I was at Fort Ord, CA in the middle seventies. After some time as an instructor at the drivers school, I wound up in the Supply and Transport Battalion, B Company to be exact. The Army was in a quandry about what was and wasn't acceptable training for its warriors then. General Rogers had become the Chief of Staff of the Army and immediately changed two important regulations: 1) the weight standards were drastically changed and 2) the PT requirements were put under serious review...but until the review was completed, every soldier in the Army was required to be able to run two miles in 17 minutes no matter what the PT standard was for their age. I am ashamed to admit that overnight I became 25 pounds overweight (by the new standard) and I had NEVER run two miles all at once in my life. The legend at the time was that Rogers had been the CONUS Commander and while reviewing a parade with a visiting general from some South American country; was embarrassed when the visiting general laughed and pointed out that in his army all the sergeants were skinny and the generals were fat but in the US Army all the generals were skinny and the sergeanst were fat. Later in my career I worked for General Rogers and got to know him personally. I told him that he had made me overweight and asked it the story was true about the SA general. He smiled and said it was pretty much that way. He said he swore that day that if he ever became the Chief of Staff of the Army, he would change that. He did. And although I thought it pretty inconvient at the time, I have him to thank for getting a new attitude about fitness that I should have had all along. Better late than never, I guess.
But I started this tale to tell you about Army Volleyball. Not the competative kind in the olympics, or even the organized kind found in high schools and colleges all over the country...but the COMBAT kind you find only on company streets and sandlots on Army posts all over the world. I have been in volleyball games when some senior NCO who was bored threw in another ball or two in mid-volley and called out "Jungle Rules!". Suddenly war breaks out and anything on either side within three feet of the net is fair game, whether it is over the net or in the net. Balls are spiked directly into opposing players faces, or back of their heads, or guts or butts or groins...or even guys on your own side. My favorite game was on B Company's street when a volley (using only one ball at the time) had been going on for some time. There had been some amazing digs and saves. Suddenly the ball went into the net and bounced out about knee level. One of the second line guys knocked it down with a soccer-style knee block then kicked it under the net to the other side. Someone over there kicked it back and all the sudden we had a soccer game going. The ball was kicked back and forth under the net for several minutes when one of the backline guys got too much boot under it and it went over the net. Without hesitation the guys on the other side went into a set up and the volleyball game was back on and the longest volley and soccer game and volley I had ever seen continued.
It wasn't long after that that I got surprised by an unannounced PT test. I passed it, barely (truthfully, I got a little pencil-whippin' help from a sympathetic NCO). I was really embarrassed by it. I had always run and hid from PT and PT tests. But I decided that I would get myself in such a condition that if I got tagged for a surprise test ever again I would sigh and say, "Goody, a light day!" And I did. At first I wasn't very bright about it, but I did start doing some regular exercises and jogging. I was transferred to Germany in the fall of 1977. My new First Sergeant asked me about my weight at my initial interview with him. I was above my screening weight but had been passing the body fat tests they had started using. He suggested I get serious about running and exercising and encouraged me to get out in the woods behind our Kaserne and hit the trails out there. I went to work in ernest. It wasn't easy for me and I wasn't always as deligent as I should have been, but one day about a year and a half after my embarassing test at Fort Ord, I was walking across Husky Field on Patch Barracks and saw a group of soldiers taking a PT test. They were from my unit so I stopped to talk to them for a minute and found out that I was supposed to be testing, too. I went home and changed into sweats, came back and took the test, did VERY well on it, and returned home for a shower and back into Class A uniform and whistled a little tune back to the office, smugly thinking that I had achieved my goal. My daily personal workout regimen was so much harder than the PT test that I did feel like I had had a light day. Thank you, Bernie Rogers, wherever you may be.