"GET THE FUCK OFF MY BUS!! GET THE FUCK OFF MY BUS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!"
Even were I inclined, I wasn't in a position to argue. The nervous kid sitting in the window seat was climbing over me to get into the aisle, frantically grabbing for his bag and accidentally placing his knee right in my crotch.
I managed to push him off my scrotum and onto the floor. I did this right as he snatched his bag from the overhead bin, and it came crashing down on my head. Judging by the weight and texture of the blow to my skull, he apparently planned on some bowling, and perhaps fixing something that required a wrench, in the next fourteen weeks.
I managed to push my way through the crowd, secure my ruck sack, and elbow my way to the front of the bus. The intervening five seconds did not see the DS's [Drill Sergeant] mood improve appreciably.
"DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH ME, YOU DISGUSTING GOAT-SMELLING TURD!! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME AND GET OFF OF MY FUCKING BUS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!! YOU HAVE EXACTLY THREE MORE FUCKING SECONDS!!"
Instead of taking the normal route out of a passenger bus--walking down the front stairs--I followed the people in front of me, and climbed over the seats. Of course, buses are not designed for this sort of exit.
After climbing over the last seat, I fell down the stairs and out onto the pavement. Thankfully, my fall was buffered by other recruits who had preceded me. I scrambled up and ran as fast as I could, blindly following those in front of me. I looked up briefly, and almost laughed:
Welcome to Infantry Basic Training
Ft. Benning, Georgia
[I have since got to know several former and current DS's who've spent time at 30th AG, and none of them ever greeted a bus like that. They said that's much more the Marine style of greeting new recruits, and that for whatever reason the DS on duty that night was either in a bad mood or showing off for someone. Obviously the one show-off asshole out of a thousand was there to greet me.]
We were shepherded into a big reception room filled with wooden benches, where we were instructed to stand at the back and "shut your mouths." There was already a large group of recruits sitting on all the benches, filling out paperwork.
I looked around the room and was even more disappointed than I was at the airport. I expected to see a group of guys younger than me, but still like me. I thought that they'd be resolute and determined and in shape. I thought they'd be here because they wanted to be here. I thought they might be green and inexperienced, but still be hard and ready to conquer any obstacle in their path.
Instead, I was in the middle of the infield at a NASCAR race.
The guy sitting to the left of me had on a Pittsburgh Penguins Starter jacket, circa 1992. It looked like he found it in a dumpster. His hair was stringy and greasy, he was as fat as John Goodman, and he smelled like a public toilet. Literally--he had that combination piss and toilet brick smell of an airport toilet. The guy on the other side of him, one of the few in the room who looked like he had his shit together, kept looking at him with contempt. We shared a few "What the fuck is wrong with this guy?" looks. On my right was a kid whose teeth stuck out of his mouth, as if he'd been sucking his thumb long into adulthood. He had that absent "I'd be happy staring at a wall all day" look on his face that you see from cashiers at fast food restaurants. He was skinny as a rail and wheezed every time he took a breath.
What the fuck? Who are these fucking people? Is THIS what I left my life for? I wouldn't hire most of these guys to do my yard work, yet I'm going to serve next to them in an infantry unit and trust them with my life?
There were a few kids around me talking to each other. A Puerto Rican DS came to the back of the room and talked to those of us standing up.
"Who talkin back here? Shut'cho mouf. Shut it now. This your first hour in the Army, and you already actin' da fool. Don't let me catch'chu talking again. I'll smoke you till you catch fire."
Of course, the idiot standing next to me in the Penguins Starter jacket took this as a cue to talk. And of course he has a thick southern drawl.
"Smoke us? Wats dat mhean?"
I just shook my head. Anyone who has even SEEN A MILITARY MOVIE knows what's coming next.
"Front leaning rest position right now. All of you."
I, along with only about 6 other people in my group of 50, got into front leaning rest position. Front leaning rest position is basically just the starting position for push-ups, where your arms are straight and you are ready to go down and do a push-up, but instead of going down you just hold the position.
Instead of following the six of us who knew what we were doing, the idiot in the Penguin jacket didn't know when to shut up.
Idiot "Wats front leanin reast?"
Nick [From the front leaning rest position] "Hey Private Pyle, get in push-up position."
Idiot "Wat?"
DS "GET ON YOUR GODDAMN FACE!"
So there I am, 20 minutes after arriving at Ft. Benning, already getting smoked because this fucking doofus is too stupid to imitate everyone else.
He keeps us like this for maybe 5 minutes and lets us back up. I hardly even feel it, as I practiced front leaning rest position before I came in and can hold it pretty easily for at least 8-10 minutes. To my shock, almost everyone around me was fucking OUT OF BREATH. Private Pyle in the Penguins jacket had broke into a sweat. Unbelievable. This dude is not going to make it.
A few minutes later, a balding sergeant comes over and starts barking orders at us. We are told to empty our bags, and the sergeant reads off a list of contraband at us, and told us to throw all of it away. He tells us that if we throw all our contraband away now, we will be fine and no one will pursue any disciplinarian action against us, but if we keep anything that we brought on the list he read, they will find it and we will be punished.
This made no fucking sense to me. We were given a list of items to bring before we came, and told that anything else is contraband. One change of clothes, some white underwear, shower slippers, tooth paste, tooth brush, bathroom bag, a pair of sneakers, and that was about it. Yet, when the sergeant told those of us with contraband to file in to throw it in the amnesty box, nearly EVERYONE got in line. People had everything you can imagine--food, knives, drugs, shanks, cell phones, prescription medicines, tools, anything you could imagine. It was ridiculous. ALL of these items were specifically listed on the "Do Not Bring" list. Why would these idiots bring this stuff?
After this, we must have spent 3 hours doing the most tedious paperwork I could imagine. When we got on the plane we were given a huge packet of paperwork from our recruiters that they had filled out for us, and now we had to meticulously pour over each fact and verify that nothing was wrong. Anytime anyone had something wrong, one of the sergeants would come over and assist them. I didn't understand it at the time, but this scrupulous snail like pace is the way the Army works. Get things done exactly right, no matter how long it takes, and no matter how long you have to wait.
Let me explain where we are now. When you arrive at Ft. Benning you don't go straight to Basic Training. You are inprocessed at a place called 30th Adjunct General, or 30th AG for short. Sgt. Anderson mentioned this place in passing, but didn't really explain what it was. The balding DS just told us that we'd be at 30th AG for at least 4 days, and maybe up to 14 days. Two weeks till we start basic? What the fuck is wrong with this place?
We finished all the paperwork at around 3:30am, and were taken across a courtyard to a huge open air concrete building 3 stories high. It was cold out, like 40 degrees or less. Of the 50 guys who came with me on the bus, 40 were put in one bay, and I was put with the other 10 in a different bay because the first bay was full.
My group was taken to one of the rooms on the second floor. There were two guys in grey sweats with "ARMY" across the front and black watch caps on. They told us to go inside and find an empty bunk and go to sleep.
The inside of the bay looked exactly like the one in Full Metal Jacket; nothing but concrete floors and bunk after bunk after bunk, on both sides and in the middle. It was dark and everyone except for the guys standing guard was asleep, and almost every bed was taken.
There was one halogen ceiling light on in the bay, at the very front. Since I was the last one in, I ended up having to take the top bunk directly below the light because that was the only bed available in the place. It was 4am by the time I got settled. And the mattress had no sheets on it, because the bay was out of fresh linen and I couldn't pick any up until tomorrow.
I had started my day at 4am at MEPS yesterday, it was 24 hours later, and I'd had no sleep. I laid there almost in shock. I could not believe what a awful shitstorm this day had been.
The Army is nothing like I thought it would be. Everyone is an idiot. All you do is wait. Everyone is an asshole to you. The living arrangements are a fucking joke. We can't do anything without explicit permission. I might as well be in fucking jail.
I expected it to be shitty to a certain degree, that's not what bothers me. I didn't expect the DS's to be my friends or anything like that. What has really thrown me a curveball is the other kids here. They are complete and total fuck ups. These guys are the dregs of society. It's not like I am judging them by their socioeconomic status; you can be poor and still have dignity. But these kids wouldn't know dignity unless it was spelled "Digg-Nitty," wore bling and was drinking a forty.
And to top it all off, there was a loose spring digging in my side. This is just great.
I tried to go to sleep, and ended up having to literally tie a sweat shirt around my head so the blinding light that was 12 inches from face wouldn't keep me up. As soon as I got to sleep, I was shaken awake.
I looked at my watch: 5:34am.
Are you fucking kidding me? Is this what I signed up for?
I raised up off the bunk to get up and hit my head on the light cover. As I was rubbing my head I looked up at the ceiling, and carved into the tile next to the light was the only thing that made me smile in the past 24 hours:
30th AG:
Operation Clusterfuck
I wasn't even vaguely aware of how appropriate I would come to find that little carving to be.
Posted by Rudius Media at 4:29 PM