My Army Story part 3
MY ARMY STORY
Part III
By Ken Scar
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| Self portrait on drunken night in my apartment in Killeen.
THE GARRISON LIFE
I was still an emotional wreck when I reported to Fort Hood.
My dad had procured a hotel room in Copperas Cove, a matchbox community located
just west of the base. He only had two days to hang out with me so we spent them
frantically figuring out what the heck I was supposed to be doing there. We got
my vehicle registered to drive onto the base, located the building my unit was
in, and checked out the town. When he flew home to Colorado I’ve never felt so
alone.
I was assigned to the 7th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
(7th MPAD) which consisted of 15 enlisted (privates, specialists, and
sergeants) Soldiers, three captains, a first sergeant, and a major commanding.
MPADs are very unique units because journalism is an unusual field of work, and
even more so in the military. As an example; most majors in the Army lead 80 –
150 Soldiers. Ours led 15.
I was dreading what my new routine might be, but it wasn’t terrible
once I got used to it. Being a Soldier “in garrison” is similar to having a
nine-to-five civilian gig, but with a million more rules and a much stricter
dress code.
Fort Hood itself is a dystopian flat landscape stretching
mile after mile and sectioned off into blocks of asphalt parking lots, chalky
green yards and indistinguishable tan buildings. There are very few trees or
any other kind of shade to park your car under during the ungodly hot summer days
that seem to last all year.
Workdays started at the butt crack of dawn in a grass field
near the office, where we would form up and salute as recorded bugles played
Reveille over huge speakers on poles while the base’s flag was raised for the
day. Then we’d do physical training (PT) together for an hour. Afterwards we’d
drive home, clean up, and meet right back at the office. This was not optional.
(In the Army, nothing is.)
This I
learned: Soldiers exist to serve and fight and are required to stay prepared to
do so at the drop of a hat. Physical fitness is everything. If you
want to be a Soldier, you have to stay in shape. If you can’t, you’re out.
The Army
checks your fitness level at least once every six months, when you’re given an
Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). The test is how many push-ups you can do in
two minutes, how many sit-ups you can do in two minutes, and how fast you can
run two miles. You’re graded on a scale according to age groups. Since I was in
my 40’s, I didn’t have to do as many push-ups or run as fast as a Soldier who was
23 to pass. However, there are also maximums you can hit to get a perfect 300
score (100 in each event). Getting “three hunnys” on an APFT is the surest way
to earn respect in the Army. Conversely, failing as APFT is the fastest way to
lose it.
Once I saw a
lieutenant colonel – a senior-level officer that had probably given at least twenty
years of his life to the Army - literally crawl across the finish line to
complete his two-mile run in time. He tore his knees into bloody pieces and
nearly had a heart attack doing so, with medics rushing to give him oxygen and
an IV as he lay there gasping, but he passed with about ten seconds to spare.
If he had failed, his career would have been over. Hopefully he eased up on the
chicken wings after that.
I was old,
but I grew up in the mountains of Colorado and fitness had always been a part
of my lifestyle, so I was in better shape than most of the young Soldiers I
worked with. I made it a mission to max every APFT, all age groups. (I usually
got about 80 push-ups, 80 sit-ups, and ran my two miles in 12 minutes, 30
seconds give or take 20 seconds.) The “Old Man Scar” jokes subsided after that,
but now I had a reputation to live up to – which might have been worse. I
stressed out to a completely irrational degree before every APFT I ever took.
As my first months as a Soldier went by I started to
understand how vast and complex the Army machine really is. It’s a frustrating
bureaucracy. The human beings that make up its workings can get ground up in
its colossal gears if they don’t keep reminding the people around them that
they’re there. As a result, there are a lot of squeaky wheels. Somehow, it’s
both incredibly efficient and insanely inefficient.
It also turned out the Army wasn’t full of just rednecks and
dumb jocks. I served with
Soldiers from every walk of life imaginable – farmers from the Midwest, former
gang members from the inner cities of Chicago and Los Angeles, more than a few
proud Puerto Ricans, gays, straights, Muslims, atheists . . . the Army just
might be the most diverse work force in the world. But that doesn’t mean every
Soldier’s a gem.
The rules Soldiers have to abide by are made for the lowest
common denominator – i.e. the fuck-ups and least intelligent among us – so the
daily routine can get real stupid real fast. For instance, our commander was
required to round us up every single Friday afternoon and give us our “weekend
briefing” which included valuable advice like: Look both ways before you cross
the road, don’t get drunk and barbeque, don’t get drunk and drive a boat, and don’t
get drunk and rape people (I am not exaggerating here). Of course, the biggest
dead horse of them all was don’t kill yourself.
The Army has put a heavy push on keeping Soldiers from committing
suicide (It’s been a bigger problem than ever since the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have proved to be never-ending), but nobody seemed to think of the
possibility a Soldier might use the Army itself as a tool to that end. I was
under the radar.
I
struggled hard with depression through those first few years. My estranged wife
and I decided it was best if the kids stayed with her in Colorado during the
school year, and I’d take them on holidays and during the summers, which left
me alone in Texas for most of the year. That was something I never saw coming.
After fourteen years of being a family unit, the stillness in my apartment was like
being buried alive. I became a highly functioning alcoholic. Most mornings I’d
show up at PT either still drunk or hung over. I cashed in on a lifetime of
fitness to keep my APFT scores up.
Things got worse when we finalized our divorce. The big Army,
in its robotic wisdom, decided to take my basic allowance for housing (BAH) away.
This is the money the Army allots Soldiers with families to pay rent and live off
base. Once I was officially divorced, the Army – whose official positions are
still in many respects stuck in the 1940’s - concluded that I didn’t have a
family.
I was now a lower-enlisted “single soldier” and ordered to
move into the barracks with the other single soldiers, even though I was a
42-year-old father with two kids and eleven months left on my apartment rental
contract.
It was my turn to become a squeaky wheel.
It basically took my first sergeant, my commander, and an
act of god to get my housing allowance reinstated after more than a year of
appeals to the Fort Hood housing authority. In the meantime I was still paying
rent, going broke, and getting drunk.
I completely ran out of money just in time to put all my
stuff in storage and deploy to Afghanistan.
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