OORAH
Act 1: Fort Ord California, December 1968, Basic Training Week Three
“Grab your socks! Drop your cocks! On your feet!”
Three weeks into basic training. Just back from a Christmas break. And now here we stand in our shorts. Midnight. Outside in the cold.
You know how cold it gets in the Bay Area in the middle of the night? We know and the reason we know is that our drill sergeants, all Vietnam airborne gung ho head cases who get rocks turning people who had no interest in being here into bona fide killing machines were doing their diabolical thing. This wasn’t the first time they had us standing at attention in sub zero weather.
The last time somebody had misplaced a bayonet and the drill sergeants, fearing at this point in the process somebody might have a hit out on all of them, had us all shaking our booties in the worst possible way for an hour and a half until the offending weapon was found in our version of Gomer Pyle’s footlocker. That time we took care of the offending party when the lights went out in the barracks and the drill sergeants were looking the other way.
This time they wanted us to remember that even though we were just back from the holidays, and up to our assholes in holiday cheer and pussy, that our purpose in life was to learn how to kill.
One of the drill sergeants sauntered to the front of the squad, a snarling pint sized Mexican with attitude to match. He had an announcement to make.
“Just wanted to let you motherfuckers know that we are now officially down one recruit. It seems that one of you cocksuckers decided he wasn’t cut out for this life, went home, locked himself in his garage and that sack of shit four door with the backseat made in order for screwing Betty Sue, rolled up the windows, turned on the exhaust and offed himself. If anybody else has designs on checking out, let us know. Otherwise, you will be marked AWOL. Fall out!”
Act 2: Fort Ord California, January 1969, Basic Training Week Four
“I want to be an airborne ranger. I want to live a life of danger.”
C4 gas attack just before lunch. You tear up. You choke. You have trouble breathing. C4 gas is a party. Thrill a minute around here. In the afternoon, it only gets better.
Crawl on your stomach like a snake through mud and under barbed wire while live tracer rounds whiz over your head. Then one guy flips out, stands up and runs screaming through the target area. Drill sergeants freak. Lots of f-bombs and cries of cease fire. They know it wouldn’t look well on their permanent record if a maggot died during a training exercise.
Later, we’re at the final session of martial arts training. For some strange reason, this squadron of clueless recruits seems to have mastered this Kung-Fu stuff fairly well and are full of themselves as they fall into formation for their hourly ‘you maggots suck’ belittling session. This time, courtesy of the white drill sergeant with a big head and no neck who always seems to be sweating.
“You maggots should know that while we’ve been teaching you this stuff, the reality is that the Viet Cong know this a lot better than you do and if you get close enough to use what you’ve learned they will probably kill you.”
Another day. Another…well you get the picture. Lights out. With any luck, cop a few z’s before the next unexpected. Around midnight. The lights in the barracks scream on. The drill sergeant with no neck and the Mexican drill sergeant wade into the barracks, screaming more shit about dropping your cocks and ordering everybody out of their bunks and into the shower room. The dirty minds among us smiled at the innuendo of it all…
Until we entered the shower room and saw blood spattered all over the floor and the walls. It looked like somebody had a nasty slip and fall on the tiles. The drill sergeants were quick to set the record straight. Another of our fellow recruits decided he was going to bug out and slash his wrists and just bleed out and die. The drill sergeants didn’t offer much more than ‘we found him and he was taken away’. What? No he was dead or alive? Just all this blood everywhere and no resolution?
Oh wait. There was also an impromptu bit of instruction on the fine art of ending it all courtesy of the Mexican drill sergeant who said “Look you maggots. If any of you are thinking about going this route to get out of service, come to me first. I will give you simple instructions on where to slash, what veins will pump the quickest and deepest. If you really want out of this life, my instructions will make it quick and dirty. Do it right and you will be dead long before anybody finds your body.”
Act 3: Fort Ord California, January 1969, Basic Training Week Five
“I wanna go to Vietnam. I wanna kill the Vietcong.”
It had been a rough night. A failed answer on a late night pop quiz resulted in my getting slapped hard across the face with a three ringed notebook. The next day was not shaping up as much better.
A bunker of a foxhole with a protective wall on all sides. Tossing a live grenade was serious business. It was also a sense of macho in the everybody must die tradition. It seemed simple enough. Pull the pin and fling that sucker over the wall before it explodes. But the army knew they were dealing with rank amateurs when it came to things that go boom. And the sadist in our drill sergeants was very much in play as we were called down into the bunker where, at a signal, we were to pull the pin on the grenade and then the pineapple would blow shit to smithereens.
When it was my turn Sgt. No Neck and Mexican were in ghoulish form. Talking just loud enough for me to hear, they were reflecting on the ‘accidents’ that had recently happened by the squadron before ours. Like the maggot who pulled the pin, dropped the grenade in the foxhole and a sergeant who had jumped in to push the grenade into the emergency cover pit was a bit late and ended up being blown to bits. They looked down at me, fidgeting uneasily as I awaited the signal and the moment that death and destruction would be in my hand and joked that I would pull the pin, drop the grenade in the foxhole and that would be the end of me.
That didn’t help my quickly receding composure. But it did give me a strange sense of resolve. If there was any justice, I would toss the cocksucker and would live to tell about it. There was silence and a snicker. At the signal, the grenade was put in my hand. I held it in a death grip until the order came to pull the pin. I looked up at the wall. It wasn’t that high. I was sure I could clear it if I tossed it underhand. I heard No Neck and Mexican chortling at my back.
Then it hit me. I did have a say in all this. I could follow orders and toss this puppy over the wall and everything would be cool. Or I could turn around and toss the explosive at the feet of the drill sergeants. The latter would definitely get me discharged and I’d probably end up doing hard time.
But at the very least it would prove the drill sergeant’s point. That I could kill. There wasn’t much more than a second or two to make the decision. Finally, I pulled the pin. The grenade went over the wall.
One way or another I had proven their point.
Marc Shapiro. US 56734567. US Army 1968-1970. Lived to tell you about it.
ISSUED 