifle down on the forward guard with your left hand to prevent recoil from climbing the barrel upward and shooting at the sky. But you can control it. Firing on automatic doesn’t give you a tight pattern on a bulls eye, but it does a great job spraying rounds in a car-sized area.
I have to say it. The M16 is cool beyond words. It’s great fun to fire.
But I’m a little uneasy about the M16 bullet (not the brass casing, but the thing that shoots out the muzzle). It’s .22 caliber, and that’s an unusually narrow bullet to use in war. And it’s unusually long in relation to its diameter. It’s fired at very high velocity and set spinning at a high rate by the spiral grooves in the barrel. It can be accurately fired over 400 meters.
Here’s what makes me uneasy. The M16 bullet technically meets the Geneva Convention prohibition against bullets that mushroom while traveling through a body (and because of that mushrooming, making a messy exit hole the size of a golf ball). The framers of the Geneva Convention thought it was enough to wound a man without mutilating him too. So bullets used in war, by any of the signatories of the Geneva Convention, are to be covered with a hard metal jacket like copper so the bullet makes a “clean” hole in the body it hits, rather than being made of soft lead or break-apart tips that horribly mutilate the body.
Well, the M16 bullet is designed too long for its width, so it flies through the air straight and true, but when it encounters a little resistance—like flesh—it loses its balance and tumbles. So it’s a legal bullet, under Geneva Conventions, but it causes massive destruction similar to a mushrooming bullet, maybe even worse. The DIs told us that a M16 bullet can hit below a man’s navel and come tumbling out his thigh or high up his back or even out his neck and make goulash of everything in between.
Sorry to go on like that.
I have nothing in my mind other than this force-fed training. But please know I love you and I wish so very much that I could hold you and that we could be tender and gentle and loving toward each other.
Now I’ll catch hell from my platoon sergeant again. He told me if I sacrifice polishing my boots one more time just so I can “write long f--king letters,” he’ll sic the platoon on me for a blanket party.
Love, Andrew
LOST IN THE WOODS
“All right, listen up! I’m Drill Sergeant Dugan and I’ve got information you’ll wanna hear.” Sergeant Dugan did a quick roll of his head and shoulders as though his massive neck and upper torso needed a little workout hefting boulders and throwing tree trunks.
He stood facing us on a three-foot high wooden platform in a narrow clearing between thick forest and a crushed-rock access road. It was early evening. The sun was descending on the horizon. Transport trucks had driven half the company of trainees—about a hundred of us—many miles from our company area.
We stopped our anxious talking, looked up at Dugan, and waited for instructions. But he said nothing more until all but one of our transport trucks revved up, circled at the wide end of the gravel cul-de-sac, and drove off leaving us stranded in the woods.
“I’m gonna say this once! You don’t hear me the first time, you’re in deep shit.”
Behind Sergeant Dugan, red and yellow leaves glowed in the evening sunlight. Beneath them, dark shadows lay deep between the trees along the forest’s edge. It was picturesque, peaceful, a perfect place for a campfire with friends. But to us, particularly to me, it was threatening. Ominous beyond words.
“You are escaped prisoners of war! You are to work your way through these woods in the direction you’re already facing. You’ll come to a gravel road and then friendly lines two miles away. Camp guards carrying rifles loaded with blanks will ambush and attempt to capture you. If you’re caught, or if you remain in these woods beyond daybreak and force us to come after you, you will be taken to a POW camp and you will be punished for escaping. Do you understand what I just said?”
We roared back, “Yes, Drill Sergeant!”
I heard the idling engine of the one remaining truck behind us. I turned and looked. The driver was leaning out his window grinning at us.
“Drill Sergeant?” called a trainee near the platform.
Dugan pointed at the trainee. Dugan’s hand was curiously small relative to his thick forearm and bulging bicep. “Yes, soldier?”
We all looked at each other. Surprised. Uneasy. The cadre always called us “trainee.”
“What will they do to us if we’re caught?”
“Methods differ, but I guarantee you this.” Sergeant Dugan tipped his buzz-cut, bullet-shaped head toward us and squinted over imaginary glasses, which, for some reason, scared the living shit out of me. “You won’t forget it unt
il the day you die. I kid you not.”
Dugan lifted his head and looked around. “Any more questions?” He paused. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”
Dugan jumped from his platform and walked to the transport truck. We all watched him climb in next to the driver, and away they drove, leaving us standing there like little lost orphans.
I was scared out of my mind. But now, with no further instructions from Dugan, it was time to start our trek through the woods.
Why was I so scared? Dugan’s warning reinforced the rumors we’d heard all week. The two worst, and to me most frightening, rumors were that camp guards would force a captured trainee into a fifty-five-gallon drum, secure the top, and beat on the lid and sides of the drum. Or they’d tie a trainee’s arms to his sides and hang him upside down by a rope tied to his ankles and spin him for a circle-puke.
The rumors frightened me, maybe more than most trainees, because I had no sense of direction and very little experience navigating in a forest. This was one exercise I was bound to fail. I would get lost and picked up the next day and physically abused at the POW camp.
The thought of being forced against my will into a fifty-five-gallon drum and having the lid clamped on and not knowing when they’d let me out, and the thought of being tied and spun upside down, awakened in me a latent claustrophobia I didn’t know I had. I understood I wouldn’t be injured unless I fought the guards and they got too rough with me. And I understood that these punishments for getting caught or lost in the woods were similar to college hazing pranks. But none of that made any difference to me. The prospect of being forced into that drum or being tied and hung upside down generated such terror I’d been having nightmares.
Despite our previous training in how to direct our movements in a woods without a compass—using the sun, moon, and stars; moss growing on sides of trees; sight lines on distant objects—I thought my only hope of locating friendly lines and avoiding capture was to team up with someone who knew his way around a woods. And that was Carson, my nineteen-year-old buddy from Tennessee, who told us about possum and squirrel hunting in the woods near his parents’ farm.
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