Installment # 49

As I was descending, what I saw reminded me of pictures I had seen of race cars trying to come to a stop at the end of a race by deploying those little parachutes out the back end of the car.  I soon realized I was seeing soldiers who had landed being dragged across the ground at frightening speeds, unable to release their chutes.  My only previous jumps were the three during the 3^rd week of jump school, and there hadn’t been any wind those times, so this was a spectacle I had no expectation of seeing.  Skipping my GI vocabulary at the time, I thought the equivalent of:  “Oh, my.  I am in for a rough time.”

We were taught in jump school how to land and roll onto our backs and hit the large release button that was located in the middle of our chests.  I hadn’t given it any thought at the time, but the release mechanism was designed not to open accidentally during descent.  I guess the resistance of the deployed chute made it difficult to pop open, even intentionally.  Well, that is why the guys were being dragged across the drop zone and not releasing their chutes, though I didn’t figure that out until I was one of them.  I remember being rudely thrown face down and dragged as soon as my feet hit the ground and the resistance began to diminish from the deployed chute.  The drop zone was just unplanted farmers’ fields, with rows of ruts and rocks.  Here I was, face down, trying to slow myself down with my hands, trying to keep the dirt out of my face, bouncing and jarring over these ruts and rocks, trying to roll over on my back so I could try to activate the release button.

The equipment that we wore, including backpacks, rifles, canteens, ammo belt, etc, made it almost impossible to roll over while being dragged like that.  I must have hit a bump or something and gone airborne for a second and was able to flip over.  Once on my back it took what seemed like forever to release the chute.  Again, I didn’t understand until later how the mechanism was not supposed to operate easily if there was the resistance of the chute being opened and filled with air.  I finally hit a lull in the wind at the same time that I was hitting the button, and chute released from one shoulder.  That was enough to stop it, and I was soon able to get to my feet. 

I think every fingernail was broken or caked with dirt.  While being dragged on my back, my helmet was digging into the back of my neck as I bounced from rut to rut.  I had cuts and lacerations for weeks afterward that I thought might leave permanent scars – but they didn’t.  It was later that day that we found our platoons and I had the privilege of digging that foxhole.  For the next couple of weeks back on base I remember seeing a lot of guys with neck braces or arms slings or walking with a limp.  I never heard who made the decision to go ahead with the jump.  I wouldn’t think the dignitaries were terribly impressed with what must have looked like organized chaos.

It seems like we would spend a week or so “in the field” two or three times per year.  Even though that must have included summertime, I always remember being cold.  One of the purposes of field training was to get us accustomed to using all our gear.  We would take these heavy duffle bags with us, stuffed with changes of clothes, etc, and there were times when I think I was wearing everything that I had brought, plus had the empty duffle bag pulled up around my waist or chest as high as it would go.  It was here that I first heard the term, the “angry inch”.  We were commiserating about the unique difficulty in trying to “take a leak,” if you will, outdoors – particularly in the dark -  through 5-6 inches of clothing with something that has been shriveled to almost nothing by the cold.   If you are not careful, and make your inner clothes wet in that area, you are going to be even more miserable than before.  And our little fellows didn’t much like being brought forth into the freezing cold, hence the “angry inch.” 

I used to mumble that I had left New York because I hated the cold, and then I ended up spending 3 winters in Germany!  We used to say that Germany had 3 weeks of summer, and the rest was bad weather.  I will say, though, that I learned to trust my equipment.  One time I had to sleep on the ground out in the open.  I slipped into my sleeping bag in the pitch dark, then fumbled around and got by boots off and left them in the bottom of the bag near my feet.  Then I slipped out of my heavy overalls, as my body heat started to warm things up.  In the morning I poked my head out of the sleeping bag just enough to look around and saw that it had snowed.  I was lying on the frozen ground in the snow, and was “snug as a bug in a rug,” as the saying goes.  I always appreciated my equipment after that!

The great deprivation of being in the field for 5-7 days or so was trying to have a bowel movement (“BM”) on a regular basis.  We mainly had C-Rations to eat (now called “meals ready to eat” or MREs).  These were packed into tins, and none of us knew what they were really made of.  The consistency was similar to spam, or today’s canned pet foods.  Having never been too particular about what I ate, I didn’t see this as a great deprivation, but the impact of such a diet on my “regularity,” if you will, was a real problem.  I would become constipated; try to squat at length with my bare bottom hanging out in the freezing cold, unable to go; become more constipated, yet hungry again; so more C-Rations: it was a true vicious cycle. 

I remember the time we finally got back to the barracks, and I thought all I had to do was sit in the relative warmth and comfort of the commode for as long as it took to “break up the log jam,” so to speak.  After several lengthy “no go” sessions, I started to make some progress when I realized that the feeling was literally like trying to pass a large cube-shaped object, about the size of a frozen solid ice cube.  It wasn’t cold, but it was that shape and size.  There were beads of sweat on my forehead; my legs had fallen asleep from sitting there; I was hanging onto the pipes, and my face was contorted with pain as I worked away on my project.

Did I mention that there were no stalls in the bathrooms?  There was just a row of some 6-8 commodes – no privacy.  A guy could come back for a second pee, glance over in surprise and ask, “Are you still here?”  I don’t know what child birth feels like, but this must be pretty close!  There is an expression, “Nervous as a pigeon shittin’ peach pits.”  I can relate!  For years thereafter I found that my BM system would go through a cycle of: constipation – normalcy – diarrhea – normalcy - and back to constipation about every 28 days, just like a menstrual cycle (which I have never experienced, either).  For many years now, however, family members have known that I could be counted on to disappear into the bathroom shortly after every meal and sometimes between meals, usually with some success.  But in the early years of our courting I recall being in the middle of eating dinner at Sandy’s parents’ house and having to jump up and run to the bathroom.

At the other extreme, I recall visiting Mom in Vermont when the kids were little, and spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom to no avail.  With the rights and privileges granted to her as my mother, she of course had to make inquiries and then advise me that I was going to give myself hemorrhoids and other problems if I continued to sit and strain for such long periods of time on the pot.  I think I did more waiting than straining, but in any case I tried to heed her advice.  I’ve read that, in terms of frequency of bowl movements, there is no “normal.”  There are averages, but no “normal.”  Therefore, I am not abnormal, only above average.  I suppose, dear reader, that you could have gone your whole life without this information and not felt any loss of knowledge. 

I just wanted to include some of the main ways in which my 3 years in the Army impacted the rest of my life.  So I guess I might add that a lot of us in the Army had some serious bouts of bleeding, painful hemorrhoids.  When Johnny Cash’s hit song, “Ring of Fire”, came out, we had an additional way to describe the condition!  After awhile I realized the kinds of activities that were causing them, such as sitting on cold and/or hard surfaces, like the bed of a truck or bleacher benches for extended periods during training.  In civilian life I have had occasional, mild reminders and have thus managed to avoid the situations that cause hemorrhoids.

If I may jump back to Fort Dix, I spent the eight weeks of Advanced Infantry Training, after Trainee Leadership School, dreading ever running into those sergeants again.  I heard through the grapevine how hurt some of them were.  One confided that he had fought to keep me in the leadership program, because the other instructors thought I was too young and immature…and that was the thanks he got.  I didn’t have the common sense to see the wisdom of taking the high road; of trying to spread goodwill; of trying to help someone in their career; of expressing appreciation and respect, instead of the opposite.  It never occurred to me, either, that these evaluations remained in their records, and that it mattered to them, because they were career military - Lifers.

In AIT we received training with hand grenades.  They were non-explosive, except for one drill at the end of the week.  But we were to use all safety precautions in training, whether the grenades were live or not.  One of those basic precautions was wearing our helmets.  Sure enough, on the day of training with live grenades, I showed up without my helmet.  It was so cold that day that I was wearing a beanie with ear flaps and strings to tie at the chin.  I had taken my helmet off during a bumpy jeep ride and left it on the seat in the jeep.  With the beanie on, I could not feel that I did not have my helmet on.  I showed up for live grenade training, as a platoon leader, completely unaware that I was not wearing my helmet.  The sergeant made a big to-do about informing me of my lapse, and when I reached up with shock and fear on my face to confirm his statements, the entire platoon laughed themselves silly at my expense.

If I had heard the saying by then, maybe I would have pointed out that “everybody is good for something, even if it is a bad example,” or as I recently read, “My purpose in life often seems to be to serve as a warning to others.”

My memories of Jump School in Fort Benning are somewhat antidotal.  It started with them calling the roll and pronouncing my name “Zandez,” (rhymes with ‘Sanchez’.)    I was thought to be absent for a long while before someone read my name tag and asked if that could be me.  I was accustomed to people making a two-syllable word out of Zades, but no one had ever inserted an ‘n’ in it.  The sergeant was not impressed with the fact that someone who had never seen my name before figured it out before I did.

Jump School consisted of three weeks.  The first week was called “ground week,” the second was called “tower week,” and the third week was called “jump week.”  Ground week was all physical training and attempts at breaking our resolve through taunts and insults. During the second week we jumped out of 34-foot towers on cables, and we were released from 250-foot lifts to free-fall with open parachutes.  The third week we actually jumped from airplanes.  At the end of the first week there was a PT test, similar to the one I aced in Boot Camp.  But this time, there was a cut-off, below which the candidate would wash out of Jump School.  I probably didn’t need to do this, but I faked illness and said I was constipated the day before the PT test in order to be well-rested and not sore from the day’s training.

I actually was constipated, and they gave me a bottle of something to take a little at a time over a 24-hour period.  I recall being all alone in the barracks, sitting on the pot, sipping this medicine and trying to have a bowel movement.  Nothing was happening, and I ended up drinking the whole bottle in about 2 hours.  Of course, I was up and on the pot numerous times during the night, and arrived drained and exhausted for the PT test the next morning.  I did pass, but I certainly did not do my best that day.

During ground week they had us running with no shirts on in the hot Georgia sun.  I remember seeing a black soldier ahead of me who appeared to “foaming at the mouth” from under his armpits.  Knowing very little about black people, I thought something weird like that must be happening.  I had come to know some young black men in Fort Dix, but it was so cold there, I never saw one sweating with no shirt on.  Years later, when I had finally started using deodorant, it dawned on me that that is what was creating what appeared to me to be foam.  I went from feeling superior to realizing that he was the one who was civilized enough to use deodorant, and I was not. 

Throughout my three years in the Army I did not use deodorant.  I thought that was a bunch of marketing malarkey; if I showered on a regular basis, why should I need deodorant?  It was decades later that I realized that my sense of smell is quite poor.  I think I started using deodorant shortly after I was married, to be polite and to help avoid unsightly underarm sweat stains.  It wasn’t common sense: Living with a woman was beginning to civilize me! 

There was a period of weeks when I first arrived at my assignment in Germany that I did not take any showers.  At the end of the first week we were instructed to deliver our dirty laundry, with our names on the laundry bags, to a central collection point, to be picked up all clean a few days later. In the States they must have issued us laundry bags with our names stenciled on them, or something.  I paid no attention to the instruction about putting our names on them…I would recognize my own bag and contents, surely.  Little did I realize how many units were being serviced by the central laundry facility!  There was no way for my unmarked bag to be returned to my unit for me to recognize and claim.

The story gets worse.  It was several weeks before payday.  I had no money to replace my underwear.  My little pea brain thought: What is the sense of showering, when I have to put on the same underwear and socks that I was wearing and sweating in yesterday? This went on for two or three weeks, until I could buy new underwear and socks.  The men around me may have tried to drop hints, but I was not picking up any signals.  Surely I could have borrowed a few dollars and took care of it right away.  Maybe I kept hoping that my laundry bag would show up and I wouldn’t need to spend my scarce resources on more underwear.  (I never wasted money on that phony deodorant stuff).  If I want to blame any of this on my upbringing, our place in Inwood, where we lived the last year or so before my induction, had a tub but no shower.  I hadn’t taken a bath since I was little, so didn’t get around to it very often as a teenager.  Yikes!

With similar pea brain logic in the Army, I used to crush my cigarette butts out on the floor and leave them there, instead of using the butt cans that were tacked to the posts, explaining that we had to sweep the floor every morning, anyway, so what’s the difference?  In this case the men around me actually were dropping hints, but I thought they were just not thinking things through far enough.

I remember being assigned to a crew to clean up the bathrooms.  These were large rooms with lots of urinals, commodes, sinks and tile floors.  We had soaped up the floor and I was trying to rinse it off with hot water.  I remember one of the guys spoke to me like I was a moron: Didn’t I know that hot water only made more suds?  Didn’t I know enough to use cold water?  Actually, I didn’t.  I think it was years later that I learned that when we heat water we change its properties.  The molecules start moving a lot faster, and this makes a difference in how water interacts with soap.  At the time, I just had to “go along with the gag” and use cold water to rinse the soap off the floor.

That reminds me of the time I was brushing my teeth next to someone at a row of sinks in the bathroom (latrine, as the Army calls it).  He admonished me for using warm water instead of cold water to brush my teeth.  He said, “You’re not a child anymore.  You don’t need to use warm water!”  I promptly started using cold water thereafter, thinking it made a difference, just like soap suds on the floor.  But I soon learned from the Army dentist that my gums were sensitive to cold, because of the condition my teeth were in.  I then went back to warm water, and could explain if anyone asked.  It never occurred to me to wonder why some other guy would even notice, let alone feel compelled to admonish me about the temperature of the water I was using to brush my teeth.  Maybe his parents taught him that there is only one way to properly brush one’s teeth, and he was just passing on this “wisdom” to me.  The guy on the bathroom cleanup crew had said, “I thought you were supposed to be so smart!”  I thought of my IQ score in basic training, but wondered how in the world he would know anything about that.  I guess word of mouth information precedes a new guy coming in to a unit.  They want to know what to expect.

It wasn’t long before I was transferred to the Headquarters group.  I might not know how to mop floors, but my facility with the English language separated me from the pack, plus I had learned to type in high school.  Come to think of it, maybe I was not a very good “fit” in my infantry squad.  Not only was I happier, but so were the guys I was leaving.

But to return to Jump School for a bit, the drop-out rate was very high.  Some dropped out during ground week due to the grueling pace in the hot climate; some after failing the PT test.  More dropped out during tower week: If it is this scary to jump under these controlled circumstances, how scary is it to jump from a moving airplane at 1,250 feet?  I recall one of the men asking me how often I thought about dropping out.  To my credit (or lack of common sense), I was taken aback by the question.  I told him honestly that the thought had never entered my head.  There is probably a success principle involved there somewhere.  It was similar with my marriage.  We had no “back door” or “plan B” in case it didn’t work out.  The thought never entered our heads, despite those “dropping out” around us.