They come from my time at Fort Bragg. While I was still at Fort Campbell, I took up running. The genesis of my attempt at physical fitness was a TDY trip from Campbell to Fort Meade. I was in the 101st and proud of it, but I didn't have a lot to back up that pride. I was not Sergeant Rock by any stretch, but while I was there on TDY with Brian McKenna (that's where we actually got to know each other and became friends-for-life), I started running. McKenna could run (although I'm willing to bet he can't do it anymore!) and he started me doing it. It was good practice, and I kept it up when we got back to Campbell. My friend-for-life from DLI, Dick Cooper, had gone to the 400th SOD at Fort Bragg and was always telling me I should go SF and become a man (or whatever). Anyway, around all the pogues at Fort Meade (forgive me, guys, but ya'll were pretty soft) I started feeling the need to prove myself. So after another year at Fort Campbell, I went off to SF training. First, engineer school at Fort Leonard Wood, then jump school at Fort Benning, and finally SF school at Fort Bragg.
I had no idea what I was getting into.
I learned more about myself in that nine months (how's THAT for a bit of irony -- nine months for a rebirth) than perhaps I wanted to learn, but I made it through the other side and ended up a card-carrying member of a very elite group of people. But I always wondered if I belonged.
I got out of the Army because they were going to make me go back to being an office pogue. I was going to have to give up the best thing that ever happened to me. The most traumatic thing that ever happened to me. The loneliest thing that ever happened to me. The first, greatest love of my life. The most... but I could go on forever. It was like being born again, but this time I was old enough to experience the trauma of coming down the birth canal. And now the Army wanted me to go join another family. Instead, I ran away from home, so to speak, but I never really left in my heart.
I wrote the following shortly after I got through SF training, looking back and reflecting on Airborne school. I've heard people say that Airborne school was a breeze, or fun, or whatever. I have never had a worse four weeks in my life -- one week of pre-Airborne and then three weeks of jump school. It was perhaps the greatest turning point of my life. The following words, recovered after almost 20 years, might sound familiar to some of you.
Jumping is a high. Not jumping like in high jumping, or leaping across a ditch, but parachute-by-God jumping. I remember when I was a leg, looking at those fools popping out the open door of an aircraft in flight, laughing to myself and saying "Ain't but two things fall from the sky; that's bird shit and fools." I've come a long way from that, I guess. Its strange, too, to think of me as an A-number one all American boy parachutist. I'm deadly terrified of heights. I can't climb a ladder without my knees rattling and my stomach shaking. Hell, I can't even ride the window seat of a commercial jetliner cause of my fear. So what makes it so easy to jump?Easy ain't the word. Easy denotes doing something naturally. Parachuting is anything but that. But the Army, in true wisdom, figured a way to make it easy. Their method is known as jump school, and until you've been there, you can't appreciate this method.
I showed up at the U.S. Army Airborne School, Ft. Benning Georgia, as a relatively plump little staff sergeant on his way to becoming a paratrooper first, then embarking on the great adventure of being a Green Beret. Mister Macho.
They soon rubbed that out of my psyche, but replaced it with something else; a confidence, maybe an assurance, maybe a delusion, who's to say.
The thing I truly remember about jump school is fear, always fear. Fear that I would fall short, fear that I would prove wanting, but most all fear that I would fuck up and have to repeat part of the course.
Jump school is broken up into 3 phases, each of a week's duration. Week One is called Ground Week. This is where the cadre, called "Blackhats" (capital "B") drive you into the ground.
During this 5 days, you are taught the actions you must take upon exiting an aircraft and also the actions you take upon hitting the ground. The action taken upon hitting Mother Earth is known as a Parachute Landing Fall, a PLF. What they are trying to do is teach you to fall down without breaking every bone in your fragile little body. Executing a PLF is a natural function, something all of us do hundreds of times in our lifetimes. But because it is a natural function, it is one of the most difficult actions to perform under pressure. You are actually graded upon your ability to fall down correctly.
Now, I defy anyone on this earth to receive 6 hours of instruction on taking a dump, and then to pass a test on said subject perfectly without coming up short. Try it sometime, just you and your girlfriend. You'll be surprised. Also, if you take my advice, you'll also probably qualify as being kinky.
It is ground week that also weeds out the weak and indecisive, because you do an extraordinary amount of pushups, vicious physical exercises, and lung-bursting running. Harassment is the order of the day, and until you've experienced any of this, you can't feel what I mean. I cannot put it into words. If you have a burning desire to really find out, the Army's toll-free number is....
I didn't finish that essay. The pain was too fresh.
What I didn't write about was quitting. I didn't quit, but I think I was too stupid. Or maybe I just didn't know how to. I couldn't do pullups when I was at Fort Benning, and I never really got any good at it in all my Army years. You were required to do 7 pullups every day at PT. I couldn't. Period.
If you couldn't do the pullups, or otherwise couldn't do something that was required, or didn't pass muster at the morning inspection, or else just pissed off a Blackhat, you were put into remedial PT after the hour or two of "regular" PT that everybody went through. It was June in South Georgia -- hot, muggy, miserable. After the end of the regular PT period, remedial PT would start for the rest of us. Not that many -- between 20 and 50 of us, out of the 400-500 students who would now be taking a 20 minute break before regular training started. Those of us in the PT pit would be just getting warmed up.
One day in the PT pit, we were all in the front-leaning-rest position after doing pushups past the point where we could do any more -- the Blackhats would be calling "One-Two-Three-Four" and you would be doing pushups, even if you couldn't do anymore. Leverage yourself up with your knees (ONE!), lock your arms so you were in the front-leaning-rest (TWO!), unlock your elbows so that your entire body slammed down into the sawdust in a bone-jarring thump (THREE!), unlock your knees and leverage yourself back up into the front-leaning-rest position (FOUR!), then start it all over again, every 2 seconds. The Blackhats stopped counting and started screaming, "You people are going to stay in the front-leaning-rest until at least three of you QUIT!!!!"
Uh oh.
Three guys quit. I would have been the fourth, but they were satisfied with three. When you quit, you ran over to a designated area and stood at parade rest until they came for you. It was over. They took you away, never to be seen again. You were gone. You were nothing. You had not made it, and now you were forgotten.
I don't remember the three guys that quit that morning. But thank you for giving me the chance to keep going. I wasn't better than you, I just didn't have the courage, or maybe I just didn't realize how, to quit.
I wrote this in celebration of Camp Mackall. Phase I of SF training. I was in the class right after "Maxim's Last Class." Sergeant Maxim was a legend in SF training. I missed being in his last class because I flunked the Army's PT test. The PT test had five elements, one of which was the "Run, Dodge and Jump" event. You ran between some barriers, jumped over a ditch, weaved between a couple of others, and then did the reverse. I think you needed to do it in 20 seconds, and I did it in 22 seconds. Best two seconds of my life, it turned out. About 60-70 guys went out for Maxim's Last Class -- about 25 of them finished. One of them, by the way, was one of my other friends-for-life, Lou Holm. But that's another story.
Anyway, I went through an "easy" cycle at Camp Mackall, if there is such a thing. It's all relative. This is what I wrote, twenty years ago:
It's cold. Morning comes early at Camp Mackall. The lights go on. It's 4 a.m., and I'm facing another day. Another rucksack march. The guys that are here for the second time say they are much easier. They might be, I wouldn't know. To me, all of it is hard. Again, I face the day wishing I wasn't here, not having the courage to quit, to say "Hey, I made a mistake... I don't want to be here." But once again, as usual, as every other day, I get up and do it.You keep one uniform just for P.T. It doesn't get washed, there is no time for that. Any leisure time available, whether 10 minutes or 10 hours, is spent in rest. Relaxation. Recovery. The smell is strong. The white salt stains of sweat stand out in tiger stripes. They crust at the armpits, the waist, down the back, the crotch. Each tiny grain another reminder of a day's pain.
I load up the rucksack. It has to be 50 pounds, no less, preferably more. They weight the damn things at the end of the march. God knows, you don't want to be caught short. Roll up the sleeping bag which serves as blanket, stuff in my extra boots, and add the broken bricks and chunks of concrete that add up to my required load, the albatross I wear on my back, not around my neck.
They have another trick for the patrol leaders. It is 26 pounds worth of machine gun which accompanies me everywhere. I carry it to the latrine, It is with me when I eat, It is tied to me when I sleep. This is the albatross which hangs from the neck. 26 pounds of pain.
Everything is measured in pounds now. One quart of water is 2 pounds. Same with a boot. One entire brick is 5 pounds. 100 rounds of machine gun bullets is 7 pounds. My rucksack is 51 pounds. C-rations, 2 pounds. They've been memorized, these weight tables. They are a bible which we follow more religiously than any zealot in history. Our lifeline is that 50 pounds. No more, no less, Mother of God please! No less.
Equipment on! Outside! Form up, men. Double rank. Fall in! Right face! Move out, Ron! [one of the assistant patrol leader]. Angle towards the flagpole. Ghostly figures from each of the four shacks which we call home march towards the flagpole. Men quickly and quietly form up in 4 ranks, each 20 men long, each one a separate entity, a specialized group of suffering men. Some suffer more, some less. But more or less than what? There is no yardstick for pain. It is measured in the lengths to which men will go to engage in it, to live with it, to live through it to the other side. There is no pleasure here anymore, just periods of pain interspersed among periods of no pain.
Here they come, the cadre. "Put it on , men, put it on!" We turn right, individually as a whole; the lines start to move, the feet plod, the speed picks up, the sweat and the pain begin again.
Hindsight memory tells me that it wasn't all pain. There was a shared brotherhood that grew as the training wore on, and the pleasure of that shared history was worth all of the pain.
During Phase III of SF training, my patrol had been in the woods for a couple of weeks with our "G" force (guerrilla force -- clerks and cooks from leg units on Fort Bragg) and the cadre kept screwing with us. The G's didn't get a resupply, so we had to give up all of our food for them. Gave them all of our C-rations. Looking back, I probably should have stashed something, but I was following the rules. It was one of those drizzly rains in January, but not really bad, and we didn't have any food, although our G's did. In fact, they had a bunch of food. In fact, the cadre made a grocery run for them, bringing back all kinds of pogey bait. But we didn't get our own food back -- like I said, they were screwing with us.
I was standing around the fire next to SP5 Aubuchon, a black guy coming through training from Fort Devens' 10th Group, who was an assistant patrol leader. A half dozen of our G's were eating their pogey bait, and one of them was cooking a hot dog on a stick over the fire. He pulled the stick back to retrieve that 'dog, but jiggled the stick, and it fell off and landed -- SPLAT!!!! -- in the mud. Before the droplets of mud had fallen back to earth, Aubuchon looked that guy in the eye and said in a rushed, almost urgent, voice "Are you going to eat that?" That guy looked at him like he was depraved, and said "No way!". Aubuchon snapped that thing out of the mud in a flash, grabbed my arm and we stepped away so the guy wouldn't have a chance to change his mind. Out came the trusty Buck knife, that puppy was cut in two, and we prepared to feast. The young clerk-type guerilla fighter looked over at us and asked, "Hey, you guys want some ketchup with that?" and Aubuchon looked over at him, cocked his head to the side and shook it slightly as he continued to chew. "MMM MMM, ISS ISSS USSS INE..." (translation: "Uh Uh, this is just fine," as he chewed madly). That was one of the most memorable meals of my life, especially because My Buddy Aubuchon shared it with me.
I never saw SP5 Aubuchon again after we graduated from SF school. But whenever I think of that 30 second slice of my life, I get choked up. I miss you, guy. I miss that 30 seconds.
There were some other memorable times during Phase III that I would just as soon not remember. Like getting captured. The TAC sergeant sent three of us trainees and three of our G's on a bridge recon. I should have smelled a rat because of who was selected to go -- me and a couple of other favorites, plus three of our G's who were low-intensity-combat types. He made sure we briefed him on our route and timings and all that, and then told us to have fun. Well, just because I said I was going to go this way and then that, that didn't mean I couldn't change the plan as we actually went. In fact, I almost always changed the route, mostly out of habit but with a touch of paranoia thrown in, since someone had tried to trick-screw me in Phase I with a planned ambush.
We were coming up on the bridge through some woods, and it was perhaps 200-300 meters away, when I about stumbled on a SP4 from the "aggressor force" manning an M60 machine gun. He seemed just as startled as I was, and as the six of us turned to bolt, he squeezed the trigger to call for help and then jumped up in pursuit. As I was carrying a rucksack and was at the end of a slowly accelerating line of men, I was pretty easy to tackle, but at least one of the SF trainees got away after outrunning the pursuit. As they were tying me up and putting me on a truck, I overhead one of the sergeants chewing out the SP4 who captured me for triggering the ambush too early, and the SP4 was defending himself by saying "Hey, they didn't come the way they were supposed to come..."
Hmmmmmm.
Before they put the blindfold on and started the real fun and games, I saw one of our patrol members who had been injured during the infiltration and was on limited duty. He wasn't exactly meeting our eyes. I never, in a million years, thought that our TAC would tell them we were coming. Screw you STILL, you sorry *(&)^^$$##@@! I haven't forgotten, and there was never any question of forgiving.
It wasn't so bad. They tied us up, handled us roughly, acted mean, shot off a blank in my ear (oooooohhhhhhhh..... you 82nd Airborne guys are SOOOOOO MEAN!). By the way, you guys, I had a piece of paper in my pocket with the coordinates of our base camp and a sketch of the layout written on it (requested by the TAC, by the way, but not collected prior to our departure on our little walk in the woods). I was searched, but I wored two pairs of pants, and it was in the pocket of the inner set of pants. During one of our halts, I was able to sneak it out of my pocket and bury it between my legs. I had a 120' climbing rope sitting in my lap at the time (I don't know why, I think they were still trying to screw with us -- gonna hang us?) and I managed to worm my hand into my pants through the zipper and press the folded up paper into the dirt. I had just completed this feat when the guard came up behind me, snatched the rope out of my lap, and said in a loud and threatening voice "What are you doing?!!!???" My fellow detainee, whose name was Michael something (I think), chimed in "Hey, leave him alone, he was only playing with himself... we've been out a long time, you know." Well, it worked. Quick thinking, big guy! You saved the bacon for the rest of the patrol.
After dragging us around for a while, we were turned over to SF school cadre, and those guys held a wet t-shirt contest for me and the other SF guy. That consists of draping a t-shirt over your face and pouring water over it. Me, I freaked and would have confessed to the Lindberg kidnapping if they had asked me to, but the other guy just took it in stride, held his breath when necessary and blew out when necessary. Then they took us back to the camp and we kept on with the training.
But it wasn't over yet.
A day later, the TAC had the assistant G chieftan (there is an overall chieftain who is played by an SF guy, but this was the head sergeant from the G force "volunteers") put three of us on trial -- three of us who were on the TAC's list of favorite trainees. I was tied up, and a dirty sock was stuffed in my mouth as a gag. Could have been worse, though -- one of the guys was gagged with somebody's underwear. As they were screwing with one of the guys, I spit out the gag and leaned over and looked him in the eye and said in a low and soothing voice, "Hey now, keep it cool, they've got to untie us sooner or later, and then we'll kill them with our knives...." I said it real low and real sincere and I meant every damn word of it. When they did let us up and untie us, I couldn't keep this crazy grin from my face. One of the TACs started yelling at me to wipe that stupid grin off, but I could only look at him and then shake my head. I walked away and calmed down, but it was a pretty intense moment for me.
That intensity carried over to our bridge attack a day or two later. It was sort of the capstone of the field training exercise. The plan was to have a civilian pickup truck drive across the bridge, which was guarded by a platoon of the 82nd's finest, and have two of our guys lob out artillery simulators from the pickup truck bed, where they were hiding under a tarp. These exercises were a regular routine in the Uwharrie National Forest in North Carolina, so the locals all knew the SF cadre pretty well and were used to being asked to participate in things like this. Anyway, the truck went across and the SF guys and the G's charged the bridge. I was leading the assault crew for the far side of the bridge, where we were going to set demolitions and then I would swim/wade back across the river with a long length of det cord (really, it was a 120' climbing rope because we didn't have any real det cord) and tie into the charges on the near side bridge supports. I was charging across the bridge and some 82nd guys were trying to capture me. I just kept on going with guys hanging onto my rucksack, yelling all the while "You guys are dead, I'm wading through your f***** bodies, you bunch of !@#$!@%#%%...." I just kept going and they couldn't hold me. I ran into our TAC on the far side of the bridge where he was standing with the 82nd platoon leader, and I lit into him with something of the order of "You had better get these dead guys off of me before the stuff hits the fan, I'VE GOT A G*****, MF-ing BRIDGE TO BLOW UP HERE AND THEY ARE STARTING TO PISS ME OFF!!!!1"
For once, the TAC seemed kind of amused, and he said, "Hey Sergeant Barth, that's okay, we'll just give you credit for this one -- good job! And watch your language, there's ladies present." One of the civilians had brought a date with him to watch the fun and games. I said something along the lines that I hadn't come all this way to stop now, so he said "Have at it!" and I jumped under that bridge, connected everything up, and swam across the river (it was deeper than I thought, but only for about 10 feet right in the middle). Oh baby, that felt good.
A few days later, we graduated and went our separate ways. I saw some of the guys from time to time around Fort Bragg, but the closeness we had during the training was never the same afterwards. We were making new buddies and forging new bonds. Mine were with the guys in the 400th ASA SOD at Bragg.
This is Lou Holm, who was my best buddy during my Bragg days. Roommate, confidante, partner in crime, sounding board, friend. He went to the Demo Committee as an instructor and eventually got married and left the service. I ran into him in the reserves afterwards, but we eventually lost touch. Some of my very best Fort Bragg stories revolve around the house we rented just off post while we were going through training, and then afterwards until he got married. See the 400th ASA SOD page for those stories, though.