Category Archives: U.S.

As soon as our bus full of new privates arrived at the Basic Training barracks, our “wait” phase was over and the “hurry up” phase hit full crescendo. The DI aboard the bus must have softened us up with a lot of doom-talk, then as soon as the bus stopped he joined the welcome party of DIs, all angrily shouting at us to get ourselves and our gear off that bus yesterday and form a straight line. Then they went down the line, checking each name off their list and finding something to insult or criticize in each of us.

These boot camp teaching methodologies were new to a nerd like me. I would have preferred gentler methods of instruction, The Silent Method, say, or Suggestopedia. But our DIs preferred The Shouting Method. They addressed us at a full shout, even directly into our faces, and we quickly learned to respond at a full shout, invariably announcing our agreement with a hearty “Yes, sir!” or “No, sir!” or “Yes, drill sergeant!” or “No, drill sergeant!”

Sins of omission, commission, or hesitation often elicited a different methodology, Total Physical Response. For instance, we might be ordered to drop to the “front lean-and-rest position” and do 10 or 20 push-ups, sometimes more, as if the DIs were priests dispensing so many Hail Marys and so many Our Fathers as penance after confession.

The primary goal of TSM was to reinforce hierarchy and unequivocal response to orders. TPR had much wider uses, perhaps the most common being PT (physical training).

Sometimes TPR reinforced verbal objectives, as in a chamber full of tear gas, where we each tested our mask, then in turn took it off and stood at attention while reciting name, rank, and serial number before being allowed to cut and run for the door, as tears, snot, and slobber began to overwhelm us. I have never forgotten my old (pre-SSAN) serial number–which started RA119…–despite never having used it in 35 years. (Nor have I forgotten my name!)

Sometimes verbal cues aided TPR objectives, as when we chanted cadence while jogging or marching, both to keep in step and to keep our minds from drifting. Cadence calling was one of two areas where DIs could indulge a little creativity. The other was thinking up amusing exercises or punishments, like having the whole platoon lie on our backs, wave our arms and legs in the air and yell, “I am a dying cockroach!”

I still remember a nonce couplet our DI concocted to razz the DI of a competing platoon. These were like jazz chants, another language-teaching methodology.

Sergeant White is turning green, 1, 2, 3, 4
Someone pissed in his canteen, 1, 2, 3, 4

TPR also helped teach an important distinction that some of us needed to learn, the difference between our rifles and our guns. The physical portion involved each of us raising our (M-14, not yet M-16) rifles into the air with our right hands, and grabbing our crotches with our left hands. (I can’t remember the M-number assigned to our reproductive equipment.) The poetry that accompanied that motion follows.

This [shaking right hand] is my rifle
And this [shaking left hand] is my gun!
This [shaking right hand] is for fighting
And this [shaking left hand] is for fun!

We also did a lot of group and pair work. We always had to go across a horizontal ladder on the way to the mess hall entrance, and had to carry each other from the exit back to the barracks. If someone was waiting, you got to ride piggy back. If no one was waiting, you got to carry the next soldier.

The showers and toilets, too, involved groupwork. There were only six commodes for 40-50 privates, with no partitions, so you sat face-to-face and cheek-by-cheek during the peak times. At least we didn’t have to shout while grunting.

One example of pairwork was land navigation. Each two-man team was given a compass and a treasure-map set of directions: so many paces in this direction, then so many paces in that direction, and so on, through hilly, but not densely forested terrain. The person with the compass would direct his partner to the end of one leg, then move there himself, then they’d start the next leg. I held the compass on that one, and my partner and I were one of the few pairs who ended up close to the final target.

Whatever the Army’s goals and objectives might have been, I learned a few things not on the list.

I learned that DIs are capable of rough-and-ready sensitivity. Our (black) DI platoon sergeant addressed identity issues head on in his welcoming speech: “Y’all may think of yourselves as Georgians or Alabamans, as black or white, but y’all just look green to me.”

I learned that, despite being relatively unathletic, I could take at least as much physical punishment as anyone else in the rather sorry lot I trained with (about which more later).

Finally, I learned that, after a long day’s march, followed by live-fire night-infiltration exercises that involved a lot of low-crawling under barbed wire, Army field-kitchen food can taste mighty good, even when the only meat is liver.

The Army recruiter in Charlottesville had sent word to the induction center at Richmond that he was sending them a couple of hippies. But my brother and I had shaved off our beards and trimmed our hair before arriving there.

We entered the Army on the same day in April 1969. My brother, younger but more precocious than I, had dropped out of high school, and then finished his GED in the States. After I had dropped out of college, we had whimsically decided to head for Mexico in my little Studebaker Lark, with hardly enough cash to pay for the gas.

We were broke by the time we got to New Orleans, so we worked as day laborers until the engine broke down. Dad would only send us money to fix it if we promised to come back home–which we did, and then began negotiating with the local Army recruiter. After taking a battery of aptitude tests, I signed up for language school and my brother for warrant officer flight school–flying helicopters.

Somewhere on the induction questionnaire I had tried to salve my pacifist conscience by opining that I was signing up for language school in hopes of eventually helping to increase international understanding rather than making war–or words to that effect. Well, somebody must have actually looked over our answers, because my brother and I were both called in for questioning, separately, and forced to affirm that we would indeed obey orders.

After the usual induction procedures–standing in line nearly naked while medics jammed their fingers into our crotches and asked us to turn aside and cough; holding our arms still so the immunization guns wouldn’t draw blood; demonstrating whether or not our bare feet were flat–we were herded onto a train, me as far as Ft. Benning, GA, my brother to Ft. Polk, LA.

I had grown up riding trains in Japan, but this was only my second train ride in the U.S. (The first was from Martinsburg, WV, to San Francisco, CA, on the way to Japan when I was one year old.) People were playing dollar-ante poker at the far end of the car; while we were playing nickel-ante poker at our end. I was on a winning streak, but my brother was the one losing the most, and I had to extend him credit. Whenever I was up a few dollars, I would buy a round of beers.

The next morning we got off the train at Columbus, GA, some of us more broke than others, and waited for the bus from Ft. Benning to come pick us up. When a Drill Sergeant finally arrived, one trouble-seeking punk from Georgia asked him whether Drill Sergeants worked bankers’ hours. He later paid dearly for that remark.

We were still innocent then of how fearsome a Drill Instructor (DI) could be, but we would begin to find out as soon as we reached the other end of that bus ride.