IX
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
1
April, 1977
Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi
THOSE OLD SECOND THOUGHTS
Monday, April 25th, 1977—just twelve days after first being inspired to a more challenging lifestyle by Sgt. Beaudry, then un-inspired by my mother’s catalogue of concerns, then re-inspired by the joys of Casual Status—I am, at last, a Combat Controller. Enrolled, active, and participating.
I can’t believe it. I’m a member of the Special Forces… in training. Sort of.
Well, I’m standing here in this field, anyway.
My first Air Traffic Control School class was also just this morning. Up at 5:00am (again), formed up on the quad behind the barracks by 5:30, then marching in a big class formation, in the dark, following the squadron’s banners, out across the old runway (now closed and used as a parade ground) to the other side of the unused flightline, where its renovated hangars awaited us, bathed in a crossfire of floodlights. This schedule drops us off outside the ATC School hangar with about ten or fifteen minutes left to spare before the start of classes at 6:00. Then it’s flat-out nose-to-the-grindstone for the next six hours—with a ten-minute break every hour, on the hour—until noon. And at that point, the academic part of the day is done. For us morning guys anyway. The afternoon classes march in just as we’re forming up to march out.
On our way back to the barracks, we pass in review before a small cabal of colonels and majors (the commanders of the various schools and barracks squadrons) who are waiting for us at a jury-rigged set of aluminum bleachers, halfway out in the middle of that abandoned flightline. We never break stride though—just an “eyes left” or two as we pass beneath their watchful gaze—then we’re off the flightline and clomping to a stop outside our respective barracks, all within fifteen minutes of being released from school. And that’s our day! That’s everything.
The rest of the afternoon and evening are ours to do with as we please—five days a week, Saturdays and Sundays off, just like every other job in the world—for the next five months.
For everybody in my class, that is, except me.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon now, starting at 2:00 (giving me just enough time to shuck my uniform, throw some food down my neck, then walk it off), I get to spend the hottest two or three hours of the day after school trying to keep up with these macho CCW (that’s “Combat Control Wannabe”) animals, while they kill themselves just trying to be such macho CCW animals.
And boy, it sure doesn’t take long for those old second thoughts to kick in.
There’s not a whole lot of “instruction” involved with this program. It’s all just sort of listen up and DO! Sgt. Beaudry stands before us, in the same white running/swimming shorts that the rest of us are wearing—along with the same OD green T-shirt, emblazoned with the same Combat Control “flash” right in the middle of the chest, and of course, the lovely (and matching) black combat boots—calling out the names of the different exercises (few of which I actually recognize), then leading us through them, rep by hard-driving rep. And despite his age, he seems to possess the stamina of a Clydesdale.
Obviously, as recent history has proven, that is not my strongest suit.
It only takes a rep or two, each time, to catch on to the choreography of the exercises. But the group’s pace is brutal, they seldom do less than fifty reps of anything, and I haven’t done anything this strenuously physical in, well, my life. So I’m constantly behind and stumbling to catch up, as well as making an awful lot of gasping, wheezing sounds, dumping enough sweat to blind myself, shower my neighbors, and kill the grass, and frequently having to sway to a stop and brace my hands on my knees, just to keep from toppling over.
We’re in the middle of the old flightline’s grassy infield, the same abandoned flightline that we all marched across to school this morning. So there’s a fairly regular flow of foot traffic passing by us as we work out, occasionally pausing to watch, but always enjoying a chuckle or two at our expense. And against the backdrop of this team’s well-drilled energy and discipline, I stand out like an open fly on an orchestra conductor’s tuxedo.
Surprisingly though, the rest of the guys in the formation are very supportive, constantly reassuring me that they all had a First Day too. For it is the nature of this Phase I program to just keep roaring along at full speed, regardless of who filters in or filters out along the way. It’s up to the individual to hit the ground running and do his best just to keep up.
Apparently though, Phase I Combat Control training does not actually have anything to do with Combat Control itself, except in name. It is merely an extreme physical improvement program, a ferocious “buffing-up” course designed to prepare each candidate for the far greater rigors that they’ll have to face in each of the “real” Combat Control schools to follow. And, while I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not—straining and beating myself up this much, just to ready myself for an even more punishing regime in the months and years to come—there’s still something kinda’ cool about the idea of being counted among the ranks of people who can do this sort of thing.
Fortunately, the atmosphere is unexpectedly casual and light. For though the group responds to Sgt. Beaudry’s every spoken word with an energetic zeal and a military precision that would make a grown T.I. weep for the sheer joy of it, the rest of the time these guys are just a bunch of grab-ass clowns. And though I am obviously the newest kid on the block here, I am not the only one having a hard time keeping up. Those that have been at this for a while, yet are still having to toil so hard just to fall further and further behind, are constantly hounded—in a lighthearted way—about their more feminine physical attributes, or their geriatric tempo, or their endearingly childlike coordination. But invariably, as the last most grueling reps of each exercise are counted off, the harassment turns to encouragement, the laughter to shouted motivation.
“Come on! One more, ya’ big wuss! ONE MORE! You can do it! Push it! PUSH IT! That’s it! Come on! There it is! You got it! YOU GOT IT! Come on! YEHHH! Now, ONE MORE, ya’ big screamin’ fairy!”
And I like that.
I find that I respond well to that. I find that, astonishingly enough, I really do have one more, two more, sometimes three, four and five more left in me, even after I’ve already been reduced to a sweat-drenched bag of boneless, breathless meat, without the strength to even hang on to the chin-up bar any more, much less pull myself back up to it. And that is strangely exciting to me.
Today also marks the first time I’ve ever done sit-ups with a telephone pole on my chest. Well, mine, and the chests of seven or eight other guys as well. And, as it turns out, it ain’t as bad as it looks. Individually, you’re only supporting about an eighth of its weight—and there’s always someone in the line with a bigger chest than you, whose massive pecs have mostly lifted the pole off you anyway—and if you’re sneaky about it, you can roll that weight down your chest with each rep, and it’ll actually pull you up into a sitting position. Still, this dramatic display of sheer strength, willpower, teamwork, and of course, penis size, really sets the female heart aflutter. I can tell from all the laughing and pointing coming from the nearby parade route.
Apparently, based on the way my fellow CCWs respond to all the hooting and heckling, here in the South, the phrase “what a bunch of assholes” is actually an indication of hero worship.
Once again though, the terminal effort for me is the damned running.
After forty-five minutes to an hour of furious pushing and pulling and pumping, twisting and bending and squatting, they cap off the festivities with a three-mile run! I almost blew out a spleen and three kidneys back at Lackland just trying to trot off a mile-and-a-half! And that was during the last of a Texas winter. This is the beginning of a Gulf Coast summer!
Clearly, to keep up with these guys, I’m going to need to invest in a golf cart or something.
Granted, this run isn’t for time—it’s for endurance—which means a more even pace, somewhat smaller steps than my desperate run for the roses back at Lackland, and a greater concentration on rhythm over speed. To that end, the run is in formation, in step, and propelled by all the lewd chants and lascivious song lyrics that Sgt. Beaudry can recite—which is quite a vast treasure trove, by the way—a running singalong in which we all must participate.
Oh yeah… singing. That’ll help me control my rampant breathing.
Our route begins with a nearly mile-long straightaway, chugging down the sidewalk that edges the base’s perimeter road—a tall, concertina-topped fenceline separating us from a two-laned highway and the deep jungles of the bayou to our left, with the back side of the barracks compound on our right—until it breaks out of the populated areas, and meanders around the end of the active runway, still hugging that perimeter fence. The mile-and-a-half mark—the halfway-point turnaround for a three mile run—is the parking lot of a lonely little building, nestled in its own little oasis of trees, out in the vast empty grassland that flanks the runway. Longer runs involve turnarounds on the other side of the runway apparently, at points, which, from here, look like dots on the Canadian border.
I am instantly depressed. My inaugural run with the group is along their shortest roundtrip course—their shortest—and I’m folding up like Benny Hill’s deckchair before we’ve even tromped past the Airman’s Club annex. I coughed up both lungs within only three blocks of the exercise field, and now I’ve got a stitch the size of a TV remote embedded in my ribcage, my knees have turned to chewing gum, and my ass just decided it’s nappy time.
I weave and totter out of the pack, allowing the rest of the guys to storm up the sidewalk without me. I still follow them, exhibiting my dedication and willpower by lurching along in their wake like a bad actor dragging out his big death scene. Only I’m not acting.
Jesus! I volunteered to do this to myself THREE AFTERNOONS A WEEK?!! What the hell was I thinking?
And this is just Phase I, just the prep course for the rougher shit that will follow… and the even rougher shit that will follow that… and the downright brutal ass-kicking that’ll follow that.
I’m staggering along on liquid legs, lungs spasming in my chest, leaving a sweat-slick behind me that looks like a huge wet snake has been following me down the sidewalk all the way from the pool, and I’m wondering where’s the up-side here? Even looking for the long-term benefits, what could the pot of gold possibly look like at the end of this bloody rainbow? How—when—will this backbreaking uphill climb ever level out? Based on what Sgt. Beaudry’s been saying, it sounds like the reward for all this superhuman effort is just more of the same! Or worse!
I saunter weakly past the last of the buildings in the barracks compound, hands on hips, chest still heaving. In the distance, probably a quarter of a mile ahead of me, I can see Beaudry leading his merry band of lunatics into that little oasis parking lot—the halfway point—then trotting them through a tight turnaround, and getting them churning back towards me again.
Here we go.
I shake my legs out. I do some shoulder rotations. I roll my head around its gimbals, making sure that every last vibe I’m giving off fairly screams I’m ready! Put me in, coach! And as the narrow two-line column tramps past me again, I swing in behind them, synchronize my steps with theirs, and join them for the last mile or so of the run.
Well, most of it, anyway. Within only a few blocks, my breathing has flown out of control again, and somehow my boots have quadrupled in weight. I’m trying my best not to sound as utterly obliterated as I feel, but I have a feeling that all the gasping and whimpering, combined with the melodramatic clutching of my chest—or at least the white-hot stitch that’s swelling under my ribs—is giving me away.
I’m just starting to fade back from the pack again, when the old flightline hoves into view and manages to inspire a couple dozen more slogging steps out of me. This is just enough to keep me at pace with the others until Sgt. Beaudry finally reins us all in at the edge of the field, and allows everyone to walk off the remaining distance to the exercise area.
Breathless conversation kicks right in, followed, in short order, by the usual insults and humorous deprecations, and then the inevitable grab-ass. For obvious reasons, I do not feel a part of this. I’m not only the New Guy here, but I’m the Weak Link as well, the weenie that can’t keep up with the Rest of the Guys on a mere three-mile run.
As a disheveled group though, we amble back into the infield, and reform into our original exercise ranks. There, Sgt. Beaudry—who’s hardly darkened the armpits of his T-shirt for all his exertions—looks over his motley crew from behind those dark lenses, nods his head approvingly, dispenses a token admonition of “good job, everybody,” then releases us for the day.
I couldn’t see his eyes, but clearly he wasn’t looking at me when he said that.
And that’s it—just the first of sixty such ball-busting afternoons that will befall me over the next twenty weeks while I’m attending ATC School here at Keesler. Fifty-nine more days just like this one, where I’ll finish up feeling like I barely escaped being beaten to death in a riot, only to be creamed by a bus as I limp away from the scene. Because I gotta’ tell you, right now I am wasted. I am one wrung-out, strung-out, sorry-assed bastard. I look like a big wet dog that just got stuffed through the cat door—the hard way. And this is what I get to look forward to every other weekday for the next five months?!
What the hell is wrong with me? What’s the freakin’ point? All this, just to get a little more bang for my martial buck? Just to feel more like I joined the “real” military instead of a costumed day job? Or is it just some kind of “guy thing?” A need to feel like I can run with the big dogs, commune with the heroic elite, and be the envy of all my friends back home.
Or maybe it’s just one of those penis-size things again.
No, I wrote that one off a long time ago.
Well, whatever it is, it ain’t enough. This was about as fun as “First Shower Day” in prison. And I don’t need to do it twice to know that I ought to just leave the soap where I dropped it.
I’m limping off the field, mulling over alternative ways to slither out of this little impulse-commitment of mine, when a couple of the guys—a big burly bow-legged bastard named Rogers, and a squirrelly little foul-mouthed hotshot named Mark Horn—trot up to me as blithe and winded as if they’d just made a dash from the car in the rain.
“Hey, you looked pretty good out there today, Airman Stipp,” says Rogers.
I throw all my remaining energy into the nearly overwhelming task of turning my dripping head toward him. Then I squint at him “real suspicious-like,” as if he’d just suggested that we share a bed tonight.
“What?”
“Fuckin’-A, man,” says Horn, “Not a bad first day at all.”
I shake my head, and smear about a gallon-and-a-half of sweat off my brow and out of my eye sockets. “You must not have been paying attention, guys. I was the one you had to bring back in a bucket. Remember?”
They both chuckle at that.
“Nah, man. The first day kicks everybody’s ass. This is a bitch of a routine to step into cold. You actually did better than most.”
I burn my last erg of energy just lifting a single eyebrow in disbelief.
Horn keeps talking. “Hell, you did better than a couple of those guys out there are still doing after being at this for a couple of months now.”
Funny, I didn’t see anybody else expiring on the roadside back there with me. I snort, and mop some more sweat off my face with my saturated T-shirt.
“No, man, really,” Horn insists, “You kept up pretty good. But the main thing now is to keep on going. Just stick with it. It’ll get better.”
I stifle the urge to ask “why,” and instead ask, “How?”
“Well, you gotta’ give it at least a couple of weeks. I mean, this first week’s going to be hell, not only ‘cause everything’s new, and strange, and tough as a cast iron bitch, but because, starting tomorrow, just about every muscle in your body is going to be so damned soooooooore.”
They both erupt with malevolent laughter.
“You gonna’ be one big walkin’ cramp, bud,” adds Rogers. And the laughter escalates.
Oh, wonderful. I hadn’t thought about the after-effects.
“Yeh, you may wanna’ come out here tomorrow, on your own, and do a few stretchers or something, man. Maybe run a little.”
“Do a couple laps in the pool.”
“Yeh, something like that.”
“‘Cause, you think you feel like shit now—wait’ll you try starting that routine with your whole body in knots and locked up solid.”
“Yeh. Like this…” And Horn curls his fingers into claws, hunches his back, shrinks his stride into a limping, pigeon-toed scuffle, and twists his head to the side, looking like Quasimodo at an arthritic eighty years of age. Rogers is tossed helplessly into fits of laughter again, and this time, I am carried along with him.
The three of us stagger off the field then, giggling like loons.
All right. I’ll give it two more weeks.
2
SECOND COMING
First big road trip in Larry Connors’ much-ballyhooed ’63 Camaro.
He was smart enough to take some of that advance leave they were trying so hard to sell us back on our first day of in-processing. Took it and ran home, he did. Soaked up three days of normalcy, then drove his beloved “ride” back here to Keesler.
I’m not sure what all the hoopla was about though. It’s pretty much just an old “plain brown wrapper” Camaro, painted basic white, with blackwall tires and an old-smelling cracked leather interior, garnished with a typical male’s quota of floor trash. It’s also sans air conditioning, which means we get to cruise through the warm wet air of Biloxi with the windows rolled down.
No, we haven’t quite captured the freewheeling spirit of a “gad about town with the top down,” but before we’ve even gotten off base, I’m feeling just as jet-blasted as I would have in a real convertible.
It’s only our second Saturday since the school schedule kicked into gear, and we’re spending it by taking off to catch the opening day matinee of this new movie called “Star Wars.” Time magazine had a big cover story article on it in last week’s issue. Made it sound like the Second Coming itself, like some kind of once-in-a-lifetime historical event. Well, how do you not go see something like that?
So the four of us—Larry Connors, Mike “Dumbass,” Gene Podulka and myself—are all packed into this old car of Larry’s, chasing the roar of its four-barrel carb out onto the coastal highway and down the shore to Gulfport, where the movie’s showing at the Edgewater Mall theater.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
1
April, 1977
Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi
THOSE OLD SECOND THOUGHTS
Monday, April 25th, 1977—just twelve days after first being inspired to a more challenging lifestyle by Sgt. Beaudry, then un-inspired by my mother’s catalogue of concerns, then re-inspired by the joys of Casual Status—I am, at last, a Combat Controller. Enrolled, active, and participating.
I can’t believe it. I’m a member of the Special Forces… in training. Sort of.
Well, I’m standing here in this field, anyway.
My first Air Traffic Control School class was also just this morning. Up at 5:00am (again), formed up on the quad behind the barracks by 5:30, then marching in a big class formation, in the dark, following the squadron’s banners, out across the old runway (now closed and used as a parade ground) to the other side of the unused flightline, where its renovated hangars awaited us, bathed in a crossfire of floodlights. This schedule drops us off outside the ATC School hangar with about ten or fifteen minutes left to spare before the start of classes at 6:00. Then it’s flat-out nose-to-the-grindstone for the next six hours—with a ten-minute break every hour, on the hour—until noon. And at that point, the academic part of the day is done. For us morning guys anyway. The afternoon classes march in just as we’re forming up to march out.
On our way back to the barracks, we pass in review before a small cabal of colonels and majors (the commanders of the various schools and barracks squadrons) who are waiting for us at a jury-rigged set of aluminum bleachers, halfway out in the middle of that abandoned flightline. We never break stride though—just an “eyes left” or two as we pass beneath their watchful gaze—then we’re off the flightline and clomping to a stop outside our respective barracks, all within fifteen minutes of being released from school. And that’s our day! That’s everything.
The rest of the afternoon and evening are ours to do with as we please—five days a week, Saturdays and Sundays off, just like every other job in the world—for the next five months.
For everybody in my class, that is, except me.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon now, starting at 2:00 (giving me just enough time to shuck my uniform, throw some food down my neck, then walk it off), I get to spend the hottest two or three hours of the day after school trying to keep up with these macho CCW (that’s “Combat Control Wannabe”) animals, while they kill themselves just trying to be such macho CCW animals.
And boy, it sure doesn’t take long for those old second thoughts to kick in.
There’s not a whole lot of “instruction” involved with this program. It’s all just sort of listen up and DO! Sgt. Beaudry stands before us, in the same white running/swimming shorts that the rest of us are wearing—along with the same OD green T-shirt, emblazoned with the same Combat Control “flash” right in the middle of the chest, and of course, the lovely (and matching) black combat boots—calling out the names of the different exercises (few of which I actually recognize), then leading us through them, rep by hard-driving rep. And despite his age, he seems to possess the stamina of a Clydesdale.
Obviously, as recent history has proven, that is not my strongest suit.
It only takes a rep or two, each time, to catch on to the choreography of the exercises. But the group’s pace is brutal, they seldom do less than fifty reps of anything, and I haven’t done anything this strenuously physical in, well, my life. So I’m constantly behind and stumbling to catch up, as well as making an awful lot of gasping, wheezing sounds, dumping enough sweat to blind myself, shower my neighbors, and kill the grass, and frequently having to sway to a stop and brace my hands on my knees, just to keep from toppling over.
We’re in the middle of the old flightline’s grassy infield, the same abandoned flightline that we all marched across to school this morning. So there’s a fairly regular flow of foot traffic passing by us as we work out, occasionally pausing to watch, but always enjoying a chuckle or two at our expense. And against the backdrop of this team’s well-drilled energy and discipline, I stand out like an open fly on an orchestra conductor’s tuxedo.
Surprisingly though, the rest of the guys in the formation are very supportive, constantly reassuring me that they all had a First Day too. For it is the nature of this Phase I program to just keep roaring along at full speed, regardless of who filters in or filters out along the way. It’s up to the individual to hit the ground running and do his best just to keep up.
Apparently though, Phase I Combat Control training does not actually have anything to do with Combat Control itself, except in name. It is merely an extreme physical improvement program, a ferocious “buffing-up” course designed to prepare each candidate for the far greater rigors that they’ll have to face in each of the “real” Combat Control schools to follow. And, while I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not—straining and beating myself up this much, just to ready myself for an even more punishing regime in the months and years to come—there’s still something kinda’ cool about the idea of being counted among the ranks of people who can do this sort of thing.
Fortunately, the atmosphere is unexpectedly casual and light. For though the group responds to Sgt. Beaudry’s every spoken word with an energetic zeal and a military precision that would make a grown T.I. weep for the sheer joy of it, the rest of the time these guys are just a bunch of grab-ass clowns. And though I am obviously the newest kid on the block here, I am not the only one having a hard time keeping up. Those that have been at this for a while, yet are still having to toil so hard just to fall further and further behind, are constantly hounded—in a lighthearted way—about their more feminine physical attributes, or their geriatric tempo, or their endearingly childlike coordination. But invariably, as the last most grueling reps of each exercise are counted off, the harassment turns to encouragement, the laughter to shouted motivation.
“Come on! One more, ya’ big wuss! ONE MORE! You can do it! Push it! PUSH IT! That’s it! Come on! There it is! You got it! YOU GOT IT! Come on! YEHHH! Now, ONE MORE, ya’ big screamin’ fairy!”
And I like that.
I find that I respond well to that. I find that, astonishingly enough, I really do have one more, two more, sometimes three, four and five more left in me, even after I’ve already been reduced to a sweat-drenched bag of boneless, breathless meat, without the strength to even hang on to the chin-up bar any more, much less pull myself back up to it. And that is strangely exciting to me.
Today also marks the first time I’ve ever done sit-ups with a telephone pole on my chest. Well, mine, and the chests of seven or eight other guys as well. And, as it turns out, it ain’t as bad as it looks. Individually, you’re only supporting about an eighth of its weight—and there’s always someone in the line with a bigger chest than you, whose massive pecs have mostly lifted the pole off you anyway—and if you’re sneaky about it, you can roll that weight down your chest with each rep, and it’ll actually pull you up into a sitting position. Still, this dramatic display of sheer strength, willpower, teamwork, and of course, penis size, really sets the female heart aflutter. I can tell from all the laughing and pointing coming from the nearby parade route.
Apparently, based on the way my fellow CCWs respond to all the hooting and heckling, here in the South, the phrase “what a bunch of assholes” is actually an indication of hero worship.
Once again though, the terminal effort for me is the damned running.
After forty-five minutes to an hour of furious pushing and pulling and pumping, twisting and bending and squatting, they cap off the festivities with a three-mile run! I almost blew out a spleen and three kidneys back at Lackland just trying to trot off a mile-and-a-half! And that was during the last of a Texas winter. This is the beginning of a Gulf Coast summer!
Clearly, to keep up with these guys, I’m going to need to invest in a golf cart or something.
Granted, this run isn’t for time—it’s for endurance—which means a more even pace, somewhat smaller steps than my desperate run for the roses back at Lackland, and a greater concentration on rhythm over speed. To that end, the run is in formation, in step, and propelled by all the lewd chants and lascivious song lyrics that Sgt. Beaudry can recite—which is quite a vast treasure trove, by the way—a running singalong in which we all must participate.
Oh yeah… singing. That’ll help me control my rampant breathing.
Our route begins with a nearly mile-long straightaway, chugging down the sidewalk that edges the base’s perimeter road—a tall, concertina-topped fenceline separating us from a two-laned highway and the deep jungles of the bayou to our left, with the back side of the barracks compound on our right—until it breaks out of the populated areas, and meanders around the end of the active runway, still hugging that perimeter fence. The mile-and-a-half mark—the halfway-point turnaround for a three mile run—is the parking lot of a lonely little building, nestled in its own little oasis of trees, out in the vast empty grassland that flanks the runway. Longer runs involve turnarounds on the other side of the runway apparently, at points, which, from here, look like dots on the Canadian border.
I am instantly depressed. My inaugural run with the group is along their shortest roundtrip course—their shortest—and I’m folding up like Benny Hill’s deckchair before we’ve even tromped past the Airman’s Club annex. I coughed up both lungs within only three blocks of the exercise field, and now I’ve got a stitch the size of a TV remote embedded in my ribcage, my knees have turned to chewing gum, and my ass just decided it’s nappy time.
I weave and totter out of the pack, allowing the rest of the guys to storm up the sidewalk without me. I still follow them, exhibiting my dedication and willpower by lurching along in their wake like a bad actor dragging out his big death scene. Only I’m not acting.
Jesus! I volunteered to do this to myself THREE AFTERNOONS A WEEK?!! What the hell was I thinking?
And this is just Phase I, just the prep course for the rougher shit that will follow… and the even rougher shit that will follow that… and the downright brutal ass-kicking that’ll follow that.
I’m staggering along on liquid legs, lungs spasming in my chest, leaving a sweat-slick behind me that looks like a huge wet snake has been following me down the sidewalk all the way from the pool, and I’m wondering where’s the up-side here? Even looking for the long-term benefits, what could the pot of gold possibly look like at the end of this bloody rainbow? How—when—will this backbreaking uphill climb ever level out? Based on what Sgt. Beaudry’s been saying, it sounds like the reward for all this superhuman effort is just more of the same! Or worse!
I saunter weakly past the last of the buildings in the barracks compound, hands on hips, chest still heaving. In the distance, probably a quarter of a mile ahead of me, I can see Beaudry leading his merry band of lunatics into that little oasis parking lot—the halfway point—then trotting them through a tight turnaround, and getting them churning back towards me again.
Here we go.
I shake my legs out. I do some shoulder rotations. I roll my head around its gimbals, making sure that every last vibe I’m giving off fairly screams I’m ready! Put me in, coach! And as the narrow two-line column tramps past me again, I swing in behind them, synchronize my steps with theirs, and join them for the last mile or so of the run.
Well, most of it, anyway. Within only a few blocks, my breathing has flown out of control again, and somehow my boots have quadrupled in weight. I’m trying my best not to sound as utterly obliterated as I feel, but I have a feeling that all the gasping and whimpering, combined with the melodramatic clutching of my chest—or at least the white-hot stitch that’s swelling under my ribs—is giving me away.
I’m just starting to fade back from the pack again, when the old flightline hoves into view and manages to inspire a couple dozen more slogging steps out of me. This is just enough to keep me at pace with the others until Sgt. Beaudry finally reins us all in at the edge of the field, and allows everyone to walk off the remaining distance to the exercise area.
Breathless conversation kicks right in, followed, in short order, by the usual insults and humorous deprecations, and then the inevitable grab-ass. For obvious reasons, I do not feel a part of this. I’m not only the New Guy here, but I’m the Weak Link as well, the weenie that can’t keep up with the Rest of the Guys on a mere three-mile run.
As a disheveled group though, we amble back into the infield, and reform into our original exercise ranks. There, Sgt. Beaudry—who’s hardly darkened the armpits of his T-shirt for all his exertions—looks over his motley crew from behind those dark lenses, nods his head approvingly, dispenses a token admonition of “good job, everybody,” then releases us for the day.
I couldn’t see his eyes, but clearly he wasn’t looking at me when he said that.
And that’s it—just the first of sixty such ball-busting afternoons that will befall me over the next twenty weeks while I’m attending ATC School here at Keesler. Fifty-nine more days just like this one, where I’ll finish up feeling like I barely escaped being beaten to death in a riot, only to be creamed by a bus as I limp away from the scene. Because I gotta’ tell you, right now I am wasted. I am one wrung-out, strung-out, sorry-assed bastard. I look like a big wet dog that just got stuffed through the cat door—the hard way. And this is what I get to look forward to every other weekday for the next five months?!
What the hell is wrong with me? What’s the freakin’ point? All this, just to get a little more bang for my martial buck? Just to feel more like I joined the “real” military instead of a costumed day job? Or is it just some kind of “guy thing?” A need to feel like I can run with the big dogs, commune with the heroic elite, and be the envy of all my friends back home.
Or maybe it’s just one of those penis-size things again.
No, I wrote that one off a long time ago.
Well, whatever it is, it ain’t enough. This was about as fun as “First Shower Day” in prison. And I don’t need to do it twice to know that I ought to just leave the soap where I dropped it.
I’m limping off the field, mulling over alternative ways to slither out of this little impulse-commitment of mine, when a couple of the guys—a big burly bow-legged bastard named Rogers, and a squirrelly little foul-mouthed hotshot named Mark Horn—trot up to me as blithe and winded as if they’d just made a dash from the car in the rain.
“Hey, you looked pretty good out there today, Airman Stipp,” says Rogers.
I throw all my remaining energy into the nearly overwhelming task of turning my dripping head toward him. Then I squint at him “real suspicious-like,” as if he’d just suggested that we share a bed tonight.
“What?”
“Fuckin’-A, man,” says Horn, “Not a bad first day at all.”
I shake my head, and smear about a gallon-and-a-half of sweat off my brow and out of my eye sockets. “You must not have been paying attention, guys. I was the one you had to bring back in a bucket. Remember?”
They both chuckle at that.
“Nah, man. The first day kicks everybody’s ass. This is a bitch of a routine to step into cold. You actually did better than most.”
I burn my last erg of energy just lifting a single eyebrow in disbelief.
Horn keeps talking. “Hell, you did better than a couple of those guys out there are still doing after being at this for a couple of months now.”
Funny, I didn’t see anybody else expiring on the roadside back there with me. I snort, and mop some more sweat off my face with my saturated T-shirt.
“No, man, really,” Horn insists, “You kept up pretty good. But the main thing now is to keep on going. Just stick with it. It’ll get better.”
I stifle the urge to ask “why,” and instead ask, “How?”
“Well, you gotta’ give it at least a couple of weeks. I mean, this first week’s going to be hell, not only ‘cause everything’s new, and strange, and tough as a cast iron bitch, but because, starting tomorrow, just about every muscle in your body is going to be so damned soooooooore.”
They both erupt with malevolent laughter.
“You gonna’ be one big walkin’ cramp, bud,” adds Rogers. And the laughter escalates.
Oh, wonderful. I hadn’t thought about the after-effects.
“Yeh, you may wanna’ come out here tomorrow, on your own, and do a few stretchers or something, man. Maybe run a little.”
“Do a couple laps in the pool.”
“Yeh, something like that.”
“‘Cause, you think you feel like shit now—wait’ll you try starting that routine with your whole body in knots and locked up solid.”
“Yeh. Like this…” And Horn curls his fingers into claws, hunches his back, shrinks his stride into a limping, pigeon-toed scuffle, and twists his head to the side, looking like Quasimodo at an arthritic eighty years of age. Rogers is tossed helplessly into fits of laughter again, and this time, I am carried along with him.
The three of us stagger off the field then, giggling like loons.
All right. I’ll give it two more weeks.
2
SECOND COMING
First big road trip in Larry Connors’ much-ballyhooed ’63 Camaro.
He was smart enough to take some of that advance leave they were trying so hard to sell us back on our first day of in-processing. Took it and ran home, he did. Soaked up three days of normalcy, then drove his beloved “ride” back here to Keesler.
I’m not sure what all the hoopla was about though. It’s pretty much just an old “plain brown wrapper” Camaro, painted basic white, with blackwall tires and an old-smelling cracked leather interior, garnished with a typical male’s quota of floor trash. It’s also sans air conditioning, which means we get to cruise through the warm wet air of Biloxi with the windows rolled down.
No, we haven’t quite captured the freewheeling spirit of a “gad about town with the top down,” but before we’ve even gotten off base, I’m feeling just as jet-blasted as I would have in a real convertible.
It’s only our second Saturday since the school schedule kicked into gear, and we’re spending it by taking off to catch the opening day matinee of this new movie called “Star Wars.” Time magazine had a big cover story article on it in last week’s issue. Made it sound like the Second Coming itself, like some kind of once-in-a-lifetime historical event. Well, how do you not go see something like that?
So the four of us—Larry Connors, Mike “Dumbass,” Gene Podulka and myself—are all packed into this old car of Larry’s, chasing the roar of its four-barrel carb out onto the coastal highway and down the shore to Gulfport, where the movie’s showing at the Edgewater Mall theater.
As both Sergeants Horn and Rogers had predicted after my first day of Phase I PT though, every muscle in my body was in full seizure by the next morning. I looked like I still had all the hangers in my clothes, along with a couple of broom handles shoved down my pant legs as I “marched” to school that following day. And I was the only one in the formation making “ah, oo, eech, ouch, urf” noises as we crossed the old flightline. I tried their suggestion about doing some kind of stretchers during my interim off-hours, but by that next PT afternoon, I was still a very stiff and very tender little rookie.
Fortunately, about halfway through the opening calisthenics, I noticed that I was no longer mincing and grunting like a woman in labor. The punishing regimen had actually loosened me up again. I was actually feeling pretty danged good, truth be told. I still couldn’t finish the run, but it was good to feel the pain retreat under the renewed onslaught. And, if for no other reason than that, I was beginning to see some value in continuing the program.
Yesterday—our second Friday since the school started—marked the end of the two-week period I’d mentally agreed to stick with it. And, well… I got through it, alive, upright, and with my sense of humor intact. And I’m not sore today. Every arm, leg, and ass muscle in my body feels, what? Tired? Weak? No, more like “tested.” The same sort of wiped-out—but rewarding—exhaustion that a quarterback must feel after a particularly trying game. But I’m not sore.
I guess that means I’ve gotten over the program’s first little hurdle then. I can get through an entire day’s work-out now, without stopping or falling too far behind the others—except on those damned runs—and that makes me feel good. Even proud. But most importantly, I’m seeing progress. I can feel the improvement every day. I’m slowly but surely catching up with some pretty bad-assed dudes, physically speaking, and that’s something worth pursuing. Worth continuing.
So let’s just call this movie a reward—a little “present” to myself.
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