The Next Phase of Basic Training.
I was really nervous now, thinking my life was about to become a real hell. We quickly marched into our bays where the first thing that happened is ALL our civilian gear was taken from us. We could only keep toilet articles and note paper and pens. Photos, mementos, books, clothes whatever else we'd brought with us was stowed in our cases in a locked room that would not be opened until we left.
Some of those gals were mighty upset by that. Before the room was locked our drill SGT went through the stuff we'd kept out pointing out stuff that needed to be stowed. It all went in a big box, everybody's stuff together.
From then on we had "classes", morning runs, meals, showers, and exams. EVERYDAY! It didn't matter what day of the week it was except that if you said you belonged to a religion you were allowed to go to church on Sunday, however, you all went to the same chapel and it didn't' seem to matter that you may be Jewish Catholic or Methodist. That was it.
Later, after Basic you would be allowed your own religious experience. Some suddenly "found" religion thinking it would get them out of chores. Sometimes I went to church, sometimes not. I could always sleep in church. It wasn't like I'd never done that before. If I didn't go, a "chore" was found for me. Sometimes a good chore and sometimes not.
I really lucked out in that I never got KP. It was a "given" that all of us would experience that but I seem to have fallen through the cracks on that one because I wouldn't get KP till years later when I was in Hawaii in the National Guard and we were on a field exercise.
One of the reasons I didn't get it was that a lot of girls were clamoring to get it. I didn't understand at first until one of the black girls told me that if I got on KP I could get free pot. I was shocked. It wasn't just the black girls either because white girls were volunteering to do KP all the time.
Before we went to sleep at night everyone showered. You only had so much time to do it and most of the girls thought it wasn't enough. If you wanted to wash your hair there wasn't enough time. There was no room in the bathroom for all the girls to do all that they claimed they needed to do. I think they had been allowed to keep small hand held hair dryers or maybe they bought them in the PX later. I just didn't have the time or energy to wash mine every night. When I did wash it, I'd towel dry it and go to sleep with my hair in braids. It wasn't always dry in the morning.
In the morning who ever had been selected for "bay guard" duty would scream at you to wake up. You'd scramble for the toilet to get showered and prepped for the day. I would notice that some girls were already in there. They would get up early to do their hair or make up. We were not supposed to wear make up during basic but there was always some who would do what they wanted thinking they were not being noticed. You didn't get sent home for flaunting that rule but you did get KP and most of them wanted that in the first place.
Then we'd hustle to make the beds up to perfection. We'd get demerits for not having them tight enough. A Puerto Rican girl got it in for me some how and I don't know what I ever did if anything to incur her wrath. She liked to wait till my back was turned and mess my bed up, sometimes moving the pillow a bit or wrinkling the blanket. One time she just left a white envelope on the blanket. I knew it wasn't mine but it would have accomplished nothing to say anything. I took my punishment and did my pushups. I felt it was safer that way.
Every morning when we did our run she would get behind me and shove the barrel of her weapon in my back and tell me I wasn't going fast enough. I would run faster and she would do it again. This went on for several mornings. I was getting real fed up with the bitch. The next time she did it I stopped where I was while the other girls poured around us and I told her exactly what she could do with her weapon. You guessed it. I had to do pushups. The good news was that she did too. I don't know if that was what did it but she stopped doing it. She still messed with my bed but she didn't ram the gun in my back again.
After inspection we'd go downstairs and get in formation to be told our assignments for the day. We did not get breakfast or do anything else until we had done our bit of PT. The first day we escaped the full assault. Our weapons were not assigned to us until the second day.
We had to march or march while running for two miles the first day and I think they increased that as we went along. It was hard to tell because it was still dark. We had our full packs on our backs and our gas masks attached to our hips. When we got to the field we took all this off and piled it according to regulations in front of us. Then it was calisthenics.
I don't know how long we did that but when she felt we'd done it for the right time she would blow her darn whistle and we'd load up our gear and march or run depending on how she felt back to the mess hall where we ate our breakfast. We did get a sort of choice here. We could get our eggs cooked according to how we wanted them but only if the cooks were in a good mood. Sometimes a smile helped. I really didn't care how much eggs were cooked as long as they were cooked.
I ran into trouble at other meal times though. I had been dieting for months before I went in and I sure didn't want to gain that weight back so I picked at my food not eating much and pushing it around the plate. We had very little time to eat so I thought no one would notice. I was so wrong.
It wasn't long and a drill SGT, a male one smacked me on the head and ordered me to eat every thing on my tray. I did it but I felt groggy all day and even moved sluggishly. It was too much food. Despite all the exercise it wasn't long before I started puffing up. My body just couldn't deal with all that salt. I spent a night in the hospital because my legs swelled up and my hip joints were painful and reddened. The doc said lay off the salt. I was then allowed to not eat so much and not forced to eat everything there.
This is the hospital I was at but it looked nothing like this when I was there over thirty years ago. I remember gray stone walls and it was huge but it didn't look like this.
The food was not that great. Besides the great amounts of salt there was a lot of greasy fatty stuff and mountains of pasta and potatoes and rice. If that wasn't bad enough, recruits were passing out in the heat so they added salt to the water we drank. I was not doing well but I sucked it up and did what I could to avoid the salt in the food at least.
During the night if you had bay guard duty which I got now and then if not a lot, you'd get called down to the office of whoever was on duty to report. When this was done you walked by a soda machine. I drank a lot of caffeine laden Mountain Dew. I loved the stuff. It sure kept me awake for duty.
One night the phone rang. I had to go down to report. He probably wanted me to spit shine his boots. He was pretty blunt about it. It wasn't his boots he wanted me to polish. He made me an offer he thought I wouldn't refuse and I said no. If I wanted to pass, I had to have sex with him. I told him if he ever wanted to use that thing again, he'd better keep it in his pants.
I went back upstairs, knowing in my heart that my army career was over before it began. I didn't know how to handle this and I was going to have to go home in disgrace because I couldn't control my hot temper. I didn't sleep the rest of the night.
Sometime after lunch, I got called to the office again. It was a different sergeant. He wanted to know how the night before went. They never called you down the next day and asked you this. Something was up. What had that jerk told them? I told him, "It was uneventful, just like my report says."
He said he'd heard differently. Here was my chance to tell all, but if I did, at what cost? I'd be laughed at by all those girls who'd slept with him in order to make the grade. Others would say I was just saying it because I couldn't make the grade and I needed someone to blame.
My grandmother on my father's side would turn over in her grave. My mother would worry so much, she'd have a heart attack. It was all more than I could take. I just said nothing happened, and when you think about it nothing had. I'd been propositioned by a man and I just said no. He didn't force me. Case closed.
A few days later I noticed a chubby little pale skinned red head sneaking down the stairs in the middle of the night. I didn't ask. I didn't want to know but later in the day I was in the toilet and she was in there talking with another girl about her great night with the DS. She would go home early but I didn't ever find out why.
We had classes on rank, classes on map reading, daily marching exercises and PT. Somewhere along the way we started getting more interesting classes. We learned how to load and fire our weapons and how to clean them. I liked the range best because I got to blow things up. You have to be careful and use your brain. If you didn't, you'd wind up like me with burning fingers. I got smoke in my eyes and I reached for my weapon and got the hot barrel instead. Some of us got extra training with other fire arms. I was one of those.
We all had to do the LAW. That was a weapon like a bazooka from WWII. You loaded it and propped it on your shoulder. Then you pointed it where you wanted to hit and fired it. It was clearly marked so you didn't accidently point it in the wrong direction and kill your team mates. I liked weapons and this one especially. We were out in a big field with them one day. Off in the distance there was an old rusty truck and a tank. Those were our targets.
I watched as one after the other of us, both males and females took there turns. Some came close. One of the guys hit the truck and I saw a small puff of smoke. I thought that was all we'd see. My turn came a few minutes later. I was reinstructed on what to do and where to aim even though I'd committed it to memory listening to him tell all those before me.
I took aim at the tank. It was bigger than the truck and I thought I could hit it. I really don't know how it happened. I fired the thing and I swear parts of that tank were going straight up in the air while others were going in different directions. I just stood there in shock and awe. The DS told me I could put the weapon down now. I didn't even realize I was still holding it.
There were still others behind me who hadn't had a turn but the DS said, "OK, troops, load up, we're going in, Baker killed our best target and there's not much left to shoot at." He had a big grin on his face when he said it.
The M60 is a huge machine gun. It's definitely heavy duty. It has quite a kick. The actual bullets were bigger than my fingers and came banded together in strips. We took turns in two person teams firing these at old tanks and trucks out in the field. The Army doesn't like to waste an opportunity, or an old truck.
I jumped into my foxhole with this huge black guy who looked like he could squash Cleveland with one blow of his fist. He said I could go first because he had something in his eye. I started to fire and there I was, instantly pinned up against this huge chest and I didn't even know his name. We used some tracer rounds so we could see if we actually hit something. I hit the truck and I loved it. My cushion asked me to shoot for him. He said he still couldn't see. The drill sergeant never caught on to the switch. Later I heard my cushion got sent home with a bad heart.
We went on a week long bivouac to the back hills. I call it the back hills, it was really piles and piles of reddish brown sand dunes with bits of vegetation. Sometimes you'd go through heavily wooded areas.
On at least one of these occasions there would be a puff of smoke off to the side somewhere and someone would yell "Gas." We'd all scramble to put on our masks. I never smelled anything at these times but they swore it was real gas. I really doubted that unless it was in minute amounts.
We went though training on several different sites during this bivoac. Each site was named for a particular World War II battle, like Omaha. I don't remember all of them.
On one we learned hand to hand combat. It was interesting and I learned a bit of self-defense there.
Another dealt with getting out of traps. This was a bit scary but I knew it wasn't real. You would have your hands tied behind you and have to get out of it. Thankfully they did not stuff rags in our mouths. One girl cried during this and she was sent him as being unfit. Another girl put her bound hands down her back until she had them by her feet and could slide them under her feet one foot at a time. This was a neat feat and we all tried to copy her but I couldn't master that one.
We learned how to punch and kick and use whatever was at hand to defend ourselves.
We learned how to put out makeup on right. I'm just kidding. When my oldest sister went in the Marines I think they taught them stuff like that but it had nothing to do with the kind of makeup, I'm talking about. This is a photo of me in mine.
You were supposed to fix yourself up so you couldn't be seen. I did fine, once I took my shiny glasses off. That small can fastened to my collar had to come off too. It had a chain that held it on and I was afraid it would show. I stuffed it in my pocket. It held ear plugs if my memory serves and it doesn't always.
Meal time while on Bivouac is different to say the least. For the most part you got cans and packets of stuff. If you were lucky you got a tiny one inch can opener. There was only one in every case so not everyone got one. I did. I had it for a long time. In fact I had three or four of them because later I got more. Its a very handy little tool.
Some of the stuff in the cans was good and some was nasty. There would be the "John Wayne" bar of course. It was a round disk that was covered in foil and tasted similar to a heath bar but not as good. It was dark chocolate with bits of toffee in it.
If you were lucky you got a chocolate muffin in a can. Once I got a can with a disk of meat resembling pork that didn't taste too bad. It was maybe a quarter of an inch thick and an inch and a half wide. Below it in the same can was some watery stew with vegetables.
Everything you took into an area had to go back out with you. There was no tossing a can in the bushes for the enemy to find. We were told our cans could be washed and used for other things if we were somewhere and had to live off the land when our food ran out. We were also taught stuff I already knew like what we could eat and what we couldn't in the wild.
At other times and especially for breakfast you would go through the chow line. Here you had your pack of dinner ware that you carried with you all the time. It was called a mess kit. The photo below is not mine but it shows you what it looked like.
It all fit together and you carried it on your belt although some carried it in their packs. You also had a canteen that went on your belt. You were instructed that every chance you got you were to fill it with water.
Also not my photo.
Some of us filled our canteens with army Kool-Aid but this was discouraged. We were informed the heat of the sun on our canteens would somehow alter the chemicals in the Kool-Aid and it could make us sick. I avoided Kool-Aid completely after that announcement.
Its a good thing there were no enemies around to hear us in the morning in the chow line because all that metal banging together as we walked got a bit noisy. After chow each person filed from one can of scalding hot water to another. First you stopped at a trash barrel and scraped every bit of uneaten food into it. You were not supposed to put paper in this barrel. The scraps were sold to a pig farmer for feed. Another barrel took paper trash. Then the hot water barrels. The first had soap in it and you dipped and swished your pans and tools in there. You linked them all together so you didn't have to get your fingers in the hot water. Then on to the next station where you rinsed them the same one. A third barrel did the final rinse. You then filed through another line where they were inspected to make sure you did it all right.
That one is mine. I took it with color film but I was fooling around in photography class in college and I printed it on black and white paper and blew it up bigger. Sue says it looks old like something from WWII.
At last you were allowed to go to the latrines. For this purpose we had just port-a-potties. We didn't have to actually dig latrines. In your meal packet you got a tiny bit of folded up toilet tissue. It was thin and not very helpful unless you used all the layers at once. It wasn't long before most of us smelled bad but we all did so nobody complained. There were no male and female facilities. You were not defined by your sex. You all used the same.
Once during this time of basic training Mom got real sick. I think it was a stroke and I had to get an emergency flight home. They let me stay a week but when I went back my group had passed on and they stuck me in another group. I had to do some stuff over. It wasn't a lot. I was a little depressed about it though.
I had forgotten this but I'm adding it now. They found me flights I could ride for free to get back there to NY. I flew on a National Guard one as far as Dover, Delaware.
It was strange because I was strapped into a little canvas pull down seat on the side wall of the plane. It was open between me and the pilots. Two other guys were also back there with me. Between us a jeep was lashed down.
I wondered at the time how they got it in there and how they'd get it out. When we arrived I left the plane before the jeep but later I would see in movies and TV shows how they got the jeep out of the plane.
At Dover there wasn't another flight out for me. I had to stay over night. They put me in guest housing. I did what I needed to and ate the snacks they brought me. Dinner at the mess hall had been a long time before we landed.
I don't think I took a shower that night. I hadn't done anything but I was worried about Mom and tired. I did what I needed to do and left the light on so I wouldn't be alone. I left the toilet door open, too.
I got up once in the night and the door was shut and the light was out. I thought that was strange. I went in there and that was when I noticed the slide lock on the door on the opposite side to the one I was using. I was so embarrassed. Some poor schmuck saw me sleeping and just shut the door and turned out the light.
I took a commercial flight home after my short visit with my family.
In the new group nobody knew me. They didn't accept me. I caught a cold while we were on bivouac sleeping in tents in the fields. It was bad and I went on sick call. They gave me three small bottles of cough medicine and some pills. The first night I was coughing so much the other girls in my tent were complaining. I took some more sips of the cough medicine. I don't know how much I did drink but I know I drank a lot of it. I slept some at least.
In the morning they couldn't wake me up. I heard them screaming at me but I just couldn't move a finger. They left me there in the tent and I slept some more. I got up about noon and had to do extra duty because of it. It didn't matter that I was still hacking my head off.
One morning I was called in to the office. I figured I was about to be sent home. Instead I was given a special assignment, actually two special assignments. I'd known about the second one from the first week of basic. I can't talk about that one much even now. I was selected to do some "special training." At the conclusion of that and my AIT, I would be sent to other units for short periods of time to train others in this special training. I was told that it wouldn't be for long and that the Governor of my home state had personally selected me for this job. It was a test program. I was told that it was up to me to do my state and my governor proud. Because this is a true account and not fiction I still can't tell what I trained for and what I did. I could be sued or worse for that even though the program was eventually killed.
But this particular morning there was a special task they told me they needed me for. This one I can talk about. I really felt stupid doing this but when you look back on my life you will know that I trained for this one all my life.
I was taken into the Colonel's office where I stood at attention and waited. He told me he had something he wanted me to do. I was led to a large room that looked like one of those rooms you see in the movies when there is a stockholders meeting. A very large table with chairs around it sat in the center with no one else in the room but me and him.
I bet you think something hinky was going on but no, it was something stupid, instead. On the table were two large piles of colorful magazines, a note pad, pens and shears, a stack of paper and some tape or glue. I forget if it was glue or paper.
The Colonel and his wife were having a party. I was to organize part of the entertainment. She'd read about this somewhere and wanted it at her party. I was to go though the magazine and cut out photos of people who were in the news and glue them or tape them to the sheets of white paper. Each one would have a number on it. I would keep track on the note pad who was whom. I was allowed to slip in one or two not so famous that looked like famous as long as I noted who they were so his wife wouldn't look stupid. He didn't say that. I've got to say that was the most fun morning I ever had in the army.
To get paid here, you had to stand in line for ages and wait. All of you were together in line. One payday came, it was my first, I think. Some of us were hauled out of line. I think she picked us at random. It was a guard duty assignment.
We were given guns but no bullets. We were supposed to walk back and forth looking tough to protect not just the payroll, (I hope they had real guards for that,) but the trainees as well who were sometimes easy targets for pickpockets. Just because you were serving Uncle Sam didn't make you honest.
We were lucky and we didn't have to prove how tough we were or weren't. On the other hand, we were the last ones to get our pay and time for having fun was running short. I went home to the bay and fell asleep.