MEPS [Military Entrance Processing Station in Detroit] at 6:00 a.m.
long waits.
737 to Chicago. To St. Louis.
Arrive in LW [Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri] 11:30 p.m.
Sleep at 2:00 a.m.
That's how my first day of being in the Army began.
I'd already been in the Guard since the previous August, and had been going to training weekends with my Guard unit (then, Alpha Company of 156 Signal Battalion). But this was my "initial" training, 9 months after I'd joined my unit. I wanted delayed entry so I wouldn't miss my first year of grad school. I didn't realize that delayed entry only meant basic training and that I'd go to my unit during that "delay" period.
It was a long and boring day. We had lunch downtown with some fairly run down place that had the contract to feed us. I seem to recall seeing one recruit driven from MEPS by a screaming officer outraged that the young man had a rather vulgar t-shirt on--he was outside waiting for his recruiter to take him home for a change of clothing. If it wasn't that day, it was another day. But it was definitely at MEPS and odds are it was this day since I had to be outside the place to see this incident.
A group of us made our way on our own through the plane flights and boarded a bus in Chicago to go to the lovely Springfield region of Missouri. I don't know if the driver ever spoke to us on the drive there. Had I known how long that drive was, I would have slept.
we arrived late and filed into a building where we were briefed and filled out paperwork and had a last chance to deposit any contraband (weapons, drugs, cigarettes, food) without question in a garbage bin as we filed by it.
And of course they put is our temporary bunks late. The one thing I was not confused about was that I knew sleep would be a rare experience for the next 9 weeks or so.
I was in the Army, now.
