by T.R. Healy
Before I entered the United States Army in the summer of 1968, my father passed on some wisdom he’d heard before he enlisted to serve in the Second World War: “If you think everyone you come in contact with in the Army will be like your brother, you’ll be sadly mistaken.” At the time I didn’t give much thought to what he said, just dismissed it as some idle remark. But soon enough I realized what he meant. The non-commissioned officers I encountered during Basic Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, especially the Drill Sergeants, were unlike any people I had ever encountered. They were ten times as threatening and stern as the nuns and priests I dealt with in elementary school. They breathed both fire and ice. Clearly I had entered strange territory inhabited by even stranger people.
The Drill Sergeant was a special breed of soldier because his principal function was more psychological than technical. Where the cook, the clerk, the truck driver, the infantryman and all other soldiers had only to perform the basic mechanical skills they were taught to perform, regardless of their individual feelings or attitudes, the Drill Sergeant had to adopt a whole new personality in order to fulfill his function. He had to become another man, someone who was capable of establishing an entirely different standard of conduct and eliminating any act that opposed or deviated from this new standard. Unlike any other superior, his express purpose was to influence and change the personalities of those under his control, to break their civilian instincts and in their place cultivate the desired military ones. He was the force of iron who gave orders, determined values, set standards, enforced rules, dispensed punishments, tested and judged performances; he was the very personification of power and propriety and reason and perfection.
In the beginning, the Drill Sergeants belligerently asserted themselves at every possible opportunity, trying to impress on us the truth of their might, their omniscience, and their unimpeachable authority. It was a period of acute pressure. Constantly we were screamed at and humiliated, our beliefs challenged then shattered; constantly we were forced to do things that seemed baseless and ridiculous, then reprimanded for doing them incorrectly. Never could we satisfy or please. Always we ended up admitting our ignorance and our incompetence and asking the Drill Sergeants, as they knew we would, for another chance to prove ourselves. It was a strange, belittling relationship dominated by recrimination, with the Drill Sergeants always watching and examining us to see if we were developing the desired patterns of thought and action. Very soon we grew to fear them, and to feel frustration, anger and regret at the utter helplessness of our position. Several incidents revealed this but one especially stands out in my mind, even though I was more spectator than participant.
We had just been dismissed from closing formation, and just about everyone left the company street and returned to the barracks to change and get ready for dinner. Those of us in the Second Platoon, however, remained in formation and watched as a Drill Sergeant we called Squash bitterly denounced Chi-Town because, on his way to the formation, he had walked past Lieutenant Squire without saluting. Squash went through the standard litany of aspersions, which ranged from common schoolyard epithets to three- four- five- and even twelve-letter obscenities to attacks on his masculinity and his worth as a human being. He then questioned his integrity and accused him of an assortment of lies and deceptions and, as always, concluded his attack by doubting Chi-Town’s ability ever to make it through training to become a soldier. By now such behavior was customary, and I only half listened. Whenever we made mistakes, regardless of their size, the Drill Sergeants always reacted with slashing philippics to make sure we understood their intolerance for our errors. And always they corrected our mistakes with assault. That was the great panacea—creation through destruction. They rectified by smashing. Smash Smash Smash, as if we were old dusty rags that had to be beaten with sticks before we could ever be brought into the household and made a part of it.
Finished with his assault, Squash ordered Chi-Town to report on the double to the arms room for a work detail. Still tense and shaking, yet obviously determined to please Squash and remove the stain of his recent mistake, he moved with a stallion’s burst, streaking up the grassy bank onto the cement walkway with such determination that, unknowingly, he ran straight past the CO, who was standing next to the horizontal ladder smoking a cigarette.
“Oh, Lord,” moaned the Sandman in a worried whisper.
The CO looked stunned. Yanking the cigarette from his mouth, he let out a huge scream, as though he had just suffered a painful wound. “Come here, you stupid son of a bitch!”
Everyone in the platoon turned around, scared it might be one of us he was screaming at, then looked away when we saw we were safe. Instantly Chi-Town froze and rushed back to the CO, his fingers clicking nervously against his pants legs.
“Look at him,” Gator chuckled. “He gonna git it now.”
“He’s scared shitless,” muttered Four-Eyes with an undertone of sympathy.
Furiously the CO berated Chi-Town for failing to salute him. “Don’t you know the proper respect you’re supposed to show an officer, trainee?”
“Yes, sir. I’m supposed to come to attention and salute.”
“Well, you sure as hell didn’t do it, did you?”
“No, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
“I don’t give a goddamn if you’re sorry or not. You messed up. You’ll probably always mess up. They’ll send you over to Vietnam and you’ll be the cause of somebody gettin’ blown away because you messed up doin’ something you shouldn’t have done, and then you’ll come up to one of that guy’s buddies and start to whine and say how sorry you are and he’ll rifle butt your teeth out, and if he doesn’t he ain’t no better than you are. Sorry, shit! That ain’t gonna cut it ‘round here, trainee. You better start gettin’ with the program right now or I’ll recycle your ass outa here so fast you won’t know what happened.” He paused, glowering, and glanced briefly in our direction then said, “I want you to report to your Drill Sergeant and I want you to tell him that you don’t know how to salute yet and ask him to show you.”
Tensely he saluted. “Yes, sir.” The CO, lips tight and lean as a piece of wire, saluted back, the shook his head in disgust.
Chi-Town ran back to the front of the formation, a few steps in front of Squash, and before he could tell him what happened, Squash stared at him and, almost comically, said, “You jerk,” and waved his glazed fists. “Can’t you do anything right? Are you always this stupid?”
Chi-Town didn’t answer him and, predictably, Squash went through the same list of names and threats he went through less than three minutes ago. This time he seemed even more furious in his denunciations, probably because the CO remained on the bank to make sure Chi-Town was properly disciplined.
Squash ordered him into the front leaning rest position a couple yards in front of our ranks. “Start knockin’ out push-ups till I get tired, trainee,” he said.
Chi-Town spread his hands out a little more so that they were even with his shoulders, brought his toes closer together, and went down, exhaling. He came up and went down again and then twice more.
“Make your chest hit the ground,” Squash demanded. “Hit it hard so everyone in the formation can hear it.”
Grunting, Chi-Town lowered his thick body until the front of his shirt slapped the gravel then lifted himself back up and glanced at Squash.
“Hit it!” Squash shouted, and Chi-Town repeated the same cycle again and again though at a slightly reduced pace.
Squash stepped away after a couple minutes and began to scold us for our slackness and our lack of bearing and, in a threatening tone, warned us never to fail to salute an officer regardless of what we were doing. “No matter what,” he barked. “If you’re in the company area and see the training officer or the CO, you better stop, come to attention, and salute, and show ‘em the courtesy they’re entitled to as officers, or I’ll jump in your shit pronto. You can be guaranteed of that.” He hesitated, appeared unsure of himself, turned and looked at Chi-Town, who by now was breathing like a vacuum cleaner, and shouted, “Count ‘em off, trainee. I can’t hear ya and my hearin’ is the best there is, ‘cordin to the medics who gave me my last physical.”
“Twenty-seven, Drill Sergeant!” he cried. “Twenty-eight, Drill Sergeant!”
Squash glanced over at the spot on the bank where the CO stood, but he was not there now. He had stomped away a minute or two earlier, leaving only a couple of dead cigarette butts on the ground for us to pick up tomorrow morning.
Suddenly, having dipped his neck a little too far as he lowered himself toward the ground, Chi-Town lost his helmet, which wobbled noisily in the gravel.
“I can’t hear ya, trainee,” Squash wailed. “Sound off so I can hear ya, goddamn it. And get that helmet on.”
“Fo-, for-, forty-two, Drill Sergeant,” he said, the number finally spilling out of his mouth. Then, as he tried to reach for his helmet, his arms collapsed and his chest thudded against the ground.
“Get your sorry ass up!” Squash screamed frantically, sprinting over to him. “No one told you to stop. Get on up, trainee, or I’ll kick ya. So help me, I’ll kick ya right in the head if you don’t get up this second.” He stood at Chi-Town’s side, threatening him with the toe of his spit-shined boot.
“Come on, come on, get up,” implored Gator in a soft drawl.
“One more time,” urged Four-Eyes in a voice no louder than a pulse.
Django, out of the side of his mouth, whispered, “I heard from a guy in Alpha Company that one of their Drill Sergeants kicked a dude in the balls.”
“Knock off the chatter,” snapped Nickelwise, turning around and glowering like a dimming light bulb. “Or you’ll be down there doing push-ups too.”
Sweating and groaning, Chi-Town managed to prop himself up on his shaking arms. Yet he could not seem to go down, as if afraid he might not get back up if he did, so he stayed in that position. Cools and others laughed, he looked so ridiculous. An animated cartoon frozen still, I thought, as he lay there in the air on his hands and toes, occasionally swaying from side to side.
“I ain’t tired yet, trainee,” Squash whined caustically, bending down and looking straight into Chi-Town’s eyes. “You better start movin’ or else you’re gonna be out here all night.”
“Permission to get up, Drill Sergeant?” he asked groggily.
“I want to hear some numbers, trainee. Big loud numbers!”
Oscillating back and forth, Chi-Town tried to lower himself but halfway down his arms broke and he sprawled across the gravel and sand a second time.
“Get up, damn it!” Squash roared. “Get your sorry ass up in the air.” The toe of his right boot flew through a section of gravel like a rake, spraying dust and rocks across Chi-Town’s back and shoulders. “Get up, now!”
Aided, apparently, by a sudden source of energy, he scrambled back up on his arms, his back curved like an archery bow, and after catching his breath requested again, “Permission to get up, Drill Sergeant?”
“Shut up and count. I’ll tell ya when ya can get up and that ain’t gonna be until I’m good and tired.”
Seconds later, he collapsed. Squash screamed angrily but Chi-Town was immobile, his chin and arms flat on the ground.
To see someone expose another person’s frailties, reducing him to an object of scorn, and to do it not for the original end of instilling discipline, but as an end in itself, was sickening. But, worse than this, was to know that Squash had the authority to behave that way and there was nothing any of us could do about it. We were as helpless as Chi-Town.
Soon Chi-Town broke, and his sobs became audible, even though he tried to muffle them by pretending there was something caught in the back of his throat.
“Are you cryin’, trainee?” Squash shouted with contempt.
“No, Drill Sergeant.”
Squash raved, calling him all the familiar names, then said, “Get up and get back in the formation before I kick your sorry ass down the street.”
Though we stood just a few feet from them, supposedly with our eyes pointed straight ahead, most of us looked away when Chi-Town got up and turned in our direction, as though he were tainted. He picked up his helmet and glasses and hustled back to his place in the formation but few of us saw him. Squash then turned and made some final remarks concerning the slackness of our military courtesy and, as usual, expressed his doubts that any of us could ever become soldiers while Chi-Town knelt behind us, vomiting into his helmet liner. After a few minutes, we were dismissed for dinner.
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T.R. Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and is the author of a collection of stories, A Time of Times.
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