2. You Gotta Get Up Early.
Eddie's first formative Army experience is in his lower bunk-bed in the 2-floor barracks - a long wood building under sloping roof, each floor housing 50 or so new soldiers, with upper & lower bunk beds on each side. Eddie is midway from an end on the top floor.
At 4:30 AM, he is deep asleep. Suddenly, bright lights switch on and a loud voice shouts "Yo! Git you asses up, fuggers! You in da Ahmy now!"
Eddie is sitting up rubbing sleep out of eyes and the first thing he sees is the lower bed across the floor having its sleeper dumped by the 3-stripe sergeant pulling the sleeper's bedding out from under him. "Let dis be a lesson to you all! You in da Ahmy now!"
Eddie notes the Sergeant is Negro, a really black black man. It is Eddie's beginning training in rough racial equality in the Army. The basic training that includes this demeaning treatment gives a touch of humble pie to Eddie's civilian selfishness.
A week later, Eddie reads his name among several names posted on a roster for Kitchen Police, or KP duty.
Next day, at 3:30 AM, bleary-eyed, he lines up with eight other soldiers in fatigues, the gray-green shirt and pants, with matching visor cap that has the distinctive high-top round pillbox-hat shape. A soldier with 1-stripe on sleeves, a Private First Class or PFC, gray-hair & mustache, says: "Look smart, you punks. Atten-hut!" and marches them off to a back entrance of the mess hall. Afterwards, Eddie learns this is PFC Johnson, a remnant of the World War 2 Army who could not take civilian life so he re-enlists repeatedly even now into middle age and only one promotion from Private in all those years showing his lack of ambition. He is assigned the worst non commissioned officer jobs like this early AM duty.
In the kitchen a fat, big-mustached sergeant in white apron says "Come on you punks, start cleaning." PFC Johnson shows the new recruits the mops & brooms and soap & water, and, minutes later, Eddie is on his knees scrubbing the mess-hall floor. Later, a cook teaches Eddie to fry eggs-over, en mass and put them on a counter next to the bacon, which Eddie also gets experience cooking.
The KP duty is all day, ending 11 PM. Eddie finds himself not only cleaning and cooking, but serving. Along with the other KPers he takes his meals at a long table on a bench and eats by the numbers with old PFC Johnson's telling the KPers "You got 10 minutes for breakfast starting Now! And he tells off each minute - "One .......," "Two,...". Eddie finds himself rushing his coffee and cake at the PFC's "Nine".
On a cold, rainy night Eddie does guard duty, walking up and down in a brown army coat, an M-1 rifle over right shoulder, 2 hours duty, and looking into the empty buildings. At 2 AM, glancing in a window, he notices movement. Entering, he shines his flashlight into a small room. On the floor are 2 soldiers from his barracks, both with pants down to ankles, doing what the soldiers call sixty-nine, each recruit's mouth filled with the erect penis of the other. The room stinks of wine, with bottles in a corner. The two 69ers understand the seriousness of the interruption and without Eddie's even ordering them they separate and jump up pulling up their pants.
Eddie has had his experience in a car with an older guy. He knows it is a kind of rite of passage. He also knows he holds the keys to these guys' future. If he arrests them for breaking and entering the building at night for the purpose of homosexual perversion, these 2 lives will be ruined, not only by their courts-martial and the jail time but by the story that will follow them for life.
Eddie puts his rifle down and says, "OK, you guys, clean up and dump those bottles outside, and don't ever again go breaking into buildings at night." Then he turns and resumes his guard duty route. He does not report the incident as he should report it according to orders.
The last few days of basic are spent in the field. The recruits, each armed with rifle and bayonet, and equipment for camping in backpack, march miles into the local forest. They stop late in afternoon to dig and put up individual pup tents in which they will sleep. They eat and gather in a central large tent with a big fire to keep out the freezing winter. During the day they do war games between red and black armies identified by color armbands. Like in actual combat with live bullets.
They are living off the land and it leaves a deep impression on Eddie - it makes him aware of how close civilized persons are to the historical Middle Ages. On the final day, after a week in the field - It happens to be Christmas day - the troops are given a Christmas dinner and Eddie goes into the main tent where a party is going on with roast turkey dinners prepared by the kitchen Sergeant, and being handed out by the day's KPers. As Eddie passes in line to the serving area with his tray, he recognizes one of the recruits he surprised that rainy night in the building doing the homosexual 69. The soldier is on KP serving the roast turkey portions. As Eddie holds out his plate the fellow looks at him and, without a word, gives him a double portion. The guy on line in front of Eddie. notices and shouts, "Hey, Cohn! How come you give dat guy a double?" and is told by Private Roy Cohn, the soldier serving, "Shut up, you punk, or I'll see you later outside!" And the guy stays quiet, and Eddie realizes, he did a good thing not reporting the homosexual acts that night.
Later everyone in the tent is singing Christmas songs and Private Cohn and the other soldier Eddie had saved from ruin come up to him and each one wordlessly shakes his hand. Eddie wells up with good fellow feeling as his singing voice rises in Silent Night.
For next, click 14.(3-4) Menage a Trois - Seal the Deal
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