To the great thrill of Fourth Platoon, our drill sergeant announced that the following Sunday, we would receive a four hour pass. In other words, we could roam free for an afternoon. After a month and a half of a micro-structured environment, it felt much like the Israelites must have felt upon their Exodus from Egypt. (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little.) 
It had been one of the longest months of my life. Well, more like six weeks, I suppose. I had never been away from home for any extended time before and, at the childish age of twenty-one, found out just how homesick I could be, I suppose. Being away from Mom, Dad, my own bed and Mom’s good cooking was taking it's toll on me.
Pass came and most of the guys made plans that involved girls and alcohol. I only wanted to call home. Which I did. (Which is another blog.)
Mostly, I just walked around post enjoying the little freedom I was then experiencing. Most of my time, actually, was spent in waiting to get my turn at a phone booth. (Yes, those were all we had back then.)
Upon my return to the barracks, I spent the few minutes left to me napping and yapping. It was nice while it lasted.
It was around then that my fellow trainees started dragging, stumbling and falling into the barracks. Even an ignorant and innocent boy such as myself could smell the strong drink on most all of them.
Sergeant Ligon called us out for mess and it was pretty obvious that most of the guys were in too poor shape to even march in a straight formation. We didn’t get very far before he, in a rage of furry and a smog of foul language, lined us up for some impromptu p.t. (Physical Training) Which he conducted with no small amount of vitriol.
We did push-ups, squat-thrusts, running in place. He even had us on some monkey-bars doing pull-ups and working our way from end to end. Needless to say, there were a lot of sick and puking troops that day. Not a few of the guys found themselves bending over and tossing their biscuits! A lot of the green I saw on that hot April’s day was not just in their uniforms. You might say it was hard to tell where their fatigues left off and their faces began!
The Army is all about unity and uniformity. They were constantly trying to impress upon us the concept of teamwork and esprit de corps. They wanted us to appreciate the fact that, in combat, we depend on one another and that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When one soldier fails to do his job or carry out his orders, it affects the rest of his comrades. Any U.S. Army drill sergeant worth his salt will never pass up an opportunity to inculcate this valuable lesson into the young, malleable minds of his trainees.
Now, don’t you think that Private Davis, yours truly, got to stand on the sideline laughing while all these tipsy troopers were put through their paces. No, Sgt. Ligon had me right in the middle of it. Not that I appreciated this valuable training at the time, I must say.
This was just a couple of days before bivouac. Incidentally, all of our gear, (what we weren’t going to carry ourselves,) was packed onto a large flat bed trailer outside of our barracks. So, since Sgt. Ligon felt we needed more of this “good training,” he had our Platoon Leader assign us for extra guard duty. In other words, all night my fellow recruits were walking perimeter around the aforementioned oversized truck bed in the dark of night.
Some of us were assigned to “fire guard” duty instead. I was among that group. This meant that we stayed inside and…made sure there wasn’t a fire? Oh, well, that’s the Army way. (And that’s another blog.)
I was pretty upset about the whole episode. (Much more than I should have been.) I complained to Pvt. Shelby, our platoon leader, reminding him that he and the drill sergeant knew that, of all people, I wasn’t one of those coming back from pass in a drunker stupor. He smiled wryly, (he was a good guy,) saying that, yes, Sgt. Ligon and he knew and that was why I was inside and not outside in the weather. That gave me some solace and I marched on, checking the hallway and barracks rooms, dutifully ensuring that the building was, as of that moment at least, not bursting into an all-consuming inferno.
Lesson learned!
While serving in the U.S. Army, I tried some different things. Nothing too crazy or exotic, but I did start chewing tobacco, went to my first bar, (didn’t have my first drink, though,) and grew my first mustache.
To this day, I can’t grow a proper beard. I just don’t grow sideburns. I’ve been shaving for forty years and still have an Indian beard. (Apache here; Apache there. Tee-hee!) I did find, proudly, that I can grow a serious mustache, though. I have a large enough upper lip and found that the hair fills out very well there. Actually, it grew out a little too well back then.
The military does allow a certain amount of facial hair, but definitely within their standards. Regulations vary from branch to branch, but the lip hair part is pretty consistent. A mustache must be tapered and should not extend past the ends of the lips or over the upper lip. Well, mine was, shall I say, a little more bushy than that. It was certainly not tapered and definitely hung past and over my lip.
I thought that it might be cool to have one of those big, western style, cowboy mustaches. You know, like the one Sam Elliot has. I knew I couldn’t get away with that, but I still let it grow long enough to be pushing my luck.
I had, with a little help from my friend, Spec 4 Gary T. Cutshall, been transferred from Commo to supply. I didn’t get along very well with my section chief and was thrilled to put some distance between us. (Sadly, he was from Knoxville, as I recall.) I was assigned as assistant battery driver which meant, in actuality, I worked directly for the top sergeant.
One day, about a month into my growth, my old section chief made a snide remark to me about my mustache. I returned a snide remark, (yeah, I was an idiot,) about how I worked for the man with the diamond on his collar and if he didn’t mind, then it was okay.
That was in the morning. At noon muster, the first sergeant announced that, at the end of the day’s business, he wanted to see PFC Davis. He didn’t say why. This definitely intrigued me and not in a good way.
The day progressed and my paranoia increased. As I was also supply gofer, (long story,) I inquired of the supply chief, Sgt. Thompson, if he thought Top could maybe have a problem with my whiskers. He answered blandly that he couldn’t be sure, but it was a definite possibility. I remarked that I was going to take care of that little problem.
I made a quick bee-line back to my barracks, secured my shaving gear, scurried to the latrine and, not only trimmed, but completely removed my fuzzy little friend. Then I returned to supply, wearing nothing more on my face than a silly smile.
That evening, after announcements and other business, Top didn’t mention me or anything about me. Not wanting to increase my woes, I asked Sgt. Thompson what the deal was and he suggested we find out. So, we went to inquire.
When chief asked the Top Sergeant if he wasn’t wanting to see PFC Davis, Top looked me straight in the face and said, “That’s not the soldier I wanted to see. The one I wanted to see had a ****-ing mustache down over his lip!” He pointed to his own mouth only slightly exaggerating the length of my missing facial hair.
Sgt. Thompson looked at me and I looked at him. We both smiled knowing that I had dodged a really big bullet.
Lesson learned!
I remember arriving at Ft. Leonard Wood one early April morning. It was sometime around three a.m. We were greeted by a young man shouting at us and telling us in no uncertain terms to get off the bus!
He then lined us all up and had us screaming at the top of our lungs, “Yes, sir!” to everything he said. He then hustled us into the mess hall where we received, even by Army standards, an early breakfast.
First, it struck me as funny that, as I noticed, his name was Davis. It was also very funny when I ran into the guy in the PX a couple of days later discovering that he was just a private, albeit Permanent Party, who had the smarts to make the most of his golden opportunity to hassle a bunch of trainees.
We were ultimately led to some barracks, ones that we stayed in for about a week while being processed, and were strongly advised to get some shuteye. We were assured we’d have a busy day later.
Sleep was hard to come by, but I finally passed out from sheer exhaustion. It seemed I’d only been out for a short while, though it was surely a couple of hours at least, when I awoke, hearing what must have surely been singing. I rolled over in my bunk, squinting out the window into the morning sun, where I focused my eyes on a distant company of troopers. They were singing cadence, marching in our direction and looking extraordinarily sharp, I thought.
I got the attention of some of my fellow recruits and we watched admiringly, only hoping that one day we’d look as good as this fine group of soldiers did that day. We were all very, very excited about the adventure that lay before us.
Another funny thing that happened was when we actually met these very same heroes in green we had seen and heard marching down our street only a couple of days before. We were with them at the infirmary where we all were receiving what seemed like an endless series of the military’s mandatory vaccinations. Turned out, they themselves were no more than trainees who had been inducted into the service only a couple of days before us. We all had a good laugh and wondered out loud about what further adventures Uncle Sam’s Army had in store for us.
