In the summer of 1999, I spent 14 weeks learning how to shoot people.
Now, to stab them with a bayonet. “Blood makes the grass greener.” Please hear about my wartime face.
Summers in Georgia are unpleasant and OSUT (Single Station Unit Training, an expanded version of basic training that the Army gives infantrymen as a very special personal gift) is very boring.
In the movie, basic training involves a lot of dramatic shouting and violent confrontations, with someone always banging on a metal trash can. In real life, basic training involves a lot of standing positions, a lot of “do-overs.” many of the regiment. In the heat. There is a bug.
Frequently asked question: “Do I really have to stand here?” Yes, kid. Yes, it is.
Deep in the cycle of desensitization and infantilization, we were loaded up with grenades and carted away like livestock in abandoned military cattle trucks. McKenna MOUT range, located behind what was then called Fort Benning. I don’t know what Fort Benning is called now, and I don’t want to know.
It is possible to have too much of something, including the absence of suffering.
MOUT stands for military operations in urban terrain, or urban combat. At the MOUT site, trainees load rifles with blanks, stack doors, and learn how to open doors. miles gear tied to their bodies. The MILES gear will beep as it gets “shot” over and over again and you’ll wonder if stacking and taking the door is a good idea.
The plan was to spend a full day cleaning up a fake room, then have dinner, then have a long nighttime MOUT session in the dark, then spend a few hours on site in a sleeping bag, then do more training. Ta. However, the executives who were running the training grounds were somehow unable to obtain the memo. After a truckload of dinner — breaded meat objects, spoonfuls of rice, and gray boiled vegetables — we lined up to train, only to suddenly disappear. Our drill sergeant was there, but their drill sergeant wasn’t. There was no one around to run the place.
Basic training is fun for other drill sergeants as well, and they tend to be enthusiastic about it. length day to day. Marriages are said to encounter certain challenges during their drill sergeant duties. man wearing round brown clothes Eventually he is happy to return to his frontline unit where he can prepare for war and get some personal time like a normal human being. So the collapse of our night training session was greeted with a barely concealed sense of relief by our human tormentors. Most of them had run away to spend a rare night at home.
Unobserved, but with the threat that they might appear at any moment if they were, a group of young men spread out their sleeping bags on the ground surprisingly early in the evening. We slept in platoons, and of course in squads, in sleeping bags, in full uniform, in proper military order.
But on the lawns at the edge of McKenna Harbour, an extraordinary sense of leisure prevailed. A large group of unassigned and unsupervised military trainees began to feel at home like opium den dwellers. My boots came off. There were lots of yawns, lots of quiet conversations, and lots of relaxed laughter.
As I recall, and I have no way of fact-checking this, McKenna is sitting on a plateau overlooking a quiet forest. We watched a peaceful and serene sunset. In the middle of the night, someone woke me up for an hour-long fire watch. I wandered around in silence, feeling a deep sense of happiness. I then returned to my sleeping bag and fell asleep quickly and easily.
My mood there was one of rare relief – in a sweaty uniform that probably smelled like goat, in a government-issued bag with no pillow or sleeping pad. It’s lying on the ground. It felt like a Four Seasons, but much better.
I’ve been thinking about this experience for a week. Because, you know, he’s finally getting down to business. — Regarding the recent anti-Israel sit-in at Vanderbilt University. A group of undergraduate students occupied the administration building for most of the day, emerging later to tell harrowing stories of the hardships they faced in a courageous confrontation with authority.you can See their story here.
“For 21 hours, we were deprived of medical care, deprived of sleep, deprived of food, water, and resources.” Then brace yourself. Police woke them up at 5:30 in the morning and arrested them. Don’t even let me have a latte first, you fascists!you can Even if you imagine it Do I have to wake up at 5:30?
The lack of self-awareness revealed by the story of not having everything I wanted for 21 hours is the result of living in a cage of privilege and comfort. It is possible to have too much of something, including the absence of suffering.
Influenza is a serious illness, and its most ironic symptom is the inability to recognize comfort because you have never felt what discomfort feels like. What your heart needs is contrast To see different states of being.
I hope young men and women feel uncomfortable. And so that they can feel pleasure someday. I suspect that taking this drug at a very comfortable time and place could be of great benefit to quite a few people. I hope I never get caught.
