Tigerland

"See that boot?" the drill sergeant bellowed.

"Yes, sir."

"I'm not a fucking officer, never call me sir."

"Yes, drill sergeant."

"Give me twenty pushups and kiss the tip of my boot twenty times."

I could see my sweating reflection in his spit shined boots.   Alternatives, briefly crossed my mind. Then I dropped and followed orders.

The drill sergeant wore a Smokey the Bear hat and was puffing on a stinky-assed stogie.   He was a muscled throw back to the cavemean days.   I thought about shoving a grenade up his ass.

"Wipe the black off your lips.   You look like you been eating black cunt.   Then report to the gas chamber." A nasty grin split his coal black face, his teeth were rat shit yellow.

The gas chamber was an old barracks with two horse troughs in front.   You wore a full field pack, carried your weapon, and wore your steel helmet and gas mask.   Two drill instructors made you run around the room until you were breathing hard, then they opened four canisters of mace and pepper gas.   The room turned foggy and ate at any exposed skin like acid.   They ordered us to halt, remove our helmets and hold them between our knees, remove our gas masks and replace our helmets on our heads.

The gas chewed at our eyes, nose, and mouth like a horde of stinging wasps on fire.   The masked instructors smiled and slowly asked our name, rank, and where we were from.   By this time most of us were foaming in froth like rabid dogs.   We drug ourselves outside to wash in the horse troughs, they were filled with piss.

One soldier dropped his helmet, he was ordered to return to the gas chamber the next day.   That night he hung himself in the latrine.

Tigerland in Fort Polk, Lousiana was the closest thing to hell and Viet Nam in America.

In July 1971, I celebrated my eighteenth birthday there.   By digging a hole with my entreching tool, my hands bled through blisters.   Mosquitos and chiggers swarmed and swam in my sweat and eyes.

"I killed three men, with that little shovel, caved their skulls into hamburger."   We'd just eaten greasy hamburger chunks for lunch.

"What's wrong, boy?   You usually got something stupid to say."

"It's my birthday and I was wondering how it feels to die," I replied.

"I'll tell you when it's your birthday, you are mine now.   I am your mama, papa, and God.   And if you want to know how it feels to die, I have three more weeks to teach you.  Now, dig, you piece of shit."

"Yes, drill sergeant."

The concrete floors in the barracks were dyed red, so every item of white clothing soon ended up pink.   Every pore of my body seemed to ooze Lousisana pink.

We went to the hand grenade pits the next day.   After receiving a two hour lecture and demonstarion on how to pull the pin and throw it.   It's destructive force and five seconds before it would explose and blow the hell out of anything around.

We had a three foot high cement wall to hide behind after throwing the grenade.   There were three pits, divided by walls.   Each had a hole in the corner in case someone just dropped it.   A drill instructor was suppose to kick the live grenade down the hole, in case of accident.   This duty was for instructors that had pissed someone higher up off.

Two guys from the deep south were chosen to throw grenades with me.   The first grenade toss went okay, but gravel pelted us from the sky.   The drill instructor grinned.   The second toss, the guy next to me couldn't get the pin out.  The instructor went to help.   They got the pin out, but juggled the grenade, just as the instructor kicked it toward the hole, it went off.   His foot was gone, it looked like night crawlers spurting blood from his ankle.   The southern boy was holding his ears, blood was pumping from his mouth and nose.   His screams were red bubble gurgles.

Learning to kill was a bitch.

On completion of our seventh week of training, with one week to go, we were given three day passes.

A Texan, an Arizonan, and a New Mexican (me) headed for New Orleans; head shaved G.I. Joe's.

We hit Bourbon Street and whored and drank and smoked weed.   Fuck the army!   We "borrowed" a car and cruised with some young nightingales and wound up in jail.

The army came and got us, we were their property.   We watched from a latrine window, which we were cleaning with toothbrushes, as all the other soldiers marched in a graduation parade.   They were all decked out and shiny.

We were recycled, eight weeks all over again, same old same old.

All the graduates got orders for Army Individual Training and then onto Viet Nam. We peeled potatoes, dug holes, and got gassed.

By the time we graduated, Nixon had decided to send no more fresh meat to Nam.

They say every cloud has a silver lining, well sometimes even fucking up does too.