During Army Basic Training, our company faced a 12-mile forced march in the sub-freezing conditions of a Fort Leonard Wood winter. In the week prior to the actual event, our drill sergeants had constantly reminded us that we recruits would be suffering pain not only from the march itself, but also from the residual pain for days to follow. The entire company was dreading it. Believe me; I was anxious about it myself. But whenever you least expect it, fate often has a nice way of intervening on your behalf. Thanks to my Marine brethren, I wouldn’t be making that march. It wouldn’t be the drill sergeants who would have the last laugh.
Shortly after the weekly training schedule was posted, ever recruit learned about the planned 12-mile forced road march scheduled for the end of the week. Rumors spread quickly. Some learned from reading the schedule, while others learned from word-of-mouth. Either way, it didn’t take long for the news of the road march to spread. The drill sergeants reveled in doing things like this. They would see whether or not we were paying attention to detail by seeing how long information would take to circulate.
By the second or third week of Army Basic Combat Training (BCT), or “basic” as we called it, most recruits had learned how to read the posted training schedule, and how to interpret and understand the details of the upcoming training week. Then, once we figured out how to decipher the logic, we could look ahead to see if any unpleasant tasks loomed in our immediate future. Even if an unpleasant activity was scheduled, it was somehow more bearable knowing about it beforehand and thus, being able to mentally prepare for it.
One morning after the training schedule had been posted; we recruits figured out that a 12-mile forced road march was scheduled for the upcoming Friday. Not to mention that all week long, the DIs had found ways to throw the upcoming misery in our faces. The DIs delighted in the fact that a dark cloud of dread had begun to hang over and permeate the entire company. The joke seemed to be on us recruits.
This dreaded march was also scheduled on a day that was forecasted to be bitterly cold. Hell, the temperature at Fort Leonard Wood during “basic” had rarely risen above zero degrees the entire time we had been in training. A sub-zero forced march wasn’t something anyone really looked forward to. I suspected even the DIs themselves didn’t want to road march in those weather conditions. In their misery, they would take it out on us. Miserable drill sergeants: miserable recruits. The first law a recruit learns of the big green fighting machine.
The march was scheduled for late afternoon. At that morning’s formation, Sgt Beebe asked whether or not we had made travel arrangements for our upcoming Christmas leave. It turned out that a handful of recruits still needed to make their formal travel plans. I happened to be included in that handful.
Sgt Beebe called our little group together with instructions about what we needed to do. Plus he made it perfectly clear that we needed to hurry back in order to NOT miss the looming road march. Sgt Beebe called us stragglers a cab, loaded us into it, and told the driver the situation. Again, Sgt Beebe demanded that we get going so that we could hurry back for the upcoming road march. As the cab started to pull away, he warned us that our task shouldn’t take more than an hour at most.
As our cab was about to pull onto the parking lot of the travel services building, two crowded Marine Corps buses were about to pull in front of us. If they managed to get in front of us, the Marines inside would probably get in line ahead of us. This would cause us a huge delay. As one of the other recruits leaned forward to alert the driver to speed up, he bellowed, “Hurry up, or those buses will get ahead…” I quickly put my hand over his mouth to shut him up, pulled him back into his seat and said, “Exactly!” The two Marine Corps buses beat us into the parking lot. Dang it; we would have to endure a long wait to purchase our tickets.
Because the Marines beat us into the building, we were forced to wait while 140 Marines conducted their travel plans. Processing travel orders for 140 men took quite a bit of time. Meanwhile, we stragglers were able to stay in a warm calm environment. We also sat and read magazines, drank soda from a machine, and listened to the music piped into the lobby. These were things we couldn’t do back in the training area.
The actual transaction time for four men to get travel orders took approximately twenty minutes to complete. However, waiting for the 140 Marines bought us a little over three hours, plus the travel time it took us to get back to the barracks.
Because we took so long at travel services, we of course ended up missing the road march. Sgt Beebe was pissed. He began interrogating us about why we had purposely defied his orders. We all took turns explaining what had happened, but Sgt Beebe smelled a rat.
It was obvious that Sgt Beebe didn’t believe us. He was going to figure out any flaw in our story. He simply placed a call to the travel services office to corroborate the story of the bus load of Marines. Someone at travel services verified that, indeed, a busload of Marines had been processed that afternoon. Sgt Beebe wasn’t sure what was going on, but the look on his face told me he was going to find a way to make us pay for missing the road march. I mentally braced for whatever was in store for us.
During Sgt Beebe’s searing lecture in punctuality, in a voice muted as one would speak when they are pondering out loud, he mentioned that he didn’t have any transportation to get us out to the march. Rats! (hee hee) So to make us pay for our tardiness, he told us that he was tasking us with cleaning battalion headquarters. He was going to punish us by making us janitors for an evening. It’s not even close; a warm janitor beats a tired, cold, marcher any day of the week!
We four that cleaned battalion HQ had a good time playing janitor. Sgt Beebe hadn’t bothered to specify any deadline for cleaning battalion HQ, so we took our sweet time. We were away from the yelling DIs. We were in a well-heated building (we wouldn’t want the commander to feel cold now would we?). We even managed to sit and relax for a bit. During high school I’d been a janitor in my uncle’s business. This was a piece of cake.
The job actually took us about an hour to complete. For the next hour we sat around and chatted about this-and-that. But while the other recruits were relaxing, chatting away, I was curious about what went on in that building and began to play Curious George.
One of the first things I did was examine what the battalion commander’s desk contained. He had several piles of papers lying on the desk. I slowly began cautiously sorting through the one closest to me. About half way down in the stack of papers was a memo from the post commander. It rescinded the authorization that allowed DIs to wear colored acorns on their DI hats. These were worn by the drill sergeants of the cycle; that is the previous training cycle. I took a quick mental note and looked further into the pile. Most of the papers meant nothing to my untrained eyes. But the fact that DIs would no longer be authorized to wear their acorns was going to serve me well in the near future.
Eventually we made it back to the barracks where a company of frozen, tired and grumpy recruits were just returning from their frozen trek across the post. These guys reminded me of pictures of the Marines gutting it out at the Chosin reservoir. I know I probably should have felt somewhat guilty about missing the march that my fellow recruits were forced to endure. However, I thought to myself, “If the DIs wouldn’t have pushed it in our faces, I may feel bad.” To me, ditching the road march was a poke in the eyes of the DIs who pushed it our faces and not a dig at my fellow recruits. I also realized that I was going to be suffering more in Airborne and Special Forces training than these other recruits, so I went and relaxed while the opportunity existed.
I also suspected that Sgt Beebe felt that we had missed that march on purpose. He knew me and I believe he knew this was something I would do. But he couldn’t prove that we had done anything purposely. After missing that road march, Sgt Beebe would often throw me a piercing stare every time he came near me. It didn’t matter though; we would be graduating soon, and he and I would be a thousand mile apart.
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pete padilla petepadilla.com