Just a Basic Day - Camping

(my spell check just went out.  It will be wrose than normal.)

My cousin asked my dad to go camping once.  Dad said he did not want to go and when asked why and had he ever been dad replied, "Yes once, but we called in Korea."   Well I almost think the same way and if I had gone to Viet Name or something like that, I'm sure dad and I would agree.

As an officer you are given to shelter halfs to make one small, what we all call, "pup tents."  They were made from canvas, green, and very heavy.  If you were an enlisted man or a traniee you were only given one shelfter half and you had to find a guy who you would share a another shelfter half with. 

Depending on if you were tactical or administrative you would sit you tents up in neat rows, dig drainage ditches around your tent in such a way that if it rained the water would run to another trench that others had dug in front or behind their tents.  In theory the water would run off your tent into the trench surrounding your tent and then flow into the trench that would carry the water away and you would stay high and dry.  It never seemed to work that way though.  If it rained a lot you just figured on becoming wet.

If you were tactical you just put your tent where ever you wanted with in a defined area and make sure you were at least 10 meters away from the other tents (the distance that a hand granade would kill at) and make sure you were camouflaged, an art in itself.  (If you were really hard core you could use your poncho and poncho liners together with commo wire and make your self a nice little abode. I am far from hard core but I have done it, it works and I prefer it.)

With all the technology I hope the military has figured out a way to make the tents lighter weight and individualized by now.
 

Just a Basic Day - DI's

Drill Instructors, Drill Sergeants or just plain DI's were and I assume a dedicated lot.  The are also mean, cantankerous, sadistic, funny, and think all basic trainees are stupid and beneath contempt.  Most of them did not quite know what to make of us.

The average age of a basic trainee back in 1968 was about 19.  Most had never been away from home, most were draftees and I am sure most didn't want to be there in the first place.  The ones that were not scared to death had an attitude and a bad one to boot.  Our cycle, with all the two year ROTC candidates were an average age of 23, didn't really want to be there but given the alternative kept a good attitude about the whole thing.  Like one guy told me, "I'd hate to get killed because I wasn't paying attention in class."  To the DI's we were just as stupid and little less contemptible than most recruits and we were also giving them a break.  They didn't worry about us going AWOL or smartomg off or being thrown in the guard house, or be given Article 15's, it was sort of like a vacation to them.

They tried to act gruff but we knew it was all a game and knew that they knew and that we knew they knew that we knew. 

I cannot remember any of their names except for our platoon drill sergeant.  I can remember what they looked like however.  All of them were black except the one I had.  His name was Sgt Redman.  He had been in the army three years, this time.  He had been in and out of the army three times and had gone thru basic as a recruit three times.  He drank a lot or so his red cheeks said and he wasn't that smart but sort of a nice guy.  He seemed to be pretty realistic about us, and didn't give us any amount of harassment.  He just told us to do things and we would do them and he did it with out yelling.  I have often wondered if he stayed in the army.  All the DI's wore smokey the bear hats.

Some of the guys in our company had a lot of problems going through the physical things required.  The DI's tried to help them and encourage them.  They would not give up and told the cadets that they could not give up either.  Most did not.

Just a Basic Day - Recycle

Just a Basic Day - Recycle

It seemed like every time the commander of our basic training company got mad at us for some infraction, usually not getting some place on time, he would threatened to "recycle" all of us.  We knew he couldn't do it of course but we did not want to challenge him either.  Recycle meant that we had to start basic all over again.  That was always a depressing thought.  In our particular situation it would never have happened, but to the regular draftee it was devastating.  Even the threat of being sent to Viet Nam was not enough for you to want to repeat basic.  The worst he, the commander, could do to us was kick us out of the program and there were a few that should have been.  It scares me just a little to think that some of the goof balls, and duffaces I saw in the ROTC Basic Training program made it thru and became officers.  Hopefully they were in the fiance or admin branch or some such place where they could not get someone killed easily.

Of course one of my greatest fears was that I would someday be put into a position that unless I made the right decision I could get someone killed.  The Fiance and Admin branches were not that bad a deal for any of us I guess.  I for one was a reluctant warrior at the very best.

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*this is out of sequence.  I am asking anyone who happens to read this to let me know, if you know of course, why I am getting so many hits from France and for the one titled April 18, 1954.  The following can be found on my other blog The Adventures of Conley McAnally along with other adventures in Italy, Ireland, Germany, and Panama.  Thanks for you help.  Email  Stone639@yahoo.com
I look back on my time in Alaska with smiles, happiness, and humor.  Today I came across a log I wrote at the time I was experiencing all the wonders of Alaska.  Realities and memories don't match up sometimes it seems.
8-15-02.  Hooper Bay, Alaska

We arrived yesterday.  This is the most dismal looking place I have ever been in.  It is dirty, the houses are little more than plywood shacks and the teacher housing, at least for us, is some where next to the type you would find in the ghetto.

There are fly's all over the place, our food has not arrived, we have no phone or TV yet and we only get one station on the radio.  We are very remote here, you can feel it, we feel forlorn and even with both of us here we cannot help feeling alone and isolated.  A silence has fallen between us but it isn't out of anger.  I think I might have made a mistake.

Women are the ones who are the real pioneers and are the back bone.  They make a house a home.  Paula is doing all the right things but I can tell her heart is not in it.  It pains me to see her unhappy.

It is 52 degrees outside, the wind is out of the west at 17mph.

The school building is the pits.  My classroom is OK and in all fairness everyone we have met, native and teacher, have been very nice and helpful.  This is a good thing I guess given the fact that yesterday we were all strangers.

Note:  I will now and then blog more of this unedited log.

Just a Basic Day - Crawling

We had to low crawl it seemed every time we turned around.  As everything in the army there was a specific way to low crawl.  You had to lay flat on your stomach, extend your arms at the elbow placing your hands flat on the ground with fingers facing front.  Then you would spread your legs like a frog.  You would then extend your right arm forward while at the same time bringing your left knee towards the front while maintaining it parallel to and on top of the ground.  Then you would repeat the patters with the left arm and right leg and keep alternating until you got to where you wanted to go.  The idea was to present the lowest target you could to the enemy.  It works.

The biggest low crawl challenge you had is when you had to crawl under live machine gun fire.  During the first few weeks of basic you kept hearing about this and I suspect most of us had seen it done in movies.  It seems like there was always someone who had come across a snake, panicked and stood up and was shot.  It always was one or two cycles ahead of us but what actually was one of those urban legends never really happened.

Our turn to crawl under live fire finally came.  We were herded in to a trench at one end of a big long open field.  It was night.  The machine guns were set up at the opposite end and started firing over our heads.  When a bullet passed by you could hear a "snap" or a "crack" sound.  We were told that is the bullet breaking the sound barrier.  I don't know if that was true or not, but you did hear the bullet whizzing by. 

We were told to climb over the drench wall and remain low (that seemed obvious to me.)  Then we were to low crawl under barbed wire while the bullets zinged over head, every 5th round being a tracer round thus lighting up the night.

No one panicked and I realized that the guns were placed in such an angle and on platforms that one would have to jump up and down in front of the gun and then probably couldn't jump that high to get hurt.

I was sort of disappointed because the position I had in line was towards the end of the column and no fire was going directly over head.  I didn't see any snakes either.

Just a Basic Day - Shaving

If there is one thing the military likes more than shined boots it is a hairless face.  This is in far contrast to the old days or even regulations.  However make sure you shave your mustache if you are career oriented and if you are in basic training don't even bother to try and remind your superiors that you are with-in regulations dawning your handlebar.

One of the guys in our unit showed up with a bright red handlebar mustache.  It was curled on the ends at least twice.  Quite the sporty looking affair.  We asked him if anyone had said anything to him bout it and very indignantly said "no, it is within regulations." 


Two hours later a bunch of us ran into him again and he was clean shaven.  We asked him what the deal was.  He said that the Mess Sergeant refused to feed him until he shave his moustache.  He said he went to complain to the captain but could not get past the company clerk until he shaved his mustache.  Everyone needs to conform now and then I guess.



We had to shave everyday.  Even when we were in the field.  We would use hot water provided by the mess section which we poured in our steel pots.  If there was not hot water cold water had to suffice.  We had no mirrors so to make sure that we got all the right places we were taught a technique that insured we would be clean shaven.  First you select a companion, usually your tent mate, both lather up then looking at each other mimic what the other guys is doing with is razor just like you do in a mirror.  It really works.  Some little trivia there.

Just a Basic Day - Band of Brothers

You do not realize how sheltered of a life you live until you start meeting guys from all over the country in a guy setting, ie like Basic Training.  Just to name a few by geography, I have long lost the memory of their names, - South Dakota (went to law school) North Dakota (called him MoJo for some reason, ran into him ten years later at Ft Sill, had the room across from mine in the officers quarters one AT) Washington, DC (law school, George Town) Wyoming (he was very flexible, could kick his leg over his shoulder, one night we were talking and he told me his Dad had committed suicide, I did not have the nerve to ask how) Boston, Texas, Rhode Island, New York ( the first Jewish guy I had ever met.  He was not cut out for the program but would have been less cut out for the regular basic training program. He was a funny guy, took his pain in stride and never, never gave up and completed the course, he was also a law school guy.) 

We had a lot of guys from back east and down south.  Their exact locations escape me but they seemed to be more interested in where I lived than I thought normal.  I guess the word Kansas in Kansas City threw them a lot.  It took me forever to explain that Kansas City was in Missouri not Kansas and I am not sure they ever did figure it out.  One guy in particular was sincere when he asked me if we had cows on the street and did I own a cow boy hat.

I was very fond of all those guys.  Some were just cool guys, others were down home types, some were nerds but all were likable.  There was not one guy in our platoon that I did not like or nor get along with. 

The last day we were there a guy, one of the nerds, put up a piece of paper on the bulletin board for all of us to put our names and addresses on.  We all just laughed about it knowing who the poster was, but we all seemed to slip our name on the paper.  I don't remember if I copied any of the names down, but wish I had now 50 years later. 

I don't dwell on those guys and each year I remember fewer and fewer.  There is a Basic Training book that was made and it is some where in one of my many boxes I keep stuff in.  Guess I should go find it and pay a short visit to a band of brothers who at one time were very important to me.