The laughter couldn’t be heard outside our tank, but we laughed our asses off, inside.
By the time Armor AIT was over, I’d learned that tanks weren’t quite as invulnerable as I’d originally thought, but I still loved the concept.
Another key part of my life started here, too. Something I haven’t mentioned much is that not only did we have all that spending cash, we also had… leave passes. Unless I or someone else in my group had screwed up, we had liberty to leave the base. Week-days, we were still restricted to base, but Friday after the school day was done, we were automatically granted forty-eight hour leave passes. That gave us plenty of time to get out and see what was around us – and oh boy, did I do some seeing.
My first time off base was with several Armor AIT classmates – one a cute but rail-thin redhead, Michelle Tanto, and Deni Tato, an airheaded blonde with fake – but huge – tits.
We’d gone out Friday night, drinking – the two of them dared me, they didn’t believe I could hold my liquor – so we went to a local bar. Per SOP, we were in uniform, and the local (not to mention, federal) laws dictated that short of us doing something really stupid, people shouldn’t touch us. Even Law enforcement couldn’t do anything short of detain us until the military police arrive at the local jail to collect us. That said, I didn’t do ANYTHING worthy of the hassle I collected that night.
We walked into the first bar we saw – “Silver Bars” (some sort of retarded play on words and Captain’s rank insignia). Michelle and Deni were tossing back shots like it was no-one’s business. They were both ‘privileged’ kids from an arkscraper somewhere on the west coast, and had more money than god – so they knew (but I didn’t, at the time) that the body mods that mommy and daddy had paid for would keep them sober, long past when I’d had enough to knock out a horse. Did I mention that the dare was, I’d buy until they passed out? Yeah, I got suckered on that deal.
I was trying to keep up, and was doing good until I started to feel a bit woozy around number 11 or 12.
Twelve. It was definitely twelve, because I remembered thinking, “Lucky thirteen, that’ll do the trick!” It didn’t even make it down the hatch; as I was walking back to our table with the three oversized shots, some goon backed into me and knocked the three glasses out of my hands, then knocked me on my ass. The glasses were fine; they were that funky see-through aluminum stuff – very hard to break, but they looked like glass. The guy turned around and started bitching about me slopping my drinks on his pants – which I clearly hadn’t. He reached down and picked me up by my collar, and pounded me, once, hard enough to rip the collar off of my uniform.
I didn’t know that at the time; I don’t remember anything after that punch until I woke up in the local jail cell with a cop pouring a coffee mug full of ice-cold water on my face. Apparently the bartender saw it all happen and called the cops right away. They showed up and arrested big dumb and stupid, and me, too. I was in sorry shape – uniform ripped to shreds, and drunk off my ass – still! I didn’t even know what time it was.
I shouldn’t have bothered even thinking about it. I’d apparently been out of it for long enough that when the MPs showed up, I could technically have been charged as AWOL (Did I forget to mention? We had to be back on base between midnight and 6am, even on weekend leave passes). When they did, though, the local cops out-processed me, giving me back Rage (which the MPs promptly took and wouldn’t let me have) and then the real hell started.
By the time we got back to base, and the base security and MP Officer was reading me the riot act, I finally got a chance to get a word in edge-wise. “Do you have anything to say for yourself, shitbag?”
“SIR! Yes sir! Please examine my face, my uniform, my hands, and ask both the two students who were with me, as well as the bartender where I was drinking. If you would, sir, please also request the police report.” I was confident this would get my ass out of the sling it currently was in.
Turns out, I was right – again. I was released, all charges were dropped (thank fuck, because I was on a short trip to a court martial and dishonorable discharge if not!), but I had another fun little surprise waiting for me.
The BS&MPO had, yes, talked to Michelle and Deni, the Bartender, and the local cops.
Michelle? Told him I’d been minding my own business, just drinking too much, and that I hadn’t done anything to deserve what I got.
Deni? That lying cunt told him that the guy had turned, knocked the glasses out of my hand, and I started picking a fight with him, hit him several times before he picked me up and gave me the obvious war wounds.
The clincher, though, was that the bartender saw everything, and the local cops had recorded it in their report.
I was allowed back to my training unit, but Deni got charged with conduct unbecoming, dishonesty about a teammate, and was dishonorably discharged, and was then handed off to the local police for additional charges. Like I said, federal law took things seriously when someone tries to abuse the military.
Michelle never spoke to me again, turns out Deni was her girlfriend and thought that I’d done to her fuckbuddy, what in actuality, Deni had done to me.
That didn’t matter to me, though, and it was again a reminder that I needed to do something about this whole getting slapped around routine. Yes, it was almost always someone bigger, stronger, faster, and/or better trained than myself that I was up against, but I was just sick and tired of it. I’d rather be in a position to not get hit at all, and instead, be able to stomp the shit out of someone who otherwise wanted to be stomping me.
It was Saturday afternoon, and I still had the rest of my leave pass till Sunday afternoon, so I started looking for any kind of hand to hand combat training I could find.
I was in luck – unlike the invisible hole where I’d done my basic training, Fort Mcclellan had plenty of options open to me. I ended up going to the one that seemed the smallest, thinking I’d find more attention from a teacher there than one of the larger places.
I was in luck – I walked into the tiny little hole in the wall place, and saw a bunch of guys in white pajamas stomping around. That struck me as odd, but searches on my implant suggested that this was the best-rated place in town, and it was , yes, small enough that I could get plenty of instruction in a shorter amount of time.
I sat down and waited until they were finished whatever their stomping dance was, and then I stood up in an “at ease” position. The guy at the front, a shorter tubby dude, turned around to look at me….
… and I braced to attention immediately, when Colonel Marshall said, “Ahhh Mister Wolf, I’d wondered if I might be seeing you soon. Come in, come in. Take your shoes off first.” The rumors about his lethal nature were starting to make more sense to me now.
That was the start of some huge changes for me.
Chapter 14: Studying
Armor AIT had just started, but that story was getting kind of boring anyway. I ended up graduating from that class, not at the top, but not at the bottom, either. I did well enough.
Colonel Marshall’s dojo, as he called it, was another story entirely.
I’d grown up getting slapped around, punch or kicked… I’d been harassed, abused, taken advantage of (some might say raped, but hey, you can’t rape the willing!), and I’d finally gotten off my ass (no pun intended) and done something about it.
It turns out that yes, the place was indeed the highest rated hand to hand combat training center anywhere near Fort Mcclellan, and for good reason: Colonel Marshall, now the commandant of the school for AIT for Infantry and Armor, had previously been a Military Policeman. During that time, he’d also been the head of a special group – he’d run the Protective Services detail for the Commander of the Army. Then, and now, he’d been a big fan of martial arts as one more ‘tool’ in the toolbox of being dangerous. I found out later, his experience didn’t end just with his hands and feet – he was just as dangerous with knives, swords, pistols, rifles, rope, a broom handle, or a keychain
. Yes, he was THAT dangerous. Those rumors were probably not even close to the reality of just how dangerous he was.
I never asked for it, but he offered to grant me a special leave pass for evenings, if I wished to attend his classes for the time that I was still in Fort Mcclellan – and, of course, I accepted and with an embarrassing level of thanks and appreciation. His only requirement was that I never sacrifice my career training for my personal training – and, should he become aware of that, he would terminate not only my special privileges, but also my welcome in his dojo.
I learned everything I possibly could from him, from the basics of “kicking and punching” as he called it, all the way through the various forms and exercises that he did with pure martial artists in the dojo. There was far more than that, though – he was a sixth degree black belt in Meibukan Goju Karate, but he also held unrated standings in Jiu Jutsu, Judo, and Kung Fu. That didn’t mean anything to me at first, but later, it made a huge impact on me when I realized that I’d absorbed more than just “karate.” Trust me on this, you don’t want to study just one fighting style – that’s a fast path to dead.
Training sessions were long and difficult; he had to be easily three times my age, but he constantly and consistently ran me into the ground. I was in excellent shape, twenty years old (according to my fictitious birthday, anyway), but I couldn’t keep up with him.
I’d already had military training with the M20 pistol, M34 rifle, various blades, and the pitiful hand to hand “combat” that they called it, but what I learned with Sensei Marshall made me really dangerous, with nothing more than just my bare hands.
He, oddly, also taught me how to be… calmer. I didn’t like meditation at first, but it grew on me. I could take the rage and fury I had inside, and temper them from iron, into steel – stronger, harder, and far more useful. My rage became drive, my fury became determination – both of which are a major portion of why I became the person I was, later in life.
He must have known my history, as he tangentially referenced it several times, over the course of the first few months I attended his tutelage at the dojo.
“Wolf san, you seem less angry now.”
He was a traditionalist – everyone was addressed with ‘-san’ after their name, he counted in Japanese, it was a little weird – but I kind of liked it.
“Hai, sensei. I wouldn’t have ever figured myself to be the meditating type, but I find it’s a good way to refocus myself now.”
“Good. That will serve your purpose, better than your intent.”
That was a little weird, but he took the whole martial arts thing way more seriously than I did, at first anyway. For him, it wasn’t just an exercise, or a mechanism for self defense… it was a way of life, and one that he shared with me.
I’d never really appreciated the fact that I had people looking out for me and setting the scene for me, long before I’d gotten to that point in my life, but where Sensei Marshall – or, Sensei Kim as he finally told me to call him, in the Dojo – was concerned, I found myself wishing I’d known him a lot longer. He was one of the only people I’d ever known, who I didn’t want to bend or otherwise use to further my own end.
I found out later than Sensei Kim wasn’t only permitting me to study what he would teach me. He was actually breaking his own rule about not permitting soldiers under his command to train at his dojo. I only figured it was something he did as a hobby on the side, collecting enough cash to pay for the expenses of keeping the space open and available. I was paying him a hundred dollars a month, a bit less than a tenth of my paycheck – and thought I should have been paying a lot more. When I offered, he told me that I was paying what I asked, and that when the time came to pay more, he would tell me.
I made progress. I saw other students come and go, some of them soldiers affiliated with units that were based at Fort Mcclellan, some were civilians with no military affiliation, I even met Sensei Kim’s two sons and his daughter, all of whom were also blackbelts, albeit not at the same rank he was at. All through it, I was training – completing my Armor AIT during the day, and at night and on weekends, learning everything I could soak up from Sensei at the Dojo.
I only once made the mistake of broaching the topic of military training there, and it was earlier on.
“Colonel, How the hell do I …”
“YAME!” Japanese, for ‘stop.’ “Wolf san, I am not a Colonel. I am your teacher, and I teach you mastery of yourself. Nothing more, nothing less.”
I shut up, feeling a bit shut down. He stopped classes early that night, and I bowed out – changing back into my uniform, and putting my Gi – the white pajamas that I wore when I was training here – and my orange Obi – my belt - into a small bag. As I was walking out the door, he called out to me, having already changed back into his uniform.
“Private Wolf.”
“Sir, Yes sir?”
“It’s important to always recognize who you’re talking to, and what their role is. They may sometimes have multiple roles, but you must always pay attention to that. Mixing those roles up can lead to an inappropriate level of familiarity with your superiors – or, your juniors, should you rise to a high enough rank to warrant it.”
“Yes sir, I understand.”
“No, Wolf, you don’t – but you will, someday.”
It wasn’t the first time we’d have that talk, but I got his point – at the Dojo, he was Sensei Kim. On base, he was Colonel Marshall. It was critical that I not mix those two up – and I only ever made that mistake again, once – and then he promptly slapped me down for it, because… well, maybe I’ll tell that story later.
I trained and trained hard. By the time that I graduated from Armor AIT, I’d graded to my brown belt - one step below my first degree black belt. When it came to sparring, the only person in the Dojo would could meet my focus and energy was Sensei Kim himself – although, I had learned, at least a little, how to tone that down so as to be able to participate with others.
I had learned all of the forms required for my black belt – plus others. I’d learned all of the basic blocks, punches, kicks, and throws… and most of the advanced ones, too – at least, the ones that Sensei Kim had taught me. I’d learned grappling, mounts and reverse mounts, arm bars, leg bars, choke holds, and had generally toughened up my arms and legs to a point that I could inflict serious damaged on the untrained and unprepared.
I felt good. I wasn’t as angry as I had been before starting this, but I also had found another focus for myself. I hadn’t even realized that my prior goal, the takeover of the tenements as a stepping stone towards taking over the arkscrapers in the New York City area, had fallen by the wayside in favor of my new goal: become someone that was strong, stronger than most if not everyone else, both mentally, physically, and militarily. I’d made great strides towards that goal in the last few months, and by the time I reached my 21st birthday, I had a level of confidence that I’d never had previously, and found that I didn’t need the arrogance or abruptness that was all that kept me going, before. That was a mixed thing, as I later came to find out.
As I said, I hit brown belt by the time I was done with Armor AIT. Trust me, those gradings were not at all easy – he beat the ever-loving shit out of me, and then handed me off to other senior belts to do the same – to make sure that I both knew, as well as to validate that I had the ability to use what I knew in an instinctual fashion. They got harder as I gained rank – in the dojo, anyway, not so much outside of it – but I enjoyed them. What struck me as odd, was that Colonel – I mean, Sensei – Marshall’s way of handling me didn’t feel like abusive control; it felt like training without the emotional content. I wondered for a long time after why that was, and I eventually found out – but, again, that’s not this story, right now.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I finished Armor AIT not at the top of my class, but not at the bottom, either. I applied myself, studied hard both in class, as well as on my own – you didn’t think getting my
ass kicked at the dojo was the only thing I did in my spare time, did you?
I mention this again, because it also factored into something I hadn’t really thought about up until that point. During Infantry AIT, I expected to leave. During Armor AIT, at least at first, I expected to leave. Once I started training with Sensei Marshall, somehow, I figured that time of my life would continue indefinitely – and I was wrong.
This time it wasn’t Master Corporal Hotez who delivered my orders; she’d completed her duty and she’d actually left shortly after my basic training, and was back with a line unit by the time I started Infantry AIT. Sergeant Ballard was still around, though, and his always half-smiling face was what I saw when I opened my door.
“Mister Wolf! What a surprise seeing you here.” Sarcastic bastard.
Rage & Fury Page 14
