College Memoir Piece

 

Final Draft

            Joining the military and then not making it through Basic is something that most people would try to avoid ever mentioning. It’s a clear and undeniable mark of failure. More than just failing a class or getting fired from a job though, it’s failing at one of the most respected and lauded life choices a person can make in modern times.

            Oddly enough, it’s not something I avoid as much as I sometimes feel I should. Possibly because I could at least be proud I went, despite the panic I had been feeling. I also can say that at least no one who hasn’t been there could criticize my failure.

            I ultimately ended up at Basic for ten weeks. One can graduate in seven weeks for the Navy, but part of why I failed delayed everything. Three weeks in, I broke my pinkie toe when I fell going down steps in a mock ship during drills. I was cycled out of my current battalion as I needed to go on medical leave. I was sent to a group filled with those people either similarly dealing with medical issues, one person had been there for nine months as he was diagnosed with blood cancer during Basic and they couldn’t send him home till he was healthy, or those preparing to go home. I spent three weeks in that group till I was cleared to return to actual training. I was assigned a new group at the level of training I had reached before my injury, and restarted. Four days later, I hurt my knee and subsequently was sent back to medical leave. Looking at five weeks till I recovered enough to return to training and a minimum of four more weeks till I graduated, still living with all the restrictions inherent at being at Basic, I instead started the process to return home. Roughly three weeks later, I was home.

            I could discuss what Basic training was like. It certainly sticks in my memory. The exhausting first forty-six hours where we were processed and settled in before we got to finally sleep. The heart pounding sensation of being yelled at, and the way a childhood stutter returned from the pressure that made it so I just couldn’t seem to speak properly when prompted. The hours we’d spend marching in formation. The tests we had to take, and the classrooms we sat in to learn. How it felt to sleep in a large dormitory room with over eighty other males. Having to wake up for two hours every night to do patrols and guard duties.

            Ultimately though, it wasn’t all that which remains significant to me. That which sticks in my head most is my time in medical. In the end, I spent more time there than in actual training.

            It was only roughly a week into my medical leave that I realized that I had fallen into a routine. Actual Basic hadn’t been so. The three weeks of training had been filled with different activities; drills, marching lessons, routine chores, classroom work, etc. The medical group was not so lucky. Soon, the steps of my day became rote.

            The pulsing headache when we were awoken by shouting. Fumbling in our small beds hardly larger than a cot, attempting to put on socks and boots without letting a bare foot touch the ground at risk of being yelled at for risking some form foot impediment that always spreads when a hundred people all live in a single large dormitory room. I never failed to hit my head once or twice on the bed above mine, being on the bottom bunk as I was. Then the usual rush to the shared bathrooms to change, brush our teeth, and shave. The latter soon became the primary annoyance. Required to shave every morning using regular razors; there was no one whose face didn’t feel overly sensitive. Breakouts were common, even for those of us old enough that acne had ceased being a regular issue. Shaving chits, exemptions from the requirement to shave every morning, were much requested.

            After all the recruits were properly arrayed according to military standards, we were soon forced into three lines to begin the march for the food hall. We almost always were kept standing for several minutes for whatever reason before setting out. As this all happened in late fall, these several minutes could either be comfortable or miserable depending on the temperature of the early morning. This unpredictability continued on the walk. The specific food hall we would be using would vary between days, even between meals, but it always required several minutes of marching in formation.

             If there is one activity I remember viscerally, it was these walks. Not the training sessions that would leave you aching and feeling like you needed another lung to ever catch your breath, or the drills that sometimes made you wonder if the serjeant had a bet going on regarding times with another division with the sheer intensity he put into forcing us to try our absolute best. No, it was the slow walks to and from the food halls.

            The patches of skin rubbed raw on the back of my feet made them positively miserable experiences. I was far from the only person who lacked experience with wearing boots, and so it was a common thing for us to commiserate about. How I didn’t develop proper calouses during my three weeks of actual training still eludes me. Regardless, the sores made these slow walks miserable. I often switched between wearing my boots so loose the boot didn’t even touch the back of my foot, pushing and balancing the boots solely with my toes, or lacing them so tightly the boot didn’t shift or rub so much as stick to my skin. I always wore two pairs of socks.

            There were other parts of the walk that always managed to irritate as well. With fall ending and turning to winter, the temperature always shifting between refreshingly cool and a stinging cold. While some trips were obvious on what should be worn, no one didn’t occasionally make the mistake of leaving a coat and gloves on a too cold day or having to wear coat, gloves, and beanie on a day when the sun decided to make an appearance. Sniffling and other slight signs of cold were constant, too many people from too many places placed together in one group ensured a good half dozen maladies were constantly running through the group.

            I, at the least, was blessed enough to have had my experience happen three months before Covid. I would later be thankful for that. We already had to properly sanitize the dorms two times a day. I couldn’t imagine how things would be once Covid became a prevalent issue.

            After the unfortunately memorable experiences of the walks, much of our other activities now seem to have been filler despite the walks having actually been to travel between these activities. I actually had little to no problem with the meals, which makes them forgettable by this point. The food was better than expected, talking was discouraged but overlooked to a degree, etc. Twice a week we’d travel to a nearby shop where we could buy whatever snacks could be eaten inside half an hour, and make calls.

            I will say that never have I been so anxious to call someone even when I had little to tell them. The isolation gets to you. Even surrounded by others, the inability to talk to your previous friends and family would eat at you. I’d genuinely feel better just giving them an update, no matter how trivial.

            The time spent in the dormitory room was neither superbly boring nor entertaining. We had a half shelf of books that I’d estimate was primarily stocked a decade or two ago. I read fourteen books in the eight weeks I was in the medical group before returning home, most of them mystery that I’d have otherwise avoided if there were better books available.

            There were TV’s, to the relief of many. I was never able to get the slight feel it was silly. We were deprived of proper chairs and couldn’t rest of our bunks out of fear that we’d sleep, unless medically demanded. This left between eighty to one hundred teenagers either standing or sitting on the ground, arrayed around the two TV’s. It always made me feel like I was back in grade school; sitting on the floor to watch cartoons, our grade gathered in the auditorium for an announcement, etc. We all still did it though. The occasional time when someone’s family sent them a newer movie from home were treats we all looked forward to. It was there that I first watched Avengers: Endgame.

Nights were hard. Not due to difficulty sleeping or anything like that. No, it was patrols. Even our group, put aside due to medical reasons or waiting to leave, had to keep them up as standard practice. Two people had to be patrolling the room, and both doors needed two guards at them. These patrols lasted two hours each. That didn’t sound like a lot, but they stretched. Two hours in a dorm hall where everyone else was asleep could get to you. Being on door duty was the worst, forced to stand at attention for two hours. Everyone wanted either the first shift or the last, but everyone ended up multiple times forced to wake up in the middle of the night, spend two hours standing or walking, and then lay back down in hopes that you’d get another hour or two of sleep. It was exhausting.

In the end, we’d then start the day over. Near six weeks did I end up following this routine. It gave a lot of time to think. Maybe, as I didn’t make it into the military, it was this time that ultimately made me decide what to do afterwards.