I came to attention and barked, “NO, SERGEANT!” I locked it up and kept my eyes facing forward. The sergeant went on in this fashion for another couple of minutes, much to the astonished horror of my fellow boots, as the rain came down on us and we slowly got soaked.
Eventually, the tirade ended up pretty much like I expected it to. “DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!”
“YES, SERGEANT!” I immediately set my bag on the sidewalk and dropped to the ground. I assumed the position, with my face in a puddle, and dropped down and then pushed back up. “ONE!” I kept up the process as the sergeant processed the rest of my busload onto the bus, with them stepping around me, and in one case stepping on me. Once done, I pushed up and locked my elbows. “PERMISSION TO RECOVER?”
“DID I SAY YOU COULD SPEAK, PISSANT? PERMISSION DENIED! GIVE ME ANOTHER TWENTY!”
I guess we needed to load some more onto the bus. I gave the sergeant another twenty, and then locked my elbows and stayed in position. Eventually I was ordered to recover and stood up. My arms were killing me, but I kept my mouth shut and a blank expression on my face. Out of the corners of my eyes I could see one or two boots at each bus doing pushups, so I guess I was just the lucky guy on my bus. I retrieved my B4 and got on the bus when ordered to. I squished when I sat down. The fellow next to me was wet, too, but I was soaked to the skin. Thank God it was a warm day.
We were ordered to keep our mouths shut on the drive to Bragg. It was an hour and a half or more, and needless to say, some asshole hadn’t learned from my example. He did pushups in the aisle for thirty miles. That was the procedure for the day. I went through the entire incoming process in soggy clothes. I didn’t know whether it was funny or miserable.
I am not going to describe all the fun of boot camp. If you’ve ever seen a John Wayne war movie, you already know all about it, except ours was a lot louder, smellier, dirtier, and messier than what he did. Reveille was officially at 0600, but by then we were already wide awake. The weather was either blistering hot and sunny, or drenching downpours, with the occasional tornado scare thrown in for good measure. On the other hand, we were assured it didn’t snow much in North Carolina. Every day we did PT — physical training — also known as calisthenics. We ran, for miles and miles. We ran through obstacle courses. And then we did it all over again, while carrying backpacks full of rocks. Meanwhile, we would suffer daily abuse from drill instructors who must have had lungs and throats made from leather, since every one of them had the dial set at 11.
I just kept telling myself it was only for six weeks, and then five weeks, and then four weeks, and so forth. Every few days we would have just enough time to scribble out a note to somebody and I would write Marilyn, telling her I loved her, and how the thought of seeing her in a bikini at the beach was the only thing keeping me from going crazy. Every few days she would write back, and I would find a Polaroid enclosed. Most of them were pretty tame, but several of them were in a swimsuit or a short skirt; she said she had been up at summer camp on her own and Tammy had taken the shots.
Thankfully, I was in pretty decent shape going into basic training, what with my running and workouts. Theoretically, taking ROTC gets you out of gym class, because you are spending an equivalent amount of time doing pushups with the army. However, college ROTC programs vary tremendously across the country. You are supposed to come out already in decent shape, knowing how to march and salute, and ready to chew nails and spit tacks. Some schools are so good you come out ready to go into battle. Some you come out not even knowing how to wear the uniform. Rensselaer’s is somewhere in the middle, on the mediocre side. I can honestly say that if I hadn’t been already in good shape, I would have been one hurting pup!
There were a few odd moments along the way. By the end of the second week we were introduced to unarmed combat. During the spring semester I had managed to find an aikido instructor and start up again. He was a lot tougher, at least personally, than Lance Miyagi’s father, and ran me up one side and down the other about how my appallingly limited skills had been allowed to fade away. He even threatened to take away my black belt. Under his strict tutelage I was able to blow the rust off and get back into fighting shape by the end of the spring.
There were probably about a thousand ROTC students at Bragg that summer, in a gigantic oversized training battalion, and maybe a couple of hundred in any individual training company. My company was split up into smaller groups, each of which had a drill instructor of some sort to teach unarmed combat basics. That was when my ‘low profile’ plan failed. Our drill instructor, Corporal Jones decided to teach us hands on and he needed a volunteer. He got that volunteer the Army way — he selected one.
Me.
Everybody was looking at me, and I just blinked and asked, “Me?”
“You, pissant.” He crooked a finger at me and summoned me forward. I walked out into the sand circle in front of our group. “Your next of kin registered?” he asked, a common enough question.
“YES, CORPORAL!” I barked out. You never talk; you say it loud and proud!
“Assume a defensive position, or what you think is a defensive position,” he said with a laugh. He then proceeded to tell us what was going to happen. The instructors worked on the ‘tell them three times’ principle, which is a common teaching method (remember, I had once taught college back in the day.) You tell them what you are about to tell them, you tell them for real, and then you tell them what you just told them. In this case he told them how he would kill me, then kill me, and then tell them how he killed me. This felt like it was going south quickly.
In for a penny, in for a pound. I stepped into the ring and took up a kamae defensive position, as bait. In aikido you always let the attacker come to you, even to the extent of feinting to draw an attack towards you. Then you react defensively to thwart the attack and position yourself for any further attacks.
The corporal stopped and eyed me curiously. He began to move cautiously, trying to circle me. I stayed facing him as he tried to circle me, and I kept watching him closely. I noticed he wasn’t getting any closer. Suddenly he stepped back. Keeping an eye on me, he yelled back over his shoulder, “Sergeant Jenkins!”
Sergeant Jenkins was the senior drill instructor, a staff sergeant, and our company commander. He came over after a couple of minutes to find the corporal and me still standing facing each other in sand ring. “Corporal Jones?”
“I think we’ve got us a karateman here! I just thought you might want to watch,” said Corporal Jones.
“There’s always one,” replied Jenkins with a light laugh. “He’s all yours.”
Oh shit! Jones laughed and came back towards me.
The move he had told us he was going to make was a grab and a throw, allowing me to land hard on the ground, stunning and immobilizing me, and allowing him to kill me at his leisure. That was the theory, anyway. I’m sorry, but it was just a force of habit. I had spent too many hours in the dojo and I just fell back on rote memory. He grabbed me and I countered, and twisted him up and over and dropped him on his ass. I quickly stepped back and assumed a defensive position.
There was dead silence. Jenkins entered the sand ring, and walked up to Jones, who was now sitting upright and brushing sand out of his hair with a rueful grin on his face. He looked up at Jenkins and said, “Yeah, there’s always one. I’m going to remember you said that.”