The US Army and Me By Christine Schimanski
I'm seventeen years old now, the year 1981 and there I was, up at four am, waiting for my recruiter to pick me up and take me off to the US Army for my basic training. I'll explain how this happened in a bit. My mother was there to see me leave and to my amazement my father too! I didn't expect him to see me off but there he was. This was maybe one of only a few times I felt like maybe he cared. The only thing he said was " whatever you do , don't volunteer, for anything"! Well, I thought at least that was something. I waved good-bye and off I went. I didn't have a clue, really, what I was doing, where I was going or what I was about to get myself into. I just did what my recruiter told me. I was driven to the airport and put on a plane headed to Ft. Jackson, South Carolina. This was the first time I'd ever been on a plane. I remembered there seem to be so much commotion going on at the airport like stand in this line, move over to that line, wait and then wait some more. The furthest away from my home of NJ that I ever been was Pennsylvania, where my parents grew up and where I had gone to visit my cousins.
I can say I was overwhelmed and nervous. I felt alone, so many strangers. When I got off the plane, I was taken to a bus that was full of other recruits where we were driven to the army base. I remember seeing all these people marching and chanting RAH! RAH! Verses. When I got off the bus the sergeant was yelling "move, move, move"! Hurry up, do this, do that! Oh my god, I thought, take it easy man. Well, I guess I should have been used to the yelling after all I was always yelled at and heard yelling back home. But still it all seemed so confusing to me.
The first couple of days of boot camp was totally bewildering to me, I was only seventeen years old, still a kid and an angry one at that. The only reason I enlisted in the Army was to stay out of jail. My lawyer said it was the only way because of what I did. Yeah, what I did. I burned down the garage of a neighbor who rapped me. Yeah, what I did. What about him? What happened to him? Nothing! He got away with it. He was given a lie detector test and because he somehow passed it, they said he didn't do anything wrong except give alcohol to a miner. What about the split chin he gave me when I tried to fight him and he punched me in the so hard in the face that I needed six stitches! Nothing, that's what happened to him.
And me? I was interrogated for six hours at the police station before my parents were even called! Was that even legal? Didn't my parents ever wonder where I was? Did my so call lawyer know that what the police did was illegal? They picked me up from off the street and hauled me down to the police station. After hours of grilling me about this garage that was burned down, I told the police everything this guy did to me and I remember overhearing one of the detectives ask about some test I should take at the hospital? I thought, test for what? Then another detective said no, it's too late for that. Sometime had already passed since the incident. And I was in tears about the whole thing. In the end I was told, jail or the army and pay for his garage! My lawyer told me to plead guilty and say I'm sorry. I felt completely abandoned with no one to help me. Not the authorities not my parents, no one. I even had a best friend that turned her back on me yes, the one from high school, she didn't even believe what this guy did to me. My parents said not to tell anyone this happened. I remember my father said "now, remember mums the word" and I thought, who's mum? This is where I spent a week studying for my GED test because the Army required that I had at least a GED diploma. I passed the test and received my GED and then I had to take and pass a standard army test to get in the service. I passed that and then I had to sign a contract with the army for five maybe six years. I just did what these people told me because of my situation. My head was spinning. Did I really want to do all this, did I ever have a choice? I really disliked authority at this point. The system did not work and it definitely did not work for me. So how well would I do in the army? Not very well as you will see.
And I don't know how this was possible but no one else in my family except my parents knew any of this happened. Not my sisters, not my brothers and I was scared to death to ever mention it myself and for the rest of my life up until recently I kept the secret to myself always feeling that somehow, I was to blame for the whole thing. I know now I wasn't. But that was a long road for me to walk.
Now back to the army. The first morning I woke up in the barracks, I was frightened out of my mind! I remember thinking " where the hell am I" ? Really! Then after about five minutes it dawn on me, I was in the army. My platoon was made up of eighty percent afro- Americans and they were big! I remember thinking "holy S--- "! And even though I was really scared about where I was, I never once showed it. My outside demeanor was " Don't mess with me, or I'll kick your ass". It seemed to work for me so that's how everyone saw me. A troublemaker and a problem. After all I was on my own and no one else was going to look out for me but me. Everybody was much older than me and we were always running here and running there. We were getting fitted for our uniforms and having our pictures taken for ID's. Getting up before there was even light outside and doing all kinds of jumping jacks, running push-ups and sit ups before eating breakfast. It just seems like it was all chaos.
I can't say I had many friends there, though there was one girl that seemed to like me for some reason. And looking back now I think she did watch over me because whenever it looked like someone was going to mess with me, she seemed to always be around. Her name was Angel, hmm. She was very confident and sure of herself. So, I watched her out of curiosity to see if I could learn from her how to cope with my environment.
It wasn't long before I was considered a hard ass and a troublemaker like I said and I lived up to my name. I was always mouthing off to my drill sergeant, causing him all kinds of stress and problems and grief. I don't know how I got away with telling him off every chance I could. There had to of been a greater power looking over me. Maybe because I was only seventeen there could have been some legal issues that stopped him from smacking me upside my head. I told him at least four different times that I wanted a discharge and then went back each time saying I changed my mind. Angel would convince me to apologize to the sarg and say I'll stay.
There was one night we all had passes to go out and most of us went to the NCO club, Non-Commission Officer's Club, and I drank myself silly. I didn't want to leave and it was way passing the time we were supposed to be back. The others didn't want to leave me there but after convincing me I finally went back to the barracks. Well because we were all late, because of me, we had to do extra push-up, sit- ups, running, you name it we had to do extra everything. I wasn't very popular but I'm sure I was very much talked about.
There was also a time when I refused to do jumping jacks and just stood there while the rest of my platoon did them. My drill Sargent starts yelling at me, like he usually did, asking me why I'm not participating. I told him " my feet hurt". He said I'd better start jumping. I just said "no' and walked away. I went to the laundry room and had a smoke. About twenty minutes later one of the girls from my platoon walks in and said "the Sargent told me to tell you he's sorry and wants you to come back". I said ok and that I'll be there after I finish my cigarette. She just rolled her eyes and I know she must have been thinking, how does she get away with this?
Another time when everyone was awakened about two thirty in the morning and told to get dress. They put all of us on this "cattle truck". The same kind of truck they use to transport cattle, really. You couldn't see out of this thing. There were only these little holes on the sides and it was completely dark inside. It seemed like we were in there for hours. I felt nervous and thought" where are they taking us"? Finally, we came to a stop and they let us out. I looked around and we were in the middle of nowhere! It was hot and dusty, it felt like a remote dessert. There were these little "nats", little bugs that would fly all over your head. We all had our heavy backpacks on and were issued weapons to carry. It was a M-16 sub machine gun, with real bullets! "Now who gives a gun to a kid?" I thought to myself " I could have used this thing back home on that stupid guy!" And where the hell are we anyway? This was the first time I ever held a gun and it felt really strange. I guess I didn't really understand the connection, army, guns? But I was about to find out. We were told to march single file down these dirt roads and about every twenty minutes or so we were ordered to drop to the ground and roll out of sight. I really wasn't liking this much and didn't understand what the heck we were doing this for, remember I was thinking like a seventeen-year-old.
So, after a few hours of doing this, we were led to a place that looked like an arena. The drill Sargent than explained what bombs were and the next thing I see are these bombs going off a short distance from us. They were blowing up trucks and small buildings. It was like that movie "Apocalypse" with Marlon Brandon. I remember it was so loud, so destructive. It was scary for me and that smell of gunfire I knew I would never forget. I was tired, physically and mentally. Aren't we done with this yet, I thought? We ate lunch after that, thank god. They gave us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I was glad to just sit for a while and stop all this army stuff. I was tired for sure. When we were done with lunch, we were told to put on these gas masks and they explained to us all about different gases. I was thinking I had enough already. The sergeant tells us to make sure our masks are on correctly or you could get sick. Well, guess who got sick? Yep, I did. We went through this building where they gassed it up and when I came out the door and took my mask off, I threw up all over my Sargent's boots. Oops! Just another nail in the coffin for me with him. The last part of the day was the shooting range. And guess who they put in charge of handing out the ammunition? Guess right, me! I don't know why they would do that, being a troublemaker and all but they did. I filled the magazines with bullets and gave them to the soldiers. I remember when it was my turn to shoot. I was sitting in this hole in the ground and being shown how to fire my weapon. "Just look at the target and breath" the Sargent said. I fired away and felt the kick from the gun. My helmet was too big and didn't fit right on my head so it moved around a lot and most of the time I couldn't see where I was shooting. This was the first time I ever shot a gun. I remember feeling overwhelmed and didn't really like it and that was just single shot shooting. Next, I was told to flip a switch which made it fire like a machine gun!. Wow! This is dangerous, especially when you can't see what you're doing. Couldn't he see that? I just pointed in the direction of the target, hoping I would hit it. I had to take a remedial class on this but they passed me and gave me a marksmanship pin?
While I was out there, there was this other girl from my platoon who was trying to get a discharge on a section 8, which in laymen terms meant crazy. Well, she was crazy. She stood up out of her hole and just began shooting. Another soldier jumped on her to get her to stop shooting. I tell you one thing I rather be a troublemaker than a stupid crazy person. I don't know what happened to her but in my opinion, she should have been discharged. She was always doing crazy things but this was the craziest. At night when we were all sleeping, she would get up and start running around screaming and yelling about what, I don't know. But I heard she ended up graduating, go figure. See what our military is made up of! Is this summer camp over yet?
Every now and then we were allowed to use the pay phones to call our families. And I remember the girl in front of me was talking a long time and I was getting impatient. All of us had a certain amount of time to use the phone and after that if you didn't get a chance to use the phone, oh well. So, the girl in front of me was taking her time and I told her to hurry up. I said this several times but she just ignored me and brushed me off. Wrong thing to do. I reached over and grabbed the phone out of her hand and hung it up! She took a swing at me with her fist and we got into it. While we were both wrestling with each other everyone gathers around yelling "fight, fight". It took three drill Sargent to break us up. Not only was I punished but the other girl was too. We were marched up to the barracks bathroom and each given a toothbrush and told "clean every inch". I looked at the Sargent and said "are you kidding"? No, he wasn't kidding. This bathroom seemed bigger than my house back home. Now there we were on our hands and knees for what seemed for hours. Scrubbing the floors with a toothbrush! The other girl wouldn't even look at me and I was still trying to pick a fight with her, saying it was all her fault. She just ignored me and kept scrubbing. Little did I know then that one day I would come to own my own cleaning business. Interesting, huh?
Part of my punishment also, was kitchen duty. It seemed like I was always sent to the kitchen to wash dishes or prep food, like cracked a thousand eggs for breakfast. I never liked the kitchen; I would stand in one spot for hours cracking those eggs. I guess it was still better than marching all over the base and doing jumping jacks.
Another time we were all in this warehouse sorting out army stuff and this drill Sargent, not the one that was mine, a different one calls me into this room and corners me against the wall making advances towards me. He tried to hold me down and press his body against me. I freaked out, didn't this already happen to me and the reason I ended up here in the first place? I fought him off just short of screaming. I got away but after that every drill sergeant I came in contact with would stop me and tell me there was something wrong with my uniform. For instance, my sleeves were rolled up the wrong way or I didn't have all my buttons line up the right way. Always something and they would order me to drop to the ground and do push-ups, twenty here, twenty there sometimes thirty. This would happen all day for weeks. Now, I don't know if this had anything to do with that Sargent who cornered me in the supply office but it started the same time the incident did. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.
I didn't like being in the army, I was young, I was angry and I didn't like people telling me what to do or how to feel. Every morning I was up at four thirty and had to do jumping jacks, run and be quizzed about army history before we could even eat breakfast. I was never a morning person and I never liked getting up before eleven. Remember before I dropped out of high school, I almost always woke up late and had to go to the principal's office to get a pass for being late and then as soon as I got the pass I walked out of the school and went to Arby's for something to eat. I know, why did I even bother to check in when all I did was turn around and leave? But that was what I did. I did eventually get a high school diploma through night school, though years later.
Back to the army, one morning I guess the sarg thought he was going to teach me a lesson about oversleeping. I found out later he told everyone not to wake me but to just let me sleep. I don't know how I could not have heard all the noise of everyone getting up, taking showers, etc. But I didn't and I kept on sleeping. I opened my eyes and I could see daylight and NOBODY around! It was usually dark when I normally woke up. The first thing I thought was " OMG'!, where is everybody. I jumped out of my bunk, got dressed in seconds flat. I didn't bother brushing my teeth or anything else. I just threw my clothes on and went looking for the rest of my platoon. I went all over that base trying to find those guys. Finely, in the distance I could see them doing the usual, jumping jacks and I thought if I could just slip in without anyone noticing me, I'll be fine. But of course, that happen. My sergeant was just waiting for me to show up. When he saw me, he ordered me to drop and do a gazillion push-ups. I don't know what the big deal was, I was only late three hours and I got some much-needed rest. And of course, he sent me to do kitchen duty, again.
Now this is how my arm career ended. One morning I woke up and had a fever. I felt really bad, physically. My bunk mate looked at me and said I should see if the sarg would let me go to the clinic. I went to him and explain how I felt, he was more than happy to get rid of me for a few hours. When the doctor saw me, he immediately sent me to the base hospital. I didn't know what was going on, I thought they were going to just give me some pills for whatever I had and I'd be on my way. But I got to the hospital and handed the clerk the clinic doctor had given me and the next thing I know I was being admitted!
I was taken up to the top floor of the hospital and told I would be quarantined with about eight other soldiers. I laid in bed with a 103-degree fever. I couldn't eat, I was weak and I could barely speak. I asked the doctor several times what was wrong with me and each time I got the same answer "we don't know" and you can't leave this floor. All the other soldiers with me were told the same thing. The guy next to me looked worse than I did, I thought. He had tubes running in and out of his body. The doctor told me if I didn't start eating something the same thing would happen to me. I was freaked out about this whole deal. I thought to myself, I should have just stayed in bed today. I've never been admitted to a hospital before, let alone seen someone on the verge of dying. So, I ate what I could and I guess that was good enough because they never hooked me up to those tubes. They must have called my mother because one day I was sitting around and over the intercom I hear Private Schimanski you have a call from your mother, please come to the front desk. What? My mother? How did she know I was here? Well, I go to the desk and take the call but I could hardly speak that's how bad I was. My mother did most of the talking, asking how I was and what happened? I think I just had a bad reaction to all the shots I was given when I first arrived here. Or maybe it was something they put in the food? I didn't know and supposedly they didn't know either. It was strange that only a handful of us came down with whatever this was. Another government experiment?
This went on for about six days and all the while I thought my Sargent knew where I was. I came to find out he didn't. As it turns out Angel came to the hospital looking for me, it helps when you have an angel looking out for you. I don't know how she found me but I was able to talk to her and she said that when I didn't come back from the clinic, days ago, the Sargent reported me as AWOL. That is absent without leave, a court Marshall offense!. I remember saying to her "but I've been here for the past six days, didn't they tell him that'?. She said they only notified him today six days later, that I was in the hospital and she assured me everything was going to be alright. I told her the eight of us, were all quarantined to the hospital with no explanation of why, no reason, nothing. Well don't you think something happen to us? And why were there only eight of us affected? Num Nuts! Maybe we were the lousiest eight soldiers on the whole base and they were conducting some kind of experiment? Something like the X-Files? Whatever it was I lost ten pounds in one week and my beautiful army green clothes didn't fit anymore. What's funny is that I have a pretty good memory but for some reason I have a hard time remembering what exactly happened while I was in quarantine.
So, when I was released from the hospital and went back to my and saw my Sargent he starts to explain to me that I wouldn't be charged with AWOL but because I was gone for a whole week and that I had missed a crucial part of basic training, called biv-wac, some kind of field exercises where you throw grenades, shoot at things and so on, I would have to be recycled. Recycled? What's that? He said I would have to start all over and train from day one! Are you kidding? I was going to graduate this week. Everyone is graduating, that's crazy! That means I would be here another eight weeks. Can't I just take that week over? He said no. He hesitated for a moment and then looked up from his papers and said" well, there is one thing I can do". " I can give you a general discharge, the same as an honorable discharge. Nothing bad will go on your record but you won't be able to reenlist for two years". Re enlist? I thought, now who's crazy? Fat chance I would do that. It took me all but one second to say, "you got a deal, I'll take the discharge". It was music to my ears! It felt like Christmas, New Year and my birthday all rolled up in one! When can I leave?
Now just before being discharged I remember being sent to this building, I guess to be debriefed? The really weird thing about it is I can't really remember what happened there, again like the hospital thing. I only remember being told to wait in this poorly lit room. I remember this Coronal talking to me but I don't know what he said or even if I responded to him. Each time I look back on it it's as if I was having an out of body experience. You know being there but just watching the whole thing unfold from above me? I don't remember the conversation at all. Nothing. There wasn't anyone else in the room, that I remember, it was dark and the wooden floorboards squeaked when he walked around. I don't know how long I was there and to this day it still bothers me that I can't remember what went on in that room. Something did, right? Just like the hospital. Everything else about my stay at Ft. Jackson I can remember but not those two things. I watched a movie years and years later called the Manchurian Candidate and really resonated with me. Huh? Maybe the things we don't remember are best left alone?
Well, I was going home, yeah! I do remember that very well, I was so happy. I turned in all my army stuff, signed some papers and was handed an airline ticket. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. I boarded a plane for home, New Jersey. So many things had happened to me over a short period of time. I felt a little different somehow. While flying home I thought about all the crazy things that happened to me, the things that brought me to the army in the first place. I wondered what I was going to do next and if anything had changed back home since I was gone. It was only a couple of months since I was gone but it seemed like a life time at that moment. I dropped out of high school and now I dropped out of the army, would I ever find a place that could make me happy? I wished someone could help me figure all this out. I needed a mentor but never found one. As I flew into Newark airport, I felt a sense of relief but at the same time a sense of apprehension. I was happy to be back home but I was still angry. I was angry when I left and I'm still angry. My eighteenth birthday was coming up in a couple of months and I pondered what was ahead of me?