Our defensive line for the FTX (Field Training Exercise) would be a wavering arc through the South Carolina forest, the drill sergeants declared.
We were stopped on the slope of a hill and I was glad to be away from the barracks, away from the painstaking and soulcrushing order of ARMY, and back into the womb of Earth’s chaotic beauty. Mostly, though, I was grateful to have stopped marching. I took off my BDU blouse to cool down and leaned against a pine and looked out over the hillside, relaxing without my pack. That’s when I noticed a tick burrowing into the crook of my elbow.
“Drill Sergeant! I got a tick,” I said as I made my way to Drill Sergeant Gibbs, the kindliest of the drill sergeants, with big sad eyes like a hound dog. He lit a matchhead, then put it out, then set the cinder in front of the tick so the little bugger’s head backed out of my arm at which point he crushed the tick with tweezers.
There was worse news than the tick: we had to dig foxholes, fill sandbags, basically create that trenchline through the woods. My battle buddy Little and I absorbed this fact and where just pulling out our e-tools to dig when Drill Sergeant Horn, the laconic and lanky Army Ranger from upstate New York, arrived.
“Little, Green, follow me,” and he set off north through the forest, about 100 yards from the trenches, to a copse of trees facing a meadow.
“You two are our forward observers. Set up a hasty defensive position facing there,” he pointed downslope. “And alert us if you see enemy movement.”
This was an absolute jackpot, since a hasty defensive position is pointedly not a foxhole. It’s a shallow, v-shaped trench, deep enough to cover a crouched man, camouflaged, usually at high ground. We scraped out our positions from fallen needles and wrapped up after some light digging and arranging to provide adequate cover (with Little spending considerably more time since he wanted his side to look nice). We also pitched our tent on the back side of the copse, closest to the trenches, and set in our rucks.
As thrilled as I was at the chance for less work than the others, our forward observation post had many other benefits besides, like the fact that we were essentially forgotten, free of all burdens except gathering meals and waiting for an attack which never came. We napped in the tent and in the foxholes themselves. Little was sometimes sad to be missing the action, but I wasn’t at all. This was my dream: to be far away from everyone else. One day, I napped for six straight hours. That’s a luxury any time, but in basic training its the sort of delirious dream you wake up from at oh-dark-thirty to find a fellow recruit shaking you and saying It’s time for your night-watch.
After a couple of days, though, being so far outside the wire got boring. Little occupied himself arranging and rearranging his foxhole, but all I had to read was The Bible, so I was pleased one morning to hear voices nearby, a little uphill and west of us in the woods. Little and I shared a look and took up our M-16s—which were loaded with blanks and had the barrels capped—and peeked out from our hidey-holes. Their movement through the woods grew louder, and soon a squad emerged, one from our own company. There were six of them on patrol, lead by Drill Sergeant Moreaux, who we saw scarcely, and who was sort of a wildcard, moody and loud, from somewhere in south Louisiana.
“You know what’d be funny? If we took a shot at ‘em. Like they’re being ambushed, you know?”
“Hmmm,” said Little. “I’m not gonna do that. But I guess it’d be pretty funny if you did.”
“Yeah,” I said, chuckling. And I waited a half-minute or so until they got closer, and then I took aim and pulled the trigger.
Boom. CRACK! went the rifle.
Little was startled. The squad was startled, scrambled for cover, ducking behind pines. Even I was a little startled. But Drill Sergeant Moreaux stayed still.
“WHO FIRED THAT?” he shouted, and we stayed low until he shouted again and that time I stood up from behind a shield of pine needles and snapped to attention.
“I did, Drill Sergeant,” I said.
He spotted and stormed across the forest, the ground quaking as he stormed, and he proceeded to chew my ear for a while about how absolutely stupid I was to fire at my own squad even if the round was a blank and then he ordered me to find him when it was time for chow and then his voice got real low.
“I’m gonna smoke you until your eyeballs bleed, Private.”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” I nodded, staring straight ahead.
As the squad moved on, I ducked back down into my hasty position.
“Why’d I do that?” I asked Little. “Why’d you let me do that?”
“You said it’d be funny and it was,” he said.
I waited in misery, considering the endless push-ups and jumping jacks and lunges and sit-ups I’d be ordered to enact. I didn’t mention this to Little, but I was also afraid we’d lose our special scout position, that they’d pull us back behind the lines and I’d have to dig a whole sandbagged trench and Little would probably just watch and he’d definitely think that was funny.
My stomach was so whirly with anticipation I could barely choke down my Chili Mac with pound cake at lunch.
Even still, I presented myself, along with PFC Little, to DS Moreaux as dinner time commenced. He was seated at a quorum of drill sergeants preparing their dinners. They were outside the command station, perched on those little tri-pod chairs, some of them having a smoke while their MREs heated. We stood at attention.
“What do you need, Private?”
“Drill Sergeant, you asked me to report to you after dinner, Drill Sergeant.”
He looked at me a minute, his head cocked.
“What’d you get up to, Green?” asked Drill Sergeant Gibbs, who was dousing his Chicken and Rice with a mini bottle of Tabasco.
“Ah yes, I almost forgot!” said Drill Sergeant Moreaux. “Private, please inform Drill Sergeant Gibbs of the foolishness which took place earlier this fine day.”
“Drill Sergeant, I fired at a patrol because I thought maybe it’d be good training for them to face an ambush, Drill Sergeant.”
Drill Sergeant Gibbs’ eyes got wide and he pursed his lips and nodded and went back to digging out another forkful from the MRE pouch.
“I’da smoked you ‘til your knuckles went gangrenous,” he said. “You gotta do what your collar can handle, Green.”
I stood there awhile, waiting, while Drill Sergeant Moreaux waited for his MRE to finish heating, as he tore open a packet of peaches and scarfed down heaping sporkfuls. That’s all the Army is sometimes. You just wait and wait and wait. Little stood besides me, silent and stock still.
Finally, Drill Sergeant Moreaux turned my way.
“Private, you have a lotta cojones showing up here after a friendly-fire incident,” he said. “I’da kept my head low.”
He spooned the peaches.
“Grab yourselves some MREs and get on back to your position. Dismissed.”
“Thank you, Drill Sergeant,” I said, as my heart leapt, because not only was I pardoned for one of my all-time dumbest actions, but because the drill sergeants’ crate of MREs was barely cracked, and there was was still a packet of spaghetti with meat sauce inside.
“I guess Moreaux was the right drill to shoot at,” said Little as we picked our way back down the hill, past the trenches, and 100 yards on to our quiet observation post in the woods. “He’s the wild card.”
Why have you never shared this with me. Pure brilliance. You get to live with a story like this ready to tell at a moment’s notice.
This was a delight to read!!