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!
