I bet you're wondering ( or maybe not) what triggered these basic training memories. It wasn't all the war movies I've been watching; it was because I heard U2's One Tree Hill on the radio recently. I don't know why, but that did it.

I did some research yesterday; read some online diaries of people who went through basic and it helped me remember some things. Like I said, my memory isn't linear; here are some general impressions and feelings I had during boot camp:

Eating a full meal, including dessert, in less than two minutes flat. I still have to think about it so I can slow down and enjoy the food I eat.

Standing at attention, or parade rest in formation every morning in March and April with my feet so cold in my boots, my toes felt like someone had put marbles in my socks.

"Yes, Drill Sargeant! No Drill Sargeant!" Marching. Cadences. Polishing my boots, cleaning my M-16. Rain dripping off my too-short poncho into my boots. Waiting, waiting, waiting. And getting into the front leaning rest position, of course, and doing pushups. Devouring the Sunday paper because that's the only time I got to read anything. Getting up in the middle of the night to pull fireguard for two hours.

Speaking of, I was walking back from mess one sunday and I stopped to buy the Sunday paper; my jaw dropped the floor as I read about the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker scandal. I stood there so long in front of the vending machine a drill sargeant walking by dropped me for pushups for loitering.

Anyway, the three phases of Basic Training are called the Red, White, and Blue phase. I told you about the Red phase. And I knew my memory was out of kilter; we did no bayonet training until the White phase. This phase dealt with learning to shoot.

My dad taught me how to shoot so I felt/feel comfortable with a rifle (not a gun). I shot competently but not as good as I probably could have because I tend to choke under a time limit. Some of us got to ride home from the range in a helicopter when we qualified on our rifles. That was kewl! I enjoyed this phase much more than the drill and ceremony stuff.

I don't remember the cutoff point, but somewhere along the line between the White and the Blue phase we learned other aspects of basic soldiering. Throwing grenades, using grenade launchers, using LAW rockets and Claymores... I was a kid in a candy shop! In the Blue phase we started bivouacing (sp?) outdoors. Marching some place, setting up a pup tent; I remember sitting in the tent with Mitchell and helping each other remove that camouflage make-up. We cleaned each other's face using baby ass wipes.

Don't laugh! Any one who's done any camping knows baby ass wipes are the key to survival, especially if you're a woman!

Any way, each skill we learned was conducted at a different range. Each range was named after a famous U.S. Army battle. This factoid brings me to the Chipyong-ni breakdance. Chipyong-ni was a battle in the Korean war. This particular range consisted of sawdust pits where we learned the high crawl and the low crawl. The high crawl basically consists of slithering on the ground on your belly, only using your elbows. The low crawl is lower than that. If you aren't making a furrow with your helmet, you aren't lowcrawling. This range was miserable. I hated it even more than the gas chamber.

I was picking sawdust out of personal holes for something like two months after that.

The most fun I had during basic was during this one range where we had to tie together all the skills we had learned. My buddy and I had to silently advance and cover each other until the enemy started shooting (popup targets w/ blanks). At that point we had to switch over to verbal communications; one person would advance ("I'm up, I'm moving, he's aiming, I'm down") while the other person covered with live ammo. Our objective was to get close enough to this concrete bunker to throw (fake) hand grenades.

Thank god I trusted Mitchell. While waiting in line to run this range, I was grinning like an idiot and I told Mitch to pretend we were in a war movie. I really felt like I was 7 years old again. We put our hearts into it; when the enemy opened up we were screaming like banshees. We got big-assed GO's on that range (everything is graded Go/No Go). The sargeant in charge of grading congradulated us, and commended us for not getting flustered because some brass were watching ( a Colonel and a few others). Mitchell and I never saw anyone - guess that's a good thing.

From what I have read, the very end of basic has changed somewhat. I recall going through something called the 'superbowl', where we were rated individually or with your buddy on certain skills. I remember a long, fun discussion with one rater, a particularly tough drill sargeant, while setting up a claymore mine (a dummy, of course). I'm not being sarcastic, he just felt like talking and so I listened as I set the thing up, responding "yes, drill sargeant, no drill sargeant" where appropriate.

That's pretty much it - I haven't talked about the drill sargeants much because none of them were of the R. Lee Ermey variety. They were tough, but fair. Our platoon had Drill Sargeant Simon and Drill Sargeant Daniels, I recall. I remember one Sunday morning I had Battalion CQ with another soldier who I became good friends with. Her name was Susan Cohen and she was half chinese and half jewish. I'm not kidding. She was constantly getting in trouble for talking too much. Many of the other soldiers didn't like her but we got along well.

Any way, that Sunday at Battalion headquarters (CQ means 'Charge of Quarters', just means you answer the phone if it rings), Susan and I sat around and twiddled our thumbs. Drill Sargeant Daniels was on battalion CQ, too; he was studying for a math class he was taking. He was having trouble with a problem; I recongized it as a quadratic equation so I took some time reviewing with him how to set the problem up correctly. He knew how to solve it; he just didn't remember how to make it look like a quadratic equation, if that makes sense.

Any way, from that point on, I never got into trouble w/ Drill Sargeant Daniels. I remember goofing off with Susan on a range during lunch; DS Daniels walked by, dropped Susan and never even looked at me. I got the hint and wandered off.

The truth is the Army is easy to deal with. It's not easy and it's not super-hard. I am proud I got through basic, but I got through it because I learned pretty quick: just do what you're told.