Joining the Army

No one ever expected I would be the type to join the military. I was no exception.
As a kid I found books with colorful pictures of volcanoes more exciting than G.I. Joe action figures. If anyone inquired what I wanted to be when I grew up I would tell them an inventor, an astronaut, or an author depending on what day I was asked. I never told anyone I wanted to be a soldier.

In high school I was as patriotic as the next guy, and as president of Young Republicans, I was a hawkish supporter of the liberation of Iraq my senior year. If it can be said that I had a militant streak, it ended there. I avoided all pastimes more physical than chess, didn’t enjoy movies like Full Metal Jacket, and was the only male in my family who could care less for shooting guns in three generations of NRA-affiliated elk hunters.

The prospect of enlisting came on me unexpectedly when I was eighteen. I had just returned home to Pocatello, Idaho after a fruitless summer in Texas trying to make money as a door-to-door bug spray salesman. It had been my first attempt to live away from my parents and was not a particularly encouraging start.

I got back just in time to register for my first semester of college classes at Idaho State University. With a few days to kill, I stopped by my old high school to see friends and teachers still there. I ran into another member of my graduating class, Alex Schrote, who was also paying a visit. He had just returned from boot camp for the Marine Corps and was dressed up in military attire. Like all Marines back from training, he couldn’t wait to tell me about the virtues of the Corps. I listened at first with skepticism, but finally with fascination.

Knowing that I had worked on the high school newspaper, he mentioned that there were journalists in the military. I was listening.

Finally he said, “Spencer, I know you’ve got morals. I think you’d make a hell of a Marine.”

I forgot about joining the military as I became absorbed in college, but as if by fate, the idea kept coming back to me. I quickly became turned off to my new job as a telemarketer and wished there was a better way to pay for my education. I enjoyed working for the school paper, The Bengal, but yearned to cover stories more adventurous than changes in student aid policy. The military could give me the opportunity to pay for school and give me and write about interesting things. There was another reason for my sudden attraction to the military life, too. Alex had an air of confidence and sense of direction in his life that I lacked and envied.

I eventually brought it up with my parents. My mom voiced her concerns up front. I wasn’t sure where my dad stood. Outwardly he said he would support whatever decision I made, but he, too, seemed a little uneasy.

Whatever reservations they may have had, both of my parents wanted to encourage my self-sufficiency. On a slushy, overcast December day, my dad and I went to the Army recruiting office in the mall. The recruiter, Sergeant Turner, eagerly expounded on how great it is to work for Uncle Sam, to be part of Something Bigger. I knew it was a cheesy sales pitch because I had spent last summer giving cheesy sales pitches. He could see I was apprehensive about going through any sort of boot camp and seized the opportunity to scare me away from his competitors.

“You could join the Marines,” he said, “but do you really want to spend fourteen weeks in hell before you go to your job training?” I did not. But nine weeks of mild discomfort at a base pejoratively called “Relaxin’ Jackson” didn’t sound so bad.

Seeing that he had intimidated me away from the competition, the recruiter pushed his luck and tried to talk me into signing up as a “petroleum supply specialist.” I insisted that I was interested in being a military journalist or I would see what the Air Force had to offer. Turner became furious at this and called me “ungrateful” as my dad and I walked out.

Two weeks went by and I didn’t contact the Army recruiting office. In an act of desperation, Turner called, promising me a slot at the Defense Information School to be trained as a military journalist. All I had to do was go to the Military Entry Processing Station in Butte Montana, take the ASVAB and go through the medical examination. If I scored high enough on the test and there was an open position for a print journalist, I could sign up. If no slot was available or if I didn’t score high enough, I could always come back and do it again some other time. Or, he said, trying to make it sound like an afterthought, I could sign up as something else. He reminded me the Army was in need of petroleum supply specialists.

On Jan. 23, I climbed into Turner’s 1994 Honda Accord with two more of his prey. The other prospective soldiers were a quiet twenty-one year old, sitting by the window behind the driver’s seat, who said he was good at auto shop and wanted to be an Army mechanic, and a guy riding shot gun with long greasy hair except for a bald spot on the crown of his head, who claimed to be nineteen, but looked closer to thirty. He was just hoping to pass the urinalysis.

I sat in the right window seat the back, enduring eight hours of Turner’s unspeakable überliberal social commentary, until he finally deposited us at the doorstep of the MEPS building. Inside, it looked something between a hospital lounge and an arcade. There was a rack of outdated magazines, an area with a pool table together with other quarter-fed entertainment machines, and a TV caught in an epic battle between CNN and MTV. On the perimeter of the room were five doors labeled with the names of each of the five branches of service.

The first night I took the ASVAB. Ten of us at a time were escorted to a room with a row of computers. The computers had a screen that said “After each question, answer by pressing A, B, C, or D on the keypad and pressing spacebar.” To ensure there was no confusion, the keyboard had only five keys, A, B, C, D and spacebar. The test had portion on mathematics, writing, and other basic subjects that were pretty easy. There was one section on mechanics where I was clueless, but in the end I came through with an 88 percent. More importantly, I had a General Technical score of 124—high enough to get any job I wanted.

When we were all finished, a bus shuttled us to a nearby hotel. The shuttle picked me up with thirty or so other recruits at the (I thought) early hour of 6:00 a.m. and brought us to the MEPS building for medical testing. We waited forty five minutes in the cold before a sergeant opened the door and escorted us to something like a classroom. The sergeant told us that an Army doctor would be with us momentarily, but we sat bored for fifteen minutes with no sign of him. The recruits dozed with their heads on their desks, donned headphones, or tried with varying success to start fleeting conversations with one another. I wished I had a book with me. At 7:30, a grizzled man in a white laboratory coat arrived with a wooden cane in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. “Be honest,” he admonished, sounding vaguely threatening, “or else we’ll find out.”

On the first page of the stack of papers the doctor handed me I came across the question “Number of times I have used methamphetamine in the past six months: a.) zero times, b.) one to three times, c.) five to ten times d.) eleven or more times.” I wondered if Army actually distinguished between someone who had done meth ten times and someone who had done it eleven times or whether it was just a ploy to make druggies think they were o.k. if they picked “b” or “c.”

The next question: “number of sexual partners I have had in the last six months…” By this time, I could see a distinct pattern in the answers to my questions.

When everyone had completed the questionnaire, the doctor broke us down into groups of four or five and rotated us through several stations that assessed everything from blood pressure to urine samples. A foul-mouthed sergeant in fatigues handed each of us a two liter bottle of water to facilitate the latter.

By the time I had passed through three or four stations, I felt ready to give my sample. When my group got to the urinalysis station, however, the doctor was nowhere to be found. So we went on to the next station. A half an hour later, there was still no doctor.

At the blood sample station, I had to pee so badly I could not stay still enough for the medical sergeant there to stick me.

“Hold still! And forgodsakes uncross your legs, you look like a faggot,” the sergeant said before jabbing the needle into my purple arm for the sixth time. He deposited a big wad of chew in a bottle of murky brown spit-juice and added, “I sure hope yer not queer ‘cause we got enough foxhole buddies in Iraq as it is.”

The sixth time turned out to be a charm. After two vials had been filled with my blood and slapped with the proper label, I was so eager to leave, I almost got up with the needle still in my arm.

“Hey, buddy, you look kinda pale. You ain’t afraid of needles are ya?” said the sergeant as he removed the needle and taped a cotton ball in its place. I shook my head. I was pale because my bladder felt like it contained a bowling ball.

I hopped over to the latrine and I got in line behind two or three others. When it was my turn, the doctor handed me a tiny plastic cup asked if I could fill it. Hell, yes. I
snatched it from his hand and dashed to the urinal in response.

Just as I thought I had been jabbed and prodded in every way possible, I was ushered into another room. About ten recruits were packed on a wooden bench wearing nothing but underwear and goose-pimpled skin. They laughed at the puzzled expression on my face.

I inferred that I was supposed to strip down with them, and was just doing so when the doctor stepped in. At his command we formed three lines in the middle of the room, an arm’s length apart from one another.

“Now rotate your arms forward in wide circles,” he said.

We did several callisthenic exercises, as the doctor walked past each one of us to make sure we were up to par. Then came the dreaded duck walk. I had heard about it during the car ride, but wasn’t sure I believed it.

The doctor demonstrated, squatting down, putting lacing his fingers on the back of his head and stepping forward. I was surprised to see that a man who needed a cane was able to move in such an unnatural way with no apparent difficulty.
“It is very important that you step heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe each step,” he said. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing as each of us tried to emulate the goofy walk in our underwear.

I tried to imagine what the military application of this spectacle. I could see some officer saying “Alright men, we’re going to take the enemy by surprise this time. Instead of charging, we are going to duck walk to their position. While they are scratching their heads, Charlie Company will flank them…” I later heard that it was so the doctor could make sure the major joints functioned properly. What a shame. I liked my explanation better.

There were rumors of a prostate examination after the duck walk which, thankfully, turned out to be unfounded.

Having endured all the required indignities, the doctor escorted those of us who filtered through back down to the lobby area. I noticed the alleged nineteen-year-old was no longer with us. I figured he must have answered “b” on the wrong question.
The survivors were called into the rooms of their respective services one at a time to pick their Military Occupational Specialties. When it was my turn, I asked for 46Q. I was lucky—there was only one remaining slot in the nation for that day. It required me to leave for Fort Jackson, South Carolina, April 20, which would cut my semester short, but I felt I could manage it.

I signed the stack of papers set before me. Each was full of bullet points and small print, but if I asked what the details were, the legal advisor would dismiss it with a quick “this just means the Army can see your medical records” or “that just says you’re not a conscientious objector.”

When all the paperwork was finished, the new recruits were lead one at a time into a room with deep red carpet, with a large U.S. flag and the flags of each branch of service on either side of a mahogany pulpit. It looked like a place you’d expect the president to give a speech. When it was my turn, three uniformed soldiers escorted me to the room. I raised my right hand I and repeated every word of the Oath. “I, Spencer Case…” I knew that there was no going back.

The rest of the semester came and went by normally. I continued writing for The Bengal and got most of my basic courses out of the way, ever conscious that on April 20, my life would be different.

The date arrived. I packed everything on a list of required items that Sergeant Turner gave me into a Nike bag. It was small enough to sling over one shoulder as I walked through the revolving glass doors of the Greyhound Bus station.

Turner’s items were not the only thing I carried with me. I also had several large books with me including Uncle Tom’s Cabin and, I would later find, a copy of Mere Christianity with a note scrawled in my dad’s handwriting. I knew that all but the most explicitly religious reading materials were prohibited at basic training and that I would never be able to read that much on the trip to Fort Jackson, but I felt somehow comforted having them with me.

My family was there at the bus station to see me off. I received kisses on my cheek from my mom and fourteen year old sister Lindsey and more manly bear hugs from my dad and 16 year old brother Jesse. I picked up my youngest sibling, six year old Ty, to embrace him. When we said our goodbyes and I stepped onto the bus, my mom started to cry. It came as no surprise, but that didn’t make it any easier.
I sat back on the cool, imitation leather seat at the very back row as the bus pulled away. It would take me back to the MEPS station in Montana to check in, then I would fly to Atlanta and take another bus to Fort Jackson. I was on my own.

Oddly, I felt calm. There were no more articles to worry about, no more school assignments, no more trying to figure out how to get to and from work when one of my other family members needed the car. It was just me, my Nike bag, and a new future.