University of Life Writing Center

By Amber Chisholm

There are a lot of things I wish I had known before going to boot camp. I can’t
complain, I made it through okay, but there are a few details about how things work
that I wish my recruiter would of mentioned.

Don’t Stand Out
“Shut up! Now, when I say, you are going to fly off this bus and go stand on the
painted dots. Place your bags gently to your left without making a single sound. And
if I hear one single person open their trap, you’ll be on you face doing pushups ‘til
morning… MOVE!” Everyone frantically grabs their things and stampedes off the bus.
I have my eyes set on a dot, I hustle over to it, nope, someone took it. Now that
one, no, taken. The dots are filling up. Quicker this time, I took two steps to my left
and jumped on a dot. Finally, a dot that is mine, I have a spot, I don’t stand out.
The trainees were quiet; we all stood in silence waiting for our next instruction. My
eyes are forward watching the training instructors or T.I.’s for short, swarm around us
like piranhas. One instructor approaches the boy in front of me. As I watch what is
going to happen with him I feel hot breath on my neck. A shrill voice starts to scream
in my ear making me flinch from the volume. “Did or did not Sergeant Horton give
you distinct instructions to put your damn bag on the ground.” It took me a minute
to realize that I was still clenching my bag in my left hand. I tried to let go of the
handles before she had to warn me again. Too late. “Put your bag down goofy! Are
you retarded or something? Did you ride the short bus to school?” I immediately let
go of my bag and it crashed to the ground. “Pick it up!” I bent down and grabbed
my bag. “This time, put your bag down without waking up the whole damn base!” I
placed my bag ever so gently next to my left foot, as if inside contained a transplant
organ. It didn’t make a sound. “Pick it up!” I snatched up my bag. “Drop it!” I
placed it down again. “Pick it up! Drop it! Pick it up! Drop it!” This continued over
a dozen times. My ear was damp with the saliva that shot out of her mouth as she
screamed. “You are the dumbest thing I’ve seen yet,” she said coldly.
She started to walk away and things all around seemed to be settling down. The
piranhas stopped swarming the crowd and started to line up in the front, and she
went to go join them. But just before she turned to leave she kicked my bag. It
moved about a foot. All of sudden a little song began to sing. “I love, a-hoo-hoo,
honey, oh yes I do, a-hoo-hoo!” My heart sank. Did she hear it? She stopped dead
in her tracks and turned back to me slowly. “What the hell was that?” Yup, she heard
it. Not only did she hear it, but so did another T.I., who immediately ran over to
find out what that little song was all about. They grabbed my bag from the ground,
unzipped it, and dumped the contents at my feet.
There it was, a little yellow Winnie the Pooh doll my friend had given me as
I boarded my plane in Nebraska. Not the typical gift given for someone leaving
for Boot Camp, but I appreciated the gift and even thought it was kind of cute. I
remember wondering on the plane what I was going to do with it once I got there. I
think I just figured they’d let me put it in some kind of storage until my training was
complete.
A third and fourth training instructor approached the scene. One of them picked
up the bear and raised it to my face. His face was in mine; his hat was touching my
forehead. His breath smelled like cigarette smoke. Again, a couple more T.I.’s joined
the party. I was surrounded from all sides. The only thing I wanted to do was to
blend into the crowd and not stand out. Now here I stood with every single training
instructor around me, screaming at me from all sides.
“Who the hell brings a doll to basic training?” After realizing that I was supposed
to answer him, I tried to mutter something. Before I could explain where the doll
180 The Art & Craft of Writing came from he cut me off with more insults. The other seven instructors were yelling
and asking me to explain the presence of the bear. The noise was unbearable.
I heard the voice on my right say, “well, answer me damn it!”
I looked at him. “I didn’t hear what you asked.” I squeaked out.
“Eyes forward! Head straight! You look at me in the face ever again, I will drop
kick you in the throat! Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” I said quietly.
“What did you say, maggot?”
“Yes sir!” I shouted.
“You are joining the United States Military!” He grabbed the Winnie the Pooh doll
ad held it to my face, “This is not a place for dolls! To me, this is a chew toy!” And
with that he raised the stuffed animal to his mouth and bit the head off my Winnie
the Pooh doll! The body dropped to my feet. He took the head and threw it against
the wall. My heart was pounding like a drum; I wondered what they were going to
do next.
Relief swept over my body as I watched the pack of hyenas turn and leave me.
With all of their backs to me I thought maybe I could turn and run. I pictured myself
getting a good head start before they saw me and started to chase me down. I
decided against it due to the fact that I couldn’t even feel my legs at that moment.
Plus, there probably would be some type of sniper in a tower waiting to pick me
off. My mind wandered away and I pictured myself running into the dark open field.
The other trainees see me and start cheering me on. I ran like a jaguar toward
the barbed wire fence just as the sniper saw me and took aim… my movie scene
daydream stopped abruptly as a large black man in front started to speak. “Welcome
to Lackland maggots! Tomorrow will be your first day of the eight week training.”
I gazed down and looked at the contents of my bag all around me. I gave a sigh,
excepting my fate for the next eight weeks. “Fifteen minutes down, eight weeks to
go.”
Following the “Simple Rules”
For me, the hardest thing about basic training is trying to stay awake. A lot of
time is spent in the classroom learning ranks, pay-grades, field tactics, ceremony
instructions, customs and courtesies, ect. It’s hard to sit there and watch a powerpoint
lecture after getting four or five hours of sleep. This particular day was
especially tiring because throughout the night before the instructors went around
to all the dorms waking up all the flights in the middle of the night. They would
storm in and rip open our lockers, looking for unauthorized items. They would whip
through the aisles like a destructive tornado, flipping over mattress after mattress and
then yell at us that our bed wasn’t made.
Today in class we were becoming oriented to the chain of command, learning how
to report a problem to your immediate supervisor and then continue up the ladder
until the problem was solved. I had gotten lucky and was privileged to be sitting by
my only friend in my entire flight, trainee Escobar. We always tried to sit together
but when you march into class your instructor will tell you to “sit-left” or “sit-right”, so
Escobar and I were always split up because they knew we were somewhat friends.
At the beginning of every lecture they remind us of the “simple rules”. One of
which is to walk to the back of the classroom and stand there if you get to tired
15: Student Papers 181
sitting there. Standing on your tired legs is well worth the pain compared to what
happens to you if you get caught sleeping. I ‘m a big fan of standing in the back
even though most trainees will risk fighting off the sleep and stay in their comfortable
chairs.
During the lecture I was trying to take notes because we are tested on the material
we are taught. I looked caddy-corner to my right and I saw a member of our brother
flight struggling to stay awake. I gave Escobar an elbow and nodded for her to look
at him doing the jello neck head bob. His eyelids would slowly close and then his
head would start to sway. He’d always get to a certain point and then snap awake
and sit straight up like nothing had happened. Escobar and I watched him the entire
class, but making it look like we were still paying attention to the lecture.
We were getting a little worried about this trainee because now his head is
completely dropped, chin to chest and he is totally asleep. We looked around the
room to see which T.I. was going to notice him first and bust him. As we looked
back at the trainee his body started to slump forward. His face was headed straight
towards the desktop where his hand was still holding the pencil he used to take notes.
His head gained speed and the top half of his body was going down, down, down.
The pencil he was holding perpendicular to his desk went straight through his eye.
“AHHH!” He immediately stood up and started flailing his arms. Just as he reached
his arm up to pull out the pencil, a training instructor ran from the back of the
classroom and tackled him to the ground, pinning the trainee’s arms to his chest. ]
“Stay calm! Do not touch your eye!” The T.I. yelled to him.
The trainee wasn’t listening to any type of instruction. He was screaming over and
over, “Get it out! Get it out!” He started going into shock, turning pale and his body
started shaking. By now every trainee in the room was standing, some huddled right
over the victim. Escobar and I leaned left and then right, struggling to see what was
going on. The trainee was on the floor, three instructors were now on top of him,
holding his arms and legs. Blood trickled down his face like tears. His body stopped
moving. He had passed out and was lying limp.
The medical team arrived on the scene. They came in screaming for everyone to
“get back, get out of the way!” They took out a styrophone paper cup and punched a
small hole in the bottom of it. Then they proceeded to slip the cup over the pencil so
the part you drink out of was circling his eye socket. They taped the cup to his head
to stabilize the pencil. Another medic took his vital signs. They talked about using
to “salts” to wake him up, but one medic was very persistent to keep him passed out.
The team swept up his body and laid him on the stretcher. Before we realized it, they
were rolling him out of the classroom and he was gone.
The room was silent. We were all trying to comprehend what had just happened.
A few trainees started asking each other how the pencil got into his eye. One kid
behind me asked if the T.I. that ran from the back of the class had stabbed him with
it.
“Sit down! Shut-up! Sit down!” A T.I barked. “This is why we stand in the back if
you are feeling tired!” Trainee Guice demonstrated what could happen when we don’t
pay attention to details. If you are falling asleep, you stand your ass up in the back!
Understand?”
“Yes sir!” The trainee’s stated in unison. The teacher of the class took his position
once again with the dreaded power point remote control in his hand. All the trainees sat straight up in their chairs, terrified they would fall asleep.
Escobar leaned over to me and whispered, “Flick me if I start to fall asleep.”
“Ditto.”

Inspections
Basic Training is very stressful. It seems stupid now, looking back at the things
that caused me so much stress, but at the time, my stress levels were through the
roof. Inspections were the main cause of everyone’s stress. Every day you are given
time to work on your wall locker and clothing drawer, and in this time everyone is
frantically clipping strings off uniforms, ironing perfect creases, folding their brown tshirts
into a perfect six inch square. Just when you have everything perfect, all your
buttons are buttoned and the edges of your folded underwear are completely flush,
(and you know it’s flush because you used tweezers to pull all the edges straight.)
Just then, a random T.I. will bust into your dorm and pull everything out of your
wall locker and chuck it on the floor. All you want to do is get in the fetal position
and cry, but there’s no time for that, you must get everything perfect again because
clothing inspection is tomorrow. My recommendation is to find a friend and help each
other out. That way, if disaster strikes and it’s your locker that got hit my hurricane
Sergeant Kerns, then you have backup to clean up the destruction zone.
Knowing your Learning Materials
Now there are many things you can do to prepare for boot camp. You can start
running, practice sit-ups and push-ups, lift weights, you can teach your body to go
to sleep and wake up early. However, the one thing you cannot prepare for is the
food. I wouldn’t recommend practicing being hungry. But that’s what you are for the
first six weeks, hungry all the time. I’ve ever eaten foods so bland in taste, but still
wanting to devour it all. The procedure for the chow hall is as follows: Your flight,
along with every other flight in the squadron will wait in formation as your “chow
runner” will go report to the dining supervisor that their flight is prepared to enter the
dining facility.
Our chow runner was my good friend Escobar. She always did a very efficient job
of getting in among the first chow runners to report, holding our place in line to eat in
the order she reported. Then you wait… and wait… and wait. Entire flights will be in
and out and your flight is still standing at attention. Needless to say, and entire flight
can get in and out in 12 minutes if needed, but standing there outside the chow hall,
at times, felt like days. Finally Escobar will realize its our turn to go, so she yells.
“Flight, 206B, prepare to enter the dining facility! Element one, forward march!” The
first line of girls start to march through the door Escobar is holding for them. Finally,
inside you can smell the dehydrated powdered eggs being fried up, yum. You stand
head to toe in a line up against the wall.
Now comes the tricky part- walking in front of the T.I. to grab your tray. You
have to march all by yourself up to him and ask permission to eat. Then when he
has granted you permission, you do an about-face turn and walk away. If your form
was bad he will not hesitate to send you out of the chow hall, which means no food.
Early on in training, when non of us march very well, dismissal happened a lot.
I poke my head out of the line about two inches, just to see how many girls are
ahead of me. Two. The trainee in front of me has a lot of hair and her ponytail is hitting me in the face. Her hair doesn’t smell that great either. But I must keep my
toes touching the back of her heals. All of a sudden she starts to march forward, “I’m
next.” I thought nervously. I listen to the T.I. give her permission to eat as I shimmy
up to the red line painted on the floor. When she has been given permission, that is
my queue to go. I march forward three steps, take a right turn and stop just in front
of my T.I. My steps were a little too big and I was a little too close to him.
“You in love with me or somethin’ cover-girl?” He asked.
“Cover-girl” was the nickname he gave me around week two. For some reason or
another, one day he started asking me if I thought I was pretty. Every time I would
answer “No sir!” He would reply with, “Yes you do. You think you’re cute. Well let
me tell you, your not! You’re the ugliest girl in the flight. You make me want to puke
just looking at you!” Then he would pretend to dry heave.
“Get away from me!” He shouted. I took two baby steps back. “What the hell is
it that you want cover-girl?” As if he has no idea I was about to ask for permission to
eat.
“Sir, Trainee Chisholm reports as ordered, permission to eat Sir!” I said from
memory just as I had done three times a day for week upon week.
“Answer me right and you can eat.” He stated coy lee.
“Oh crap.” I thought. “He’s going to ask me something from the manual. Please
ask me something I know, please, please, please let me eat.” I started getting
nervous as he stood there thinking up a question.
“Who is the 737th training group commander? What’s the bastard’s full name? Tell
me cover-girl, what’s his name?” He ordered.
My mind started to race. I knew the answer but my mind drew a blank and I
couldn’t remember. “Oh no, who is it, Blackburn or Cribb? I know this! Cribb, no,
Blackburn, or is it Colonel Huhn?”
“Well, cover-girl, who is it? Hurry up damnit!” He barked in my face.
“Sir, trainee Chisholm reports as ordered, Chief Master Sergeant Billy G. Blackburn,
Sir!” I said aloud with no confidence whatsoever.
“Wrong!” He shouted, almost happy that I was incorrect. “The 737th training
group commander is Lieutenant Colonel David Warren Cribb.” He leaned in close to
my face and yelled, “Now get out of my chow hall!”
And with that I marched at attention away from him, and back towards the door
that I had just came in. Even as I walked away, he insulted me further by shouting,
“Cover-girl, you look like a chicken when you march!” I was on the brink of tears I
didn’t get to eat, but I was also relieved to finally get out of the spot light. I got to go
back outside, were many of the girls were already done with their three minute meal,
and blend in with the crowd again. I was so mad that I had answered that question
wrong. I knew the answer but I choked under the pressure.
Escobar was soon done with her meal and was out the door. She stood next to
me in formation. She tried to make me feel better by whispering, “it was pancakes
today.” Pancake breakfast was, by far, the worst breakfast. Escobar knew this and
she has listened to me complain about the pancakes form day one. The pancakes are
so bad because they’re completely stale, you can’t just shovel them in and swallow
like you do with the watery eggs or shredded hash browns. You can hardly chew
through them, so you end up swallowing large pieces whole. They get stuck in your
chest and it is a pain like no other. The only way to get the pain to subside is to flush them down with gallons of water. I decided hunger pains were better than having
the intense pressure in my chest from a pancake being clogged in my esophagus.
Yeah, I got lucky today.
Physical Conditioning
The physical aspects of basic training are not difficult at all. But I would
recommend starting to do some push-ups and sit-ups before hand. Everyday, two
hours is spent outside exercising to get in good enough shape to pass the sixth week
evaluations. There are lots of different exercises that are done, but only three that
you are tested on. A female twenty-nine years and younger was required to do 41
sit-ups in two minutes, 19 push-ups in two minutes and a two mile run in 21 minutes.
The last thing you want to do is be recycled just because you can’t pass your
physical evaluations. Being recycled means you are kicked out of your flight and you
join another flight that is two week less in training, giving you time to get in better
shape for your sixth week evaluation again. I remember a girl in our flight got sent
to us from a senior flight because she could not do her sit-ups. Then she failed again
when she did the evals with us. And again with the next flight and the next flight.
She continued to get sent from the sixth week back to the fourth week about five
times before she could finally do 41 sit-ups in two minutes. I couldn’t believe the day
in technical school, (the program you go to after boot camp to be trained for your
military job.) a friend from boot camp came up to me and said, “Did you hear about
Boemer?”
I was confused, “Who’s Boemer?” I asked.
“You know, that girl who kept getting recycled for not being able to do sit-ups?”
“Oh yeah,” I remembered quickly, “what about ‘er?”
“She graduated on Saturday.”
Here it was eleven weeks later and she was just now graduating from Basic
Training. Running, push-ups and sit-ups are not things you want to start working on
when you get down there, start getting in shape early.
Details
Every day, a lot of filler time is spent cleaning. Cleaning what you ask? Oh you’ll
clean anything and everything. From the latrines to the springs on your bunk beds,
you will clean it all. One day your T.I. will have you wax the floor: so you get out
the buffer and spend a good six hours buffing and waxing and buffing again until you
look down at the floor and it show your reflection like a crystal clear pond. Then,
early the very next morning you are instructed to take your keys from your security
locks and start scraping the wax off the entire one hundred square foot dormitory.
But that’s life at boot camp; you are to do what you’re told even though, to you,
it makes no sense whatsoever. It’s how you’re taught military bearing and how
to follow orders. What I can recommend however, is to try to get a good detail,
something you don’t mind doing. If you hate cleaning toilets, do not get on the
latrine crew. But if you like to sweep, try to get the stairs as your detail.
I was unaware of what it meant when we raised our hands for details. A lot
of things sounded okay to me but the one thing I was told before I left for Basic
Training was “Don’t raise your hand for anything!” This was confirmed when our
T.I. proposed the question. “Who likes bowling?” A few girls raised their hands. He looked at those who raised their hands and he responded with, “Good, now go clean
the toilet bowls.”
I was assigned the trash detail. My partner in crime was none other than trainee
Escobar. This is probably how Escobar and I became such good friends. Every time
the flight would leave the dorm, Escobar and I would have to sack up the trash and
run it out to the dumpster that was located a couple blocks away. We enjoyed our jog
to the dumpster six times a day; it made us feel free for those seven or eight minutes.
One particular day, our trash detail wasn’t so fun. We were both running late from
changing from our exercising gear back into our normal fatigues. I yelled to question
over to Escobar, “Got the trash?” She thought I was telling her “I got the trash.”
What ever the miscommunication was, the trash was left in the dorm and we both
fell out with the rest of the flight. When we met downstairs and were ready to jog
together to the dumpster, we realized neither of us were holding the garbage bag.
We sprinted back up the three flights of stairs and sacked up the trash as fast as we
could. By the time we got back downstairs we saw our flight starting to march off.
“What should we do with the trash?” I asked Escobar.
“Should we just take it with us to class?” She sputtered out.
“No way! You think holding a giant trash bag won’t be noticeable to Horton?” I
said. I was starting to panic as I watched the flight get smaller and smaller as they
marched down the street.
“Here, lets just throw it in the kitchen dumpster and then catch up with the flight.”
“Good idea lets go.” I agreed.
We sprinted around the corner of the squadron to the back of the chow hall and
chucked our trash in the dumpster. Just as we shut the dumpster lid we turned
around and there was a T.I. He wasn’t our T.I., but we had seen him around the
squadron and he wasn’t anyone to mess with.
“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?” He yelled.
“We, um…” I tried to explain, but there really wasn’t a good explanation.
“Do you two have permission to use this dumpster?” He demanded an answer.
Escobar tried to tell him we were in a hurry. “We didn’t have time to get all the
way to our dumpster and back before our flight left us, so we…”
“Oh, I see,” he cut her off. “So you two just thought you could take a short cut and
use this one instead of doing what your suppose to and walking your lazy ass’s all the
way to your own dumpster. Huh? Is that it?”
I jumped in again with my remarkable rebuttal of, “We um…”
“Well that’s too damn bad. Go get it.” He told us. I didn’t understand what he was
referring to. “Get what?” I thought.
“Get in that dumpster and get your bag of trash!” We hesitated for a minute, not
believing that he was actually going to make us get in the dumpster and pull our
trash back out. “Get in there!” He lunged forward a little when he said it as if he
were going to throw us in there himself. I was closest so I went first. I pulled myself
up like getting our the side of a pool, swept one leg over and jumped in feet first. I
landed in a foot of mush that consisted of all the food dumped out from the kitchen.
There were bee’s swarming around inside. Escobar was right behind me, but she was
struggling to get in. She is about six inches shorter than me so her entry into the
dumpster wasn’t as graceful. She fell on her butt after she dismounted in; her hands
went in the slop. I chucked the bag out of the dumpster and we finally managed to climb out of the cesspool. The T.I. had already left, probably laughing all the way
back to his office.
We looked down at our boots that were covered in rice and a salmon colored
liquid. We made our way to our dumpster, got rid of our garbage bag, the way we
should of done in the first place. We ran all the way to the 313th squadron, where
all the classes were held. We got yelled at by at least six instructors for not knowing
where we were supposed to be. Finally we found our flight in one of the classrooms.
As we opened the door to disrupt the class, everyone turned to look at the two
garbage girls. Sergeant Horton immediately got up and walked over to us, “Where
the hell have the two of you been? You think you can…” He paused and then took a
small step back. “What’s that smell?”
The Three Roles
There are three ways of surviving Basic Training, three different roles you can
play. One, you can be a constant victim. These trainees never seem to do anything
right. Sometimes it’s nothing they have done, it’s like they have a “kick-me” sign on
their back and they don’t know its there. I saw this lot with the trainee’s that were
slightly overweight. T.I.’s love picking on the fat kids. They are like a bunch of grown
up bully’s. We had a girl in our flight that constantly got put down because of her
weight. Sergeant Horton would make a crack about her weight every time he saw
her. “Come here Shaw, I have a question for you.” He called out to the hallway from
inside his office. He had noticed her walk passed his office door and he called her
back just to rip on her for a minute. She put her head down as she heard him call
her name, but she quickly made her way to his office door.
“Yes, Sergeant Horton, trainee Shaw reports as ordered.” She stated boldly.
“I was just wondering…” He paused and looked up towards the ceiling as if he
were really contemplating something. Then he continued. “If I were to tie a cookie
to the bumper of my car, would you chase me into traffic?” Then he roared with
laughter.
Trainee Shaw muttered, “No sir.” Sergeant Horton continued to laugh and told her
to get out of his sight.
The second role is the leadership role, the over-achievers. If you was to become
a flight leader that is great, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you are in charge of
people in the flight, you get plenty of praise for the things they do good. But the
downside to this is, that you also get punished for their mistakes. I remember our
leader, trainee Walker, going push-ups many times for something as stupid as one of
our boot laces coming untied.
This is why I bring up the third role, the “cruisers”. This is what I set out to be.
I think it is a perfect game plan to sit back, to what you’re told and learn all you
can, but let the eight weeks just pass on by. The perfect scenario would be to get
to your Basic Training graduation, and when your T.I. comes to shake your hand,
he can’t quite recall your name and has to look at your shirt to remember. Mission
Accomplished.

Basic Training is hard, but definitely not impossible. With the right preparation it
can seem almost easy. Have the frame of mind that you are going to get in and out
in eight weeks. Know that your instructors are there to break you down. The reason
behind it is, when you are built back up again, this time, you are a stronger person for enduring the trials you went through. Basic Training is completely necessary to be
a member of the United States Military, its something you just half to do. The things
taught, team work, service, integrity, and having a level of excellence in all you do,
are things you can take with you and apply to the rest of your life.

Discussion Questions:
1. Describe your overall reaction to this paper. Did you enjoy reading it? Which parts
did you enjoy most? Did you identify with the author or anyone else? Was the
information easy to follow?
2. What was the paper’s purpose? Did it succeed?
3. Who was the its audience? Did the writing style and content reach them effectively?
4. Point out five areas where places, objects or events were described with abundant
concrete details. How effectively did this allow you to visualize the scene? Could
these areas have been described more completely? Name five things that the
author did not describe in detail which you had to imagine for yourself.
5. Does the paper develop the overall story adequately? Did the author omit any
important details?
6. How did the dialogue affect your reading experience? What made it effective or
how could it be improved?