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 That's Len in the top row, third from the left, lining up with the fellas from his platoon who accompanied him on his "honeymoon in Hell" with the U.S. Army. |
Army basic training was
seldom mistaken for fun
By LEN KLEMPNAUER
of TheColumnists.com
It wasn’t
a union made in heaven, although I went into it with eyes wide
open and fully expected it to last for years. We started our
days together in California and ended up together in Alabama,
where we separated after 21 months, 10 days and three hours.
At the time we split, I was working for room and board, bunking
with 11 other guys in the same room and earning a robust $120
monthly.
As you've probably figured out by now, the union I'm talking
about wasn't with a woman, but with the U.S. Army.
Yes, those were the days--the days of the domino theory and the
dreaded draft--when every American lad from age 18 to 26 was
liable for military service. Some were luckier than others, especially
those born between 1935 and 1938. The oldest missed Korea, barely,
while the youngest were turning 26 by the time Vietnam detonated.
In early October 1958, I dropped out of
college for the third time in mid-semester--the San Jose State
registrar’s office was starting to call me by my first name--and
“volunteered” for the draft. Volunteered was the official
term. Capitulated seems more appropriate, for once my college
deferments expired, the Army was going to grab me anyway.
Other avenues existed if you didn’t want to waste two years
on active duty. A lot of guys opted to become Weekend Warriors
in the Reserves or National Guard.
Occasionally, time in the military was substituted for time in
the pokey. If a young fellow got into trouble with the law, provided
his crime wasn’t too flagrant, a sympathetic judge might
rule that he either go to jail or go into the service. It was
a compassionate alternative. At least two members of my Santa
Cruz (Calif.) High School class chose the military option over
jail in 1954. One “found a home” and became a career
man. The other did his two-year hitch, later went to college
and earned a Ph.D. in psychology.
Convicted felons, on the other hand, didn’t qualify for
the draft. Rightfully, those with physical or mental disabilities
didn’t qualify either.
You could beat the draft. Married with
children, sole supporters of a family other than just a wife,
those holding jobs critical to the nation’s health, safety
or interests, and “career” college students--all were
deferred.
Among the last bunch, though a tad younger than my age group,
the two most famous --or infamous, depending on your political
leanings--are former President Bill Clinton and current Vice
President Dick Cheney. Both deferred themselves right out of
Vietnam. No, sir. No veterans’ benefits for them.
In hindsight, one can’t blame them
for avoiding a war that went nowhere but down. What is hard to
swallow is that men who evaded the draft eventually become old
men with the power to send other young men off to war. But as
W’s Veep has been quoted, “I had other priorities in
the '60s than military service.”
Didn’t everyone?
For Fifties’ college dropouts, the Army served another useful
purpose. It was a fallback for those of us “trying to find
ourselves,” as the excuse for lack of motivation became
known in the ‘60s. So why not try the Army?
Originally I had planned to make it a career after volunteering.
It took only a few days of my “Honeymoon in Hell"--basic
training at Fort Ord, Calif.--to decide that military life was
not the life for me.
Much of basic remains a blur to this day, not because it happened
almost 50 years ago but because they kept us so busy from pre-dawn
to long after nightfall that there wasn’t time to take notes--on
paper or mentally.
I remember cleaning and polishing everything in sight, firing
on the rifle range, marching, doing calisthenics, cleaning and
polishing everything in sight, training with bayonets, marching,
crawling on our stomachs, cleaning and polishing everything in
sight, tossing hand grenades, marching, performing close order
drill, cleaning and polishing everything in sight, practicing
first aid, marching, being on KP, cleaning and polishing everything
in sight, patrolling as guards at night (bearing a rifle but
no bullets), marching, attending dull classes taught by even
duller sergeants, and marching, marching, marching through the
soft sand that pervaded Fort Ord.
Walking in sand while clad in boots and shouldering an M-1 rifle
and toting a backpack wasn’t quite the same as cavorting
on the beach on a sunny California afternoon.
All that training and cleaning and polishing and marching were
interrupted frequently with standing in line. Slow-moving lines.
Endless lines. To this day I won’t get in a line that has
more than 10 people ahead of me.
I suspect the Army wore us out so we wouldn’t contemplate
women at night. Sleeping with 50 other guys in one big bedroom
didn’t do much to encourage prurient thoughts either. Until
our bodies were adjusted the way the Army needed them, that is,
until we were whipped into shape, sex ranked very low on the
totem pole.
Food ranked higher than sex. If your mom was a great cook, Army
food was lousy; if your mom was a lousy cook, Army food was great.
Whatever one’s tastes, we ate everything and anything, even
things I would never eat as a civilian. They did give us enough
food.
Sleep ranked highest of all on the wish list, but they never
gave us enough of it. Even your roommates' snoring, nightmares
and sleepwalking while you snoozed on the bottom of a two-tiered
bunk bed with a restless comrade on the top level never interfered
with one’s sleep. But if someone got a mite too close to
your bunk, you were instantly aroused from your sleep and on
guard.
Two months of basic training climaxed with a week on bivouac,
the Army’s definition of camping, when you shared a pup
tent with another guy. It is cold in January, even in California,
but at least it didn’t rain that week.
Basic did teach me some important life lessons, however:
*
Be wary of promises not made in writing, such as, “Donate
blood to the Red Cross,” the first sergeant told us one
morning, “and you can have the rest of the afternoon off.”
After being purged of a pint, I spent the rest of that afternoon
on KP, cleaning out the grease trap and washing the mess hall
windows.
*
Take pride in your accomplishments, even if they go unrecognized.
After one Saturday morning inspection (barracks inspections were
held every Saturday), our drill sergeant told us we were the
sloppiest soldiers who had ever donned the uniform: “The
dirtiest [expletive deleted] barracks I have ever [expletive
deleted] seen” were his kindest words. “Except,”
he conceded, “for the spic-and-span urinals in the second
platoon.” I beamed, for I had swabbed those urinals. (My
folks had owned a small drive-in restaurant, and I had been cleaning
toilets since age 12.) Despite my best efforts, we didn’t
get weekend passes.
*
Never play poker with four guys from Los Angeles who joined the
Army together. Regardless of my extensive college training in
the game, I learned one Saturday night that, in L.A. anyway,
a flush beats a full house. A couple more courtesy hands and
I was out of there with my buck-thirty-five in winnings.
When it was all over, the Army’s agenda had worked miracles.
I went in weighing 190 and came out weighing 190. But, man, was
it distributed differently.
As for walking, I could shame a camel.
Then they screwed up all that hard work by sending me to clerk-typist
school for two months at Fort Ord. Subsequently, I ended up as
a desk jockey for the remainder of my two-year tour at Fort Rucker,
Ala., which I cut short by getting an “early out” to
return to college. I wasn’t unhappy with that, even though
there was no G.I. Bill to help pay for school for those who served
after January 1955. (It was reinstated in March 1966 and made
retroactive.)
Last May 21, local veterans’ organizations, led by Not This
Time Vets, staged an Armed Forces Day parade in Santa Cruz, about
six miles from where I live today. That was a real anomaly in
a city whose council members had recently denounced current U.S.
military policy. I can’t remember the last time a military
parade was held downtown.
Veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and the Iraq
War rode or walked down the main street. The biggest applause
came when a dozen or so Viet vets on motorcycles roared past.
You could see tears in some of their eyes as the crowd cheered.
I spotted two high school classmates standing in the crowd. One
had been in the Marines, the other in the Air Force. All three
of us, thanks to the quirk of birthdates, had served during peacetime.
We didn’t consider ourselves real vets like those in the
parade. Our time was little more than a walk in the park.
©2006 by Len Klempnauer. The photo is from the author's
files. All rights reserved.
This column first posted March 20, 2006.
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