The Basics of Basic

The bus pulled up to a nondescript building at Lackland Air Force Base sometime around midnight on February 23, 1973... There were a number of drill sergeants (TIs -Training Instructors) waiting for us and they immediately began screaming at us to get off the bus and line up... After "taking roll" the next thing they did was direct us to a restroom to pee in a cup...

Aside: In order to enlist in the Air Force you had to sign a statement saying that you had never used any illegal substances... OK - I "fudged" a bit on that one - but so did roughly 80% of my fellow enlistees :-) ... I remember wondering why they didn't screen for drugs at the induction center. All I could figure was that the other branches weren't as "picky" as the Air Force... Still, it seemed kind of stupid to fly someone halfway across the country just to send them back... And yes - there were people who were dumb enough to show up for basic training with drugs in their system.

After we finished "relieving" ourselves they shuffled us off to "midnight chow". As I recall, I had some greasy french toast smothered in runny "flavor impaired" syrup. It really didn't sit very well in my stomach... And then it was off to a classroom to fill out some forms and sit through an "indoctrination" session. They showed us this cheesy video that featured a recruit repeated asking "Who am I? Why am I here?". That become one of our "taglines" for the rest of basic. Every time things got particularly stressful you'd turn to the guy next to you and say "Why am I here?". It almost got funny after a while.
BTW: I was in that classroom that the TIs started the whole "I can't hear you!" bit - making you scream "Yes Sir!!!" in response at the top of your lungs... That was kind of the "wake-up call" that (despite what our recruiters had told us) basic training was going to be a lot like it was in the movies...

It was about 2AM by the time the classroom session ended and we were shuffled off to our respective barracks (we had all been awake for over 20 hours and were dead on our feet), and that leads into the next "big lie" the recruiters told us: "Don't worry. You will get eight hours of sleep almost every night"... Yeah - as I recall, that happened "never" times :-)

The next morning (Saturday) we learned that we weren't going to get our heads shaved or be issued uniforms until Monday, so our drill sergeant (Wilkerson) spent the weekend teaching us the essential "rules and regs" and the basics of marching. Yeah - we stood out like sore thumb marching around with our civvies and hair and all...
And yes - (I've alluded to this before) - instead of being surrounded by patriotic "do your duty" types (as I had expected), almost all of the 50 men in my "flight" had joined for reasons other than "love of country"... It was definitely an interesting mixture of cultures. At the extremes were young men from Harlem that had never actually spoken to a white person before, and  a couple of guys from "rural America" who had never spoken a black person before. That led to some real interesting dynamics :-)

Although we kept pretty busy that first weekend it wasn't exceedingly stressful - yet... And I was suddenly thankful that my 4th grade P.E. teacher at Waldron Academy (a former Marine drill instructor) had taught us kids how to march in formation and do the correct moves for left face, right face, about face and change step. It definitely made that part of basic training easier. (Some of the guys were having a really hard time with it.)

OK... Here's another one of those things I probably shouldn't mention but will anyway:
Just in case you think the female recruits had it any easier, we happened to march past their flight that first day just in time to hear their male drill instructor scream "When you come to attention I want to hear 30 p#ssies snap shut!!!"... Yeah - I couldn't decide if I was amused or horrified.

I'm stunned at how many memories came flooding back when I started writing this post. It was a pivotal point in my life and it's going to be a real challenge trying to figure out how to write it all down... Heck - I might even have to do an outline :-)