A lot of people don't understand the part of the Army before you actually attend Basic Training. Yes, they ship you off to the same god forsaken, hole in the wall, bum fucked slice of hell, but you are not technically at basic Training for a few days. Before Basic Training, there is the Reception Battalion. Long story short, the Reception Battalion is where they process you like so much branded cattle. Your eyes are checked, your hair is cut, all of your contraband is taken away and thrown into this bin that I can only imagine is picked through at a later time by the Cadre at said reception Battalion (you're welcome for the 3/4 full carton of smokes by the way, assholes), and you fill out paperwork. Loads of paperwork. Then, when all T's are crossed and all i's dotted, they put you in a cattle car (literally) and send you off to your unit. This is my experience at the Reception Battalion.
I got off of the plane in Saint Louis at around 1:30 AM. Mind you, I had gotten on my plane in Indy at 10:35 AM. So after a FIVE hour layover in Chicago and another layover in Minneapolis, I finally arrived; Sleep deprived, wanting a cigarette and completely lost. I wandered, half-awake and frightened, out of the doors by baggage claim and lit up a partially smashed smoke. I remember how much loose tobacco there was in the pack. I can't be sure why that sticks with me so well, but I can still see all of that loose plant material falling out of my soft pack as I tapped out a square. Probably because it was the last time that I would smoke until we snuck one at our "free day away", some six weeks later. I lit the cigarette and looked up over the end of it and met eyes with a man in a drill sergeant hat. He was as black as a whore's heart and bigger than a mountain. His eyes looked cartoonish, because they were so very, very white and he was literally the darkest human being that I had ever seen. He knew I was due to be on his bus. He could smell it on me.
About seven of us got on the bus and were promptly told to "Shut the fuck up if we wanted to live". I wasn't sure if we were going to Fort Leonard Wood or an internment camp somewhere deep in the Missouri countryside. Shutting the fuck up was no problem for me, as I had been awake for going on at 24 hours at this point. I was so tired that I felt like I was just floating through this whole experience. Which is far more than I can say for the guy who was sitting next to me. He was an older guy, probably 35, the same age I am now, and he smelled like bad cologne and even worse breath. But he was crying. He was crying real, honest to God tears and he kept hitching when he tried to breath, like the oxygen was choking him. In retrospect, I should have probably tried to comfort the poor guy, but I pretended to be asleep and then really did pass out from exhaustion.
We got to Ft. Leonard Wood some time around 2:45 in the morning, I THINK. I'd be lying if I said that I could remember this for a certainty. I know that it was super late, very dark and sort of cold. Not the kind of bitey, Midwest cold that you get in early March, but that humid kind of cold that sort of sets into your bones slowly. It was a foggy cold, if that helps at all. As soon as the bus stopped, more enormous men boarded our bus and promptly began to scream bloody murder. These were not Drill Sergeants, oh no. These were Tech Sergeants, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. I never met another one of these creatures outside of reception, and I'd like to think that the entire thing has been wiped off of the face of the plant. So I ran off of the bus in the half-awake, half-dream state and was promptly hustled into this building that sort of looked like a prison, and sort of like an elementary school. It had lots of very thick glass on the outside, and the lights hit it in such a way that it cast odd shadows all over the entry way.
Once inside, we were told to dump all of our baggage into this small bin and let the Tech Sergeants go through it. Not only did I have an almost completely full carton of Camel Lights with me, I had brought porno magazines with me. And snack food. And some "for my eyes only" pictures of my girlfriend. Somewhere, right now, there is a 50 year old, ex-tech sergeant with Polaroids of my then 18 year old girlfriend, spread eagle on her bed and giving him a sly, come-hither look. ENJOY THEM YOU ROTTEN BASTARD! Ok, sorry, where was I? Ah yes. After most of my personal "contraband" was confiscated by the terrorists....er...cadre, we were taken into a poorly lit room full of school desks and bad tiling. On each desk, there was a postcard that were supposed to sign that stated something like "Dear, _________ , I have made it safely to Ft. Leonard Wood to begin my training. I will write you soon. Best, ___________" . I filled in my sister's name, signed my name on the bottom and wrote what I thought to be something terribly insightful and witty on the bottom, in the space below the signature line. Years later, when my sister showed me this postcard, I realized that I must have been asleep on my feet. Punch drunk. Something. The space below my name was indeed filled. it said"AS-------------------------------------",with the trailing line literally running off of the page.
We sat in that room for a couple of more hours, filling out paper work and trying not to get murdered by a cadre member for closing our eyes for more than 3 seconds. The kid in front of me fell out of his desk and didn't wake up when he hit the floor. I can almost still hear the sound of his head thumping off of the ground. It reminded me of checking a tomato for ripeness. I also remember being horribly jealous that he was laying down. I bet the tile was cool and sweet to the touch, even if it was only for a couple of seconds, until the Sergeant came along and dragged him up by his tee shirt collar. He turned and smiled to me when he sat back down. I'm not sure if he was still asleep, but he certainly seemed oblivious to the eye fucking that the cadre was giving him at that point and time. That was the other "Miller". This wouldn't be the first time that we would share experiences like this.
After we were done filling out every single piece of paperwork on the face of the earth (I am pretty sure I bought a Sergeant's mother a house that night. who knows?), we were lined up, sort of, outside of the reception building and taken to the barracks where we would be living for the next 2 days and change. I can't be certain, but I would wager that these barracks were built sometime around the turn of 12th century. They were drafty, they were cold, and there only two rooms in the entire building. The one main bay was where all of us slept together in bunk beds, much as you might imagine the stereotypical, "Full Metal Jacket", military style barracks. The bathroom sat at the far end of the building and there was no hot water. The Sergeants told us that we could go to sleep if we wanted to, but we had to be up in an hour and 45 minutes. To this day I don't know who said it, but someone on the far end of the barracks muttered "Oh, fuck this", which, as you can probably imagine, elicited a mighty strong reaction from the tech. After the lecture he delivered to us, which included words like "goat fuckers", "dog shit faces" and "cunts", we had about an hour and 25 minutes to sleep. I tried to sleep, but there was no way to get relaxed. I had been awake so long at this point that I felt like I was tweaking out on speed. My eyes hurt and I was hungry and I didn't like this place, and when would I talk to my family again, and is that dude jerking off to the pictures of my girlfriend RIGHT NOW!? So I paced. I paced until they came to get us for morning formation.
We all met out in the gigantic courtyard where all of the barracks buildings opened. Everyone there was in different stages of reception. Some had just gotten there, us, and some of them were almost ready to head out to their respective training units. I was exhausted and so was everyone standing around me. The formation looked like a group of those inflatable men they put in front of car dealerships when their having a "BIG, WACKY, SALE!". Arms and heads swayed in every direction and some folks struggled to keep their balance. And in the middle of checking out my own formation, I noticed another formation across the way of other people who had also just arrived; the women. Yes, the women. Most of them looked as bad or worse than we did. Faces, used to make up and moisturizers, neglected because all of that had been taken away. Hair, used to being conditioned and brushed meticulously, lay matted against their heads or in sloppy ponytails. But it was at that moment that I knew we'd be OK. They couldn't kill us if the girls were there.
And that was day 0.
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