Ryan Smithson (2 page)

“Yeah,” she said. “I hope not.”

“Don’t worry about it yet. I still have to get through basic.”

That night Heather dreamed that we were running from incoming missiles. I was wearing an army uniform.

As summer approached, the war in full swing, I began to second-guess my decision to join the army. I told myself I was doing what I had to do. Not to mention I had already signed up. There was no easy way out, short of desertion. And in a time of war desertion equals jail time.

When Heather asked me why I would join the army in a time of war, I shrugged my shoulders and told her it just seemed like the right thing to do.

“That’s very admirable, Ryan,” she’d say. “Stupid, but admirable.”

“Hey!” I’d say back. And we’d laugh.

Admirable, stupid, or whatever it was, the decision was made. I’d be leaving for basic training soon. I still needed to figure out exactly what my enlistment meant. As time passed, I wasn’t sure how the events of 9/11 really affected me.

I hadn’t lost anyone in the attacks. I hadn’t known those people who were murdered. I didn’t know what the terrorists were trying to say or how their message directly affected me. So I found out.

During Labor Day weekend of 2003, a month before I was scheduled to leave for Fort Leonard Wood, Heather and I took a trip to New York City. I had lived in New York my entire life and never been to the City. I wanted to see the place, its magic and energy. And I wanted to see Ground Zero.

I needed a reminder.

We stayed in Manhattan and saw as many sights as we could in the three-day weekend. New York City truly lived up to the hype. It was alive like nothing I’d ever seen. Broadway was a brilliant strip of flashing lights and artistic billboards. Times Square, full of shoppers and camera-toting tourists, seemed too big to be real.

In New York the energy of people had a way of spreading. It was so contagious that even the panhandlers seemed glad to be panhandling (though I’m sure they weren’t). This energy seemed to animate the city air.

Except in one spot the energy stood still.

It was nighttime, and the only light at Ground Zero came from portable construction spotlights that sat in the enormous gray crater. The light had a soft blue quality to it, deathly.

The worst part was the silence. No taxis or buses drove there. No excited tourists shopped or snapped pictures. As usual people were everywhere, but no one said a word.

The buildings surrounding Ground Zero were abandoned, their windows still broken and missing. Hundreds of jagged, ugly holes peering down at us. Holes where the soft blue light couldn’t reach. These black voids, just empty reminders of the lives lost.

Heather and I walked up to the fence that closed off the gray-blue crater from the public. Stuck in the fence were wreaths and flowers and notes from children; framed photographs of people in uniform and loose photographs of people with their families, small photographs that once sat in fathers’ wallets. Stuck in the fence were U.S. flags and banners proclaiming, “We will never forget.” There were final good-byes from relatives who couldn’t say it in person, pictures of angels drawn by heartbroken children—angels with sad faces and gray-blue tears.

Stuck in the fence was New York City. Stuck in the fence was the United States of America. There were white people and black people and Hispanic people and Asian people and Jewish people and Muslim people and Christian
people and small people and fat people and baby people and human people.

Stuck in the fence was me.

I’d heard all about September 11th. But I didn’t feel the weight of it until I saw the fence.

I didn’t know these people. They were not my friends or family. I had never met them. Their existence before that day meant nothing to me. But at that moment their existence meant everything to me.

I let go. My throat tickled, my nose ran, and I cried. I shed tears I didn’t deserve to shed. I was not entitled to tears but they came nonetheless. These tears for injustice, for impurity, for virtue, for love, for hate, for misunderstanding, for innocence, for guilt, for nothing, and for everything.

Heather looked at me and cried, too. We stood like that for a long time, not saying a word. Just crying. We didn’t sob; it was respectful crying, like at a funeral. We held each other, and people walked around like ghosts.

A mother walked up to the fence, tears in her eyes, and dropped a fresh set of flowers next to a picture of a young man. She said something to the photograph and buried her face in her hands.

I felt trapped in rubble and the pressure was overwhelming. The Twin Towers didn’t fall in Manhattan. They fell on me.

There is a certain romanticism that comes with being young. Young men and women just released from high school are ready to take on the world. They want to save it. They try for a while, but then they often get to a certain age and they give up. Because the world is a big place. It’s impossible to fix, they think.

And that’s the problem I saw. America had given up. And that’s why the World Trade Center was allowed to fall.

If I don’t do something, who will?
I thought.

I stopped crying.

A month later I left for basic training.

T
he army makes recruits stay at a hotel the night before they fly to basic training. This is to ensure a timely arrival for their flight (and no deserters). Among the dozen or so other recruits saying good-bye to their families, mine stands across from me. Heather has to work, so she can’t be here. Last night, she gave me a kiss, told me she’d be waiting. In the lobby my father shakes my hand and hugs me like a man. My mother gives me a kiss and hugs me like her baby. My little sister, Regan, gives me a kiss, tells me to be strong.

They tell me they’re proud of me. I say, “Okay.”

They tell me to call or write as soon as I can. I say, “Okay.”

“I’ll miss you. I love you,” we say.

I find my room. I lay on the bed and wait until the four thirty wake-up call. Maybe I sleep.

At five
A.M
., a bus takes us to Albany International Airport, where we board a plane and say good-bye to life as we know it.

After landing in Missouri I am squeezed onto a bus with fifty other people, mostly teenagers like myself, from all over the U.S. Not much is said as the bus bounces along the highway from the airport to the army post. Some of us have books. Some have CD players. I don’t have anything. I sit in my seat wondering what to expect. I wonder if the army will change me as much as everyone says.

Driving onto post, I notice how mundane all the buildings look. Everything is exactly the same: perfect rectangles made of brick sitting on perfectly mowed lawns with perfectly straight hedgerows. We stop at one of the large brick buildings, and my mind races with questions.

Will there be screaming drill sergeants?

Will I be able to handle myself?

Is everyone else as nervous as I am?

A young woman in army fatigues steps on the bus and tells us to get out our IDs and follow her. So far so good.

Is this a trick?

I wonder if the drill sergeants are waiting inside the building for us. Just waiting like snakes under brush. I
stand up and follow the crowd.

When we get inside, the young woman tells us, “This is reception. You’ll be here for one week.”

Reception is a week of in-processing. There are drill sergeants walking around but only to keep us in line. A true drill sergeant thrashing is rare. Reception is the army jargon meaning “week-long basic training bureaucracy.” It’s where we do paperwork, get our uniforms, do more paperwork, get our hair cut, more paperwork, get our training gear, more paperwork, get a shot in our left arm, two shots in our right arm, blood drawn from the inside of our elbow, a tuberculosis test on our forearm, and a horrible injection in the top of our ass that bruises for three days.

We can’t talk during reception. We are pieces of equipment on an assembly line. It sounds fast paced, but in reality reception is very slow. There are a lot of recruits to in-process, and waiting is how we spend most of our time. So, as we wait to do more paperwork or wait for our next meal or for our next inoculation, we read our Smart Books.

The Smart Book is a two-inch-thick army manual we carry in our cargo pockets. It contains all the necessary knowledge a recruit must know in order to graduate from basic training. It has everything from the army’s rank structure to proper marching technique to clearing a weapon’s jam to the phonetic alphabet. If our Smart Book is not on our person, we might as well have forgotten to wear pants. To witness a true
drill sergeant thrashing, just forget your Smart Book.

Reception: picture rooms with white concrete blocks for walls and green tiled floors. There is a horde of greasy high school graduates with all the hair cut off their heads. Half of them are standing in line waiting to enter a processing room. The other half are sitting on benches waiting to wait in the line that’s waiting to enter another room, only to come out and wait some more. All these teens are dressed in the same green-tan-and-black camouflage, wearing the same shiny black boots. Their bald heads are buried in the same gray, spiral-bound army manuals.

Even when there’s free time, when we get back to our enormous sleeping bay and can relax and read a book or write a letter home, it feels like waiting. The bay is filled with bunk beds and wall lockers and snoring men. And every night, two or three times a night, the fluorescent lights flip on and dozens of new recruits wash in and join the party. So even sleeping is like waiting, waiting for the next set of nervous teens to wake us up and fumble around on their squeaky mattresses.

If this isn’t the longest week of my life, then kill me now. With each day the anticipation for basic training grows until it feels like a whitehead ready to explode. Each day feels like the end will never come. I haven’t even started basic training and I already want to quit, to tell the army to shove that stupid Book up its ass. I don’t feel any Smarter.

Finally, the last day of reception arrives. I pack all my gear into a green duffel bag and meet the rest of the company in front of the barracks. A company is a group of about two hundred soldiers. Our newly issued military IDs and our dog tags are checked, and then we’re stuffed into cattle-carrying cars.

The line progresses as one cattle car fills up. The giant sliding door rattles shut, and the truck pulling the cattle car drives off. A second one fills, closes, and leaves. And a third. I step onto the fourth. When everyone is loaded, the door slides shut and the cattle car takes off. Sardines aren’t packed this close.

Except for the bouncing and squeaking, the ride is long and silent. The inside is dark, shielded. There are no windows (the army doesn’t want us to know our way back), but there are small holes near the roof. Breathing holes so the cattle don’t suffocate. Sunlight shines through these holes, casting dusty rays across our paralyzed faces stuck like dents in ice cubes. Too scared to melt.

Somewhere there are angry drill sergeants just waiting for us to unload. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat, and I wonder if this is what it’s like on the way to a combat zone.

We know we’re approaching our new barracks when we hear the muffled booms of drill sergeants screaming at those privates who’ve already stopped and unloaded. Our brakes squeal. The cattle car stops. We look at one another,
wondering if we’re supposed to get out or if we’re supposed to be let out. We’ve spent a week waiting, waiting to be told what to do and where to go. So we wait.

The rattling door flies open, showering us in sunlight, and three drill sergeants demand to know just what the hell we are waiting for. There is a mad rush, and my brand-new combat boots don’t even touch the ground before a drill sergeant is in my face. The brim of his “brown and round” hat pecks at my nose.

“Why are you touching my hat, private!” he screams, veins throbbing.

“Sorry, Drill Sergeant,” I say.

“Oh, so I’m a sorry Drill Sergeant?”

“No, Drill Sergeant.”

“Don’t you ever tell me no, private!”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

The scene is chaos. Panicky privates run around like cockroaches when the kitchen light turns on. Drill sergeants are the feet trying to stomp at them.

Move Faster! Stand Here! Run There! Find a Spot in Formation! Get Moving! Faster! Shut Up!

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

“I said, ‘Shut Up!’”

The first smell of basic training is humid rubber. That’s The Pit.

The Pit is a depression the size of a football field stuck between four brick barracks—four companies of privates learning to become soldiers. We are the newest of the four companies and we run around like the lost, scared wannabe soldiers that we are. The Pit smells like rubber because it’s filled with chopped tire pieces. It is soft and squishy and vile. The army’s recycling program.

I take my place in The Pit as part of a wide formation: fifteen feet between each private. The shouts of the drill sergeants echo off the four surrounding barracks, and the resulting sound is an avalanche. I stand and listen to one drill sergeant up front with a megaphone, trying to shut out the roars of a dozen other drill sergeants coming from all directions. The drill sergeant with the megaphone yells at us, tells us all about the position of attention, and another screams in my face because I’m not doing it right.

They tell us we’re worthless, that mommy ain’t here, and that we are no different than any other rotting piece of compost in army fatigues. They tell us we’re not wanted, that our recruiters lied to us, and that we should just go home. And the privates just stand there taking it as the drill sergeant with the megaphone tells us that our asses belong to him and that not even God Himself can save us now.

O
nly after we have been completely destroyed can we begin to find ourselves.

The drill sergeants do it like this: they break us down, build us up, break us down again, and then build us back up. The first breakdown is the hardest part. It’s the first three weeks, and they call it Red Phase.

After a while push-ups and Red Phase have the same meaning. Sometimes we do them in cadence.

Drill sergeant yells, “One, two, three…”

We yell, “One.”

“One, two, three…”

“Two.”

One is down, two is up, three is down, the count is up.
This way, one count means two push-ups. Two counts mean four. Thirty-five means seventy.

Other times, when the drill sergeants want to be extra mean, we do push-ups in half steps.

Drill sergeant yells, “Down…”

We yell, “Attention to detail.”

“Up…”

“Work as a team.”

And of course there’s always a longer pause after “down” than there is after “up.”

The army takes our clothes and gives us camouflage. To hide us. To hide who we are, who we were. All of us convicts in camouflage green jumpsuits. They take our designer shoes. They give us combat boots (“to be shined every night, private”). They take our sunglasses and give us patrol caps. They take our chewing gum. And the television, our CD players, and the lunch Mommy packed.

“‘An Army of One,’ my ass!” they yell. “You are not one. You are no one! You are battle buddies. Every one of you relies on every other.”

They take it all. The drill sergeants strip us of every luxury, everything we’ve ever convinced ourselves to be a necessity. They take who we are and flatten it, everything we think we know about it. They take it away so all we’re left with is each other and the hair on our chinny-chin-chins. Then they give us a razor blade and tell us to shave.

Sitting in the barbershop chair, we get the hair cut off our heads like dogs at the vet. We watch in the mirror as our identity floats to the ground. We watch as the barber sweeps it up, puts it in the trash. Right where it belongs. The hair of a hundred other recruits, a hundred other identities mixing and blending until they’re all the same.

We’re all the same.

The basic training barbershop smells like old sweat and mineral oil. A dark and vague smell, like a back alley full of hot metal. The mineral oil so the trimmers stay clean and efficient. The distilled stink of it mixing with skin and sweat. This smell, it’s people losing their identities. It’s boiling hot, bottled anger. It fills the barbershop and wafts through the silent line of camouflaged privates at parade rest.

Parade rest: a modified position of attention. Hands behind the back, clasped right over left, head and eyes forward, mouth shut, feet shoulder-width apart. Can’t walk while you’re at parade rest. When the line progresses, come to attention: snap the feet together, hands go to fists and drop to the sides. Step forward. Then back to parade rest.

The barbershop’s efficiency can be seen from a mile. A line of privates in one side, two-week old fuzz atop their round heads; a line of privates out the other side, skinned and clean.

After our haircuts we form up by platoon. Fifty privates
in each platoon. Four platoons in the company. Standing in formation waiting for the rest of the company is how we do everything. A formation consists of four ranks: horizontal lines, privates standing shoulder to shoulder. In our ranks we “dress, right, dress.” This means we are lined up perfectly with both the private to our right and the private to our front. This ensures that every private has a place and can be seen and accounted for at any given time. All a drill sergeant has to do is count the number of privates in the first rank and multiply by four.

The golden rule of a formation: never walk in front of one.

A private leaves the barbershop double timing, or running, just like he’s supposed to. He pulls his camouflage patrol cap over his bald head and double times toward his platoon. He doesn’t remember the golden rule. I want to yell, to tell him to think, but the second golden rule of a formation is you don’t talk while standing in one.

As fast as lightning, a drill sergeant is in his face.

“You just want to run around disrespecting formations all day, do you?”

“No, Drill Sergeant!” yells the kid, snapping to parade rest.

“Now you’re lying to me?”

“No, Drill Sergeant!”

“Well, which is it, buttercup? Did you just disrespect my
formation or did you just lie to me?”

Drill sergeants have such a knack for making simple situations complicated.

“I just meant—”

“You meant what? Now I’m the liar?”

“I—”

“I—I—uhh—” mocks the drill sergeant.

“I disrespected your formation, Drill Sergeant.”

“Oh, a little integrity, I see. That’s mighty kind of you. Tell me, Honest Abe, what are the other six army values?”

These can be found in the Smart Book.

“Drill Sergeant, the other six army values are loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity—”

“Yeah, we covered that one!”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant. Um, uh, respect—”

“Said that!”

“Um…Drill Sergeant, I…”

“You what?”

“I—”

“You what?
You what?
” The drill sergeant screams in his face. “Well, cupcake, while you’re stammering around trying to figure out that the seventh army value is
personal courage
, your battle buddy is over there dying from a bullet wound!”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

The kid looks like he wants to cry. No one is really dying
from a bullet wound. The drill sergeant is proving a point. In combat there’s no time to think. You just act.

“Cannon cockers until I say stop!”

Anywhere else the kid’s punishment would have been called squat thrusts. In basic training they’re called cannon cockers.

The kid stands at attention, drops his hands to the ground, and kicks his feet out behind him. This puts him in a push-up position. He pulls his feet back underneath himself and stands back at attention.

“One cannon cocker,” he says.

“You forgot to say ‘boom,’ sweetheart!” roars the drill sergeant. “Do it right or they all do it.”

He points to us. With his finger he’s saying, “If one soldier makes a mistake in combat, they all suffer.”

Kid drops, throws back his feet, and then stands back up.

“Boom!” he says.

“Damn it, private! You ride the short bus? Every time you kick your little feet, you say ‘boom.’ That’s the cannon cocker. When you stand up, you say the count. Think you can handle that, numbnuts?”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

Drops to his hands. Feet shoot back like the recoil of the M16’s buffer spring.

“Boom,” he says. A hundred recruits watch him, hearing
his Mississippi accent echoing. Stand up. “One cannon cocker!”

Back down. His feet shoot out twice. “Boom. Boom.”

Back up. “Two cannon cockers.”

“Boom. Boom. Boom.”

“Three cannon cockers.”

This goes on for way too long. His booms the only sound. At the seventh cannon cocker, someone in the formation can no longer take the echoing Mississippian accent of this kid: “Baoum…baoum…baoum…”

“You wanna laugh at him, you little puke?” yells another drill sergeant. “You can join him!”

Now there are two. And they’re both nervous and hysterical. They can’t synchronize.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom…”

“Baoum, baoum, baoum, baoum, baoum…”

Which gets them yelled at some more.

The rest of the shaved recruits form up, and we thank God that this cannon cocker charade is over. We are all seconds away from doing them. We stand there, a sea of bald boys learning to become soldiers one cannon cocker at a time.

Many people can’t do it. Most of the privates who “wash out,” or fail to complete basic training, do so during Red Phase. And the army doesn’t care. It doesn’t want the washouts. The army doesn’t believe in pity, because its
enemies don’t believe in pity.

Only after we have been completely destroyed can we begin to find ourselves.

Red Phase is about reflection. It’s about looking around and realizing how much all this means. This ground, this place we call a home. This space and time given to us for free. These people we call countrymen.

And the way it feels to lose it all, to lose our free will. The drill sergeants tell us when to train, when to push, and when to pull. When to laugh (never) and when to cry (don’t even think about it). They tell us how to walk and how to talk, how to sit and how to eat, and when to shower and when to shit.

When we have something to say, we stand at the position of attention and request permission to speak. And hope the drill sergeant doesn’t rip our bloody head off for interrupting his busy day.

Red Phase is about duty. The opposite of freedom.

And standing there being screamed at for not tucking in the corners of my bed sheets properly, I have an epiphany. The drill sergeant is two seconds away from tossing my whole mattress on the floor. He’s five seconds from tossing my battle buddy’s mattress on the floor. If we don’t pick them up and remake our bunks in time, the whole room—six other privates’ mattresses—will be tossed. But it’s okay. I get it.

If you sacrifice your freedom, you’ll learn what freedom means. And once you know what freedom means, you’ll know why it’s worth fighting for.

Sacrifice. Godforsaken, selfless, nothing-matters-less-than-my-well-being sacrifice. “I serve the country” is tattooed right across my forehead. I am a part of the all-warrior circus. We are snarling clowns with spiked teeth and bleeding gums. We smell like rotten war paint.

We smell like old camping gear. That’s the smell of the army.

Mostly it’s the TA-50, our field issue. The web gear that wraps around my chest like a python, its ammo pouches are full of the army smell. The Kevlar helmet that dents the top of my head smells like it’s leaking army-scented oil. The rucksack, poncho, and the worn-out, recycled wet weather gear that doesn’t work. That’s TA-50, all of it reeking of the army.

That smell was stuffed into my duffel bag, inside my extra uniforms, my socks, and my brown underwear. (Yes, the army even tells recruits what kind of underwear they’ll wear in basic training.) All of us, we smell like the army now, too. That smell is in the towels we use to dry off. It’s in the sheets we sleep in. It’s in our washcloths and wall lockers and brown T-shirts. It has been said that after a certain amount of time, one can get used to any smell. That’s either not true or I need more time.

The army smell is distinct, something I’ll smell a thousand years from now in my hundredth next life and I’ll turn and say, “That’s a smell from a previous life,
A.D
. 2003.” The army smell is indestructible. It cannot be washed off or worn out. It cannot be manipulated or covered up with cologne or deodorant. It is pungent but hardly offensive. It’s earthly, the army smell, like dust on a shelf. It’s ancient fabric dipped in OD (Olive Drab) green dye and handed out to new recruits.

Sometimes you can rub at the new dye and it lightens. It fades away little by little. Then if you look hard enough, the old dye peeks through. Behind the ugly green-brown dye, the fabric is blue. Some of the spaces between the splintering olive color, the parts that were given up, sacrificed, these parts are white. In some spots the old fabric is stained and bloody. Red.

Lying in my bunk writing a letter to my parents, the red flashlight making my paper pink, I realize that when I am sent to the Sandbox like all the drill sergeants say I will be, if I die, the flag they give my parents, the Stars and Stripes, is going to smell like the army. Dipped in new dye, sure. Crisp and clean and folded in a compact triangle, absolutely. But it’ll still smell like the olive green and dirty brown of everything that surrounds me here in basic training. It will smell like these sheets. And whenever my parents remember their son, they’ll have to smell that old
vinyl, dust-on-a-shelf smell I now live in.

I try not to think about it. I finish my letter and lay my head on my pillow, thinking of tomorrow, Sunday.

Sunday is our day off but that doesn’t mean what you probably think. We don’t get to talk to our families, run down to the PX (Post Exchange) to buy a soda, or take a leisurely walk around post. Our heads are still shaved, the drill sergeants still yell, we still crawl out of our racks at four thirty
A.M
., still wear army greens, and still get three minutes to hammer chow. The difference is that there is no training.

During the week we practice marching. We do teamwork-building exercises and confidence courses, the obstacle courses for which basic training is famous. We do hand-to-hand combat and pugle stick fighting. We sit through classes on the army values, first aid, and financial skills. We walk through a gas chamber full of CS gas, the tear gas that police use at riots. All this stuff is training. And all of it comes to a halt on Sunday.

Sunday is the only day we can look forward to each week. In drill sergeant language our only task on Sunday is to “conduct barracks maintenance.” This means clean.

Using pine oil almost exclusively, we scrub every inch of our section of the barracks. On our hand and knee. We buff the floors, scour the sinks, polish the toilets, scrub the showers, and wipe the counters. (Regular shaving cream
gets a shoe scuff off a tile floor like no one’s business.)

And the smell, that virtuous smell of Sunday. Tangy and sour, like pine pitch fermented in peroxide wrapped in sin. Are sins really forgiven on Sunday morning? Or are they just washed up and sanitized, covered up with a piney solution?

The mixture of pine oil and sin, it smells like atheism.

After one brave soul announces to the drill sergeant that we are done cleaning, he comes upstairs with a white glove and runs his finger along the windowsills, wall lockers, radiators, shower walls, and everywhere else. If he sees a speck of dust, it’s back to cleaning.

During the first Sunday of Red Phase, we’re thinking if we clean quickly, we’ll have time to make a phone call or more leisure time. We soon find out how naïve we are. Even if the drill sergeant doesn’t find dust, he finds dust. And since we bothered him before the job was done, we are irrevocably stupid and therefore deserving of some good old-fashioned PT (Physical Training). We quickly learn to use the entire Sunday to clean.