Thank You for Your Service: One Mans Journey Through a Stint in the U.S. Army

By Chad Smith

A day to day glimpse into the regular life of a soldier in the United States Army.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543973877

Chad Smith

Chad Smith, DDPP, DDLP, ASTP,  is a Co-Founder and Partner at the Demand Driven Institute. Prior to the Demand Drive Institute Mr. Smith served as the Managing Partner of Constraints Management Group (CMG) for eighteen years. Mr. Smith has co-authored and contributed to several books on MRP, Theory of Constraints, and the Demand Driven methodology.

Book preview

two.

Chapter 1

The Decision to Join

Walking into a recruiting office may be an exciting experience for many, but it certainly wasn’t for me. I was wondering if I was making the right decision.

How old are you? arather dubious SGT asked from behind his desk.

Thirty-four.

And you want to join at your age?

"Well, yes. Is that okay?

Yes, yes, of course….It’s just a bit...err…unusual.

I was somewhat expecting this response. I hadn’t come from a military family, and while I’d spent a great deal of my childhood in camouflage and playing with plastic Army guys, I hadn’t worn the uniform myself.

We’ll need some information to get started, he remarked as he pulled one form after another from his desk. Please fill these out.

Of course, Sergeant! I have my high school and college transcripts along with my birth certificate, and copies of both my parents’ birth certificates!

This was starting wonderfully. I was well prepared, having gone so far as buying a Halliburton briefcase because I’d read you tend to accumulate a lot of paperwork when in government service.

Great! We’ll be needing copies of all of that.

Okay, name, social security number, address…easy enough.

The medical conditions form was a tad bizarre. There were checkmarks for everything you could have possibly ever had and some you may have never considered. Club foot? Bed wetting past the age of twelve? HIV? I tried to complete the paperwork while ignoring what my imagination was conjuring about any experience with folks afflicted with these conditions next to me in wartime conditions.

Sergeant? There’s a question here about any past medical procedures. Does having your wisdom teeth removed count?

No.

What about getting stitches?

Yes.

Okay, what do I put?

We, ah…need full medical records involving the procedure.

I have no clue how to provide those records. I was eight, and the hospital has since closed.

Well, the Army requires that documentation….

…

Did I mention anything about stitches?

…

Not that I recall.

Can I get another form?

Of course!

After filling out all the required information, I was informed there was no possibility of my becoming an officer due to my age. The famous surge implemented by President Bush had caused the officer corps to become oversupplied and all age waivers had been suspended indefinitely.…

Shit.

I went home and discussed the matter with my wife. Jen, to her credit, said she would support any decision I made. While I had expected to enter the Army as an officer given my college degree, I reflected on the matter and decided service to my country outweighed other concerns.

This was a pretty big matter given we had an infant in house. Chad Jr. (yes, my vanity stretches that far) appeared most unexpectedly a couple of weeks prior to my wedding. After his birth, I tried to discuss the whole matter with him, but he remained silent for several months. The whole birth thing apparently caught him off guard too.

Once you complete the required forms, they perform a background check on you (think criminal records, outstanding warrants, etc.) and you schedule a time with your recruiter to take your ASVAB, or armed services vocational aptitude battery test. This is the military’s version of the SAT. Your recruiter drives you to the nearest MEPS station to take your ASVAB.

MEPS stands for military entrance processing station. There are something like 65 of these around the United States, and from what I gathered during my experience, employment there is limited to individuals who fail personality tests for working at the airport. My sergeant and I walked into a federal building in downtown Dallas right next to Dealey Plaza where President Kennedy was assassinated. I wondered if this was the same MEPS location where Oswald had signed up for the Marines, but my ponderings were cut short as my sergeant quickly escorted me into the rather imposing-looking structure

We went through a security station complete with armed guards and a metal detector to enter the building. Upon being deposited on the fourth floor, I appraised my surroundings: it looked like an unholy marriage between a doctor’s waiting room and a bus station.

PUT THAT CASE IN A LOCKER! barked the man at the first window I approached.

Sure.

I went and placed my new briefcase in a locker down one of the halls.

NOW, WHERE ARE YOUR PAPERS?

In my case down the hall.

GET THEM OUT!

Frustrated, I looked around for my recruiter, but the bastard had vanished, leaving me only a card with his name and an e-mail address to contact him.

Well, this could have started better….

After some additional barked questions and the turning over of my paperwork, I was ordered into a computer lab/testing room containing six or seven long tables with computers on them. I sat down, followed the prompts on the screen, and started my ASVAB test. The test itself comes in 10 parts, some of which I found ridiculously simple, while others baffled me:

Math: 2x + 6 = 10

What is X?

10,000

0

2

1

Looking at the electronics information section of the test was an entirely different matter. Questions about open and closed circuits left me stumped:

B looks good. Haven’t gone with B in a while…

Once the test was completed, I was handed a sealed envelope with the results and given instructions not to open the thing. I called my recruiting sergeant.

I finished my test. Can you come pick me up?

Sure! How’d you do?

Well, I don’t know. They gave me the results in a sealed envelope and told me not to open it.

Open it.

I did so and looked upon a very confusing piece of paperwork.

So, what’s your score?

I’m not sure. I just located my name and social security number.

Look for a part that gives your GT scores.

Oh! I just found my overall score was 92!

Just find the GT score.

It says 132. Is that acceptable?

You did great.

So, what does that score mean for me?

You’re qualified for everything the Army has. Your score was better than mine.

My recruiter came and picked me up. There would be a period of several weeks until I headed back to MEPS. During this time, I kept checking in with my recruiting sergeant, tried to get myself in shape, and made my best attempt to learn about the various jobs the Army had to offer.

My approach to the question of jobs involved looking online. You can easily find a list of all the jobs offered in the United States Army. Once you find something interesting, you can look up videos of the job in an online format, provided and produced by the Army. These videos are available on outlets such as YouTube and contain stock footage, along with goofy porn-style instrumental background music. An announcer in the background tells the viewer things like, In this job, you’ll work long hours into the night…. I didn’t care so much about the videos, but the comments section contained treasure as valuable as gold.

Some of the quotes were encouraging:

This job is the best kept secret in the Army.

Others were less favorable:

I would rather serve a thousand years in Hell than do this job one more day.

I slowly whittled the list down.

When my recruiter took me back to the MEPS station for a physical, I was already a wee bit jaded. After being deposited by my sergeant, watching his government-issued car fishtail out of sight, and checking back into the asshole-staffed federal building, I had to receive my physical exam.

You’re led to a hallway and instructed to sit quietly while waiting to be moved from one station to another.

At the first point, I entered a booth for my ear exam, sat on a stool, donned a pair of headphones, and held a buzzer, which you press when you hear any noise. After years of hunting and shooting without any hearing protection, I didn’t expect a very high score.

Gosh, you really can’t hear very well, can you? the doctor remarked afterwards.

What?

Never mind.

Huh?

The eye exam was pretty standard, reading the chart and whatnot.

More interestingly, at one point, each of us was called individually into one room where a doctor asked us to drop our pants, turn around, and spread our buttocks. I have no idea what he was looking for (hemorrhoids? an odd STD?), but it seemed like a pretty easy job for an MD. Butthole? Check. NEXT!

We also got called in as a group to one room where we were required to perform all kinds of odd things from walking like a duck to touching our toes and standing on one foot.

After all of that was over, I was told to go see a man sitting at a cubicle. This was the first person at the MEPS station who treated me like a normal human being. It was his job to find me a job in the Army. Have you ever watched one of those annoying commercials where the announcer says in a deep voice, There are over 200 ways to be a soldier in the U.S. Army? Yeah, well, not the day I showed up at MEPS.

Well, let’s see here…wow! You got a really high ASVAB score!

Yeah, my recruiter mentioned that.

Would you like to be a cook?

Well, I like to cook from time to time, but I don’t think I’d like it for a job.

Given the fact that according to Army regulations at the time I needed to ship off to basic training before my 35th birthday, there weren’t many options. After establishing I didn’t want to be a cook, I went on to throw out truck driver.

What about military intelligence?

That sounds interesting.

Well, if you’re going to go that route, you’ll need to take a language aptitude test.

Oh, God!

I didn’t need to take a language aptitude test. Despite having taken two years of Spanish in high school and having several close Hispanic friends, I still had trouble ordering at the Taco Bell drive-through. I couldn’t begin to imagine learning Arabic. Farsi? Did Allahu Akbar mean God is the greatest or I’m wearing explosives?

Anything else?

There’s supply.

I’ll take it!

This was January, and my ship date was set for the 15th of May. In the meantime, I set about getting my finances and personal effects in order, took some online classes the Army provides, and kept trying to get myself into better shape. Once you’re in the period of waiting to ship off for basic training, you’re in what the Army calls the Future Soldier Training Program. You generally meet with your recruiting sergeant once a week along with others to check in and learn what to expect about life in the Army.

One Saturday we met in a park near downtown Fort Worth with about a hundred or so recruits from around the area to try our hand at physical training. The run darned near killed me. Some recruiting sergeant from another office saw me struggling and tried to help, falling in beside me as I jogged along conspicuously behind the rest of the group.

Hey! You’re doing great!

*pant*…*gasp*

Try running a little faster, okay?

Ungh!

Here. I’ll run just a bit ahead of you, and you try to get up here and touch my hand, okay?

…not…*gasp*…helping…

Why don’t you lengthen your strides a bit?

At that point I stopped running, looked at what I considered the world’s worst motivational coach, and threw up.

I needed to work on my run.

Things were going poorly on other fronts as well. I informed my mother of my plans to join the Army and do service to God and country in that proud and storied institution. Unfortunately, what she heard was something more along the lines of, I’m going to go die, to which she acted accordingly and burst into tears.

Slight problem in the translation there. Probably a wise decision to sidestep the foreign language requirements of an intelligence man if I am having this much trouble in English.

In turn, I tried to stay positive and motivated by purchasing Army-related things. I got a tin sign sporting the word Army, which I proudly hung on our back porch, several shirts declaring the same at an Army surplus store, and enough Army-related books to fill a small library. However, my favorite, most beloved item was a black rocking chair I picked up at a Southern restaurant chain called Cracker Barrel. It had the Army seal pressed into the top of the back. I spent hours in that chair, reading and thinking about how I should be out running.

The pamphlets and other reading material provided by my recruiters were also proving helpful. They explained how basic training was broken down into three phases: red, white, and blue. Not too creative, but definitely patriotic. We would spend three weeks in each phase learning various skills. They called the approach crawl, walk, run, and if my performance in the park was any measure, I was certainly more than qualified for crawl. A big thing impressed on my fellow recruits and I was learning the soldier’s creed. It goes as follows:

I am an American Soldier.

I am a warrior and a member of a team.

I serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.

I always maintain my arms, my equipment, and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I AM AN AMERICAN SOLDIER!

Poor Jen must have heard me repeat that creed a hundred times. She was really a trooper (please excuse the pun) while I prepared for this life-changing experience. The focus of my Future Soldiers Training was getting in shape and learning the Soldier’s Creed. (Spoiler alert: You repeat that creed something like seven hundred times in basic training and never repeat it again.)

Having said that, there were other important things we learned in those weekly, evening meetings. We were taught what a formation was (four lines of soldiers standing next to one another), how to stand at attention (stand straight, look forward, curl your hands by your side with your thumbs along the seam of your pants, place your heels together but your toes apart so the effect makes a V of your feet, and above all, for God’s sake, slightly bend your knees!), and what other, simple commands meant:

Upon the command of AT EASE! you put your hands behind your back and spread your feet shoulder-width apart.

Left and right face are self-explanatory. The trick there is pivoting on one foot in a sharp manner. ABOUT FACE is a bit tricky too.

AT REST is an odd command we hardly ever used. If you find yourself in front of a formation and need them to stay in place, but don’t need all the soldiers to maintain the rigid, no-nonsense posture of AT EASE for an extended period, you call AT REST. Upon the command, individuals in the formation can relax, talk, and do whatever they like so long as their right foot stays in place. The left foot can go off on all the zany adventures it likes so long as the right stays firmly planted. I’m told that back in the 80s and before, you could even smoke at rest. I miss the 80s.

By the time winter transitioned to spring, I felt I was doing great. With May 15 approaching, I knew the Soldier’s Creed by heart, had improved my pushups to the point where I could knock out a solid 50 in a day without too much soreness, could run to the end of the block not needing an escort home, and knew I had an ASVAB score that placed me somewhere between Einstein and God in the Army’s eyes. Furthermore, my mother’s tears had subsided after only a couple short months. Things were good and primed for my departure to basic training.

On May 14, Jen drove me to the recruiters’ station with little Chad in the backseat. We had a tearful good-bye, and I gave them both a big hug. As they drove away, my recruiter loaded me into his car for a trip to a nearby high school. He had to give me a PT test.

Excuse me?

Had I been forewarned about this, I would have probably elected NOT to drink a bottle of champagne the night before…

Wonder how that slipped the bastard’s mind?

As fortune would have it, the guy was determined to send me off no matter what. With the aid of a faulty stop watch and some very generous interpretations of the correct forms of push-ups and sit-ups, I was shone a score of 22, and 27, respectively, each done within one minute. Even more impressively, I ran one mile in 8 minutes and 28 seconds.

I’m not sure I made it around the track four times that fast.

Nope. You did great and were really moving there at the end.

I walked a lot.

Yea, but you were walking really fast.

Well, there is that.

One the way to the MEPS station, we stopped and picked up another guy. I had no idea of any of this at the time, but I could tell something had gone very wrong in the house when they came out. My recruiting sergeant looked ashen-faced and embarrassed. He was followed by an athletic-looking black fellow. Jacks was a young black kid in a strange relationship with a much older woman.

I’m so sorry. I just thought she was your mother!

Nah, it’s okay. She’s my ole lady.

Turns out, this guy had been living with her in a serious relationship for the past several years. This development left me both amused at the sergeant’s reaction to his tactical blunder and dubious about the long-term prospects of love when the parties in question are 20 to 30 years apart in age. I’m sure the sergeant was considering the moral implications as Jacks went on to describe how he had been with this woman since he was 14. I know I was.

Later that night, I found myself standing outside the Crowne Plaza hotel in Dallas. It was a surprisingly nice venue, and I had been there previously for a stock options seminar. The place was filled with anywhere from 100 to 150 of us who were going to take shuttles back to the MEPS station the next day to swear in and ship out to various basic training bases around the United States.

At dinner time, we had each been provided a modified menu to select entrees from the hotel’s restaurant (though eating for free didn’t provide for things like appetizers). Dinner was followed by a meeting upstairs where we packed into a conference room, signed our names, and were given some rules and options for the evening. The rules made sense: Don’t drink at the bar, don’t leave the hotel grounds, and don’t accost the other guests. A room/lounge had been set up for us with video games and television. Also, no roaming the halls past…something like 10 or 11 p.m.

How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?

Four of us were outside smoking and talking about which jobs we had taken in the Army.

I turn 35 next month. Why?

Well, it’s just that you seem a little, uh, old.

I know. It seems to be getting worse every year.

Huh?

The aging. It’s a by-product of not dying.

What?

Never mind. Hey, guys, good luck in basic, okay?

Yeah, you too, man.

I wasn’t in the mood for mindless banter. I headed up to my room. We had been assigned two to a room, but my roommate (I never caught his name) had arranged for his girlfriend to stay in the hotel that night. He stayed in her room, so I had the place to myself.

Frankly, I wasn’t too excited about the position I had placed myself in. I had a wife and son I now couldn’t see or hold for quite some time. The rules suddenly surrounding me felt like I had voluntarily put my head in a noose. I was signing all my liberties away.

I’m not certain if my melancholy was based on being apart from my loved ones or simply facing the unknown. Nevertheless, I was in for the trip. As I laid down that evening, my thoughts turned to event horizons.

An event horizon is, according to theories of general relativity, a boundary in space-time beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. Put another way, it’s the point of no return. Quite apropos. I was rapidly approaching a personal event horizon. I hadn’t had a solid bowel movement in about 10 days. My appetite was failing me, and I had trouble sleeping. It was a wicked combination of anxiety about the unknown I was about to step into and self-doubt over the soundness of my decision. During event horizons, the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible. They’re most commonly associated with black holes. Apropos, indeed.

Chapter 2

Welcome to Basic, Turd

The next morning after showering, dressing, and breakfast, I boarded a bus and headed back to the accursed MEPS building for more paperwork and waiting and waiting and waiting. I went through a swearing-in ceremony where we raised our right hands and took the famous oath swearing to defend the constitution, obey our superior officers, protect America from all enemies, and a bunch of other stuff I wasn’t really listening to.

Jen, her sister, little Chad, and mom came up to say their good-byes and see me off. After what came close to a tearful send-off, I left on a bus along with two girls and four guys. It honestly felt like I was going away to prison as we headed north towards Oklahoma and Ft. Sill

We had each been handed meal vouchers (think ticket stubs) and given our sealed orders (so no fool lost any important paperwork). The girls instantly bonded and chatted away, while the guys fooled about on the back of the bus. I sat alone in my own little world.

What the hell did you just do, Smith?

A few hours later we arrived in Lawton, Oklahoma, and were taken to a Golden Corral where we gave our meal vouchers to the lady at the register. Those of us who smoked realized this was the last step towards a break in our addiction. Being more than a little nervous, one of the girls, another guy, and I must have excused ourselves from the table half a dozen times. Not that it mattered; nobody was eating much. It felt ominously like a last meal.

Before arriving at base, I finally quit being nervous. Maybe it was the last couple of cigarettes. Maybe it was Golden Corrals’ food. Whatever it was, I decided to stop worrying and simply take events as they came. Hell, what were they going to do, take away my birthday?

That must be the obstacle course, I remarked as we passed a schoolyard playground on base. Back on the bus, we had driven onto Ft. Sill, but our driver had gotten hopelessly lost. We had passed the playground in question twice already. My witty