I have the distinction of being the first person ever drafted out of MIT’s graduate school. I spent my two fun-filled years at Paradise in the Pines — Ft. Bragg, NC, home to the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, and Special Forces. Back then the 82nd had an unblemished record — they had missed the drop zone in every combat jump they ever did. There were posters everywhere for STRAC, the STRategic Army Command — Strong, Tough, Ready Around the Clock. One of my favorite posters showed a guy in combat gear running out of a doorway with a faded background image of a civilian tearing off his clothes, all emblazoned with rousing slogans. Some wag had added a speech bubble on the civilian that said, “Out of the way, jerk! This a job for Superman!”
The Army is big on training. My personal favorite was assault training. When you assault a fixed position, you walk up to within 15 yards taking an aimed shot every few steps to keep the enemy heads down. When you get to 15 yards, you load a fresh magazine and fire from the hip as you trot the rest of way, one shot every two steps. After the DI had carefully explained the technique, he asked if there were questions. I asked, “Sergeant, the guys are hunkered down in their foxholes as we approach and they can hear the change in rate of fire when we get 15 yards away. What’s to stop them each from lobbing a grenade out at us?” His reply was, “There are always casualties in combat.” Terrific.
One day they sent us off to Quantico for amphibious training. The course was taught by a very gung ho Marine drill instructor. He emphasized that we needed to scare the hell out of the enemy (as they sat behind their machine guns!) by running down the ramp of the landing craft screaming as loud as we could. The first time through the drill we didn’t yell loud enough for him so we had to do it again. (It doesn’t matter what branch of service you are in; you never do it right the first time.) The second time around, two hundred guys roared out of the landing craft screaming, completely unrehearsed, “Fuck The Army!” as loudly as they could. Even the Marine DI cracked up. Most of my company were draftees.
After basic I was assigned to a map making company. (All geologists get assigned to map making companies because they know how to survey. It didn’t matter that I hated surveying and was incompetent at it.) One day I am out in the boonies on a field exercise. (At Ft. Bragg you do a lot of 1-2 week field exercises. The cat houses in Readsville, the town next to Ft Bragg, do a booming business because somebody is always just getting back from a couple of weeks in the bushes.) Three of us were digging a sump for the field kitchen. We were down about 6 feet when it occurred to us that between us we had 18 years of college. Your tax dollars at work.
A secret that almost nobody in the Army will admit: Though they loudly proclaim their dislike for SOS (Shit On a Shingle, aka chipped beef on toast), most grunts like it more than any other breakfast.