November 5 - An Anniversary of Sorts

I enlisted in the U.S. Army in Montgomery, Alabama, August 30, 1966. They put me on a bus which took me to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where I was housed in a tent at the reception station for a couple of days until I was assigned to a Basic Combat Training unit, Company D, 3rd Battalion, 1st Training Brigade, or "D-3-1! Best damn company on the hill! Sir!"

While waiting in tent city, I began to be assimilated into the army culture. I got yelled at, got my head shaved, got cursed at, and, when I accidentally called a Drill Sergeant "Sir", got told at a very close range, "Don't call me 'sir'. I work for a living."

I also got to experience the pure joy of the army mess hall, and the communal latrine.

Actually, for basic food, the mess hall was not bad. Plenty to eat, but, as the signs exhorted, "Take what you want but eat what you take" was the rule of the day. Also, eating in silence. They had to push a lot of people through what was a rather small mess hall, so you ate your food and got out. Fortunately, at later assignments, the army actually tried to make dining a relatively enjoyable experience, and a meal with your friends included plenty of conversation for seasoning.

The latrine, on the other hand....

How do I say this?

It was a large, drafty, wooden building. There was a shower at one end...essentially a large room with several very basic (maybe that's why it was called "basic"...basic food, basic showers, basic beds, basic toilets, etc.) shower heads. The shower took up about one-third of the building. The other two-thirds was a large room with sinks along one wall, and toilets, or should I say toilet seats, around the others.

Although AT&T had not come out with the ad yet in 1966, it gives new meaning to the phrase "reach out and touch someone"!

There were no stalls, no doors, no walls separating the toilets. You sat side-by-side with, or directly accross the room from, others engaged in the same activity.

As with every place in the military, there were more signs, but the ones I remember most vividly were the ones which said something to the effect, "Stand Up Before Flushing". I wondered about that one for a couple of minutes until someone did - flush while still seated, that is.

Apparently, they took the water for flushing toilets directly from the hot water line which went to the shower.

He got up rather quickly as hot water splashed against...ahem...delicate areas. Perhaps "leaped up" would be a better description than "got up".

I will write more about basic training later, but to get back to the anniversary mentioned in the title:

I graduated basic training on November 4, 1966. I had orders to report to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California to study German for six months. On the morning of November 5, 43 years ago today, a hungover Drill Sergeant drove me to the airport in Columbia, South Carolina where I boarded a plane for Charleston, where I changed planes. I changed one more time, I don't remember where, but believe it was Chicago, and the third flight took me over the Rockies to San Franciso, where I changed planes again to a little puddle jumper which took me to the Monterey airport.

This was the first time in my life that I had been in an airplane, my first trip to California (of the many in my lifetime), and the first (and fortunately last) time I got airsick.

Not much of a story, perhaps, but it's mine, and I'm sticking to it.
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