Uncomfortable night of sleep.
Dry shaved. Sent back to TMC-1
for leg. I thought I'd only be put
on sick call. I'm worried that
my leg won't be OK in time for
PT test. I'm dirty and sore.
I hate sick call. Sergeants make
you feel like dirt. It works. I can
barely walk and I still made the
12-15 mile road march w/hours in
MOPP 4 and I still feel bad for
being back here at TMC-1.
Good news! It is not a stress
fracture. Some cartilage maybe torn.
Code for 5 days. Back to my
unit.
22:00 Ready for bed.
Compass training. No gas tonight.
Regular drills tomorrow. Night
fire tomorrow. On Code B, C, + D
whatever that is. Down hill.
A sleeping bag on the hard dirt was not ideal. I can pretty much sleep anywhere, but this was not one of those times, apparently. All I could do was scrape my face that morning. I went on sick call that morning.
But how I got there was a amusing. Actually, for the trainee with me who could only listen in horror and hope I didn't take him down with me, it must have been terrifying. But in retrospect, it was amusing.
I had to request from one of the drill sergeants permission to go to the "meat wagon" for sick call. Out in the field, they sent a truck to deal with minor stuff. So I limped over to Sergeant [Tango]--the most foul mouthed Samoan you'd ever want to meet.
A quiet man, mind you. He'd suddenly just be there. And he didn't yell. But he was course and if he didn't have use of the words that broadcast TV can't use as well as those for body parts, I'm not sure he would speak at all.
Another soldier was with me. I was senior so I took it upon myself to do the speaking. I went to parade rest before him and asked for sick call slips for myself and the soldier with me.
Sergeant Tango--a Regular Army drill instructor--told me that we'd have to get that from the senior drill sergeant--a Reservist who was about to leave. So I thanked him and took my leave, leading my fellow sick call wannabe with me. I found the senior drill sergeant and explained to him that Sergeant Tango had told us that we needed to get sick call slips from him.
I don't know if there was some signal between the two sergeants, but the senior drill sergeant said, with some indignation that I would bother him with this, that he wasn't going to do it and that we'd have to get them from Sergeant Tango. Great.
So I limp back with the other trainee in tow.
"Sergeant Tango, senior drill sergeant requests that you sign the sick call slip," I informed him.
"I'm not going to sign that slip. You tell senior drill sergeant that he has to sign it."
What the heck. I'm sure marching back and forth on my bad leg isn't tearing it up any more, eh? Once more into the breach. This was when my partner seemed to be getting a little more nervous about the whole situation. His silence as I spoke to the competing sergeants seemed to be getting quieter. But perhaps that was just me.
So I get to the senior drill sergeant, and in a proper parade rest with eyes straight ahead, I inform him, "Senior drill sergeant, Sergeant Tango requests that you sign the sick call slip."
"I'm not going to sign it!" He proclaimed. "You tell Sergeant Tango he has to sign it."
So I limped back. I knew the way pretty well by now.
"Sergeant Tango, senior drill sergeant respectfully requests that you sign the sick call slip."
Sergeant Tango still didn't seem in the mood to be cooperative. So he orders me back to the senior drill sergeant, telling me a final instruction,"You tell senior drill sergeant to suck my dick."
Wow was my partner quiet. And possibly getting smaller.
Now I'm no idiot. My partner perhaps had no way to know that he wasn't on a Viking funeral ride with a dead man limping. But still he was silent. Perhaps I should have reassured him that I would not convey that precise message. But I had my own problems and his mental health was way down on my list.
So I tell the senior drill sergeant, "Sergeant Tango respectfully requests that you sign the sick call slip."
But it was not to be. We headed back to our sergeant of origin. Once again, I repeated the "respectful" request of the other drill sergeant that the drill sergeant I was standing before should sign the slip.
Sergeant Tango leaned into me and quietly asked, "Did you tell senior drill sergeant what I told you to say? Did you tell him exactly?"
To which I replied, at parade rest with eyes firmly fixed ahead on no particular place, "No, drill sergeant. I paraphrased."
Sergeant Tango signed the slips. No recruits would die that morning.
And I'm sure I just needed to walk off my leg injury, so what the heck.
Yet I hated to go on sick call. Sure, I had walked out there with my equipment and endured 2 hours in full chemical warfare protection level in the heat (which drenched the chemical suit and depleted all our water). And I was horrified that instead of just getting patched up at the meat wagon they sent me back to the base hospital (The Medical Center, if I remember correctly).
There, I thought I was going to have a Penthouse Letters moment. (Do they even have those any more? Is the magazine even around any more? Hey, you know, in college I heard other people talk about them ...)
At one point, they sent me in to get x-rays. I lay down on the table in my uniform and promptly dozed off. I was awakened to the sensation of someone touching my junk. I raised my head up and looked down, with my eyebrows raised quizzically, to see a young enlisted female nurse maneuvering a lead shield across my genitals in preparation for the x-ray. She seemed rather the shy type. She could have asked me for help instead--but what the heck, how could she miss it, eh? I'm a dad now, so she did a good job.
Anyway, the good news is that it wasn't a stress fracture like they thought it might be. They put me on some heavy duty muscle relaxants which made everything feel much better. At one point I stopped taking them to see if my leg was really healing--and then when right back on when it was clear all the pills were doing was masking the pain.
But I knew I would not be RFT because of my leg. It was all down hill.
Compass training was kind of fun. I led our group to the target location with a map and compass, plus the ability to keep track of my paces and know how many are needed to walk 100 yards--while going around impassable terrain. I wonder if the Army even bothers with that any more?
Oh, and we'd have night firing. Maybe this is the time we had the A-10 pass in front of us. That would make sense since we were farther out from the paved base area this time. One day I'll need to move that part here, I think. Like I said, the sound the 30mm chain gun makes is pretty awesome.
Apparently, we weren't gassed with tear gas that night as I seem to have expected.
