Hemorrhoids gave me hope for a 4-F classification and exemption from being drafted into the Army. My notice to report for a physical in Chicago came to me while I was in Tucson. I was having extreme pain while doing heavy physical work picking and shoveling caliche rock preparing footers for a dude ranch renovation, and I hoped the timing was just right for the physical. Unfortunately, the trip back to the Midwest took a couple of days, a couple of days for my bottom self to return to a somewhat normal state. I passed the physical and was classified 1-A. Now I waited for the call.
After a return to Arizona to visit friends, I decided to not wait for the call but instead to enlist in the Army. I enlisted in the Army Security Agency (ASA), a 4 year commitment. All the others were three years! I tried for the Army Intelligence Agency but wasn’t bright enough. (The real reason was that I was unable to pass the color vision exam!)
My trip from Tucson to a Santa Ana, California, recruitment office was uneventful except for two memories. First, as I got onto I-10 to begin the hitchhike to California, I was picked up by a guy in a pickup. Upon opening the door to get in, I spotted a large revolver on the seat and hesitated. Right away he said, “Don’t let that bother you. I shoot coyotes with it.” He drove me toward Phoenix, but I had to thumb another ride. A car stopped and offered one. As I put my bag inside the trunk I placed a nice pair of cordovan dress shoes on the top of the car. We drove off, and the shoes fell off somewhere in the desert. Some rides later I made it to Santa Ana - without shoes. The recruiting sergeant was baffled. He said that he couldn’t take me to the recruitment station in LA barefooted. So off we went to a Salvation Army store, where he bought me a pair of shoes out of his own pocket.
Now I was ready for military service. The flight out of LA to St. Louis took a load of raw recruits to Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. This basic training site had the exciting reputation of being known as Little Korea. It was the traditional eight week program of reordering my priorities and personality. Radical haircut, marching in cadence, rifle marksmanship, bayonet training, KP (kitchen police or work), long lines policing the grounds for cigarette butts, crawling 100 yards of simulated battlefield with tracers going overhead, wetting my pants while dining out in very cold weather, being yelled at by drill sergeant - all made for many long days.
Lots of running and physical training worked well for me. Marching was not so good. Just couldn’t get the timing of “Your mother was there when you left, your right.” I remember being pulled out of formation to help me with the timing. Basic was a bonding time for trainees. Drill sergeants were excellent at making one feel stupid, especially if one had college experience on one’s record. The trainees came together for psycho/social protection from the dramatic life change.
In the eight weeks that included weather ranging from 80 degree heat to ice and snow (appropriate for Little Korea), some incidents have stayed with me. Not everyone drafted could handle Basic. One person in my barracks brought live ammo from the range and put the cartridge in his rifle, which was locked in a rack. He stood over the rifle rack and somehow managed to engage the trigger to fire the cartridge through his head. Another person was being court-martialed because he had great fear on the training course. At night we would read each other our psychiatric reports in our footlockers; this young man’s record read that he was a “coward.” A psychiatric term?
And I remember Sidney. We were out on a very cold and snowy day. Trainees were standing around a stove with one of the drill sergeants in a warming tent. At the edge of the tent we observed someone trying to enter under the tent wall. First came his helmet, then a head with steamed up thick glasses, and finally the full body of Sidney. The laughter and ridicule of this unfit trainee still cuts into me.
Yes, I was physically and emotionally able to graduate from Basic. However, a deeper movement was beginning to happen inside me.
The day the plane left LA for Ft. Leonard Wood I had been given a small New Testament, Gideon's gift to all the trainees. I had made a commitment to be in the Army for 4 years; at the same time I began to reread the New Testament. I had stopped being active in the church and remembered purposely leaving my Bible at home when I went West. Well, how about reading the Sermon on the Mount after a day of bayonet training? “What is the purpose of the bayonet fighter? To Kill!” That was our mantra while thrusting forward and ripping the bayonet upward into the enemy. Along with personal reading, other trainees in nearby bunks asked me to read to them. So here we were reading Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” An unusual way to relax after a day of learning how to be killing machines!
Before leaving my tales from Little Korea, I must share an experience that happened in the mess hall. This may be the only story that my children know about my basic training. One day the chow line had a kidney bean salad that looked just like my mother’s very good bean salad. Great! With the large metal serving spoon I heaped a large serving on my large metal tray. But when I sat down at a table ready to dive into the bean salad, I discovered that it was not good, it was awful! So awful I couldn’t eat it. What should I do? We had to leave the mess hall with a clean tray, meaning everything that we had served ourselves had to be eaten. The only thing that I could think of at the time was to fluff up my napkin and cover the salad. My next step was to get up and walk past a non-commissioned officer stationed at the garbage cans, whose job was to see that the trays were clean. I got one step past him, but then a strong hand clamped onto my shoulder and guided me to a table. The hand shoved me down into a chair, with an accompanying loud voice: “Golden, you clean your tray!” He stood over me as I slowly took bites until the tray was clean. When I told my young children this story I would ask, “Who was the bad guy and who was the good guy?” It was amazing. The sergeant was always the bad guy. Poor daddy!
Next week’s post will highlight my inability or unwillingness to participate in advanced training Cold War hype.
Eric....thanks for your kind words. Yes, a bit longer for the start of this 4 part thing. Really don't want to make the post too long. Glad you enjoy the stuff. More to come. Hope to see you at the coffee shop in the near future. Rog
Hey, Roger. I confess that I must be hooked on your stories, as I found myself excited to see a new one in my inbox this morning. Enjoyed it, though I found the lead-off sentence with 'hemorrhoids' a rather inauspicious start. This one one was more lengthy than some of your others; you seem to realy be hitting your writing stride.