Continuing the story from yesterday.

We filed into a large, sterile, echoing room, past a table with sandwiches, juice boxes and bottles of water. We sat on benches, three to each. A civilian woman walked to the front and began our first of countless orientations. We were assigned numbers based on the order we were sitting. I was now 58A.

Once again I filled out countless pieces of paper. We were offered another chance to dispose of any contraband we suddenly realized we were carrying. To the side of the room there was a display of some of the treasures that had been collected through this process: a bile vial of mouth wash, playing cards galore, every brand of cigarettes you could imagine, nail clippers, knives, firearms and more.

Next we filed through several rooms and were issued hideously rough brown towels that would barely fit around our bodies, a light green laundry bag to carry these items, a pair of black exercise shorts, one gray t-shirt, and a gray sweat suit, each with black lettering the reflected our new owners. Glancing at my watch I saw that it was almost eleven thirty. I need to change my watch to military time, I thought to myself.

Thirty minutes later we arrived at the barracks where we would bunk as we went through the Welcoming Battalion processing. Following an announcement that wake-up call would be at four, we were silently assigned bunks in a cavern-like dark room where other females were already sleeping. Females on guard shift directed us with red lighted flashlights to gray metal bunk beads guarded on each end with tan metal lockers. We were instructed to put on the clothing we had been issued – civilian clothing was not to be worn again until after graduation – lock up all issued items, along with our personal bags, and get to sleep.

***

“Get up. Get out of that bed before I get in there,” bellowed through the room’s intercom system. Having been assigned a top bunk I groggily, but carefully, maneuvered to the floor. I unlocked my locker, grabbed the hideous towel, soap and a toothbrush. I rushed to the latrine hoping to beat the other hundred females.

As I walked, I notice a female across from me who had propped her cast right leg against the bunk across from her. I learned later that she had torn some ligaments while marching to chow a few weeks prior and was stuck here until it healed. Everyone called her Crutches. Next to her was another private who had graduated Basic, shipped to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) and found out she didn’t qualify for her selected job. What had followed was some type of lawsuit and she had been assigned a new job and was waiting for security clearance. The female on the top bunk across from me spent quite a lot of time crying having left her new baby at home with his alcoholic father.

After using the latrine I returned to my bunk. I pulled on my sweatshirt feeling quite official with the word ARMY displayed across my chest and put on my running shoes. I quickly locked up my locker which was to be secured if we were more than an arm’s length away. This along with marking all items with our names was to guard against stealing. Apparently theft was a common occurrence in the military and explains why I still have white granny underwear with my last name permanently written on the elastic band.

This morning was my first experience with the phrase “Hurry up and wait.” Up at 0400 and yet I sat there waiting for what felt like forever. And in those few minutes I met the three battle buddies that I would treasure throughout the experience and after: Stick, H and M. H had just gotten engaged and was head over heels in love. M was signed up to be a parachute rigger and would be heading to jump school if she passed all the physical demands it would require. Stick was anything but a stick, but had a sweet spirit about her. All four of us became fast friends and were discharged four months later. Stick had a vertical hip fracture, H a sprained ankle that refused to heal even after months of physical therapy and M and I with a friction disorder that caused our knee caps to pull sideways when we bend our legs. H was the first to get injured, I was the second. But I was the last to be pulled from training. I was the only one to attempt the final physical fitness test; the only one to fail.

It’s been 8 years since my discharge from the Army. Today I thought I’d share a piece that I wrote a few years ago about my experience:

I’m often asked, “What made you do it?” Honestly, I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking. I wish I could say it was some profound sense of patriotism, but I think it was probably boredom. when the Recruiter called I was looking for something challenging. So I did it. I enlisted in the US Army in the midst of The Global War on Terrorism.

I can still remember Sergeant T, dressed in his Army Greens, metals and all, knocking on my apartment door. He sounded like a used car salesman; he talked fast, used big words and made it sound like my life would hit the fast track if I enlisted. Not to mention serving my country, learning new skills and finally the killer jab to my unchallenged self: adventure.

I took the Aptitude Test and scored high enough that I was allowed to choose from any of the non-combat jobs. And it was one of these jobs that finally captured me. The US would send me to language school, give me a large cash bonus and put me in a position where the CIA highly recruited. In exchange I would simply sign away the next five years of my life.

Next I had to tell my family. The shocked silence that transmitted over the phone line was deafening when I told my Dad; my Mom’s fearful look despite her encouraging words pierced my heart; the concern of my friends and coworkers remained with me through the months that followed. I spent the majority of my time before shipping out waffling between fear, excitement, alarm and euphoria.

***

Well, four months after my decisions I was in LA going through final processing. I filled out what must amount to at least ten tree’s worth of paperwork, signed away my frist born, peed in a cup as a nurse watched, performed awkward exercises in my underwear and had a complete physical. And I do mean complete. Having passed I was given orders to ship.

So in the dead of winter, I, the Southern California Girl, shipped to the middle of Missouri. My journey from the Military Entrance Processing Center in Los Angeles to Fort Leonard Wood, fully gender integrated training facility, began at four in the morning on 18 January 2005. The first twelve hours was spent between plane rides and layovers in Arizona, Oklahoma and finally Saint Louis.

The last three hours of travel was a bus ride. I sat next to Private M. She was a black girl from the South and spoke constantly about all the items she had packed, ranging from a silk nightgown, cosmetics and “hair care products.” She said “hair care products” in the most amazingly slow southern drawl I’ve ever heard. We ended up bunking the same sleeping bay during all of basic. Each morning her battle buddy would yell and scream at her to hurry up because shi did everything in the same slow manner as she smoke. Drill Sergeant A constantly said that she must have Ice Cream music playing in her head because she always had a silly smile plastered on her face, along with the hair that was plastered to her head with the hair care products that lined the top shelf of her metal locker. Her obsession with her hair always shocked me. She would stay up after lights out at 2100 to fix her hair despite the fact that each morning began at 0400. She also must have had an unusually large amount of testosterone in her body because she grew a semi-goatee on her chin and had the most leanly defined muscles I’ve ever seen on a girl.

***

In the pitch dark the bus continued giving me the sense that we were going to the middle of nowhere and even should I attempt to escape there was nowhere to go except into the deep void of the night.

As we pulled up to the base entrance, the bus stopped and the driver passed out black garbage bags to collect contraband. I tossed in the piece of gum I was chewing along with the rest of the pack. Others got rid of cigarettes, chewing tobacco, mouth wash containing alcohol, playing cards and almost anything else you could imaging ranging from bongs to Walkman.

We drove on. Out of the darkness rose an enormous illuminated building. From this building came an equally enormous black man. His drill sergeant hat evident as the light silhouetted his body. The shape of that hat put the fear of God into my soul, and still does.

He jumped into the bus opened his mouth revealing a gold front tooth and began screaming, “Get off my bus. Get off my bus right now! Line up. Line up! Females on the left. Males on the right. Get moving. You think I’m joking with you, Private? When I say move, I mean now!”

“You better move. Get into a straight line. You think that’s straight? STRAIGHT! You: face the other way. Now! Yes you. You see anyone else facing that way?”

Once we were in a somewhat straight line we filed into the building. All I could think was “Whew I made it through those five minutes without any of his attention focused on me.” I decided that for the next ten weeks I would try to make myself as invisible as possible. That didn’t really work out for me. On day 0, I was given the name “Private Retardo” by the meanest, shortest woman I’ve ever met. She made it her mission in life to make my life miserable. Thankfully I had no idea the she existed and so I continued on with excitement for the adventure that was about to start.

Tune back in for part 2 tomorrow.