CHAPTER FOUR
On Monday morning Doc and Gar and about ninety other young men repeated the process of lining up, passing paperwork back and forth, and incessantly waiting inside the dull green walls of the processing center. Since the poignant goodbyes took place the night before, John simply dropped Doc off a half hour early with a macho handshake and a discreet fatherly tear. Doc was unaware that John circled the block and parked at a respectful distance to watch the buses pull away later as John hoped for one last look.
At the bark of each man’s name one person would step forward and line up along the wall. Harrison was not far behind Garfield in the lineup. After fifty names were called, the sheep were led down the chute to the dark blue buses waiting at the curb. They were the same boxy models used to ship students back and forth to public school only sad and dreary. Their noxious diesel engines were primed to deliver the human sacrifices to the airport for cartage to Lackland Air Force Base for boot camp. The uniformed shepherds demanded that each seat be filled from left to right in the order each soul boarded. Doc was seated on the aisle two-thirds of the way back. He always preferred a window seat.
The folding doors whacked shut as the rubber seals on each side of the split door met with one another. The school bus chassis awoke with a jerk and shuddered with each gear shift as the bus headed to the first traffic light a few blocks down and turned right on the road to the airport. On the very first block away from the building Doc recognized the fifteen-year old red and white Blazer parked expectantly in the first space after the fire hydrant, but from the angle of the bus and the aisle seat, he could not catch the face of the heart inside.
The young men were wrangled off the bus and through the airport into assigned seats on a commercial airliner to San Antonio. The lines and waiting were per government specification. Several hours later the procedure was reversed as they were herded out of the airport and onto buses for arrival on base in time for dinner.
The buses pulled up in front of a long white one-story processing center with a flat roof. The heat was sweltering in the afternoon sun of August in San Antonio. A rough voiced training instructor swung through the front door of the bus ordering everyone to bail out and line up. The group debarked as ‘rainbows’ because of the variety of colors of their civilian clothes. This was definitely not a collegiate experience.
Orders were barked and any variance from instructions was met with stern reprimand. Trivial matters such as whether the toes of one’s shoes touched the painted line, posture, and the spacing between the stance of each prospective soldier took on immense importance in the drill instructor’s eyes. Each name was called and answered with a shout. “Harrison, William H, Jr!”
“Present, sir!” Doc yelled back standing straight as an arrow with his eyes focused straight ahead. The heat and humidity had drenched his t-shirt in short order, but everyone remained rigid until the last names were called and further instructions were issued. The drill instructor marched the first forty-five young men including Doc and Gar at a good clip to an old white wooden two-story barracks straight out of World War II and brought them inside to issue their bunks for the next several weeks.
Doc had not made a decision for himself since he left home early this morning. He was angry, but knew that he could not let it show.
“My name is Sergeant Adams. Every sentence out of your mouth will either begin or end with ‘sir’. You will come to attention when I enter the room. You will not speak unless you are spoken to first. You will do as I say, and only do what I say without question or hesitation. From now on, you men belong to me until the day you get separated or the day you graduate from boot camp. In the field your life could depend on how well you follow instructions, and this is the test to see if you’re up to making the cut. It’s entirely up to you. I don’t care one way or the other. If you don’t measure up, I won’t think twice about booting you out and finding a man that can take your place. From this moment on you are a team: Flight 872. You don’t exist as an individual. You have to trust each other 100%. You’re going to be living together in these two bays, upstairs and down around the clock, so you are going to have to forget your petty differences, your prejudices, your personal problems, and work as a team. You are only as strong as your weakest link, and you will find out pretty quick who he is and deal with him. God help you if you are the weakest link because you won’t be with us long. The day starts when I hit the lights at 0430 and you will be in formation for breakfast at 0500 with your bunks made, your gear stowed exactly in the proper place, and your uniform ready for inspection. Do you read me?” Doc was enraged, but he couldn’t allow his mind to wander and risk drawing attention to himself.
Adams lined up his flight in formation and marched them down to the chow hall for dinner. It was like the school cafeteria from hell at first perception. There was no talking in the food line, and the fourth seat at each table had to be filled before the tablemates could sit down to eat. The food was surprisingly good by school cafeteria standards, and quiet talking was allowed once everyone at the table was seated.
Thirty minutes later Flight 872 was marched back to be imprisoned in the old white barracks, and dismissed to spend the next couple hours before lights out as one last reprieve of relative freedom. Sgt Adams had already posted the fireguard assignments until morning in two-hour assignments with the admonishment to stay alert because the ancient barracks could burn to the ground within three minutes. Doc and Gar had escaped the first list.
The young soldiers spoke quietly at first as they formed tentative cliques for the duration. The old building had no air conditioning so the only airflow was an occasional puff of breeze as the wind came through the open windows between the barracks buildings and out the other side to the next building. They doffed whatever clothes were practicable and hogged a cool shower whenever one became free until lights out, which was soon the pattern at the end of most long days.
Since Doc and Gar already knew each other, they formed the anchor of one of the cliques. Eventually the five-minute warning was called out and precisely five minutes later the lower bay was lit only by the encroaching mercury vapor lights standing sentinel outside.
Doc was not the only recruit lying on a bunk with his eyes wide open with a combination of astonishment, regret, and apprehension. The wooden emergency door was only a half dozen bunks down. The isolated street of the training base was about thirty feet farther. The fireguard at the front door of the bay was a new recruit just like Doc who would not have a clue what to do if one of the soldiers got up, got dressed and casually walked out the back door to freedom.
There was a cut and trimmed field between the collection of barracks and the tall cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. Doc saw the fence when the buses came through the gate, but rashly assumed that the wire was to keep the rest of the world outside rather than to keep the innocents inside.
Doc heard the dorm guard shuffle down the center aisle between the feet of the bunks to rouse the oncoming dorm guard. It had already been two hours. Doc thought of Amelia back home and of Gonzaga, of Anna and John, of Rose and Patty and Rachel. He wondered if Bill Senior knew that he was here or if his older brother Steve would be able to look him up after boot camp. Maybe he and Steve could get to know each other after all these years since they now had something important in common.
Doc wondered if Steve and Jack had lain awake at night in boot camp missing their mother and brothers and sisters. He wanted to stay awake as if it would forestall the coming days, yet he didn’t notice when sleep overtook him.
Suddenly the fluorescent lights were on. There was banging on a trashcan and a flurry of activity. A booming voice called out the instructions to fall out. Five seconds later the flight was at attention at the foot of their bunks waiting on instructions. Sgt Adams gave the rundown of breakfast, haircuts, uniform fitting, lunch, and orientation classes, then gave the flight a five minute warning to assemble on the cement pad in front of the barracks. Doc was
in his t-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes and out the front door into formation in a flash.
“This is not a formation, Flight 872. This is a bunch of high school kids standing around on the playground,” yelled Sergeant Adams. The recruits had fallen into five lines of eight to ten men per rank. They glanced out of the corners of their eyes without a clue as to what the plan really was. A couple recruits on the ends shifted places so that five rows evened out.
“Did I tell you to move?” yelled an exasperated Adams. “You will move when I tell you to move and not a second before. Am I clear?” A resounding ‘sir, yes, sir’ cut through the predawn peace and quiet. Adams laid hands on the men he wanted moved and physically shoved them into place by their upper arms.
“Flight 872 will be the first to chow every day because you will be the first ones ready to march every day. If you are late, we might not eat at all. We might just stay here at the pad and learn how to line up correctly. I can eat breakfast at home before work and it won’t bother me a bit. If you get hungry enough, you might learn to be prompt. Am I understood?”
Another resounding ‘sir, yes, sir’ erupted. In the background Doc could hear other flights being similarly indoctrinated. He was stronger than these little games that Adams played, but he would go along since it was the course of least resistance.
After breakfast Adams marched Flight 872 up to the small, assembly line barbershop on base that specifically served the recruits in boot camp. Each recruit was required to ante up the cost of his first military haircut, yet given no say in what was to come next. Each head had a close encounter with the electric razor leaving only a quarter inch nub. Doc was quietly enraged as he watched man after man in the barber’s chair paying to be shorn of any personal choice. It was senseless to shave everyone’s head when many of them, including Doc and Gar, already wore their hair at a reasonable length.
The issue must have been power on the part of the establishment to force any whim on every individual. The military required everyone to look alike with white shiny scalps to mark them as indentured servants. When Doc’s turn came around, he watched in the mirror without expression as the barber performed the work of Delilah’s henchmen. Most of the recruits took the haircut in stride although a few would never suffer a full head of hair again. Doc was embarrassed beyond measure that his protruding ears and bare pate and temples were to be a reminder for weeks to come that his identity was being attacked and eroding.
The next stop was a small shop to pick up a bundle of green strips of cloth embroidered with their last names, a rubber stamp with each man’s last four social security numbers and a jet-black indelible ink pad. Doc grimaced at the thought that his entire military identity was clasped in his hand on green cloth strips with blue lettering, and the rest of his clothes and life were to be labeled by number for the next four years.
Sergeant Adams marched Flight 872 up to the long one-story processing building where the recruits had dropped off the edge of the known world on the previous afternoon and assembled the motley youths into four lines. Adams seemed to have little patience for waiting on them to create exacting files and voiced his impatience until he was satisfied. Then each of the four files entered the double glass doors in alphabetical order. Inside a gymnasium-sized room banks of folding tables bearing military issue clothes were set up with sizes taped to the edge of the table.
The recruits came from all walks of life including wealth and poverty, but now they were all on the cusp of being visually equal by donning duplicate uniforms. The military wanted so badly to divorce the recruit from anything familiar or individualistic that they provided t-shirts, socks and underwear. Doc was incredulous that the only decision he would be allowed to make that day was jockeys or boxers. Included in the clothing issue was a bulky green field jacket in San Antonio in the blistering heat of summer. The lines were long at the final checkout station where a multitude of civilian workers sweated over noisy sewing machines attaching the green identity strips to each shirt and jacket.
Flight 872 completed the clothing issue, stuffed the new apparel into issued green duffel bags, and moved to the next room that was about the same size but empty. Sergeant Adams spaced the young men in ranks about three feet apart measured by each recruit’s right hand fingertip against the left shoulder of the man next to him. When this was accomplished, each man was instructed to empty out his duffel bag in front of him, strip down, and stuff his civilian clothes into the large, clear plastic bag issued to each man. The recruits were assured that the civilian clothes would be brought back out of storage and returned at the end of boot camp.
One of the last vestiges of who Doc thought he was had been sealed with a twist tie and a nametag to be consigned to a dark storage area for return to the man who would graduate from boot camp several weeks down the road. Adams instructed them to put on a right sock. When every man put on his right sock, Adams instructed them to put on a left sock. They were being treated as two-year olds just learning to dress themselves.
Doc thought his intelligence could not have been more insulted, but he had no recourse but to go along. He seethed as they dressed by the numbers, audited and folded the remaining clothing inventory, stuffed the duffel bag and marched back to the barracks. The remainder of the day consisted of stamping the last four digits of their social security numbers in their clothing issue, followed by instructions in precision bed making and detailed specifications in the arrangement of their footlockers.
The work was so trivial that it was mind numbing. It made no sense that Adams would force them to measure the placement of their socks and underwear with a ruler, that the cheap white cotton sheets and dingy green blankets had to be free of the slightest trace of a wrinkle, and that each pair of shoes should require extensive daily maintenance. It made no sense that the crumbling barracks needed so lofty a standard of cleanliness that lint from the floors had to be removed by brushing the floors with masking tape fixed to the edge of a yardstick. Any rebellion was crushed by punishing the entire flight with demerits causing the transgressor to be the unanimous object of scorn and derision. Doc was expecting the mindlessness of a high school gym class, but was astounded that boot camp was functioning as if the recruits possessed only a preschool intellect.
Doc’s overpowering pain was watching all the idiosyncrasies that made him human evaporate into the tangle of human bondage that was Flight 872. Each day he felt himself slipping further and further from the well-adjusted, successful George Clark High School student who looked forward to active weekends with friends.
He missed the security of Anna and John always within reach when he needed them. He missed being able to sit alone in his bedroom with a book, his guitar, or with simply nothing constructive to do but enjoy an evening. He was depressed that he could no longer decide on a whim to get together with Amelia for milkshakes on late Friday evenings, nor could he call up a buddy on a moment’s notice to go hit a few tennis balls on a Saturday morning. And television: Doc had no idea what an important role television played in his life. There were no news programs or newspapers, no television, no filler when he was supposed to be studying for classes the next day.
Sergeant Adams and his assistants kept Flight 872 frantic for a week. Every minute seemed to be busy with boredom, fear, loathing, and mindless waiting combined with classes on military history and procedure targeted at grade school level. On Saturday morning after breakfast there was an unexpected reprieve. Adam’s assistant unexpectedly dismissed the flight with instructions to stay in the barracks and use their free time to wash clothes and towels, clean the barracks, and work on boots without sergeant supervision.
Although the dismissing agenda seemed full, the flight finally had a chance to relax a bit and spend some time assessing the other members of their newly formed cliques. The best part was the fact that no one was watching for slipups – it was just the flight members on their own for the first time in a week.
Doc paused in front of one of the cheap two
-foot tall by one-foot wide mirrors pasted to the wall of the bathroom after he washed the sweat from his head and neck. He looked in the mirror at the stranger’s face. Doc did not recognize the practically shaved head with a quarter inch of hair, the protruding ears, and the empty expression. The starched green uniform shirt and pants were unlike the smooth denim jeans and soft cotton sweatshirts that were his trademark. His feet were already callused from the new shoes; Doc had never worn anything but cowboy boots and tennis shoes.
He did not have the privacy to cry. Flight members were incessantly passing back and forth behind him. He became aware that another man was staring at his back waiting for him to relinquish one of the valuable community resources so that he could have a turn to wash up. This was his new life for the next four years and he was sinking into depression at an alarming rate.
Doc walked back into the barracks bay to where Gar was holding court exchanging ‘urban legends’ of recruits who had gone mad and cut their wrists or run headlong into a brick wall to escape the madness of boot camp. Gar was relishing the details of how one alleged recruit copied the method described by inmates on death row of cutting the femoral artery and bleeding out in four minutes with nothing that could possibly be done to save the victim.
Doc could understand how a person could lose hold of his sanity and commit those atrocities. Gar was simply enjoying being the center of attention while his audience was enjoying each attempt to one-up him by creating or repeating better stories without regard to validity or even probability.
Gar suddenly let out a boisterous laugh. Back at George Clark High School Gar would have never been accepted in Doc’s circle of friends with his common mannerisms and lack of class. The laugh alone would have excluded him from their league. In the barracks, though, Gar was a valued peer.
Living in Quiet Rage Page 5
