14:40. Graduation over.
Brief. No sweat. Lots of civilians
around. Plane home. Missed
connection. Standby to Detroit.
Home at 11:30.
Thursday, 7 JUL 88, was my last day of basic training.
I graduated. There were lots of civilians and we marched in formation and we all graduated (minus a desertion and recycles). We were now lean, mean, fighting machines.
That's the fact, Jack!
Coming home after basic training rather than going straight off to my military school was a bit weird. For one thing, it was like "war over!" and I was discharged. But I had to go to the next National Guard drill weekend. And next summer I'd go to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for several more months of training.
Being a part-time soldier made every summer training seem like the big deployment. And when we finished those training periods and went home to be a civilian again, it was a shock to have to come back in a couple weeks for another weekend training period.
As I've often thought, my military experience was not deep--and certainly not dangerous--but I did get hints of military life and reality.
I learned what it is like to be focused on my immediate duties of figuring out how to use a combat fax even as a coup in Moscow a world away could have escalated to nuclear war. Normally I'd have been glued to my TV.
I learned what it is like to know my unit was scheduled to deploy to war and worry about leaving my wife to go off to the Middle East. And I learned that it was tough to see my mom worry about another son going to war long after she thought she'd have to worry about that.
With basic training over and going straight home, I had a small distant glimpse at what troops going directly from South Vietnam, where one day they were in the field, then they got on a plane to go home, where the next day they were back on the block in the world expected to act and react like a civilian.
I was not at war. And after 2 months in basic training, I didn't feel like a soldier who was no longer a civilian. But I was courser. And it took a while for that to wear off. And it was weird to be in a college town environment after being in the Army.
Oh, and one more lesson. Training is something that needs to be done constantly to keep a soldier well trained and ready to fight. I went home to graduate school, marriage, and weekend drills. I gained 10 pounds by the time June 1989 rolled around and I went off the Fort Gordon, Georgia, for signal corps training. I could barely fit in my dress uniform. And I had run perhaps once after coming home.
The first morning I was back in uniform for PT, marching off from a strange barracks in the dark on a strange base to a track somewhere on base, we ran 3 miles. I swear to God, I thought I was going to die. Only the knowledge that I had no idea where my barracks were kept me in formation running since I knew if I dropped out I would be totally lost. I made it. We never ran 3 miles again, as far as I can remember. And I got back in shape in short order--without injury at the lower stress levels.
Like I've often reminded readers, I was a reservist signal corps soldier. I don't know what snakes taste like. But I was a soldier, and I learned a lot being a soldier. I'll always be grateful that I enlisted and served my time in uniform. Though I only have a glimpse of what soldiers can go through, it has made me appreciate much more deeply what our troops endure in defense of our nation under far worse conditions than I went through one summer in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
