Army Basic Training

I am writing this article 17 years after this all happened; it had such an impact on me that I remember so many things vividly still today. I wanted to start by giving a quick before and after the Army. In high school, I was motivated to be there mainly for the social aspects of high school, and to play sports. In college, I was motivated to be there because my outlook on life changed. I wanted to be in school. I wanted to do well in class. I wanted to succeed. This was all because of the training and mindset that I received from the Army. Also, spending time in a foreign country (Germany), gave me prospective on the kind of life that I wanted to spend here in the United States.

I actually called the military recruiter and told him that I wanted to join the Army. It was easy for him. I knew that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in the grocery store where I worked during high school, and I also knew that I didn't have the grades or motivation to go into college after high school. I took my ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery; horrible name for a test), and got a score of 112. At the time, this score meant that I could do most jobs in the Army. I wanted to be part of the Military Police Corps, but the waiting list was over a year and a half. I wanted to leave for training right after graduation from high school, so I took the job of a Fire Support Specialist (this is a Forward Observer, generally, go to the front lines, and call in artillery strikes).

First, I had to go to Basic Training. I was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The Army gave me a free plane ticket and I was nervous going into Dallas/Fort Worth. I then got horribly nervous going on the "very small plane" flight to Lawton, Oklahoma. To make matters worse, on the plane, there was a man in the next seat to me who scared me to death. He began by telling me not to go AWOL (Absent Without Leave). He told me that it was his job to go after runaway soldiers. Being in a small plane, it was dark, and I had this guy telling me that I was going to go through the worst event in my life; not to run or he would catch me. Strike One.