Tales from the Trail 2: Nothing Else Holds Fashion

I want to tell you another story from my years as a drill sergeant. But before I can tell you that story...well, it's more a sort of extended joke, really...I have to tell you this one.

The thing is that USAR once had something like a dozen or so entire "divisions" largely composed of noncommissioned officers, many of whom had never been on active service and who had been trained in a Reserve Component "leadership academy", as drill sergeants. I was in one of them, the old "Timberwolf" 104th Division scattered in the Northwest.

I like to think that I was a decent - not great, but decent - hat. A lot of RC hats had...issues...but that's really another story, and not a particularly humorous one.Anyway. Here's the odd thing about the way the Army used to train drill sergeants back in my day.

(And keep in mind the Army kept telling you that getting under the Hat was this big fat hairy deal and it how made you that much more of this high-speed leader of men.)

A hell of a lot of the training consisted of just flat out memorizing these little spiels - called "formats" - for drill and ceremonies and physical training.

Because at the time the drill sergeants in Basic did little of the actual tactical and almost none of the technical training. Range cadre taught Joe and Molly how to shoot, various specialty training cadre taught the commo and first aid and NBC and the rest. I have no idea if that's still the case. But it was then.All the hats did was pretty much use these little formats to teach Joe and Molly how to march and how to exercise, and then babysat them at all other times, and that was pretty much that.

So to become a drill sergeant - at least in the USAR, at least in my time - you had to be absolutely word-perfect in delivering these little "format" speeches.

They were all of a thing; an introduction, a description of the exercise or the drill position or movement, and a demonstration. For example, the one for the position of attention went something like this:

"Platoon, attention! At ease! I am SSG Blank and for the next XX minutes I will be your primary instructor on the position of attention. The position of attention is the base position for all stationary and marching movements. At this time I will talk my demonstrator through the position of attention. Demonstrator, post! You will assume the position of attention on the command FALL IN or the command Squad (platoon), ATTENTION. To assume this position, bring the heels together sharply on line, with the toes pointing out equally, forming an angle of 45 degrees. Rest the weight of the body evenly on the heels and balls of both feet. Keep the legs straight without locking the knees. Hold the body erect with the hips level, chest lifted and arched, and the shoulders square. Keep the head erect and face straight to the front with the chin drawn in so that alignment of the head and neck is vertical..."

There was a ton more of that crap, but you get the idea. You actually had to say all that stuff exactly like that, in that exact order, and you got gagged if you couldn't.

It seemed like a silly way to train "leaders" to me at the time and still does, but if I had one skill as a soldier it was learning to do what the Army wanted me to do so I did.

We memorized and recited formats for all the exercises in Field Manual 21-20, and for all the drill in Field Manual 22-5. These two GSA-paper-bound, camo-printed bibles were the Old and New Testaments for drill sergeants back when I was eager to become one, and we were told that all that was considered worth knowing was contained within their pages.

That was what we were told.

But we knew, as you all know, as every living adult knows intimately and perfectly well, there is more to life than physical fitness and military drill and ceremonies.

Sometimes, there must be romance.

Sometimes, there most be passion, the mad, heated passions that make men and women into ravening beasts, that awake the dark heats of lust that burn unslaked beneath the crispest shirtfront and frilliest blouse.

And, fortunately, there are drill sergeants there to take these untamed passions and turn them into a format. And drill sergeant candidates with time on their hands, sex on their minds, and the experience in the TRADOC format to use one to develop a format for the other.

So in case you do not know how to do this or wish to bring your performance up to Army standards, here is the officially approved 104th Division (Training) format for what we designated as "the Four-Count Hump", circa 1993.

Platoon, atten-SHUN!

At ease.

I am Drill Sergeant Lawes, and for the next twenty minute block of instruction I will be your primary instructor on the exercise known as the Four-Count Hump. This exercise is used to entertain troops not in formation as well as, when required, populate the United States inclusive of Alaska and Hawaii. It is a four-count exercise performed at a slow to fast cadence. The equipment required for this exercise include a partner and a roughly level portion of terrain.

I will now use my demonstrators to demonstrate one repetition of the exercise.

Demonstrators, POST!.

Not that in this case my demonstrators are one each male and female. Performing this exercise using two each male or two each female personnel is currently not authorized by Army Regulations or FM 21-20, however, I am informed that the Department of the Army is in the process of preparing a revision to these regulations so be advised that this information is subject to change.

My demonstrators have assumed the positions for the "conventional" or "missionary" variation of this exercise. This is the most common variation and is often exclusively used by personnel unfamiliar with the exercise or their partners. This variation is not the only variation authorized by Army Regulations, however, certain variations should not be attempted without the presence of safety personnel and a trained aidman on site.You will note that my female demonstrator has assumed a supine position. Her head and neck are erect, her shoulders square, her chest and back upright. She may place her arms at her sides or up to forty-five degrees from her torso. Her knees are bent and her feet approximately shoulder width apart.

My male demonstrator has assumed the front leaning rest position. His head is erect and faces his partner, his arms straight with his elbows locked and his entire body is in a line from his shoulders to his ankles. He may arch his back or sag in the middle but will return to the starting position before performing this exercise.

Now you will note that for demonstration purposes my demonstrators are wearing PT uniform. However, the actual performance of this exercise is done while wearing no clothing, or minimal attire consistent with the intent of the exercise. You will also note that to correctly perform this exercise the male personnel are required to maintain their penile assembly in the fully extended and locked position. Failure to do this will result in unsatisfactory performance of this exercise.At this time my demonstrators will perform one repetition of this exercise.

On the count of "one" my male demonstrator will begin the exercise by bending his elbows and lowering his entire body as a single unit until his upper arms are at least parallel to the ground. During this movement the penile assembly is inserted into the female personnel's vaginal housing unit. At the completion of the first count of the exercise the baseplate of the penile assembly should be firmly seated against the vaginal locking ring.Note that the female demonstrator is allowed to raise her hips up to eight inches from the ground surface and may make lateral motions up to four inches to either side during this count.

Ready. ONE.

On the count of "two". my male demonstrator will return to the starting position by raising his entire body until his arms are fully extended with the elbows locked. His body must remain rigid in a generally straight line and move as a unit while performing this count. My female may return her body to a fully supine position at this time.

Ready. TWO.

On the count of three my demonstrators will repeat the actions of count one.Ready. THREE.

On the count of four my demonstrators will repeat the actions of count two.Ready. FOUR.

At this time you will sound off with "Oh GOD!" and the number of the repetition. If you fail to keep your body generally straight, to ensure full contact between the baseplate of the penile assembly and the vaginal locking ring, lower your whole body until your upper arms are at least parallel to the ground, or to extend your arms completely, that repetition will not count.At this time what are your questions concerning the Four-Count Hump?

Tales from the Trail 1: The Mad Shitter

Fort Leonard Wood was fucking cold.

We were there in November, and I was told by the Leonard Wood cognoscenti that FLWM had two seasons; summer, and fucking cold. And at the moment it was fucking cold, and so was I.

But a drill sergeant is expected to be as impervious to cold as he or she is supposed to be immune to fatigue, fear, and uncertainty. Whatever else a trainee soldier may see during his or her Basic, they are not supposed to see a drill sergeant acting tired, afraid, or confused.

Or cold.

So I stood outside the nice, warm instructor's hut out in the middle of the scraggly woods on Range 37 and tried to look warm.

I was detailed as the company dogsbody that day; driver, runner, assistant Senior Drill; whatever was needed, that was what I was. But that morning the company commander had his own priorities, and they had nothing to do with my assigned duties.

"Sergeant Lawes," CPT Crowne asked sotto voce, "where, right now, at this very moment, is the Shitter?"

Now a normal, sane human being, hearing that, would have pointed the officer in the general direction of the latrines over by the woodline to the southwest. But a normal, sane human being would not understood that that term, at that particular time and place, had nothing to do with a place. It was a person.

PVT Flux wanted to be a soldier more than he wanted anything in the world.

Other eighteen-year-olds wanted a muscle car. Or a ridiculously awesome gaming system. Or to get inside the scented panties wrapped around the taut haunches of Suzy Creemcheese, Prairie Homecoming Queen and pride of West Lynn.

Not Joey Flux. He wanted a Combat Infantryman's Badge with two stars.

So he threw his gawky, badly-formed body at Basic Training like a spastic berserker, punishing himself and the equipment he fought to overcome. He was awkward at drill, slow and uncoordinated at PT, painfully incapable of the simplest military tasks.

But, oh, how he wanted to be a soldier. If desire, will and love alone could have been the masters Joey Flux would have been fucking Audie Murphy.

But mere military incapacity was not the impediment; this was the volunteer Army, and the numbers had to pass muster if even the slowest recruit had to be pencil-whipped on to their units. Let the gaining units chapter the poor bastard out, was the general opinion; they had nothing better to do. Here at BCT, Ft. Leonard Wood Missouri, we were in the business of making shit into soldiers and, by God, soldiers or one sort or another they would be.

But not in this case.

In this case, it WAS the shit that was the problem.

Because, you see, PVT Flux had problems beyond his ineptitude at D&C, general subjects, and PT.

He had an incurable inability to control his bowels around authority.

I'm not talking about a fear of truly Olympian power; a lurking dread of having his heels locked by the Chief of the Army Staff or the Post Commander. Merely being addressed sharply by SP4 Joremy, the orderly room clerk, would put Flux in a state of immediate knee-knocking terror. And if he was addressed by someone as exalted and terrifying as a drill sergeant he would nearly faint with panic.

For PVT Flux officers were pure, blind, sphincter-loosening nightmare.

The first time he demonstrated his peculiar affliction was when he was stopped by one of the cadre lieutenants while scurrying into a classroom early in cycle. He apparently hoped to avoid the august notice of this lesser god by lowering his head and speeding up to double-time, but he had made the mistake of passing alone and the officer must have been bored, or feeling shirty, because he halted Flux to harass him for not saluting.

I was told that the second john mistook Flux's look of panic for military intensity, and so stood awaiting the required gesture of respect which was, indeed, rendered with trembling hand. But it was accompanied by a sound not unlike the sudden tearing of rotten burlap, and both young soldiers were enveloped in a choking miasma of used chili mac and assorted secondhand GI chow.

The 2LT recoiled in loathing, and Flux's drill sergeant descended on him with fire and brimstone. This, needless to say, didn't help. The poor youth, having voided everything he could, merely subsided in a heap and had to be helped into the squad bay and hosed down in the shower.

Well, things went to hell after that. The wretched kid was beyond embarrassed, his superiors were roughly equally divided into horrified, disgusted, or amused. They tried, I'm told, everything they could think of. But the poor guy just pooped everytime he caught a glint of rank. He was hopeless.

By the time my USAR unit arrived to shepherd the young men of A/3/10 through two weeks of Basic Rifle Marksmanship poor Flux had experienced several more of these incidents, had been referred to Community Mental Health, and had been assessed unfit for service. It wasn't for lack of trying; I spoke gently to the poor kid, and he really, REALLY wanted to go on. It wasn't in his mind but in his bowels that the fear of military authority was so terrifying.

It was pure hindbrain - the caveman instinct when the sabertooth was on the slope above the trail, the direwolf glaring from the cleft of the rock. At the moment he was confronted by the menace of rank his monkey brain simply took over, and his monkey ass provided him with something to throw, perhaps. Or made him too noisome to be worth predating. Or something.

I really have no idea.

But the other victim of this sad little psychological drama was my commander. I'm not sure to this day if it started with CPT Crowne's predecessor but I've always suspected that this hearty sportsman, bursting with corn-fed Midwestern brio, took one look at the weedy little man who showed up to replace him and proceeded to take the mickey out of my boss with stories of the Mad Shitter and his insane desire to defecate on every officer of the United States Army.

From what I could tell from that moment, in the mind of CPT Crowne, PVT Flux occupied the same place that the hashishin of Alamut came to represent in the minds of 12th Century Crusaders, or the kamikazi in the estimation of the sailors of the U.S. Pacific Fleet; a frightful nightmare, the walking embodiment of sudden and unexpected horror.

My commander apparently pictured this poor wretch as some sort of walking bomb packed with deadly feces and fuzed to explode at the merest sight of an insignia of commissioned rank. That he was trapped in a BCT company with a home-grown Sunni suicide shit-bomb. CPT Crowne seemed to believe that the Mad Shitter lurked in ambush in every billet room or behind every blind corner of every training area, awaiting the opportunity to turn his back and hew down a selflessly-serving Reserve officer (married! with children! a churchgoer! Republican!) with his fearsome anal Claymore.

This dreadful fate so consumed his imagination that by the fourth day of our rotation the man was utterly useless and remained so the entire cycle. When he wasn't funking about looking for the Mad Shitter he was worrying about where poor Flux was and coming up with schemes to remove one or the other of them from each other's proximity, and that's what he was worrying about at the moment instead of the cold.

"Sergeant Lawes, here's what you need to do." he hissed, his eyes darting about like a ferret's in a cage, "You need to find the Shitter, and you need to take him back to the company area. Now."

I looked at the poor sod with as much pity as I could muster beyond my own chill. This is what the hell the Army has come to. Bill Calley and now this. Christ on a fucking pogo stick.

"Well, actually, sir, I need to remain with the trainees. The CUCV is the designated evacuation vehicle in case of an injury, you may recall."

CPT Crowne glared at me, his slitted lids almost hiding the panic in his mustelid eyes.

"All right, sergeant, if you're going to be that way. Inform Senior Drill that my CP will be in the cadre office until the trainees return to their bivouac site."

Yeah, the only place on the entire range where young PVT Flux can't go, you poor weasel, I thought, but gave him my best SFC Nelson salute, holding it until he turned and scampered away.

Poor Flux. He was still there, on medical hold awaiting his release from Active Duty on a Chapter 11 (Unsuitable to the Needs of the Army), when my two-week rotation ended and I got on the bus headed back to Portland.

I never found out what became of the Terror of the Tenth Infantry, the scourge of the shoulder insignia, the briefly notorious trainee soldier known to legend simply as the Mad Shitter.