“I AM AN AMERICAN SOLDIER! I AM A WARRIOR AND A MEMBER OF A TEAM!”

The first two phrases in the soldier’s creed. I had to memorize this creed, as well as the army song, the army values, and some other creeds, and cries, and songs. Looking back, I’d say I enjoyed my time as a soldier overall. I would never want to go back, because I enjoy my freedom, and there was a lot of ridiculous, and avoidable bullshit I had to put up with that was mixed in, but there were most definitely fun times. Down this page, I’m gonna tell a story to you describing my experience being a soldier from beginning to end. How I got into it, what I felt about it, how I viewed my coworkers and “superiors”. I assume you have a lot of time on your hands. Read on and discover why I am, and forever will be, Big Sham Daddy Hall.

Recruitment And MEPS

I was 18 and fresh out of high school, living with my mother and her man. I had no direction in life, and I was just doin little thuggish shit in the streets. Smoking weed, fuckin on females around the neighborhood until they grew up and got real choosy. I knew I couldn’t just stay doing what I was doing. I had to grow up. I wanted to get away from my mom’s crib, but I knew nothing of living on my own. I didn’t have a car, no college degree, no money. I wasn’t even really thinking about this situation until one of my friends from highschool hit me up one day. Now, I went to 7 different high schools, technically. 5 public schools, and 2 alternatives schools for “bad kids”. I went to those alt schools for fighting and possesion of marijuana. Thanks Nixon. I had met this friend in my first highschool, McNeil highschool. Back then he was kind of a lame-ish fat kid, but I never had a problem with him, so we were cool. I ended up knowing his mom, and I dated his fine ass cousin, Deja.

When my friend hit me up, I noticed he was no lame anymore. He had confidence, and he shed all his fat. He got buff, and i’m sure he was getting hoes. I’m lowkey proud of him, but we haven’t talked in years. There’s no hate, we’re just each living our lives. When he hit me up he told me he was going to the army and encouraged me to enlist as well. Apparently, the army was doing this thing where if you’re responsible for the enlistment of others, you will automatically be promoted a rank for each person you convince to join. At first, I told him, “Bro, I can’t join the army, I’m a criminal”. He responded, “Do you have a record”? “No”, I said. “Aight then, you good” he says. Keep in mind, I know nothing of the army. I didn’t even think much about local law enforcement, let alone an armed and organized branch of the federal government.

So he drives me to a recruitment office in Roundrock, and I speak to some Sergeants there. The one directly appointed to me, I believe, was Sgt Garcia. They give me their pitch about how great the army is, and I take a test called the ASVAB, and I have a pretty good score. We come to the topic of my likelihood of passing a urinalysis. He asks if I’ve been doing cocaine, and mentions that it leaves the body quickly. I haven’t been doing cocaine, but I tell them how much weed I’ve been smoking and he tells me to drink some water and run it out. Out of pure coincidence, I bump into another friend of mine from McNeil High school, a mixed white, hispanic dude by the name of Abraham. We both have that “Dude, what the fuck?” moment as we enthusiastically catch up with one another’s lives. I guess we’re both joining the army. We finish things at the office at go home for now.

At this point, I start working out a little in preparation for basic training and also to sweat the weed out my system. I am given a voucher for a bus ride from the recruitment office in Round Rock, to MEPS in San Antonio, about a 2 hour drive. MEPS is an acronym that stands for Military Entrance Processing Station. I would ultimately make that trip three times. Once to go through processing, another time for a precautionary second checkup because of my heart murmur, and once again to wait for my bus and flight to basic training. I arrive to the recruitment office, meet Abraham, and make small talk with him until our transportation arrives. We get on this bus to MEPS with a group of random guys and a few girls too. It was kind of fun because we knew we were all young, broke, and curious individuals going on a trip together where everything’s paid for. 2 hours later, we reach our destination for the day, which is a hotel. We’re meant to stay here for the rest of the day, go to sleep, and wake up early in the morning to go to the processing station. They made some dumb rules for us being there, but I remember not following half of them. Most of the time, people in authoritative positions, especially within the government, will try to impose stupid ass rules on you, but will rarely enforce them, will forget about them, or will give exceptions to those rules if they like you. Few of these rules do they actually take seriously. To be completely honest, unless you’re a fool, that much is obvious. It’s up to you to be aware enough to tell the difference, and courageous enough to disregard these unnecessary rules.

Anyways, I fuck around in the area, go to the corner store, buy some chips smoke a cigarette with Abraham. Even though I hate cigarettes and tobacco in general. Everytime I smoke a cigarette it feels like a waste of time, and a miniscule depreciation in health. All it does is make my hands and my breath smell bad. I get back in my hotel room, do a few push ups on the floor, and go to sleep, thinking about what will happen the next day. 5AM, everyone wakes up, goes downstairs to the hotel lobby, eat some breakfast, and are ordered to get on a bus. They call us by last name in order to board. A little aggressively, but not very. We’re shipped off to MEPS. We get off the bus, and are greeted collectively by some black chick in army fatigues that’s supposed to be important. She talked to us for about 15 minutes about this being her “instillation” or something like that, and we never saw her again. Immediately afterwards, we do a lot of waiting in a long line of applicants. My last name is in the Hs, so I guess I should be thankful. There’s a lot of people from many different towns and cities in Texas who got transported here in San Antonio for the same thing. I remember all the MEPS workers were acting like assholes towards us. Treating us like imbiciles for no reason. I’m sure it was some kind of act they’re expected to put on to give the perception that they are in charge or something along that nature. I’ve always hated people that act that way.

I get through my check ups, and i’m headed back to roundrock before long. Everything was good, except for my heart reading. I told them I have a harmless heart murmur, but they wanted to make sure it was fine, so I came back to MEPS for further testing. When you take an ASVAB, you are offered a list of jobs based off of your score. For me, there was plenty to choose from. Back at the recruitment office, I said I wanted to be a Cavalry Scout, but after having to get cleared for my heart murmur, I was told the spot was gone, and I had to choose another MOS on the fly in MEPS. I asked to look at the jobs a couple of times, but the soldier, a black female, was trying to tell me in the least assholish way she could, that I need to hurry up and pick what job i’m going to be doing for the next three years of my life, because she has a line of people she needs to get through. Whatever. I choose the one I think sounds the coolest. CBRN specialist! Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear, specialist. It was a contract of enlisment with the united states military stating I would go through basic training for 9 weeks, and advanced individual training for another 9 weeks at a different location. To top it off, it came with a $20,000 bonus. I sign the contract and I’m scheduled to come back to MEPS one final time to await a shuttle bus to take me to a basic training.

Reception

Me and about 100 other men and women are bussed to South Carolina. When I got to Fort Jackson, the first thing I remember is getting off of the bus, and the drill sergeants immediately smoked all of us that night. “Getting smoked” basically means being commanded to do a strenuous workout on the spot. In this particular instance, we were all doing a lot of push ups. I didn’t think anything of it, just figured this is necessary procedure. I was a little ticked off, though, because the shoes I brought were not for exercising, and they were getting creased. Remember, I was completely ignorant of everything military, unlike some people who had either done research before joining, or knew a little since they were military brats, the children of soldiers. Still I managed to recognize the command chain in front of us.

The main one briefing us seemed to be most in charge, while the ones who were in our faces smoking us were under her. When they figured we had enough, they yelled at us for a while, telling us how hard our bootcamp was gonna be and giving us the strict rules that cannot be broken. They also informed us that this isn’t actually the beginning of boot camp training, but an intake period directly prior to that known as “reception”. After that they made us get in a line and taught us to count off, numbering us, and making it easier to organize us. They then led us inside of a building, us bringing all of our things and had us sit on a floor with our items in front of us. We were told to put all of our belongings in a bucket in front of us, and the drill sergeants had to check in for contraband. There was a list of certain items we weren’t allowed during training. Things such as lighters, guns, knives, tazers, drugs, chewing gum, alcoholic mouthwash, condoms, lube, vibrators, and others. We were handed inform and consent papers about this from the helper drill sergeants, which we all signed. After that, the main drill sergeant told us we would continue elsewhere, but first, she’d give us one more chance to get rid of any contraband they didn’t catch on us, free of punishment. We all went and threw things we had kept on us away in the trash as they watched. Some people didn’t have anything, but a lot of people did, including me. I had three condoms I kept on me, but I said fuck it, I don’t like how they feel anyway, and threw em away. I saw the main drill sergeant giggle when she saw that. Guess they do like humor.

After that we went through the process of getting issued everything. This ultimately lasted for 5 days for some reason. The whole point of reception is to teach us how to march, when to salute for the flag, familiarize us with the soldier’s creed, practice formal standing positions, learn about military tradition, and things of that nature in preparation for training. The first thing we did was get issued our clothing items. We marched to a building where we waited outside until they opened, then formed a line inside to get issued ACU tops and bottoms, green undershirts, boxers, socks, PT uniforms tops and bottoms, matching winter gear, tennis shoes two PCs and a load of other things. ACU stands for Advanced Combat Uniform, and PT stands for physical training. ACUs are the green camouflage uniforms for the Army, and PTs are the black uniforms the soldiers work out in. A PC is a patrol cap. It is worn while in ACUs. It was around this point the men when temporarily split from the women, and it was starting to get cold, boring, and I was getting sleepy. I think we collectively went 48 hours without sleeping. Some of us men were getting envious of the girls, thinking the drill sergeants must’ve gone easy on them, letting them rest. When are later reunited with the women 12 something hours after being separated and were surprised to realize they haven’t slept either. We even ate chow at different times, just for those 12 hours, without ever knowing why. After doing some other things the drill sergeants finally showed us to our barracks where we’d be sleeping. We were ecstatic and couldn’t wait to get to bed, but the drill sergeants wanted to explain to us a concept called “Fire guard”. Fire guard is where you take turns “keeping watch” while everyone sleeps, waking up the next person for their shift, then getting sleep yourself. We all had 6 hours to sleep until we had to get back up, and now we have to take an hour away from that to have two man teams awake “patrolling” the bathrooms to make sure no one’s in thereat after lights out. When it was my shift, I just set my little Velcro watch for 56 minutes and slept in the bathroom until it was time to get the next guy. Don’t know if a sergeant came to check on us, don’t know what the other guy did, don’t know, don’t care.

We wake up at 4 in the morning, tired as hell. Get downstairs in our ACUs like they told us, meet up with the girls, and fall into formation. We are briefed by a drill sergeant that we will split into more manageable groups known as platoons. Prior to this we were more than the average size of a “company”, which typically consists of about four platoons, and a platoon consists of about 30 people. We were all referred to as “groups” at this time, though. My group was “Group 77”. We practice marching, saluting, standing at parade rest, and the position of attention. A drill sergeant tells us in case we didn’t already know, that weren’t soldiers yet, therefore we were referred to as “trainees”. In MEPS we were considered even lesser, being known as “recruits”. He then tells us that tonight, in our barracks, we are to designate a “PG”, a platoon guide, and have them report their status to the drill sergeant. A PG is one of us recruits that will be responsible for the rest of the group to a certain limited extent. I assume this is to both instill a sense of leadership and hierarchy among us, as well as make the drill sergeants’ job easier. We then salute the morning flag, and march to the DFAC. DFAC is short for Dining Facility. We form a line, and snake it as we make our way inside for breakfast, where we have ten minutes to eat, from the moment we sit at our table, while being supervised by a drill sergeant. You get a main entrée, two sides, and a snack. You sit your tray at your spot, go get two cups, holding them to your chest, fill them with juice or water and proceed back to your tray at your table. If the drill sergeants think you’re fat, they’ll take your graham crackers off your tray, and replace it with an apple or banana. You will not be allowed to get up again except to throw away your trash and leave the DFAC. This was the process for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Once you leave, the DFAC, you will make a formation with your group and wait for everyone to come out of the DFAC. After we had designated them, or PG would go first to eat, and come out first in order to pick a spot to form up away from the other PGs. When we came out the DFAC, we would yell our group name “77!” the group would collectively yell back “77!!!!” and we would know which group is our from the others formed up. Member of other groups did this as well, and we were all as quiet as the wind waiting for each trainee to come out, so it was easy to tell where your group was.

Things got pretty repetitive after that. We’d sleep and do fire guard, wake up, hygiene, form up, salute the flag, eat breakfast, and make progress in our tasks to prepare us for actual basic training. All the men were marched to the barbers to have their heads shaven of all hair, down to the skin. We then got issued our boots, and most of the issuers were just as rude as the workers back in MEPS. They all seemed to be independent contractors working for the army. Some of them tried to explain to us things about the army and what it’s like. I remember one lady was concerned with making sure she issued me boots that weren’t too small, but fit just right. She gave off a motherly vibe. We also got issues our “dress blues” which is basically the very formal, picture taking, ballroom dancing, promotion board, professional looking uniform for the army. They sucked when I was in. It was skin tight, the shoes would hurt my toes, and the shoestrings would get undone, and the whole get up had to be impeccable all the time. I did like the beret, though, even more than my PC. I would learn later that it is in within regulation to wear your beret in your PC’s stead. The last two things we got before boarding a bus to take us to basic, was our dog tags, and or CACs. CAC stands for common access card. As far as I know, every military servicemember has this card, not just army soldiers. It is the military equivalent of a driver’s license, and it has a rate of use similar to a debit or credit card. It is your key of access to government computers, your key of entry to any US military base which you are authorized visitation, and your key to shopping at the commissary among other uses and services. Your dog tags are a tin necklace which you are supposed to keep on your person at all times possible. It has your name, blood type, military ID number, and choice of religion dented in on it. After we got these two last things we were ready to go to basic. We were disbanded of our temporary groups and each trainee was given a dot with a certain color which had Velcro on the back of it. There was yellow, red, blue, and mine, which was white. We were to attach them to our bags, as it was an indication of which platoon we belonged to in our company at basic training. We sat on our bags in our uniform in the warm sun waiting for our transportation to get here. We were shooting the shit when our bus finally arrived to take us, and we sat two to a seat with our bags in front of us. As we were leaving there was a drill sergeant trying to scare us a little, saying things like “You don’t know what you’re getting into”. “This is gonna be the worst three months of your lives”. I had no care for such words, I was too busy daydreaming about what it could be like. Finally our training was about to begin.

Basic Training

The bus took us all to another part of the base; about a 15 minute drive. We came to a stop behind the first bus, and a drill sergeant hopped on the bus as soon as the driver opened the doors. GET THE FUCK OFF OF THIS BUS, NOW! EVERYBODY! So, starting from the front, everyone got up one after the other and rushed off of the bus carrying our green army duffle bags full of our stuff. They made us rush over to what’s called the “company area”. It’s just the outside center of the four buildings we would all be living in for the next 3 and a half months. It was mainly used to workout and give instructions. It was where we were to gather together as a company for our daily directions and such. On my way walking there, everyone was basically being “shark attacked”. That means drill sergeants were yelling in people’s faces. “Hurry the fuck up, trainee!” “I’ll knock you upside your head!” Except they can’t really do that, though. Knowing I, nor anyone else would be assaulted, I just focused on getting to my section and ignored the threats and insults. My color was white, and there were four color-coded sections to choose. White was on the left side in front of yellow, blue and red were to the right of us. I get in line with the rest of my soon to be platoon. “High knees!” “Pick up your duffles! Raise them over your heads!” We pick our duffels up, and throw them down over and over again. Then they make us run upstairs show us our bay where we’ll be sleeping while making us do push ups. We lock up all of our electronics, but first, we are ordered to call our loved ones and give them a quick simple message before hanging up. “I’ve made it to Fort Jackson for basic training. I am safe. I love you, goodbye.” We all turned off our phones, put them in bags along with our civilian clothing, put our names on our items, and put them in a room. Our drill sergeants locked it.

There were four bays in total for the entire company to sleep in. Females had a bay to themselves, so all four platoon women were in the same bay. The other three each had men from 2 different platoons in our company. My platoon was “wolfpack” we had some men from “warpigs” sharing the bay with us. Together we were “WarPack” Other platoons were beast mode and … Every day of the week, wake up 0430, workout, breakfast, shower, work. We worked out all the time. Before breakfast, after breakfast. before and after lunch and dinner. Before we go to sleep, after we’d been woken up in the middle of the night, and of course whenever the drill sergeants saw an error in our uniform, or if they thought you looked funny, they wouldn’t hesitate to make you do push ups in front of everyone. We would run in the dark through the woods as a group, do crunches, pullups, push ups, jumping jacks and more. Different stretches in unison. We had camelbacks to drink water out of, and when it got cold, we were still out there with hats and gloves. We checked out our weapons in the first week. Everyone got a standard issue M4 carbine rifle, and was taught it’s basic functions. I remember they way they made us hold it when marching used to strain my bicep muscle, then one day, without me noticing, I no longer felt the soreness while holding it. We would take them apart and clean them together for hours. They would ask us if our weapons were clean, and if you said yes, they would run their finger somewhere, show us some dirt, and say “DOES THIS LOOK CLEAN? FRONT LEANING REST POSITION!” We all became very familiar with the front leaning rest position. Normal people call it the push up position, though I’m not sure how often most people do push ups.

I ended up getting pink eye somehow and was made to go to sick call. I met a girl while I was in there. She was a dark, smooth skinned black girl; pretty face nice titties, thick booty. Her name was Glover. She said something to me and I said something back. She told me I was in Charlie company and I asked her how she knew that. Turns out she was a war pig. She noticed me in the company, and even knew I was in wolfpack. I had gotten called to be checked upon, so I had to leave her, telling her I’d see her at the company. Turns out I needed to be quarantined for pink eye, so I spent a week in some building away from the company with some sick people and people with injuries from basic training. It was pretty chill. I got to sleep longer, and could shower when I wanted, plus the injured trainees offered me some of their pain prescriptions. Those bastards were getting high and eating all day, lmao. The only annoying thing was because I was considered contagious, they put me in the same room as other contagious people. One guy had a respiratory infection, and he would be coughing and shit. The injured soldiers got kind of mad at him because he used the injured people’s showers even though he’s contagious. I used their shower too, but at least I didn’t have what he had.

I get out after six days and I’m welcomed back to the company by the people I made friends with. Seemed like not much had changed, so I got a vibe like I never left. The next day, I see Glover, and she smiles and waves at me. I’m kind of naïve when it comes to signals, so I thought she just wanted to be friends. I wave back and later on while we’re cleaning the company, she comes up behind me and squeezes my ass and keeps on walking so the drill sergeants didn’t notice. As soon as she did that, I look at her, and she looks back at me smiling. In my head I go “Oh she tryna fuck!” Excited, I wait for my chance to go and squeeze her back. At some point, I also start getting flirty with this other girl in my own platoon. Her name was Harvey, a tannish light skinned black chick. Her voice sounded either a little nerdy or sheltered, like she lived in her moms house with siblings and joining the army was the first time she had to do anything too hard. She was the weakest in our platoon. She couldn’t even do one push up, but I liked her. She was bubbly and had a cute face. I would later get in, and escape trouble three times for being involved with these females, as we were forbidden from fraternizing with each other. Not like that stopped anybody, though. I heard some people were fucking in the laundry room, and there were rumors that a drill sergeant was fucking a trainee. There were some pretty fine females in Basic Training, couple ugly ones, too. But the longer training went on, the sexier everyone got. The main reasons for this is because no one was watching porn, everyone was working out and eating healthy. Hormones were rising, we were getting to know each other, fat people were losing weight, skinny people were gaining muscle, and nobody had any contact with their boyfriends or girlfriends. What happens in basic stays in basic.

Among all this, I ended up getting into a fight with an African dude named Fon. Fon slept in the bunk next to me, and we didn’t have problems until one night, not too long after lights out, I felt something squirt into my hands while I had them stretched above my head trying to sleep. I look at my hands and start to get angry in disbelief at this sticky white fluid in my hand, so I get my flashlight to investigate further, and relax upon recognizing it was hand lotion. Someone pulled a harmless prank on me. I didn’t want to go wash my hands, or rub it into my skin, though, so I quickly wiped it onto the foot of Fon’s bed. Surprisingly, Fon felt this movement, and realized I was the one who made it. He said in a confused voice, “What’s going on? Did you wipe something on my bed?” I give no reply and pretend to be sleep. I hear him rustle and get up to look. He gives a dissaproving groan, and snatches my blanket off of me to try and clean it off. This enrages me, and I get confront him by yanking the blanket back. This causes us to grapple each other, knocking us against the bunk beds. We end up on the floor, and he is on top of me trying to choke me out. I’m scratching his face trying to stick my thumbs into his eyes, but before I am succesful, people hear us fighting, put their flashlights on us and break us up. We chill out and go to sleep.

I don’t feel good about the outcome of the fight because I feel like I lost, and I wanted a rematch, but I wasn’t gonna just start fighting him for no reason. I needed a reason to fight him again, like witnessing him disrespecting me. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long. After breakfast I come back into the bay to hear Fon talking to lil bro about how next time he needs to protect me because next time i’m going to “Feel these muscles”. I come up from behind him like “I’m gonna what!?” He responds “These muscles, next time we fight you gonna feel these muscles” So I tell him “Bitch you must be crazy, i’ll bloody your fucking face” so he replies “Oh maybe you wanna feels these muscles right now” and he pushes me. I look at him dead in the eyes, and throw the quickest right straight directly to his jaw. It must’ve been pretty jarring to get hit so quick, hard, and unexpectedly. After taking the hit, he responds with a right hook, which I dodge and send a two piece to his abdomen. He then grapples me, and I avoid his head and joint locks, so he tackles me to the ground, and he’s on top of me again like last time. I keep his hands from my neck this time, and i’m punching up, blocking slugs. Once again we are broken up by those around us, but I feel victorious in the fight. I did as I said I would. Fon was bleeding. I yelled at him “What the fuck I say? I told you I’d bloody your fuckin face. Look at me, am I bleeding? No!” Fon looked in the mirror and gave no response. Surprisingly, the drill sergeants either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Our fight wasn’t the only one, but luckily, no one snitched on anyone. Though there was a lot of stories.

Between the time frame of me and Fon’s fight, our class’ graduation, and the start of holiday block leave, a lot of shit happened. Harvey almost got us both in trouble because people saw her touching my dick under the table at chow hall while we were eating dinner, Glover out shot me at the range, we marched for 4 and a half hours with gear on our backs and slept in the freezing cold woods during the forge, and other things I may forget to mention. When it was time to take leave I almost missed my flight back home. In the end, though, it all worked out. My mom saw me at graduation, and I couple weeks later I flew home to spend the christmas holidays with family until it was time to go play army again.

Advanced Individual Training

After holiday block leave was over, I found myself on a plane to Missouri. It was time to start my Advanced Individual Training at Fort Leonard Wood, also known as “fort lost in the woods”, because the base isn’t close to any real city or civilization outside of itself. I was bussed from the airport, to a building that was being used as a point of reception for military members. There were signs indicating were members different types of MOS were supposed to wait. I was 74D, and I saw my section, but there were 3 different types of sub-categories, and I didn’t know which one I belonged to. I tried asking the sergeants that were signing us in, and they just told me to go to the 74D areas and figure it out. My orders didn’t specify where I’d be staying, or which company I was joining, nor who I was to report to. Basically, I was alone in a new instillation which I knew nothing about, and no one around me knew details of where I was to go.

I asked people around me for information and found out that everyone coming from holiday leave in this building is waiting for a bus to take them to their dorm buildings. Busses for one sub section of 74D comes and I am unsure of if I should take it, or wait for a different section. I look at some black people get on the bus and think “Fuck it, that’s the bus imma be on”. While riding with them, I start asking questions. I learn that they’ve been at this base for some time already, and know that this is the bus that they are supposed to be on, and know that they are being taken to their dorms. How convienient for them. We get off the bus with all of our bags and enter the front of a building. I see a reception area with no one present, and I notice everyone is going up some side stairs, so I follow them. Some climb the stairs higher, but many were entering the hall on the second floor, so I decided to go to the second floor as well. I ended up looking stupid as everyone went to their rooms, and I was the only one in the hallway not knowing what to do.

A couple short minutes go by, and i’m approached by a bald white guy, and recognize him as a staff sergeant. I believe his name was SSG Ray. I go to parade rest, and explain to him my situation. He nonchalantly says we should get me recieved into the building, and then makes some kind of joke that I can’t remember, but I did utter a confused laugh. It was surprising that he was being humourous to me. All of the sergeants in basic acted like they hated my guts, and would sprew profanitites at anyone not following orders and etiquette like a robot. He explained the basic rules: Chow times, day room activities, training schedules, prohibitations, and things like that. He then put me in a room with one other person at the time, and said I could get breakfast in the morning if I so desired. I noticed immediately that AIT was going to be much more relax than basic. We could keep our phones and use them while in our rooms at night, and go do as we pleased within the base on the weekends. Instead of a big bay room to sleep in, we were in 3-person college style rooms.

The most difficult thing for me in AIT was the physical fitness tests. I had barely passed my running test in basic, and I had not kept up my level of fitness on block leave, nor throughout AIT. The mandatory PT in AIT was much more lax, as we barely ran, and when we did it wasn’t very intense or lenghty. The second most difficult thing was staying awake during classes. I was notoriously very sleepy in class even if I had adequate sleep time beforehand. The infromation was just so boring. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, of course. There were people nodding their heads with nearly closed eyelids, and others who had to stand up in class, so as not to fall asleep. I tried holding my breath to stay awake, among other tactics. I came to Leaonard Wood in the winter, so we had snow, and I got into a few snowball fights in the street. I saw lots of people slip and fall in the most hilarious of ways. One day I saw someone running just to slip, fall, and slide into another person carrying groceries, effectively drop kicking them, sending their bags flying in the air,and their bodies crashing into the icy ground. I had also been dropkicked before, though not while carrying anything. The iced up sidewalk was hilly at times, allowing me and my friends to ski down the hill with our army boots. I found it ridiculous that I could be walking forward normally, but somehow without warning, slip and fall backwards, landing on my ass all in half a second.

The day room on my floor had a flatscreen tv that the whole floor had to share. With 30 rooms having a max of 3 people in each, it’s surprising that this wasn’t a problem. I bought a mobile wifi device from the PX that allowed me to use Netflix. I introduced a lot of people to Death Note, the anime. We would watch that at night sometimes, and I got to see how everyone gained interest in it. There was a black dude I met there who brought his PS4 with him and had the same game I had on my PS4. It was Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 4, my favorite fighting game. When I first entered the day room, he was playing against person after person, beating them bad. I joined the about 5 people spectating the match between him and another challenger. I saw this guy’s fighting style was really aggressive. He would charge at you hard and chain combos. He wouldn’t give his opponent time to think, or charge chakra, or refill his subs. I wasn’t even sure if I could beat him, but I knew I wanted to try. I said “I got next” and took him on. He was formidable, and my palms were very sweaty. I took this match very seriously, and I was able to counter his aggressive play style immediately. I could feel the tension in the room as I gained a sizable lead against him and avoided his combo traps by subbing and blocking. When he played the others, they would sub, but be wide open for attack when he quick dashed over to them, causing them to waste their subs until they were empty. I was not so foolish. On round two, I heard someone say “He might actually beat him” That I did, with half a green health bar left. I was the new king. Instant respect from my opponent as well as the other gamers in the room. “What’s your name?” “I’m Hall” I replied. Ever since then I was in with that group. We played games, watched anime, listened to music from someone’s speaker everytime we were in the day room. Our class became the cool class.

Unfortunately, when it came time to take an exams on the CBRN related topics we had been learning, I along with about 4 others failed the second exam. This meant that we would be “held back” and we had to switch to the class right behind us for retraining, while our original class graduated before us by about 3 weeks. I can only remember one philapino looking girl named Camacho who was held back with me. I was surprised that she was, because you figure her being asian and all… But then again I was just assuming she was asian. Camacho and I, along with some others, became holdovers, which are just people who stay at their temporary duty assignment until it is appropriate for them to advance to their more permanent assignments. Because we were now in bravo class, there were some things that bravo did that we had already done. We mainly just focused on studying because we were determined not to fail the exams again. Good news, next time we took it, all except one of us holdovers passed. Don’t know what happened to the flunkie.

After the exams were over, it was smoothish sailing the rest of the way. We just had to get through business as usual, and collect our PCS orders. We were given the illusion of choice. You could choose 3 locations abroad to be stationed, and 3 locations stateside. The ultimate deciding factor of where you go is dictated by the needs of the army, but the deal was they’ll glance at your request. I put Germany first because I heard the women over ther go crazy for chocolate, then I put South Korea and something else. I chose anywhere except Texas for stateside, because who wants to explore the state they already live in? After putting in our preferences the concern of mine was the PT test. I had taken a PT test in my last class already, and I failed my run. I pass everything except my run everytime. Nowadays my cardio is much better, and I go running for fun, but that’s another story. Camacho was concerned for herself as well, but I knew the females had it much easier. On the run, if you’re a female, it seems like you just have to not walk, and you’ll pass. I think her real struggle was push-ups. She needed to do 13 in 2 minuites to pass. For comparison, I needed to do 42 in two minutes to pass, and that was no biggie.

When it came down to it, I had a random stroke of luck. This new class I was in meant that I had different sergeants watching over us. There was this laid back black sergeant. I forget his name, but he was the real MVP. On the day we had a PT test, he was my grader. We were to do push ups, sit ups, and run around some buildings for 3 laps, which came out to about two miles in total. After everyone was finished and graded for their push ups and sit ups, all those taking the test were to line up at one point, and take off together. The sergeants grading us blew a whistle, and we were off. People dispersed as the running went on, and after making the first lap, I saw a digital sign at the finish line that displayed the time since the whistle was blown. I had two more laps to finish, and I knew my time had to be 15:54 or lower. By the time I finished my second lap, the time read somewhere at 12, and I thought “shit, i’m about to fail”. I try to muster up a quicker pace, but to no avail. I can only watch in resentment as the clock passes 16:49 as I cross the finish line. Feeling a little down, and wondering what’s next, the laid back SSG, my grader, comes up to me. It looked as though he wasn’t paying attention to the run times like some of the other sergeants, and had just finished joking around with someone. He says “Ok, Hall, what’d you run?” A spark shines in my eye, and I respond while breathing heavily, “15:45, sergeant. *pant* Is that passing?” He shrugged his shoulders and muttered “Uhn-uhn” meaning (I dunno), but I knew. I knew I was getting my ass out of TRADOC and on to a duty station

Nothing was standing in my way now. The universe gave me a chance to be sneaky, and I took it. There’s no harm in it anyway. So after I graduated AIT, I was considered a full fledge soldier. Camacho had passed her test as well. We were given our PCS orders, and Camacho and I both had Camp Humphreys, South Korea. We were in the same boat. All we did was live as holdovers, helping out others who were going through the training we did. We were treated as drill sergeants by the other recruits who didn’t know any better. It was pretty funny. I was chill and didn’t let that power go to my head, but looking back, I kinda wish I did. Eventually it was time to bus and fly out. On my last day in Leonard Wood, I took a picture of my last breakfast. Eggs, bacon hashbrown, french toast sticks, cereal, oatmeal, and a banana.

USAG Humphreys

South Korea was a blast. It was my first time outside of the united states, and I was beyond excited. I flew out of Missouri with Camacho, and we met this thick black chick at the san francisco airport. She was a different MOS headed to Camp Humphreys too, so we all ended up travelling together. We got some food, and boarded our 12 hour flight to asia. Camacho, the thick black chick, and I landed at Incheon international airport, picked up our bags, and immediately went to get some food. We noticed everything was in a different language, and a lot of the workers there only spoke to us in broken English. We had to point to the things we wanted from the menu. We ate some Korean dishes with noodles, but we also saw american chain restaurants like McDonalds and KFC. The menus there were different from in the states, having additional items, and excluding some less popular ones. I went to an ATM and exchanged the rough equivelent of $30, giving me 30,000 Won. There was a bus waiting for the arrival of troops to take us all to Camp Humphreys. We get on, and took 2 hour drive to camp. There was a reception there as well that lasted about a week, which was for us to get all of our paperwork sorted out, and get assigned to our companies. I was 23rd CBRN Battalion, 4th company, 3rd platoon for 2 and a half years. My first PLT Sergeant was SFC Matthew Purser. 1st SGT Djiuom was acting 1st SGT, who was actually a SFC at the time. I heard the actual 1st SGT had gotten into somewhat serious trouble, and was removed.

It was during my time in this unit that I started to learn that the army was nothing like I had imagined it to be. There was a large number of assholes and idiots in the organization, and some people fell under both categories. There was favoratism, crime, monotony, laziness, and misunderstading among the unit. For the most part, we all kind of just got by doing what we were supposed to do. We would train when we were supposed to train, we’d go to the range to shoot when it was time to, and we’d workout almost every weekday. We had motorpool mondays where our main tasks were to make sure the same equipment was running properly, and to make sure our trucks are dispached. When weren’t doing that, our main concern was how to kill time, since we didn’t have anything to do, but at the same time needed to look busy. Many of us couldn’t understand why we couldn’t be let off of work after lunch if we had nothing important to do. Instead, they would make us set up some half assed training to make us look productive. We would go over 9line med evac for the 50th time, or screw around with JCADs. Don’t get me wrong, there were fun times too. Sometimes we had what’s called a KATUSA trip. See, the Korean government works in coordination with ours, and the ROK army enlists a certain amount of it’s eligible korean soldiers to live and work with us americans in the same platoons and dorm building spaces. These Korean soldiers are known as KATUSAs, which stands for Korean Augmented To United States Army. Katusa trips were when our platoon would take a day off to leave base and go somewhere together in the country of Korea with the Katusas acting as our guides. We went to famous temples, hiked up hills in Seoul, visited the demilitarized zone and spied on North Korean soldiers, things like that. We also had many four day weekends to keep morale up, and had halfdays and sports games. We also goofed tf around a lot when we had downtime.

I got a fair amount of tail while I was in Korea. I’ve already made a post about losing my russian virginity while I was in Busan, but the first pussy I slid into since coming to Korea was that thick ass black girl that Camacho and I flew in with. I texted her one day after I had been in a sex shop in the ville and she said something about a dildo, then I said why you need that when I’m around, and she said I need both. After that I had her come over to my barracks, and we fucked. I think she had a boyfriend too, but he wasn’t around. It really be like that. There was this Korean woman I started texting through facebook, and I traveled to Seoul were she lived and had lusty unprotected sex with her. She was really nice and really kinky. She showed me her swallowing my kids, and she got excited when I sucked on her tits while she spoke to her dad in Korean. She ordered me food, and paid for my train ticket and taxi back to pyeongtaek. I came in her, got dressed and left. I fucked an MP, a military policewoman. I think her name was Brianna. She had light skin, and long hair. I think she was mixed with white and hispanic. I fucked this short black girl, and I still have her nudes, but she was a crazy bitch. I forget her name, but I called her “pizza” to my friends because she showed up at my dorm one day just like delivery pizza. I also had sex with prostitutes often enough while I was there. Prostitution is illegal in South Korea, but is it really? Red light districts and naughty massage parlors are not hard to find. I’ve seen police stations right in front of the entrance to streets with girls in lingere behind glass windows beckoning men to come in every day and night. Our chain of command warns us to stay away from these areas, but they go to them too. There were at least 2 naughty massage parlors in the ville right outside of Camp Humphrey’s walk-in gate. Soldiers would go inside all of the time to fuck and get sucked off and then come right back on base.

I had 3 different roommates while I was at Humphreys, and I never changed rooms, buildings, or platoons. I was room 413B in building 6005. My first roommate was SPC Kincaid, a chill, buff 5’8 black dude that became a SGT before he PCSed, leaving me to myself for a bit. The next person was a white guy. We were cool with eachother, and he was pretty savage like me, but he became a SGT too, and also changed rooms to go be with his buddies. The last roommate I had, who was my favorite, was Eugene Noh. He’s a Korean American that speaks Korean almost fluently. A chill party type of guy from California. Him and I shared a lot of stories, we put each other on to things, we played video games together, got drunk together, we both had girls in our rooms we were smashing, it was good times. I saw a lot and made a lot of friendships and memories. Two of those friends I had, unfortunately died. Crosswhite, a white boy I used to freestyle with, died in a car crash about a week after he got kicked out of the army. Martinez, a junky, but down ass mexican dude I got into fun trouble with, had drowned in a water training accident about a month after I left the military. Both young men no older than 23, and we weren’t even in a combat zone. I finished my contract, and got a free flight back to Austin Texas where I live now. SSG McPhearson drove me to Incheon airport and said goodbye. After all that time, I could hardly believe that I was actually going to leave the army behind for good. Now I have an entirely different struggle to make my way through. I have to figure out how to get in control of my life, and how to maintain what I obtain. As far as i’m concerned, I’m starting from ground zero. Though, I am unsure, I am not afraid.

Thank you for reading this long and complicated story of my military experience. It is not complete. I still edit this story when I remember things spontaneously. I hope you found this entertaining and can perhaps find some similarities if you have served in the army. You know what they say… Once a soldier, always a soldier.