Sundry stories from Fort Knox

I attended something called the Leader's Training Course (LTC) at Fort Knox this summer from June 24th until July 21st. This was my first writing upon returning home with a fresh memory:

July 24, 2007.
Overall, my final reflection is that most of the cadets there were/are idiots and don't deserve to be in the Army. It's ok, they won't make it past LDAC, which is the Officer Assessment course, and they won't pass muster there, so I'm not too worried. Most of the people there were doing it for the wrong reasons, such as college tuition and their "parents were making them." So what happens when you get a bunch of people that don't want to be somewhere being forced to do things they don't want to do? They act like worthless, whiney, spoiled little brats, and that's exactly what they did. One girl would stand at attention with her arms folded and her head down, which finally prompted a drill sergeant reaction one day:

"What position are you at, cadet? The position of attention or the position of "I don't give a fuck!?"

Stupid stuff like that would constantly get my platoon (and company) dropped, which could have easily been resolved had the worthless cadets pretended to be team players and learn to give a shit for the people who wanted to be there (e.g. me and a few other dedicated cadets). Of course they didn't, since only a few other (about seven) cadets and myself would clean the entire barracks and latrines. One day, another platoon came in and used our latrines after they were cleaned and left it a mess which meant we were greeted with an angry drill sergeant when we got back from training.

"The Sergeant Major came for a visit today and inspected our barracks. It was horrible. He said it's the worst barracks he'd ever seen. There's fucking dick hairs all over the urinals, there's urine stains on the toilets. You live like fucking animals. He yelled at the Company First Sergeant, since he's in charge of the barracks, and guess what? Shit rolls down hill, so I got in trouble. And let me tell you, it's straight dick to ass, with no buffer zone, and I don't fucking like it. So now we're going to clean these barracks until they fucking shine."

We spent most of our time in garrison doing barracks maintenance because of dumb ass people ruining my universe. In garrison life sucked, the training was actually fun, which is usually not the case during training.

Now, we had this one kid in my squad who was 17, just graduated high school, was from New Jersey and weighed 115 pounds soaking wet. The Senior Drill Sergeant gave him the nick name Doogi and it stuck. He always threw temper tantrums and acted like a bitch, which I told him so on many occasions. After a while I told him I'd punch him in the face every time he threw a temper tantrum, and he wised up.

Anyway, for Day Land Navigation, Doogie wound up being my partner. So on our way to our very first point usin the dead reckoning method (meaning pick an azimuth to your point and walk in a straight line towards it), I was the compass man and he was the pace man. So we get to one point, I shoot the azimuth to the next point in the middle of the forest and start walking. After about 10 steps, I fall into a hole that must have been built by the Vietnamese. This shit was a 10 foot deep sink hole that was covered by brush and leaves and shit. I take my spill and manage to grab on to two thorn bushes on either side of the hole in order to keep myself from breaking my neck. The whole time Doogie is standing there, watching me. Finally, after about 30 seconds of him just watching me struggle to hold on for dear life (I fell on my back with my head slanted down, there was no way I wasn't breaking my neck if I fell), I finally scream at him, "What the fuck are you waiting for? Help me up, you asshole!" He snapped into gear and gave me a hand, and I managed to right myself. I am the only fucking person I know who can almost kill himself doing fucking Land Nav. The post script to that vignette is that I had other friends in the woods nearby and all the said is that they heard my voice randomly say "Help me up, you asshole!" and all they could do was laugh when I told them the rest of that story.

The only other one I can think of right now is my personal favorite story of the entire time I was there, and of course, it's something stupid I did. We had a field exercise that required us to spend four days out in the field, so at night we built poncho hooches (spreading out a poncho and tying the four corners to trees to make a tent-like structure). Now, my hooch had three trees near by it, and one tree about 10-15 feet off in the woods, which required a longer piece of 550 cord (military all purpose rope) to tie the 4th end to. This was also a great guiding line to take a piss in the woods during the middle of the night if you had to go. We also built a fire at night for warmth and light (we weren't being that tactical since we had whiney bitches in our company, or MOSTLY whiney bitches in our company). So one morning, I'm woken up at 0450 in the morning, and the temperature is about 40 degrees, since it gets cold at night in Kentucky. I'm freezing my balls off and decide to walk towards the fire to warm up and have a delicious MRE for breakfast. Once I get to the fire, I realize I have to take a piss, and I'm barely awake and groggy as hell. So I walk to my hooch, find the rope, guide myself out to the forest, whip it out and start relieving myself. Instantly, I hear my stream of justice hit something that's not the cold dirt of a Kentucky morning. I mentally think "Oh shit" and adjust my stream. Then I look down and in the limited light there is, I realize I've just pissed all over someone's equipment. I then look around to see if anyone saw me do it (especially the person's who's equipment it is) and see a silouette just staring at me. So I think to myself "Wow, he's gonna be pissed when he finds his shit," I finish up and then go back to the fire. After my MRE, I go back to my hooch to get my tooth brush and get dressed. That's when I realized it. I picked up my patrol cap, only to find it wet and warm. That's right folks, you guessed it. I followed the wrong rope and pissed all over my own shit. Upon this discovery, I wasn't even mad or slightly pissed off. I just stood there and said to myself "Man...I deserved that." I then later found out the silouette looking at me was my hooch-mate who was laughing at me and wondering why I was pissing all over my shit.

That's all for now, I'll probably have more later.