11 Mike: Memoirs of a Mechanized Infantryman

By Matthew Epps

11 Mike is the gritty memoir of a soldier who served in Iraq 2004-05. His memoir includes his 9 years of service and details the training methods that the U.S. Army uses to transform young American men into infantrymen. Follow him through Germany, Kosovo and Iraq and experience what it's like to ride into battle as a mechanized infantryman; an 11 Mike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781300926535

Book preview

11 Mike: Memoirs of a Mechanized Infantryman

11 Mike:

Memoirs of a Mechanized Infantryman

By

Matthew Epps

Copyright © 2013, Matthew Epps

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

1

For Chafin, Dalton, Velez, Brewer, Penny and all the rest of you who shed your blood in that foreign sand. May your sacrifice never be forgotten.

Prologue-REDCON 1

November 8th, 2004. 0200 hours. Attack Position Otter; about two miles north of Fallujah, Iraq…

I’m sitting on top of my Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle overlooking the city of Fallujah.  Operation Phantom Fury or the Second Battle of Fallujah has just begun. My platoon, 3rd platoon, Charlie Company, 2-7 CAV is dead-last in the task force’s order-of-march.  Elements of the Marine task force that we are supporting have made their move to capture the train station which is the key piece of terrain along the northern edge of the city.  Red-orange tracers streak through the darkness and distant explosions rock the night.  Two miles to my front, men are dying.

The firefight at the train station is just the first stage of a bold and complex plan to clear the city of the estimated six thousand insurgents who are fortified there.  After the Marines take the train station, combat engineers will blast lanes through the IED and obstacle belt that rings the city. From there, the two heavy battalions from the Army, 2-2 Infantry, First Infantry Division and 2-7 CAV, First Cavalry Division will rush through the breaches and push south to seize key road intersections in the city. Next, light infantry from the Marine task force will begin to clear the city, house by house, room by room.

As the Marines fight their way through the darkness, Air Force AC-130 Specter gunships blaze away at the enemy as American artillery and mortars rain destruction on the city. It’s a hellishly beautiful spectacle.  All night, I’ve been watching our aircraft and artillery pound the city in preparation for the attack.  Brilliant yellows, bright reds and oranges flare in the night sky.  Bits of white phosphorous and white-hot debris streak heavenward like meteors before gravity’s pull causes them to arc back towards the Earth. All at once it is both the most horrible and the most beautiful spectacle I’ve ever witnessed in my twenty-nine years.  I know that before the sun rises, I will charge into that.

All that can be done to prepare for the upcoming fight has been done.  We’ve rehearsed the battle plan at the platoon, company and task force level so many times now that we could recite it in our sleep. Some of us do just that, mumbling battle drills as they doze against a berm of gravel and sand; attempting to stockpile rest against the sleepless nights that are sure to come over the next few days.  Others are writing letters to family back home while some pray or read their Bibles.

We are armed to the teeth. All of our dismounted infantry carry double combat loads of 5.56 millimeter ammunition; some carry triple loads. They are loaded down with smoke, fragmentation grenades, claymores and 40 millimeter grenades. My Bradley has 900 rounds of ammunition for its 25 millimeter chain gun and 3,000 rounds of 7.62 millimeter for the coax. We have five TOW missiles on board and countless rounds of 5.56 millimeter stowed for the dismounts and ourselves in the event that the Bradley becomes disabled and we have to fight on foot.

Yesterday, at the pep talk we got from some Marine Corps full-bird colonel, we were told to expect as high as 50% casualties. We’re told to expect the enemy to employ IEDs, VBIEDs (car bombs), suicide bombers, snipers, RPG’s, and mortars. We’re told that the enemy are hardcore jihadists and that their creed is to stand and die.  At the end of his speech he tells us that every man in the city of Fallujah between the ages of 15 and 55 are enemy combatants and are to be shot on sight.

At this point, all a soldier has left to do is make his peace with God, or whatever name he calls Him. All soldiers have done it since the first warriors picked up their spears and shields and marched off to battle.  Some pray for His protection or ask Him to smite our enemies. I do neither. Sitting on top of my Bradley, waiting for order to go forward I tell my Lord that I do not want to die but if that is the cup that He has set before me, then I will drink every drop.  I ask forgiveness for all of the cruel acts I’ve ever committed, both petty and great. I ask Him to forgive me for all of the things that I ought to have done but haven’t.  I ask Him that if today is the day, then to let me do the job that has been set before me well, so that these other men, who are depending on me to keep them covered in the battle to come, might live. I ask Him to not let me prove to be a coward in the face of the enemy.

I leave my soul in God’s hands and put all the regrets of the past and expectations for the future behind me. None of that matters now. It’s now 0300 and the order has been given to move forward. I am as ready as I can make myself. My last thought as I button down my hatch and settle behind my gun is, How did I get here; how did it all come to this?  The captain’s voice crackles across the company radio net, Guidons, guidons, guidons; this is Comanche 6; all Comanche elements report REDCON 1.

Chapter 1: LTD

Eight years earlier…

I’ve always struggled with my weight. I’m what the Army calls an LTD: Little Tubby Dude, or a heavy drop, if you’re part of the airborne community.  I pretty much got the short end of the genetic stick. I have two brothers who are both slender and blonde. I don’t know who the mailman in our neighborhood was, but I’m betting he was a short, fat fella with dark brown hair.  The winter I was in the 4th grade I just seemed to swell up and I’ve had to fight it ever since. Sometimes I’m winning that fight, sometimes…well…not so much.  I played football through junior high and high school, which kept my weight managed even though I ate a diet that was way too high in fat and refined carbohydrates.  My high school playing weight was about 230 pounds. I justified it by the fact that I could bench 330.  When my football days ended I really started packing on the pounds and by the time I was 21 I had gotten up to about 280 pounds.  It was then that I decided that I wanted to join the Army and be in the infantry.

There were a lot of reasons I wanted to join. I’d managed to piddle around and lose my academic scholarship to Arkansas State University because I’d failed to meet the GPA requirements. Because of that I was forced to adopt a Plan B; join the National Guard. I could get in shape and pay for college. That sounded like a pretty good deal to me.  I still had my federal aid, so I kept taking classes and took some freshman and sophomore level ROTC classes. It was there that I became acquainted with, then, Major David Grossman, who was the school’s Professor of Military Science and author of On Killing and On Combat.

To me, the man was the very embodiment of the warrior-scholar. A devout Christian and family man, Major, later Lieutenant Colonel Grossman was a bit of a paradox to me. He was such a friendly and affable man that I could scarcely imagine him ever being the kind of man who was a fighter; a killer. That was until he came out to the paintball class that was taught by a Master Sergeant Jeff Shearman.  Colonel Grossman and a couple of the senior cadets offered to play the opposing force or OPFOR against our entire class; three men against the fifteen of us.  The ROTC program used paintball to teach basic fire and maneuver to freshman and sophomore cadets and prospects from the campus at large. We’d been taught how to move in a squad column with fire teams in wedges, as well as the squad attack battle drill as outlined in the army’s FM-7-8. However, our crash course in infantry tactics had not prepared us for what was about to happen.

We advanced towards the little wood line where the colonel and his seniors were defending. When we had closed to about 40 yards away from their position, they opened up on us with their paintball guns. We hit the ground and got our lead fire team on-line just as we’d been taught and began to return fire in an attempt to gain fire superiority, that is getting enough rounds downrange to make the enemy keep his head down.  Now, at this point, with our squad being green as new mown grass, our attack began to flounder. The squad leader was trying to get the trail team moving to flank the colonel’s position when I thought I heard a rustle in the brush to our 2 o’clock. I didn’t think it was anything, so I kept my attention fixated forward.

Before I could draw my next breath, I was getting pelted by paintballs from our 3 o’clock.  Upon making contact, Colonel Grossman had bolted low and fast through the brush and high crawled through the waist high grass in order to gain our flank, which he was now rolling up.  Before anyone could react, he’d wiped our whole squad out while his senior cadets merely kept us fixed in place.  I knew at that moment, I’d apprenticed myself to the right man.

I stuck with it for another year and as time went on, I had the opportunity to listen to the NCO cadre, all old infantrymen, telling their stories.  And as I listened to their stories, I began realize that they were the ones who really got to have all the fun in the Army, not the officers.  Without realizing it, these old sergeants had sowed the seeds of destruction for my career as an officer before it ever begun.  So I kept doing PT (Physical Training) with the ROTC detachment and ate little else besides cabbage soup until I could pass the army physical.  Once I’d met the weight requirement I was eligible to meet with a National Guard career counselor at the MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) in Memphis. All of the branches of service had their counseling offices around the same waiting room and while I was waiting to see the National Guard counselor, I slipped in to talk to the active duty army counselor just to see what he had to offer.

I sat down in front of his big gray Government Issue desk and he took my name and social security number and typed them into his computer terminal. He said he could offer me Broadcast Journalism. I forget what MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) that was but I wasn’t interested and I told him that I wanted to be in the infantry, MOS 11 Bravo. His eyebrow shot up and he asked, Are you serious? My test scores were high enough that I qualified for just about every job in the army. I could have my pick. The broadcast journalism job he was offering me was a plumb assignment; easy duty that would later translate into a good paying civilian job after I got out.

I understood that by passing this up and volunteering for the infantry, I was condemning myself to a life of sleeping out in the rain, snow and mud; eating cold chow and walking all over Hell’s Half-Acres; not to mention the strong possibility of getting shot at. I didn’t join the Army because I wanted to be a cook or run a camera. I wanted to fight. I could already speak a little army by this time and responded with, Serious as a heart attack, sarn’t.  I asked him how fast he could get me down to Fort Benning.  Four months was how long I’d have to wait in the Delayed Entry Program.  A couple of months later I talked a girl I knew into joining; earning a promotion to private second class (PV2) before I’d even shipped out. When I went back home and told all of my friends and family that I’d just joined the army to be an infantryman and that I’d enlisted for four years their jaws dropped. Everyone told me I was either crazy or a fool for running off and joining the infantry full-time. Four months later I got off a bus at 30th AG, Fort Benning, Georgia.

For the uninitiated, I will describe the process by which American youths are transformed into infantrymen in just three and a half short months.  All US Army infantrymen are trained at the Infantry Training Brigade on Sand Hill, which is isolated from main post by miles and miles of dense pine woods. The first thing that happens is you get off a bus at what’s called Reception Battalion. This is where the process begins. Here is where you are administratively processed into the army personnel system, get various immunizations, issued uniforms, get that signature recruit haircut and learn a few of the basic skills of being a soldier; like how to make your bunk, shine your boots and how to wear the uniform. You learn how and who to salute. You learn to identify people of different ranks and how to address them. You learn to stand at attention and parade rest and how to form the extended rectangular formation and how to conduct PT. It is all very calm and orderly. Deceptively so.

Most recruits stay at reception battalion between one and two weeks. Once the recruit is processed, vaccinated and issued uniforms they are organized into training companies of 220 men.  Then one day a group of drill sergeants we’ve never seen before show up with a couple of cattle trucks. Each person then takes their two duffel bags full of army issue stuff and the one bag of civilian stuff that the recruiter said to bring and are calmly herded out to the sidewalk where the AG drill sergeants, who have been more or less calm and courteous (only disciplining the blatant rule breakers) by drill sergeant standards for the last week or so, introduce you to the drill sergeants you’ll be going ‘downrange’ with.

The senior drill sergeant from the training company is given the roster of names of the 220 young men who will be going downrange together to train.  In a loud, clear and calm voice the drill sergeant gives instructions to the 220 young men to get on the cattle trucks as their name is called. As each recruits name is called they grab their bags and shuffle to the cattle trucks. This is it, now TRAINING is about to start! I think to myself. I’m excited; this is what I worked so hard for, ate cabbage soup for and ran so many miles for. My bags are light in my hands and with my little gym bag of civilian stuff slung around my neck I start to jog over to the cattle truck when my name is called.

Take it easy, son. I don’t want you to trip and get hurt, a tall sergeant first class tells me. I look at his name tape. Sullivan. Something tells me I’ll see him again. I slow down. I shuffle to the truck, climb aboard and slide down the bench seat with a duffel bag in my lap, one between my legs and the gym bag still hanging from my neck.  The drill sergeants pack us in like sardines. There’s an old joke in the army that goes: How many privates can you fit in the back of a duce-and-a-half? ONE MORE!  For the first time I hear Pack it in, make your buddy smile!  The truck’s engine is running as the drill sergeant, Sullivan reads off the names. Finally, the truck is loaded.  The drill sergeants climb aboard the trucks and close the doors. Bedlam ensues.

The drill sergeants start bellowing. ‘Screaming’ isn’t the right word as it implies a high pitched screech of a victim and the word ‘yelling’ simply doesn’t do justice to what they were doing with their voices. Bellowing is the best word I can come up with.  Their voices just bristled with homicidal malice. You know right away that these are men who could kill a man and then eat lunch while sitting atop a pile of their enemies’ broken and mangled corpses.

PUT YOUR FACE IN YOUR DUFFLE BAGS! GRIND YOUR FUCKING UGLY-ASSED FACES INTO THOSE DUFFLE BAGS, a drill sergeant yelled, IF I SEE A SINGLE GOD-DAMNED FACE I WILL MONKEY STOMP IT IN TO ABSO-FUCKING-LUTE OBLIVION! I was convinced that they meant business, so I pressed my face into the rough canvas of my duffle bag. We rode around what seemed like hours in the cramped cattle trucks with our faces pressed into our bags while we were showered with a stream of obscenities. Finally the trucks came to a halt.

GET OFF OF MY TRUCK! GET THE FUCK OFF OF MY TRUCK! the drill sergeants screamed. Disoriented, the recruits struggled to obey but everyone’s legs were cramped up from being packed into the trucks for so long. People are starting to trip over one another.  I finally struggle off the truck.  The first thing I see is an apparition the likes of which I’d never seen before. A tall, lean drill sergeant was planted right in the door of the truck. He looked like Jim Carrey’s character from In Living Color, Fire Marshal Bill. On steroids. OH LOOK, A FAT ONE! he growled. Another drill sergeant chimes in, WHAT’S THE HOLD UP, FATASS; YOU LOOKIN’ FOR THE CHOW HALL?

I’m in shock from the sheer volume of the insanity that is taking place all around me. I’m stunned by the verbal assault that I find myself affronted with. I’m like a deer in the headlights.  I look past the two drill sergeants. There is a broad sidewalk that leads 150 yards from the road to a large brick building that has five distinct wings coming off of the main structure. Along the sidewalk is every drill sergeant of 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry and each one is pouring verbal abuse on the recruits as they struggle to make it down the sidewalk with their baggage.  The two drill sergeants brush me out of the way and start in on the next guy getting off the cattle truck. I start to lumber down the sidewalk towards the barracks building.  As I make my way down the sidewalk I quickly become numb to the torrent of screams and threats from the drill sergeants along the way.

I finally make it down the sidewalk and there is another drill sergeant steering us recruits underneath an overhang that is our company area and then puts us into a mass formation.  So there we are, holding a duffel bag in each hand; trembling under their weight. One guy puts his bags down.  WHO THE FUCK TOLD YOU TO FUCKING PUT YOUR GODDAMNED BAGS DOWN, a drill sergeant asks him. Before the guy can make a response the drill sergeant yells, PICK ‘EM BACK UP!  He tells us all to keep our bags in our hands until told to put them down.  The drill sergeants start dividing us up into platoons of 55 men; all the while we hold our bags up. It takes forever. Sweat pours from every brow and down every back.

We stand in formation and listen to the first sergeant outline his expectations for the company. At 700 decibels.  Finally, the order is given for us to put our bags down.  The army calls this ritual Shark Attack.  It is designed to overwhelm the senses of the new recruit and begins the process that turns ordinary American youths into infantrymen; into killers.  The idea from day one is to start hardening the recruit’s mind against the stress that the loud noises and confusion of battle will cause. The recruit also learns to obey quickly and without question. It works.

Chapter 2: The Rock of Chickamauga

The 1st Battalion of the 19th Infantry Regiment traces its lineage back to its formation during the Civil War.  At the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, the regiment won fame for its stubborn refusal to withdraw in the face of a Confederate attack as other units of the Federal army fled the battlefield. The 19th Infantry Regiment was known from that day forward as The Rock of Chickamauga.  The greeting of the day is, Rock steady, drill sergeant, or if acknowledging an officer, Rock steady, sir.  We recruits are taught this on our first day of instruction.  Army basic training was 8 weeks. Once a recruit graduated, they were then sent to train in their MOS before reporting to their first permanent duty station.  Not so for the infantryman, or other combat arms soldiers.  Combat arms: infantry, armor, combat engineers, artillery and scouts go through what the army calls OSUT or One Station Unit Training. In other words, basic training and MOS skills are combined into a 14 week training regimen. Since basic training is where Army recruits learn the basic skills they need to function as a rifleman and survive on the battlefield, the infantryman just gets an extra five weeks of the same thing, only at more advanced levels.

Day one is the Shark Attack. Controlled chaos.  After Shark Attack and the organizing of the company into four platoons, recruits are then rushed upstairs to the barracks bays.  Each platoon stays in an open bay that has a bed and a wall locker for each man.  At one end of the bay is the drill sergeant’s office and the storage closest where all of the recruits’ civilian gear is locked up. At the other end of the bay are the latrine and showers.  The floors are so shiny that we can see our reflections in it.  I have been assigned to 2nd platoon.  Each recruit has a battle roster number. Every number in 2nd platoon starts with 2. My battle roster number is 218. Two-one-eight. Our bunks are assigned in battle roster order, which coincidentally is also alphabetical order.  The recruits’ battle roster number is written on pieces of tape and placed every piece of equipment they have. Their battle roster numbers will even be taped onto the butt stock of each recruit's M-16. We are instructed to set our bags on the bunks and to sit on the ends of the bunks, facing the drill sergeant’s office.  The drill sergeant is Fire Marshal Bill from earlier; I look at his name tape. Gren. Standing behind the staff sergeant is the sergeant first class I’d seen earlier; Sullivan. He doesn’t say a word. Drill Sergeant Gren orders us to pull out our army issue stationary and write a letter home.  He begins writing on the blackboard, This is what you will write to your family back home. You will not add to or take away from any part of this letter.  The letter read something like this:

Dear (Insert name of loved one here),

I have arrived at basic training in Ft. Benning, Georgia. I am safe and I am in good health.  I am writing to tell you that I will be very busy over the next few weeks and I will not have time to write or call so don’t worry. If there is an emergency, I can be reached through the American Red Cross at the following address:

Your Name; Roster Number

2nd PLT, Bco 1-19 IN

Ft. Benning, GA 31995

I am allowed to receive letters and family photos but do not send me any reading material or food.

Love,

Your Name

We hastily scribble out the letters, stuff them in envelopes, affix a stamp and pass them forward where they were put into a milk crate to be mailed off.

We spend the rest of the afternoon being assigned a battle buddy, (I got stuck with some whiny kid from New York State who wanted to go AWOL the first night) and putting together our Kevlar helmets (minus camouflage covers), load bearing equipment (LBE) and rucksack. We are left to try and figure it out on our own. Fortunately, I learned how to do this in my ROTC days. I’m done in 20 minutes, so I help as many guys as I can. At 5 pm (1700 hours, now) we are called to formation downstairs under the overhang that is our company area.  We march to chow.  The drill sergeants inform us that the entire company has 20 minutes to get through the chow line, eat (with a spoon) and get out.  We only know the most rudimentary drill commands and the drill sergeants take us through, File from the left.  It takes us a couple of tries but we figure it out pretty quickly.

We get through the line and get seated. We are instructed to eat with our left hands palm down on the table, feet together, sitting up straight. NO TALKING! IF YOU HAVE TIME TO TALK THEN YOU MUST BE DONE EATIN’! A B WHAT? SEE YA!  The guy gets up and starts to take his tray to the dish room window. He has a mouth full of chili mac and is trying to wash it down with some water, that being our only drinking choice, when Drill Sergeant Gren intercepts him, slapping the tray from his hands, NO DRINKIN’ AND DRIVIN’, JOE! Joe is the colloquial term the drill sergeants have for recruits.  Food goes everywhere. Two more drill sergeants converge on the poor bastard.  They lambast him as he scoops up the remains of his supper with his tray and spoon.  He gets most of it up and the drill sergeants relent, moving on to their next target as he scurries out the door.

Upon exiting the chow hall, recruits are instructed to double time (jog) to the right and then back around the to the company area. On the way, a drill sergeant directed us to go through a set of monkey bars that were at least 10 yards long and then to the pull-up bars at the end where we are instructed to do five pull-ups. Not everyone can do five, so we spot each other. We are told that this is the procedure that will be followed after each meal.  We then double time back to the company area where we are told to fall-in to our platoon formations. Once all 220 of us were back in formation we were dismissed from formation and told to hustle upstairs and continue putting our gear together.

The next event of day one is the shakedown.  We are ordered to dump our bags out in a pile on each of our bunks so the drill sergeants can come by and make sure that we don’t have any contraband items like tobacco, alcohol, drugs, pornography or anything that might be used as a weapon.  The drill sergeants go down each row of bunks, rifling through each recruit’s possessions; strewing them everywhere in the process.

WHAT’S THIS, A DILDO?

That’s my nose hair trimmer, drill sergeant.

SMELLS LIKE SHIT TO ME, JOE, he growls as he drops it on the floor and crushes it with the heel of his boot.

The shakedown continues. One guy has condoms in his shaving kit. HOLY SHIT, SUL, LOOK AT THIS CRAZY ASS SHIT RIGHT HERE! It’s Drill Sergeant Gren. Drill Sergeant Sullivan comes over, stone faced.

WHO WERE YOU PLANNIN’ ON FUCKING, PRIVATE? Drill Sergeant Sullivan demands as he holds the rubbers up in front of the guy’s face.

I dunno, drill sergeant, the guy stammers.  The drill sergeants tell him that he’s too damn ugly to even think of having sex with anyone. They accuse him of being a homosexual. They guy is horrified; too stunned to speak. Drill Sergeant Gren tosses the rubbers in a garbage can with the rest of the contraband. The drill sergeants move to the next man.  They find a Walkman in his stuff.  The drill sergeant orders him to stand his metal framed bed on its end.  The drill sergeant then places the Walkman on the floor; moving it around until he’s satisfied that it’s exactly where he wants it.  He stands up and pushes the bed over so that it comes crashing back down.  One of the bed’s legs hits the Walkman dead-center; sending pieces of Walkman skittering across the shiny floor.

The foot of each bunk is aligned with a line on the floor.  Whenever the drill sergeants wish to address the platoon in the barracks they command us to toe the line. Each recruit then stands at parade rest with their toes on the line; to the right of their bunk.  The drill sergeant orders the platoon to strip down.  It is at this point, around 10 pm, that the ordeal of day one takes a turn towards the surreal.  Most of us are unaccustomed to 16 or 18 hour days anyway, but the added stress of all the day one insanity has worn us out. I’m not sure if I heard that correctly.  All around me, recruits start to nervously take their clothes off.  Not wanting to stand out, I quickly follow suit. TOE THE LINE! We assume the position.

The drill sergeants produce a three-ring binder that contains pictures of tattoos and the names of gangs associated with them.  They start down the first row, scrutinizing each recruit and then instructing them to turn around.  They go down each row, comparing the recruits’ tattoos with the pictures in the binder, questioning each man about their tattoos. What does that mean? Are you some kind of gang-banger?  What’s that gay-assed shit on your arm?  The drill sergeants come to me.  My God, you’re fat!  Drill Sergeant Gren exclaims.  He asks me my name.  Before I can answer, Drill Sergeant Sullivan cuts me off, "BULLSHIT, your name is Crisco because you are a lard ass!  I now have my basic training name.  The drill sergeants move on to the next man, whom they dub Bitch Hips".

Since we’re all already naked, the drill sergeants decide that now would be an excellent time for a shower. Each row of fourteen recruits is herded into the shower room where there are six shower heads. The drill sergeants place two guys at each shower head. We each have just enough time to soap up all over and rinse. The water is freezing.  When the second guy is rinsed off they’re herded back out to the bay where they dry off and the next row of fourteen is rushed in. This is the last shower most of us will take for the next four weeks.

The shiny floor is now covered in water.  Coming out of the shower a guy slips and hits his head on the tile floor. A drill sergeant immediately grabs him and presses a towel to the injury which was, as head wounds are apt to do, bleeding profusely.  The guy gets his PT shorts on and the drill sergeant hurries him out of the bay.  It takes 14 stitches to close the wound on the guy’s bald head.  The next morning he is paraded about in front of the company formation. "THIS is what happens when you fuck with us", the drill sergeants proclaim.  After the shower, we are smoked unmercifully.

Getting smoked is being forced to perform exercises like push-ups, flutter kicks, donkey kicks, jumping jacks or monkey-fuckers until you reach muscle failure.  At that point, the drill sergeants merely change over to another exercise that uses another area of the body. It is used as punishment and to harden the mind and body. It works.  At midnight, the drill sergeants have us pick up all our stuff and cram it into our wall lockers and to go to bed.  We’re told that first formation is at 0530 hours and the uniform is BDU’s (Battle Dress Uniform; essentially woodland camouflage fatigues) and that we are to have one canteen full of water in our right cargo pocket.  We collapse into our bunks. As soon as I close my eyes, the lights are back on. The clock on the wall says 0520. Shit.

You’ve seen in war movies where the drill sergeants storm into the barracks in the mornings; beating on metal garbage cans with billy clubs while Reveille plays in the background. That’s not what actually happens in army basic training. Reveille is played at 0630. We were awake and marching off to train an hour before the bugle sounded every morning.   Apparently, we were expected to wake ourselves up in time to shave, brush our teeth and get into the right uniform. No one told us this.  The first few weeks of army basic training is contrived to ‘empty the recruits cup’; that is to demonstrate to the recruit how much they don’t know by putting them in situations where they are doomed to failure no matter what they do. Nothing is clean enough, fast