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by Bettina Rolyn
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Face-down in the muddy woods of rural Missouri at Fort Leonard Wood and grasping my rifle, I was getting gassed in a mock attack on our camp by our drill sergeant. In my prone position on a slope of the Mark Twain National Forest of the Ozark Mountain range on that autumn day in October 2003, just weeks into basic training, the smell of fallen leaves and decaying wood surrounded me. But I was more interested in the ants and bugs crawling past than in properly utilizing my gas mask.
When it was time to learn how to throw a grenade, we lined up at the range and waited a long time for our turn. Together with a drill sergeant we had to go into the bunker and take a very well-supervised turn pulling the pin and throwing a grenade over the berm to the blast area—to appreciate what it really felt like to have that much destructive power at our fingertips.
I wrote a letter to my mother on my little green, waterproof field notepad that I kept in my cargo pocket. We were supposed to take notes during training, but I used it more often for letter writing:
Dear Mama,
We’re just finishing up at the hand grenade range now. It was fun, but as I was laying on the ground in the forest for 45 minutes, waiting my turn, I could feel the beat of my heart in my hands, and it felt like the earth’s heartbeat. I saw the bugs, beetles, spiders, and ants crawling around, and I wondered what Mother Earth was thinking and feeling about a bunch of tired soldiers running around on her surface, learning how to throw explosive devices to destroy her. I doubt many other of my fellow trainees have such thoughts. I’ve noticed the kinds of reactions I get from my other comments about the beautiful sunsets and sunrises, the red leaves, the moon, the hawks and crows and all the things in Nature here that sustain me.
The women in my basic training platoon were from a diverse ethnographic palette. Rodriguez from the Bronx spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of our precious personal time shaving her nether regions. Sweet Rizzo from Brooklyn had never learned to drive. Jones was a tall Black woman from Mississippi, and I rarely understood her accent; it was the first time I’d had to ask an American to please repeat herself multiple times as my Yankee ear was unfamiliar with southern dialect. During our short personal time in the evenings, when everyone showered in the common showers, I would look around me in curiosity at this display of diverse womanhood. My sheltered upbringing revealed a gap between me and my fellow trainees. Hernandez was the smallest of the women, spunky and loud from Los Angeles. She talked the most shit and screamed the loudest. Until it was time for the ropes course where she froze in terror at the highest point in the trees and had to be talked down. Fayad, a Lebanese woman in her late twenties, was often paired with me for hand-to-hand combat; she’d have me pinned and tapping out as she strangled me within thirty seconds. She looked my size but was pure muscle.
My fellow recruits were mostly younger than me and from all over the United States. A few were few prior enlisted, and the oldest man in our platoon, a 37-year-old, had been in the Navy fifteen years before and was now just trying to keep his head down—he knew the bullshit games and stayed above it all. Smith, an overweight white guy from Michigan who sweated constantly was always last and worst at everything. If I had seen the movie Full Metal Jacket, I’d have known to call him Pyle, but my cultural education hadn’t included it. Smith’s ineptitude took some of the attention off me, but he was the kindest of everyone to me and always gave words of encouragement when I struggled.
We were given a very specific list of items we were allowed to receive from our families in the mail and an even longer list of prohibited “contraband.” No candy, no drugs or caffeine, no porn, no magazines or books, but yes to stamps, religious materials, toiletries, and vitamins. Who brings porn to basic training? I asked myself naively. I sent little letters home of scribbled notes, some written on Sundays when we were allowed to attend church on post. I picked the Lutheran church because I could sit undisturbed in the pews and write letters and journal entries—all increasingly serious in tone, with requests for arnica salve, vitamins, and ibuprofen for the many pains I was experiencing from the endless physical training.
The drill sergeant on duty every night called out each trainees’ name as we sat in formation in our sleeping uniform—gray Army T-shirt and sweatpants or black shorts with black spandex shorts underneath. Anyone who received mail had to run up to retrieve it, and if it was a package, you had to open it in front of the whole platoon. My sister Suzy, who has an impish sense of humor, sent me a package with a little plastic “Jesus Action Figure” from a gag-gift store. It was complete with posable arms—“for Blessing!” and thanks to a little roller on the base, he glided across the floor. Of course, when I opened my package, our only female drill sergeant, Drill Sergeant Haines, was on duty that night. She took one look at Jesus, and said gruffly, “That’s a toy. It’s going to have to go into your personal bag.”
Everything we received on the prohibited list, even religious toys, was banished from basic training along with our right to privacy until after graduation.
We got an average four-and-a-half hours of sleep per night, and I wrote in my journal that the lack of sleep was making me so miserable that I doubted the existence of God. This theme persisted over the course of my Army career. I often wrote in my journals that I was trying to be a good Christian, and exude love and kindness, but after some short or non-existent night, I’d have a total meltdown.
“These bitches! I hate these people,” I ranted in my journal about the women in my unit. I was not becoming all that I could be; I was losing what I had been. The lack of sleep and prohibition on coffee was one of the most difficult factors I had to deal with, and my family knew of my struggles from my manic letters. To survive I had to learn to hide not only the physical pain but my cultural background. Being an over-educated hippie was not endearing me to my female drill sergeant nor to my fellow female trainees. Being the loudest, most aggressive screamer, however, earned one points for “leadership potential” in barracks politics.
The ridiculousness of the Army games quickly wore off—just as quickly as my body and soul broke down. I was surprised to discover how short the link is between physical and mental health. Getting yelled at, marching and running everywhere, doing push-ups and “getting smoked” in group punishments meant to inspire team spirit and group cohesion had me at total and catastrophic muscle and mental fatigue within weeks. I went to sick call for the hip and leg pains that became unbearable, and the doctor spent several minutes poring over a big book until he triumphantly proclaimed I had trochanter bursitis and severe shin splints. I wasn’t supposed to be running so much but getting recycled and held back was a fate worse than death. I just wanted to make it through the sixteen weeks and get out of basic training.
Although the frequent beautiful sunsets and colorful foliage soothed my soul, the physical reality of my body’s limits begged to be dealt with. I was no longer looking at the stars but was focused only upon my pain and the immediate social drama unfolding around me.
My body’s reaction to these pains was to emit tears, which brought the ire of Drill Sergeant Haines, who gave me her “special attention.” She berated me for making all women look bad, telling me I was a worthless piece of shit, not cut out to be a soldier, and generally humiliating me. I just knew that I was in pain twenty-four hours a day and couldn’t control the tears from welling up and dripping down onto the drill pad as we yet again found ourselves in the front-leaning-rest-position, butts in the air and arms quivering, for the misdeeds of our deficient comrades.
Drill Sergeant Haines had participated in the invasion of Iraq earlier that year, and she threatened us with flashbacks if we displeased her. I knew intellectually that this was sort of the whole point of the game of basic training. The drill sergeants were supposed to be displeased with some action or inaction of our group, or individuals, and then smoke us for it. When she discovered that my job assignment was Human Intelligence Collector, I can still see the look on her face of shock and awe, and then mockery spread across it.
We were in Haine’s office because of a dispute about toilet paper. Each floor of the female barracks was assigned a squad leader, who represented the floor to the drill sergeants. This small degree of power in the hands of highly stressed and sleep-deprived very young women proved a recipe for serious emotional abuse and social conflict. In the first few weeks of basic training, I realized that what I had been taught in college about civilized discourse was not going to solve anything here, and that my street-fighting skills were sorely lacking. I was helpless against the screaming and screeching, the shit-talking, and targeted snitching.
I’m not sure if it was deliberate, but there was never enough toilet paper anywhere, and especially not in the female barracks. The drill sergeant on duty told the squad leaders no, and they came back to the rest of us and delivered the bad news. Things got heated, and somehow, I found myself crying from being yelled at by a 17-year-old girl from Louisiana—another difficult accent for me—due to my insubordination surrounding the dispensation of toilet paper.
The mixed-gender Army basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in 2003 meant men and women trained together regardless of their job or rank, but women were housed in a separate wing of the barracks. I was enlisted already at the E4 pay-grade thanks to my college degree, but trainees were not encouraged to wear rank insignia yet. Sometimes though, if you stood out from the crowd, they looked into your record to find out more about you. I couldn’t avoid standing out.
“You’re supposed to be an interrogator, and you can’t even control yourself?” Drill Sergeant Haines sneered at me.
I sniffed back weakly, “Yes, Drill Sergeant, I am also very worried. Drill Sergeant.”
“What kind of crap soldier are you? You aren’t cut out to be one!” she said.
Drill Sergeant Haines, a petite woman from New Jersey, was probably only a year or so older than me, her brown hair perfectly jelled into a bun under her drill sergeant hat. She constantly yelled and inevitably resorted to profanity even though the guidelines for drill sergeants call for professionalism and avoiding cuss words. This meant they had to get creative: “Goshdangit, Private, what is your deficiency?” was a common alternative.
Handsome African-American Drill Sergeant Deering was probably the senior ranking drill sergeant. Not understanding rank yet, I wasn’t totally sure about this hierarchy. He was everyone’s darling. One of the few unifying elements among our group of women was that we all had crushes on Drill Sergeant Deering and were highly motivated in his presence. He had a quiet, calm, funny demeanor and a natural sense of authority. We wanted to be the best we could be for him. He never had to yell, curse, or humiliate anyone. A true leader, he had the same effect on the men in our unit. When Drill Sergeant Deering asked you what your deficiency was, it was because there was one to be attended to.
One day at mail call, I got another package from my sister. It contained a tube of Weleda arnica salve and a box of organic cotton tampons. The male drill sergeant took a quick glance at the tampons and quickly handed them back to me as if they were contagious. When I got back to my bunk and took a closer look at my gifts—savoring every second of feeling like someone cared about me—I opened the tampon box—which was glued shut and discovered a bag of caffeine pills behind the first row of tampons. My sister had saved my life. I didn’t tell anyone about my secret stash of contraband caffeine pills; I brought them out only when I was desperate: for the physical fitness tests and the early morning ruck marches, which were a big challenge with all of our heavy gear, and when I’d already suffered my first panic attack being “encouraged” by Drill Sergeant Haines.
At some point during basic, several trainees (that’s what we were called, not yet soldiers), including my bunkmate, had decided they’d had enough bullshit and pulled whatever cards they had to get out. Having their parents call their congressmen; a sudden family emergency; many used the suicide card. No one appreciated their abuse of the mental health threat, as this meant that we all had to pull extra night shifts to accompany those on suicide watch.
Other people got very ill—one even with meningococcal meningitis, a rare and deadly bacterial infection we were informed—and they disappeared for days or weeks; we assumed to the hospital. One day, we heard a rumor that one trainee in our company had accused another of stealing her prescribed pain medications that she’d brought back from the hospital, and so there was a sudden health and wellness check for contraband in our barracks. This meant that the Battalion Commander and as many non-commissioned officers (NCOs) as they could round up from other units on post came through and ordered us to open our wall lockers and our one remaining private space: a small, locked metal drawer of about 12 x 12 x 4 inches—where I kept my journal, letters, and caffeine pills—to be searched.
The NCOs came in shouting instructions to open our lockers, stand at parade rest next to them and that oh, by the way, “There’s never a wrong time to do the right thing!” so we should just tell them already what illicit materials we were hiding before they found them in their inspection. As they went through our lockers one by one, we were freaking out. Some girls were crying, and others shaking. I was in the back of the room, and in the few moments when everyone was busy unlocking their drawers and no one was looking, I swiftly grabbed the caffeine pills and slid them into my cargo pants side pocket. As my heart pounded, I counted on them not patting us down on top of all the other measures. My hands were shaking.
They found all sorts of contraband that day: candy, unauthorized sharing of medications, cell phones, pornos, and caffeine pills! Several of the women who had given me so much trouble had formed a clique and apparently shared caffeine pills. Those bitches. Outrageous! My schadenfreude was short-lived, however, because the game where everyone got punished together for the crimes of the few continued. But I still had my secret stash.
After the continuing verbal abuse by Drill Sergeant Haines and my ongoing hip and leg pains which my caffeine pills and ibuprofen were useless against, I reached that strange place where I could see nothing but my own suffering and humiliation. To be told in this vulnerable state that I was a worthless, terrible soldier, I concluded life was not worth living. It was no longer a game. I was all alone and without recourse. When I decided to die, I also thought it would be good to kill Drill Sergeant Haines too. She was, after all, one of the main reasons for my misery. I would kill her first, then manage the tricky maneuver to get the barrel of my M16 under my chin and still pull the trigger.
My big opportunity—for a not-so-original act of homicide-suicide—arrived during basic rifle marksmanship training (BRM) when they finally gave us live ammunition. During the concluding timed test, my rifle jammed, and I didn’t pass. My rifle had constantly jammed throughout BRM, requiring me to implement SPORTS (an acronym for how to clear a jam on the M16 rifle: Slap up on the magazine; Pull the charging handle; Observe the chamber; Release the handle; Tap the forward assist; Shoot). I wasn’t a bad shot when my rifle worked—I loved shooting and enjoyed the Zen-like state of mind needed to focus. Shooting guns at a range is a lot more like the quiet, focused skill of archery than the chaotic, Hollywood shoot-’em-up scenes of great battles or cops and robbers. There is a level of protocol, maturity, and skill involved in range shooting commensurate with the danger of the equipment, encapsulated for me by the words of the range officer: “Place your selector switch from SAFE to FIRE, and watch your lane.”
During that fall of 2003, however, most of the trainers only wanted to instill in us the “Warrior First” mentality, especially after the Jessica Lynch debacle: her weapon jammed in the desert of Iraq, and she didn’t fire a shot before being captured during the first weeks of the war. The doctrinal focus had not yet shifted to the idea that every soldier needs to be totally comfortable with and responsible for their assigned weapon. We got practically no time with our weapons and were marched to the armory to check out our individually assigned rifles every time we went to the range. We were under orders not to fiddle with them unless explicitly instructed; there was always at least one unintentional discharge per day that miraculously didn’t kill anyone but made clear why they were so strict. I never felt comfortable with my M16 and held it like it was going to go off at any moment. Most disconcertingly, my weapon kept jamming. I would panic every time and fumble through SPORTS until something began working again, or a drill sergeant helped me. In their eyes, I was an idiot who couldn’t use my weapon. This was partly true, but later, upon returning it to the armory at the end of basic training, I mentioned the constant jamming. The armorer looked it over and said the firing pin was bent. Of course it was going to jam every other time! I had been assigned defective equipment, but the reputational damage to my soldiering was irreversible.
Those of us designated “retests” were assigned a drill sergeant to help us pass on the second attempt. I turned around to see who my coach was; none other than Drill Sergeant Haines. This time, though, she tried to be helpful.
The drill sergeants prided themselves in having all their soldiers pass BRM with high marks, so they were keen on us passing and annoyed with anyone who tarnished their scores. When the green torso targets were about to start popping up in timed constellation for us retests to shoot against the backdrop of the autumnal foliage, there was a moment—probably over in the blink of an eye—when I seriously considered turning around from my prone position and just blowing Drill Sergeant Haines’s head off. A millisecond passed without any action on my part, other than the beating of my heart and my attempts to steady my breath. Then I thought, “Nah, she’s not worth it. Fuck her. I’m going to live!” I do not know if it was the grace of God or not wanting to draw attention to myself that saved my life and spared Drill Sergeant Haines that day.
My parents, recently divorced and reluctant to spend time together, came nonetheless to my graduation from Basic Combat Training just before Thanksgiving 2003. I wrote them both letters with the information about graduation, and they came to Missouri to witness confirmation of my survival. As I walked across the stage, my heart swelled in nationalistic pride to the sound of Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue.” In another part of my mind, I knew we were celebrating how great America is at killing and destruction. We were going to kill the enemy! But who was the enemy, actually?
It would be years before I was able to change the narrative of Haines being one of the “bad guys” in my Army story. I often wondered what I’d do if I encountered her in a dark alley. As my hand-to-hand combat skills never did improve much since basic, my revenge fantasies thankfully remained untested. About as long as it took me not to take my own thoughts—suicidal or otherwise—so seriously, over time, my understanding of Drill Sergeant Haines deepened. Perhaps she was as unprepared for war as anyone else in those heady days—and unsupported in an Army still hostile to women. She was carrying the burden of representing all women in a conflict where women participated in higher numbers than ever before. She did the best she could and what she thought she had to do. I wonder how she is doing now.
Not only in basic but later, I sat on suicide watch for several fellow soldiers, all women. We didn’t know how to talk about these things yet. I had felt alone, but I was not. I kept my plastic Jesus after I got it back after graduation. He was in storage for many years while I traveled and sought peace; now, twenty years later, he sits on my shelf next to my two little green female soldier figurines. I got these toys at a writing conference where they were swag at a veteran literary journal’s booth. There I met veteran writers and came to understand that so many others had also gone through dark nights of the soul and lived to laugh and write about it years later.
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Bettina Rolyn has been writing and traveling from a young age and makes a living now as a freelance German to English translator, creative writer, and editor in Berlin. Her essays and poems have appeared in The War Horse, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Berlin Stadtsprachen Magazin, among others. She served enlisted in the US Army (2003-2007) as a Persian linguist. After quitting a career in the defense industry, she studied theology in Stuttgart, Germany and Vienna, Austria. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Carlow University, Pittsburgh and is finishing a memoir.
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