Gone to the Woods

by Gary Paulsen

  At the train depot there were twenty-six men waiting for transport to Fort Carson. Roughly half of them were young enlisted men and the other half, older draftees. The young men were, for the large part, enthusiastic and eager to be in the military; the draftees were, to a man, furious they had to be there. Some of them—perhaps because they had angered their draft boards, or were outright criminals and allowed to be drafted rather than go to prison—were downright mutinous.

  In a moment of what could only be called absurd error, the recruiter had put the boy in charge of these men. The boy had objected, but the recruiter said since he had a military background—he knew of the boy’s time in Manila and that his father had been an officer—he was a natural for the job. And besides, it was only for the overnight train ride to Colorado. All he had to do was keep track of their papers and orders. What could go wrong?

  But the normally overnight train ride took three days and two nights. Due to a scheduling error, the car was disconnected and held over on a siding in the Omaha stockyards for a day and a half. They were fed stale meals made of semi-moldy bread and colorfully tainted bologna coated with green mustard. Initially, the men threw the sandwiches away, but in the end, hunger became overwhelming, and they ate them in spite of their appearance. The smell was so thick from the hundreds of cattle being held for shipment on both sides of the tracks that the food tasted like cow dung anyway.

  On the second day, the situation became critical as the men—particularly those who had been drafted against their will—rose up in anger and threatened to run away from the train car, and the boy-not-yet-a-man had great difficulty trying to keep them together. There was nobody he could contact, and the only inhabited building nearby was a grubby stockyard bar with what looked like a dead body lying in front of it. It was called, in broken letters crudely painted on a gray board, THE LOADING CHUTE, and when one of the draftees made a break for it and went into the bar, he was—literally—thrown clear of the front door and was very grateful to get back to the railcar in one piece.

  With twenty-some-odd men eating the scattered remnants of the horrific box lunches they had been provided, the toilet on the end of the car soon filled up, heaped over—adding to the foul stench of the cattle. In the end, the only thing that kept them together was the fact that the boy-not-yet-man held their orders in manila envelopes as paper hostages. They could be charged and arrested if they didn’t have access to and control of their papers. To run from the army, which they were now legally a part of, was a felony and they had been warned they would spend at least two years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.

  And besides, they were in the middle of a stinking sea of knee-deep cow dung, and there was simply no place they could run to.

  When the mistake was at last realized, late on the third day after two nights, they were hooked to a passenger train and—treated like lepers and forbidden to leave the car they were in lest it make the other passengers ill—taken nonstop to Colorado Springs where they arrived at two in the morning stinking, roiling, in the thick and cloying odor of excrement and vomit, and aching with a driven thirst and starving hunger.

  To be greeted by the sergeant and cadre who were not quite human.

  Welcome, the boy thought, to The Army.

  The procedure for incoming recruits, which was never seen by nor understood by civilians, was to systematically attempt to destroy every vestige of their previous civilian status and life, and rebuild it with military thinking, living, existing.

  And although it fit well into what the boy wanted done to his life—cancel out all the crap, change everything—it was, in many ways, brutal.

  After the short bus ride to Fort Carson, they were pushed into one of the older wooden barracks filled with sixty bunks made of wire springs and bare tick mattresses at four in the morning.

  All the men fell on the mattresses and slipped into unconsciousness, fully clothed and still stinking, only to be jerked awake two hours later by Yello banging a glass Coke bottle around the inside of an empty metal garbage can. He ordered those who could get on their feet to physically drag those who could not wake up off their bunks and out the door to stand in formation in front of the barracks.

  After something resembling a roll call—some were still virtually asleep on their feet, or leaning against each other—they were pushed (marched would be too orderly a word) to a small mess hall. There they were given a spoon one man said was as big as a shovel, a dollop of powdered eggs on a metal tray, a half cup of something watery and brown that only a deluded optimist could call applesauce, two pieces of dry toast, and a fiber cup of pitch-black coffee, of which they had four and a half minutes to eat and drink. All the while, the cadre stood over them explaining it was a crime to waste food in the army, and if the tray was not scraped with the spoon and then wiped with the toast so that all remnants were eaten, everything would then have to be licked clean. Two men—draftees—didn’t believe it and had their faces shoved down on their trays until they were licked spotless. They had brown stains on their faces all day from the applesauce.

  Then outside, and more push-walking to begin the destruction-and-rebuilding phase of what Sergeant Grim told them was their “army career.”

  First to wooden supply barracks, which had been turned into a storage shed. Civilian clothes off, including underwear, and stuffed into paper bags with their names crudely lettered on the side, along with their serial numbers, and then, naked, into a cold shower where they were sprayed down. Then another supply shack where they were provided uniform clothing, stacked arm-over-head high, and given two minutes to get into underwear and fatigues—all massively too large. After they showered and dressed, they were herded into yet another building filled with heavy black combat boots that they had another two minutes to put on over heavy olive-drab woolen socks.

  And then, and then, and then …

  Run everywhere. Not jog, but run, and if you fell down or fell out, you were told to give a hundred push-ups or a hundred sit-ups right there in the dirt with cadre screaming into your ear, and when—not if, but when—you failed, the penalty was to be given another hundred push-ups.

  Run to another building where barbers cut the hair down to bare skin, before out at a run to yet another building where a man with a wooden tongue depressor checked first your mouth and teeth and tongue and—same wooden tongue depressor—your penis and scrotum.

  To see if you had any sexually transmitted disease or crabs. If you had venereal disease as a soldier, you would be charged with “destruction of government property” and sent to prison.

  Now a blind staggering run to the next building, where medics were waiting with hypodermic needles for vaccinations, both arms. Back outside to run back to another building for a blanket, two sheets, a pillow, and a pillowcase. Another run to the barracks to make your bed, two minutes, hospital corners on sheet and woolen blanket with a big U.S. to be exactly in the center of the bed. Run to the mess hall for a sloppy joe burger that one man swore tasted like fried cat, with four (count them) burnt french fried potatoes that tasted as if they had been violated by rancid lard, and more of the dark watery applesauce for dessert and the ubiquitous black coffee, all of which must be eaten and drunk in four minutes, scraped or licked clean. More running back outside, standing in formation to run to their first class: Soldier Etiquette. Sitting on the ground in the dirt while a corporal drew pictures on a chalkboard on how to stand at attention—fingers on the outside seams of your fatigue pants, neck and chin stiff and braced. How to salute and prove you understood which was your right hand and which one was your left. Had to hold them and demonstrate: “This is my right. This is my left.” And if, because of entirely logical exhaustion, you fell asleep—several men toppled over into the dirt completely out—you had to get up and run around the group of men in the dirt to keep you awake while learning the mysteries of soldier etiquette.

  Running, for most of them, was a nightmare. Some of the draftees were from New York City, which
was perhaps twenty feet above sea level. Fort Carson, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, was on the order of six thousand feet above sea level. For somebody from a much lower altitude, the air was almost too thin to breathe. Pity did not exist from the staggeringly tough and well-shaped cadre who would run next to a recruit facing backward and bellowing commands. It verged on the impossible for the eastern recruits and still they had to run.

  And run.

  Coupled with the forced running everywhere, to make it worse, they had to wear full-on, high-top, thick-soled, stiff leather heavy combat boots while they ran. Each boot weighed over a pound, making the recruits, now running on blisters, clomp along like Frankenstein monsters. Men dropped like flies, falling next to the road unconscious, some bleeding from their mouth, a mixture of snot and blood out of their nostrils. Nor were they left to lie. Other recruits had to pick them up and carry-drag them along at a run to the next place, to the mess hall at four o’clock, eating elbow noodles with a sauce made largely of catsup, with black coffee and two pieces of dry bread.

  At the end of the day, back to the barracks.

  Home.

  To crash on their bunks fully clothed. Several got no farther than collapsing inside the door, passed out on the floor. But nearly everyone felt like they were dying, falling into some coma-like sleep, where they were.

  Having had a more physical life, working on farms and setting pins, hunting and fishing in the woods, the boy made it to his bunk and closed his eyes. Around him, he heard some men sobbing quietly in the darkness and at least one asking for his mother.

  Day one of so-called active duty in the United States Army.

  Four the next morning up with slam-rattling Coke bottle in the garbage can, four minutes to dress, four more to finish ablutions, then meet on company street in fatigues and heavy combat boots for the first one-mile run. In a week, it would be increased to two miles and, in another week, to three. But now, on day two, it was a one-mile stagger for most of them. Hacking, blowing snot, wheezing, not even having enough strength to swear, cadre trotting backward next to them, heading to the mess hall.

  More powdered eggs, with fried potatoes on top, black applesauce, and two pieces of toast with—a treasure—a pat of butter.

  Food wolfed down in four minutes. Gulp down the coffee. Then outside in formation to run to a field to undergo an hour of calisthenics—a series of jumps, squats, push-ups, sit-ups, overlapping one to the next after which, impossible by now to believe, a break.

  A full ten minutes to sit on the ground. Lie back in morning sun. Think of nothing. Cry.

  Then up to run to the next class, history and something called a “mission statement,” sitting cross-legged in the dirt.

  Awake.

  Wake up, awake, maggots!

  Drone from the instructor, an officer, a young second lieutenant, really not much older than the recruits.

  “During the Second World War and Korea, it was found that only five percent of infantry soldiers actually fired their rifles at the enemy.” The officer spoke in a monotone that one wag later said was more deadening than novocaine. “You are the first evolution to undergo a new army training procedure known as Trainfire. You will use the same rifle—the M-1 Garand, a thirty-caliber gas-operated semiautomatic shoulder weapon—but where they used to fire at circular bullseye targets, once your rifles are zeroed, you men will fire only at darkened human silhouettes, which will spin and fall if they are hit.”

  Most of these men, the boy thought, had never even seen a rifle, let alone fired one. The boy had seen hundreds. This one in front of him was the same rifle the soldiers in Manila had used. Fired the same cartridge used in the machine guns. The ground was covered with literally thousands of fired empty .30-caliber cartridge cases. Wherever you kicked you would kick up a spray of brass cases. And he had seen them fired. At people.

  Class over, run to another field, one hour of something euphemistically called close-order drill. Marching—again, staggering—learning left from right in case they had forgotten, which some apparently had, and more marching back and forth, physically jammed into formation when they strayed, and, when it was done, run …

  Run.

  Back to the mess hall for noon chow, grilled cheese on toast and tomato soup with unidentified chunks floating in it, dark watery applesauce (more now, a full cup) for dessert and—another treasure—not black coffee, but weakly flavored sugared lime water in a fiber cup. Everything eaten or drunk in four or five minutes. They’d say “take ten minutes, but expect five, and you might get two.”

  Then run back to the field for more close-order-drill stagger-marching, then run back to yet another building where—wonder of wonders—they were made to file in, sit at desks, and begin army aptitude testing.

  Question: If all horses are dogs and no dogs are fish, can any fish be horses?

  Question: If a train moving sixty miles an hour is sixty miles from Cleveland, how long will it take to reach Cleveland?

  Question: How does a radio work?

  Question: What is the purpose of Ohm’s law?

  The answers are to determine if the recruit thinks mathematically and will fit into the spanking-new technical army that used missiles and radar and computers and nuclear warheads to kill people along with rifles and bayonets.

  And because of his television-repair classes and working with ham radio, the boy passed the technical tests with flying colors.

  “You are,” said the second lieutenant supervising the tests to the boy, “the new high-tech army’s wet dream. Almost certainly you will be sent to further, advanced-technical schooling.”

  But first …

  Ahh, yes. In the army there is always a “but first.”

  But first he must learn to march correctly and stand correctly and kill properly with a rifle and a bayonet and a hand grenade and piano wire and a knife and a hand axe and a flamethrower and a mortar and an artillery explosion and a machine gun and a recoilless rifle and a bazooka and even a shovel, for God’s sake, slash the shovel across the back of the neck with the sharp side-edge.

  And over the next weeks and months, the boy learned these things and became so good at them he was made a squad leader and awarded a medal that said: EXPERT.

  He became expert at knowing how to kill, seeing the dark figure of a man spin and fall when he fired his rifle.

  Spin and fall.

  Never saw that in Manila. Saw them double up in a spray of red mist as bullets hit them. Saw them blown backward when hit by a heavy burst of machine-gun fire. Saw them simply come apart and drop like old meat when they were chopped by bullets.

  Never saw them spin and fall.

  He was different when, at last, he finished initial combat training. He knew that he had changed and was not and would never again be what he had been in the town where he set pins and dodged bullies and found a measure of sanity and sanctuary in the library.

  But he was not yet what he would become.

  SPIN AND FALL

  They sent the boy to school after school after school in the army. Nike Ajax antiaircraft missiles guidance and firing systems and Nike Hercules guidance systems and Corporal missiles and Honest John missiles and Q-10 radar and TPS-25 radar and Redstone missiles …

  All to make men spin and fall.

  And, finally, they sent him to nuclear warhead school, where they were locked in a room with a civilian who chain-smoked so much even his pocket protector was stained as yellow as his teeth, and he showed them the ultimate weapon. The weapon itself was the size of a softball and the civilian told them if it were fired Correctly …

  Used that word: “Correctly.” Clipped the word so it was obviously capitalized in his brain.

  … if you fired the weapon Correctly it would take out a whole city. Civilian had a little smile. As if he were slightly embarrassed at what he said. About taking out a whole city.

  And the boy thought: Jesus.

  Almost but not quite a prayer.

  Th
ought: Jesus.

  Make a whole city spin and fall.

  From the schools, he went out into units and fixed computers and fired missile after missile and toward the end of his three-year enlistment they made him, of all things, a sergeant. Not like Sergeant Grim, same rank, but not training combat soldiers. An expert sergeant with technical weapons, fulfilling his destiny as the technical army’s wet dream.

  Yet even then, as a sergeant, he had not changed completely. Had not come out of the cocoon of his youth until they assigned him to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he was to help train other men in the use of high technical weapons to make even larger masses of people spin and fall.

  Here the change finally came.

  There were old men, in their late thirties and early forties, men who had fought in the Second World War and Korea and stayed in the army as a career. Men who were close to retiring, and while Vietnam was beginning to boil over and some of them would be killed there, that had not happened yet and they wanted to increase their technical knowledge, make their rank higher so they would get more money in retirement. Twenty more dollars a month. Maybe fifty dollars more a month.

  But many of them, most of them, were poorly educated, had been drafted from rough places where they had to work as children and couldn’t be in a school or a library, and had trouble with the classes.

  They were assigned to old, enormous cavalry barracks, and the boy was there and they asked him to help them pass their tests and he said he would, tried to help them. When the boy was not working with them, many of them stayed in the barracks at night and played nickel-and-dime poker on blankets on top of footlockers and drank clear alcohol out of jars.

  And the boy, who was a sergeant but not of them, not like them, sat and watched them sitting in their underwear playing cards and drinking slowly, very professionally, out of quart jars, and the boy saw their scars.