Re: The Hardline According To... The Golden Boy- The Well Part XXII
P.S. Please tell us about your time in the army, including:
One story about how basic training kicked your ass, with or without the archetypal in-your-face drill instructor embarrassing you in front of an entire platoon.
One story about how you, in your own sarcastic and irreverent idiom, played some kind of practical joke on a fellow solder / instructor / officer from which hilarity ensued.
One story about how something you saw or experienced while in the service brought you to a realization that it's not all fun and games out there and you'd have to buckle down if you wanted to achieve anything worthwhile.
Thanks in advance.
I had a nice time in the Army. I went in when I was still 17- a week after graduation.
From reception bn. they took us to our company- Fort Benning is a big place- and hot in Summer- and we were PACKED in the back of the cattle cars with our duffle bags of newly issued uniforms and our civillian bags. The
second the doors opened the DIs were on us, yelling, making us do pushups, run to the end of the road and run back, stop and do pushups while running to the end of the road. All on gravel. Hot gravel. Sitting there in the front leaning rest position with that gravel digging into your palms. Getting up to the position of attention without wiping the rocks off your hands. I'd heard about the "you eyeballin' me, son?" thing so I had the brim of my hat pulled kind of low so I could see, but would be able to angle my head so the DI wouldn't be able to see my eyes, even when he was right in front of me yelling at me. It felt like that went on for hours. It was crazy. It was cool.
Practical joke, eh? I guess I'm not too big on remembering practical jokes... So I guess this'll have to do for both questions.
When I was in Panama, we'd gotten this cherry in- he seemed slow and doofy. Before his first jump we had him running around looking for the keys to the drop zone, the reserve chutes for the door bundles... **** like that. We'd take medical tape and tape the cherries' helmets so they'd be white, and draw a big cherry on the front- just to be able to identify a cherry making his 1st "real" jump. This was a night, combat equipment jump. Rucksack, weapon... and at night. I don't remember where the cherry was in the stick, but he was after me, I was below him and I see him coming right at me. I tried to slip off to the right, but he slipped with me- just like you're not supposed to do. I remember pulling up one riser into suspension lines... Right away, his chute loses air, and he zips right past me, and then I'm even with his canopy. I then end up in his silk. I always thought that the chute would be kind of solid- with all that air in it... Not a chance, that silk started wrapping around me and I freaked. I think I grabbed a riser and started pulling- just to get away... I got clear of him, dropped my ruck and rode my weapon in. We landed within 15 feet of each other, and probably around 50 feet from the ocean.
I guess he got me back.
Pay attention during training- it CAN happen to you.
