The annual PT test had to be modified because we didn't have all the facilities at Daley Barracks that you needed to do it right. So we did the 40 yard low crawl, didn't have the pit for Run, Dodge, and Jump so we did the inverted crawl instead. We did have a Horizontal Ladder, did that...don't recall what we did for the forth event...but one lap and a little change around the parade field was almost a mile and the Colonel called that good. I was 18. Should have been in the prime of my life. I only weighed about 150 so the Horizontal ladder didn't pose much challenge for me. I could crawl ok...low and inverted...but the one mile run was hard for me...Winston may taste like a cigarette should, but it played hell on my teenage lungs. But the stretch to the finish was slightly down hill so I was clomping along, pretty sure I was gonna make a decent time.
Just as I reached the last Artillery building on the east side of the parade field (Cav was on the west, Artillery on the east, engineers and miscellaneous wrapped around the south end), I heard two sets of combat boots pounding up behind me. They came around me in a sprint, both of them bug-eyed, red-faced, sweat (smelling of whiskey) pouring out. It was my platoon sergeant and the Davy Crockett Section Sergeant, running neck and neck, veins popping, lungs roaring...and both had a lit cigarette firmly planted in the corner of their mouths. They were focused and determined and each one peeked out of the corner of his eye to see if the other was gaining. They held the sprint past the finish line, almost all the way to the mess hall door before they let up...and spent the rest of the afternoon, between coughing jags, arguing about who had won.
These two guys were both Korea vets...they had both been combat arms soldiers (read: Shooters) and had been recycled into other fields, my boss because of battle damage, the Davy Crockett guy because he was smart enough to see a future in a weapons system that nobody could know about. They were both big, muscles of the working variety, not body-building types. Both were heavy smokers, drinkers, constant coffee drinkers, and reknown scrappers. They were what we used to call "tactically and technically proficient"...actually we used to say they "knew their S***".
One Saturday night, after the company party, a huge fight broke out in the barracks. I missed it because Billy had a bus commitment to Wurzburg and I rode along with him. When we got back it was mostly over...The Davy Crockett guy and my boss started at one end of the barracks hallway and the First Sergeant and the Ammo NCO (a former all-Army middleweight) started at the other end...each pair walked toward the middle, telling rioters to go to their rooms and greeting resistance with knock out punches all four were more than capable of delivering. The word quickly spread through the hall of what was coming and the fight quickly lost its momentum. Rumor was that My Boss and the DC guy quit giving the option and just started knocking guys down as soon as they grabbed them. I could see that. They were competetive in every aspect of their relationship.
The first time I went on alert, I screwed up pretty bad...when we came back I was tired so I went up to my bed and fell asleep. Did you know that after every alert there is an accountablility formation where they count noses and rifles to insure everyone was back? I didn't either ! I don't think they were as upset about me being unaccounted for as they were about the M-14 I was sleeping with. My boss came into my room after he had searched everywhere else (because NO ONE is so stupid as to go to bed before the accountability formation) and when he saw me in my rack he literally roared. He grabbed me by my LBE harness and pulled me off my bunk and threw me up against the wall, a good 10 feet away. He pinned me to the wall while he promised to do things to me that I cannot repeat...but they were not nice, then he threw me to the door and out into the hallway and through the double doors into the stairwell. I think that when I arrived in the stairwell that was the first time my feet actually touched the floor. I managed to beat him down the stairs and into the street to be greeted by the entire company, who had been standing there waiting for me to be found. As glad as they were to see me, they sure didn't treat me very nicely.
Well, my point is this. These were the kind of NCOs that I had around me when I was learning Army ways. I understood them because they were just like my Dad, the Chief. They ruled the Army, they were masters of their AOs (Area of Operations) and they knew their stuff. They knew how to do war. As hard as my boss was on me, he was ten times harder on any outsider that abused me. I was his...I had to measure up to his standard to be "ok"...but being his, no one messed with me while I was learning to be '"ok".
I saw guys like him all around me, tough vets, intense guys with scars and knowledge. I learned more from them than from any college graduated, corporate-climbing, ass-kissing, politically correct brand of NCO that the Army seemed to embrace later on.
The old vets were my heroes...I wanted to be just like them.