Life in the U.S. Army

The first thing that surprised me about la vie militaire came during our processing in. The physical exam I expected, and big burly guys keeling over at the sight of some 50 ccs of blood being drawn from their arms was not the least out of the way, but when a dozen or so of us were lined up in the nude and told "Bend over and spread your cheeks," while some middle-aged person in a lab coat walked slowly behind us, peering. I was caught off balance. Had I only known what was in store! I should have got a glass eye, so that at least one of us could peer back¹.

When we were issued our uniforms and stuff there was some civilian at the end of the line asking us whether we were Christians or Jews and passing out "testaments" of the appropriate flavor accordingly. Now, I had put "atheist" in the blank for religion on the enlistment papers, and despite the fact that my declared faith had been besmirched on my dogtags to a bland "no preference," I remained true to it and didn't take one of their books. I found later that I should have done as these were, contrary to idealistic notions of the separation of church and state, required items for display on the top tray of one's footlocker, to be placed immediately to the right of the central divider at the bottom. I filled that space with something equally dark, a shoe brush, bristle side up, and nobody ever noticed. This was a pity, as I was rather hoping they would. My confidence in the eagle eyes of inspecting officers was sadly shaken.

Another astonishing thing was the fact that while we soldiers all had rifles, the things were locked up in racks most of the time, well away from our potentially murderous little hands. Ammunition, too, was accounted for, round by round, and it was cause for considerable alarm if a trainee actually managed to smuggle a bullet into the barracks. When candy-arsed ROTC-trained second lieutenants looked down a barrel, they most emphatically did not want to see anything looking back. At least we had real rifles, good, solid 9 1/2 pound M-1 Garands that could knock men over at 500 yards and, when out of ammunition and lacking bayonets, club them to death up close. They were made of walnut, brass, and steel, not plastic and velcro, and fired eight shots--enough if you knew how to aim. The one I had in basic training had been made by the International Harvester Company in 1943 and was still working fine.

At least it made a noise when I pulled the trigger, ejected the casing into my face (a trifling inconvenience experienced by left-handed shooters), loaded a fresh round, and I qualified. At least, I was told I qualified and I expected to have done. I had been shooting guns since I was 5, I generally hit what I aimed at, and these targets were quite large. They were in frames like sash windows and could be pulled up and down by the people in the trench where they stood. It was not until I got in that trench that I learned that everybody qualified. Trench duty was rather fun: one got to enjoy the sensation of being shot at without the discomfort of being hit, and one had a disk and a flag on a long pole to indicate hits and misses. One also had round stickers to paste over the hits (or not) so that they would not be counted twice (or would). After the shooters finished one round of firing, a kindly old sergeant told us about the importance of qualifying.

"If those sorry sonsabitches don't qualify today," he confided, "they're going to be back here qualifying Saturday. And if they're back here, I'll be back here. And if I'm back here, you dipshits are sure as hell going to be back here, too, pulling targets. And I don't think you people want to be here with me on a Saturday. I can be pretty hard to live with on a firing range, on a Saturday."

We suspected he was probably right.

He then demonstrated the use of the M-1 pencil. In the tiny illustration to the left above is a regular pencil next to the 30.06 round that is used in the M-1 rifle. Both have pointy ends that go right through paper targets, and both do this out of sight of the people on the firing line, the one by speed and the other by concealment within the trench. The two are roughly the same calibre. Coincidence? I think not. We all qualified that very same day.

The Army was the place where I first encountered the wide variation in "leaders" that I have since discovered is sadly quite common. While I was in, I met only three officers that I would today invite into my home: the one who most stands out was a tiny Filipino 2nd Lt who had become the commander of his unit in Korea by dint of having his superiors shot away from around him. He told us truths about staying alive, and we would have followed him into combat with confidence. The pathetic cretins from ROTC with dentist's mirrors for rifle inspections did not have a clue about this important enterprise. In general, in the Army and elsewhere, the less knowledge a person in command has, the more like a shit he is likely to behave; it might be interesting to do a statistical analysis on 2nd Lts fragged in Viet Nam (where they were the most popular targets), looking at their age and education at date of death. The worst pains in basic were the cadre, "assistant corporals" who had been in the service perhaps 4 months longer than we had. One I dealt with behaved like a human being on one and only one occasion, when the two of us were together in a pit and I had two genuine hand grenades to play with.

The week before, some trainee had thrown out the pin, dropping the grenade into the trench and killing a sergeant who probably died telling him not to do that.

Though a smartass, I have always been naive about some things, particularly in expecting a basic honesty and decency from most people (I have never been so naive as to expect that from all of them). For the first few months of my enlistment, the Army still paid in cash. One waited in line, then stepped to the pay table, gave a salute, and announced, "Private Martin reporting for pay, Sir!" and the officer behind the table counted out the bills. I seem to remember it being $62 a month, but I may be wrong. In any event, you got two singles. Next to the pay table was another table with the sign "Company Fund--$2." with one of the sergeants sitting behind it. You gave him the $2, he thanked you, and you left. It was not until I had left Texas that it occurred to me to wonder what the Company Fund was for; certainly, it had never done a thing for me. If one doesn't assume a basic honesty on the part of the sergeants, it isn't too hard to figure out. In a training company, they have 200 recruits for 8 weeks, then that lot goes away, and in a week or so another lot comes to take their place. In between lots, the company, consisting of perhaps 2 dozen officers, sergeants, etc. has itself an $800 beer party. In 1956, you could buy quite a little beer for that sort of money.

Perhaps the greatest surprise I had in the Army was how very easy it was. Sure, you may draw unpleasant things to do, be kept up past your bedtime on guard duty, and be commanded by people more concerned with looking important than with leading, but so long as you did what you were told, you were fed, clothed, had a place to sleep, got medical attention, and your drunken excesses were regarded indulgently by your superiors (always on the lookout for fellow alcoholics, even ones still in the larval stage). You practically couldn't be fired, and you were urged to make a career right there cosily snuggled up to the OD teat that sustained you.

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