For the Love of God! A memoir of Army Basic Training?

By Damon Ortt

An uncommonly honest, heartbreaking and hilarious memoir that will have you putting the book down only to laugh out loud, For the Love of God! is a story of wavering faith, wavering love and a rock solid contractual commitment.

When Private Ortt, a Bible-thumping, over-zealous boy joins the Army, he’s systematically whisked through a rude awakening; to the reality of the United States Army. There he learns that his Christian girlfriend wants to convert to a form of Judaism and says that God wants her to be single. His sole hope is that he can hold on to her long enough to get home and show her that they were meant to be together, but he is stuck in the testosterone-drenched school of combat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Damon Ortt
• Release date: Dec 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984825417

Book preview

For the Love of God!

For the Love of God! A memoir of Army Basic Training?

By Damon Ortt

Copyright 2011 by Damon Ortt All rights reserved.

Published by Damon Ortt at Smashwords

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All rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Most names in this book have been changed to protect the identities of those who did not express permission for me to use their real names. If any person or name in this book resembles you, it’s unintentional. Some names are correct, however, namely mine. I gave myself permission to use my own name. I think it adds credibility to the whole memoir thing.

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To Mama

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Author's Note

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Prologue

Other kids called the game War or Army, but we just called it Guns. We drew our inspiration from the Saturday-morning cartoon G.I. Joe; as soon as it was over, we would don our darkest Rustler jeans and greenest T-shirts, grab our toy assault rifles, and trudge outside into the moist heat while smearing dirt on our faces to better conceal our white skin. It was all just a game, but it was taken seriously. Usually, it was my older brother, Dale, and his post-pubescent friends against me and my hairless and high-pitched-voice buddies … and my sister. (If Duke had Scarlett, Dawn was likewise accepted.) You could kill or be killed in one of two ways in this game. One way was by throwing a grenade in the enemy’s direction so that it landed in his vicinity. Our grenades were strange potato-like balls that grew on vines in the woods. When this unfortunate event occurred, you had to count to sixty with your eyes closed while the murderer made his escape. The other way to lose your life was by being shot by a gun. If you were shot, you only had to count to twenty, as if being shot in the head were a less lethal way of dying. How you knew that you were shot by a gun that emitted no projectile was sometimes a contested subject. It was understood that if someone sneaked up on you and made the sound bbbbttttttttttooooowwwwww while pointing his rifle in your direction, you were dead; but in Guns, emotions created liars and cheats. Sometimes, when I would be caught in a booby trap in which thorny vines were rigged to slap me in the face when I fell into a brush-covered hole that was dug in the middle of the trail, Dale would hang upside down from an overhead limb and yell, Bbbbttttttooooow! You’re dead! This was when tensions ran the highest. I would redden with anger and scream, No, you missed! There’s no way that you could hang upside down and shoot straight, Dale! By the time I would say that, he’d be out of the tree and standing in front of me. He would say OK and put the gun in my face and, Bbbtttooowwww. Didn’t miss that time, did I, punk? Ha ha ha haaaa, and run off into the woods followed by curses and grenades flung at his head, all of which missed every time. The key to doing well in the mortal sport was stealth, and my brother was like a black panther wearing Realtree camouflage; if you saw him, it was already too late. He moved silently through the dense subtropical foliage, always popping up behind me just when I thought I had him on the run. There was never a clear winner—at least in my mind. To me, it was always more like a Mexican standoff, but to my brother, it was complete annihilation, with him and his sweaty, zit-faced friends emerging victorious.

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Time went on, and I grew in the ways of guerilla warfare. I had acquired a camouflage vest that fit my small body and a black bandanna that fit my large head. Everyone knows that when you look good, you feel good. Dressed for success and with several dozen G.I. Joe episodes and a Rambo movie under my belt, I became a worthier adversary. The day that I ambushed Dale and his friends, spraying them all with make-believe bullets and spit from my excited bbbttttttoooowww, I thought, I was made for this! I retreated to my preplanned rally point, deftly maneuvering through the battleground, dodging vines, and leaping over fallen trees with the skill of a mountain lion. It was then that a seed was planted. And it grew.

Soon, my brother joined the Army, and my new opponents were a band of brothers who were skilled in the ways of building tree forts. I needed an enemy, and the best way to turn them into my opponents was by destroying their forts. It was a scary thing at times because they were really bad kids. They once chased my marauders and me through the woods with aluminum baseball bats. But by that time, I was simply uncatchable. I was like a ghost in the forest—my friends, however, weren’t so lucky. The brothers caught all of my friends and locked them in a cage they had built in the woods, hoping that I would come back for them. And I did. But I lured the brothers just far enough away from the cage to have time to double back and release all of my friends—and a couple of cute girls who happened to be with us—from captivity. I was an inspiration to the boys and a hero to the girls. Not only did I save the day, but I saved myself from certain bludgeoning.

With my brother gone, there was no more Guns, and I found myself in other, more serious games of adventure. Some people would call it crime. I called it exciting. I was simply looking for a challenge, and a challenge just wasn’t fun if there wasn’t anything at stake. If I couldn’t get chased by police, parents, homeowners, golf course owners, or tree fort owners, with serious consequences if caught, I probably wasn’t doing it. Boys who are to become men need adventure, challenge, and perceived danger. If it is not given to them, they will find it themselves. My buddies and I found it by riding our bikes over the golf course hills, sneaking out at night to terrorize the neighborhood, borrowing our parents’ cars as they slept, stealing things from cars that didn’t belong to our parents, and last but not least, blowing things up, which became a theme in my life.

Jack, a friend of my family, had taught me how to make bombs out of common household products that shall remain unnamed. Oh, what a terrible thing to teach a kid like me. Jack’s bombs left a little to be desired, but through the inquiry of greater minds and home improvement store associates, my buddies and I perfected the art of backyard ballistics. Jack’s bombs made us say, Wow, that’s awesome. The new bombs made us exclaim, HO-LY FUCK-ING SHIT! as we furiously peddled our bikes to escape severely disapproving adults who would undoubtedly call the police. Fortunately for me, the pinnacle of the big bangs occurred while I was grounded. In the short period of one week, my cohorts blew a mailbox and half its post to oblivion and got caught by the police. Then, in a separate incident, RJ reached to retrieve an apparent dud and got his right hand blown to smithereens, requiring reconstructive surgery and physical therapy. It was tragic but necessary to the validity of the element of danger.

Some of these things were games, some were crimes, and some were just plain stupid, but they all created a desire in me to do something dangerous. And what could be more dangerous or exhilarating than war? Every man in the history of my family had been in the military, and I would be no exception. I felt like I was born for it, like I was made for it. I never entertained the thought of doing anything else. I didn’t care about my grades in school because I knew that as long as I got a high school diploma, I could join. College was something for the other kids. My plan was that as soon as I graduated from high school, I would join the military and live a life of adventure and danger, showing the world what I was made of.

As a teenager, I concerned myself with all things military. I joined JROTC, watched every war movie that I could get my hands on, went to military summer camps, competed in drill and soldiering competitions, read military books, and dreamed military dreams. I was totally prepared when my time came to ship off to basic training. I was practically a soldier already. I was reasonably sure that I would breeze through basic training and win the Soldier of the Cycle Award, coming back home a hero to myself and, more importantly, my girlfriend. The plan was going rather well. Everything was falling into place, everything was right with the world, and things couldn’t have been better.

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Chapter 1

In her hair she wore a yellow ribbon. She wore it for that soldier who was far, far away.

It’s a grim world, kid, and for you, it’s about to get a lot worse—that’s what recruiters should tell you when you sign up. Instead, they simply tell you that it’s going to be a challenge. If there were a record of euphemisms, this one would be at the top of the list.

Saying good-bye to my girlfriend was the hardest thing I did the morning before I left my home in Savannah, Georgia, for MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) in Columbia, South Carolina. I had never been away from home for any length of time before, and I was about to leave for thirteen weeks of OSUT (One Station Unit Training) in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. We had been together for about a year and a half and were planning to be married in the near future. She knew that being in the military was what I always wanted to do, and she supported me in my decision to join. We had dreaded that moment since I had enlisted five months earlier, but we knew it was coming and had talked about it many times before, so there wasn’t a lot to say. We said the things that everyone else says when leaving a loved one for a significant period of time. The words weren’t unique, I’m sure, but it didn’t change how we felt. It was a very bittersweet experience—we didn’t want to part, but it was what we had to do to continue our long-laid-out plan. The only thing that I can remember saying to her was, Please don’t change. She was going to go to college, and the possibility that it would change her outlook on things that we had in common was not far from my mind. She gave me a copper necklace with the Star of David on it. It was something important to her because she had recently visited Israel with her family. I told her I’d give it back when I returned. Hugs and kisses flowed along with a few tears as the mid-June morning sun shone through the cedar tree in my front yard, and then she was down the road in her car. I watched as she drove around the curve in the road and disappeared from sight. It was going to be a long three months.

My mom took me to the bus station where I boarded a Greyhound bus. She had been through this before with my brother, who joined the Army six years earlier, but I was her baby, the last one to leave the nest, and she was upset. But because I joined the National Guard, there weren’t going to be any overseas tours, so I would be back. I would come back home and train with my local engineer unit one weekend a month and two weeks out of the summer. I was going to be a weekend warrior, a member of the elite Nasty Guard, which is how the National Guard is known by regular Army soldiers.

I arrived at MEPS in Columbia without any problems, which is more than I can say for the trip I made home from there when I was sworn in. I was riding back to Savannah with a recruiter and another enlistee when the skies darkened and rain started flying sideways. We took refuge under an overpass to avoid the hail that began pelting the car. As soon as we got under the overpass, a tornado swooshed right in front of us. It was the first time I had ever seen one in real life. I joked that it was an omen. Nothing like that occurred on my trip to basic training, but all types of weather and instant changes of climate awaited me at Fort Leonard Wood—literally and figuratively.

Several people from MEPS got on the plane with me to fly to Saint Louis, Missouri. I remember two of them because they both wound up in the same company as I. The first one I met was Jergens. I only remember his name because I looked it up in my basic training yearbook, if that’s what they’re called. The book is filled with hundreds of black-and-white mug shots of sleepy-looking young men and a few young women. Most of us look like zombies staring into the distance as if we already had the mile-long stare that you hear about in war documentaries. But a few have ear-to-ear grins on their faces, which I have never been able to understand. What made them so happy? Did they have some sort of sick sense of humor? Nothing was funny. Nothing was even worth smiling about. Our photos were taken at what is called 43rd AG Reception Battalion, right at the beginning of our excursion. We all lacked sleep and were not even close to being used to the lack of physical comforts of home. We were getting yelled at constantly by what we only knew as Army people. They wouldn’t let us talk, they wouldn’t let us lean against the wall, and they wouldn’t let us slump in our seats. If I remember correctly, one of the Army people told us we were not even allowed to have joy in our hearts. So I assumed smiling was out of the question and went to wipe that smile off my face only to realize that, fortunately, I didn’t have one in the first place, which proved to be the only sense of relief that I was going to get. This made me happy, but then I remembered that I wasn’t allowed to be happy, so I returned to my preemptive zombie-like mile-long stare to avoid breaking another rule. The bottom line was that if we weren’t getting our heads shaved or being whisked through an issuing facility, we had to have our noses in what are called Smartbooks. These were given to us to read during any downtime (free time in Army lingo) we had—like before we went to sleep at night, while we sat on the toilet, while we stood in lines, between bites of food, and at the slight pause between exhaling and inhaling. We really had to think outside the box to understand what downtime meant to them. Smartbooks were pocket-sized books that contained all sorts of basic military instructions. We had to keep them in our cargo pockets at all times. They’re called Smartbooks because, well, when you read them, you got smart.

Jergens was a thirty-one-year-old middle school PE coach. He just barely made it in because, at that time, the Army didn’t accept non-prior service enlistees beyond the age of thirty-two. I wondered how it would turn out for him. I figured that he had a decent chance of making it through basic since he was a PE coach and, presumably, physically fit. I was wrong.

Barnett is the other person I remember from the flight. He was the same age as I was and was from Effingham County, which is adjacent to the county I lived in, so we became buddies. When you’re young and have never been away from home, you quickly become friends with those who have anything in common with you. Barnett and I stuck together as much as we could until alphabetical order separated us once we started our training. We ate together, slept in the same set of bunks, and were in the same room when something about as thick as peanut butter was injected in our asses. He even witnessed me falling to the floor the morning after the injection when I got out of my bunk. The shot had really cramped up my right cheek overnight, but I didn’t realize it until I stood up.

We were becoming good friends, but we didn’t leave basic training together. Barnett, like Jergens and many others, didn’t make it. Jergens didn’t make it because he couldn’t handle it physically. Barnett didn’t make it because he couldn’t handle it mentally. I don’t know all the details about why, but Barnett was put on suicide watch, which meant that he had to sleep in front of the drill sergeants’ office. So that he wouldn’t hang himself, they also took away his bootlaces, which was standard procedure. He wasn’t the only one during training who clumped around in laceless boots. When someone got his laces taken away, it always resulted in whispered discussion and sideways glances. We always speculated about how someone could kill himself there, but we never questioned why someone would want to do it.

I ran into Barnett one day at a church back in Savannah about a year later, and he told me he had joined the Marine Corps and graduated at the top of his class and was going to be a sniper. So I asked him what he was doing back in Savannah, and he said that he was being discharged due to a back problem. That’s quite a record, I think. Being booted out of two different boot camps, pardon the pun, is an achievement that most people can’t put on their resume. One kid actually ran away and made it to the bus station, where he got caught and returned. He was charged with going AWOL, and they made him sleep in the hallway outside of the drill sergeants office until they did whatever it was that they did with him. We never knew what happened to him; he just disappeared. Some people just aren’t cut out for the military, and it drives them to do crazy things.

I had never flown in an airplane before I flew to Missouri. We arrived above Saint Louis at dusk. I had just woken up from a comfortable sleep and looked out the window to see the warmest, most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. It was really quite settling. The deep oranges and warm pinks that stretched across the Missouri sky were simply magnificent. It was the last bit of beauty I was going to see for a long time.

As we filed off the plane, we met the first of the Army people. They seemed very ornery—even mean. They sternly ordered us to get in line, stop talking, and so on. I knew that we were going to be yelled at once we started basic, but who were these people and why were they being so pushy and condescending? It didn’t seem remotely necessary. At that point, we all still wanted to be there, so they didn’t need to be that way. After all, we were just at the airport; we weren’t really in the Army yet. Or were we? Looking back as I write this, I can now easily answer that question. Many Army people have inflatable egos, and they will blow them up at every chance they get. We afforded them that chance since we were completely ignorant about everything. What better place to flex their authoritative muscles than at the airport with hundreds of civilians walking around and staring at the poor unassuming souls who wanted to be soldiers? It all makes sense now. At the time, we just thought it was completely without reason.

From the airport, we got onto a bus that took us to Fort Leonard Wood. By this time, there were several buses filled with enlistees. We drove into the night not knowing which direction we were going or how long it was going to take to get there. We didn’t know if it was going to be ten minutes or two days. That’s probably the first thing that they do to start demoralizing you. As a civilian, you always have control of where you’re going and have a good idea of where you are, which is comforting. We had neither, which was not comforting.

There was a lot of talk on the bus about anything and everything. I didn’t talk much to anyone, though. I was fanatically religious