I have to thank Sherabella for prodding my memory,  when she wrote about attending a seminar where the speaker illustrated that we all have a little more effort to expend, even when we think we don't.  It immediately got me to thinking about Army Basic Training, Fort Ord, California, Summer of 1964,  learning lessons every day about pushing just a little bit harder.  Our seminars were not conducted in air-conditioned auditoriums...we learned our lessons under the blazing summer sun of the central California coastal hills. 

Our endurance and determination were tested, evaluated, and honed until we learned to exert more than we ever thought we could...then exert more...and finally reach way down into the unknown reserves and drag out still more.  I was 17 years old and had never had to push myself in any real way.  School was not easy, but my parents were satisfied with  "B" grades and I could do that in most classes without making much of an effort.  I didn't go out for sports;  I blamed it on moving around so much, but the truth was I wasn't interested in the atmosphere...our school's coaches were all retired Marines who felt that their ability to intimidate young Marines translated well into high school sports.  I didn't have the ambition to compete.  So what did I think Army boot camp would be?  I never gave it a thought.  I drifted into it the same way I had drifted into everything else in my life up to that point, without a thought or plan.  The idea of giving more of myself than I was ready to give just wasn't in my braincase.

But something happened in basic training, something I didn't expect.  I liked being a soldier.  It wasn't easy.  I had to push hard just to get by...excelling would require so much more.  I came to enjoy the strain, the sweat, the stresses, and the uncertainty....wondering if I could do what was expected...what was required.  Of course, the realization didn't come at the start.  At first, I would lay in my rack at the end of each day and ask myself, "What the hell am I doing here?"

Then, on a long road march, carrying a pack and equipment that weighed more than half my body weight, I wanted to quit.  I was overheated, dried out, exhausted, and my feet and shins were killing me.  The column turned left up the road to Sandstone Ridge.  The road ahead was straight and a steady uphill for more than two miles.  The ridge was distorted in the heat waves rising off the asphalt.  I was done.

One of the sergeants saw me faltering and stepped up next to me.  I couldn't pull out of the formation with him right beside me so we walked together silently for a hundred yards or so...he watched me out of the corner of his eye;  I watched him out of the corner of my eye;  and we walked stride for stride.  But after a bit, I couldn't keep it up anymore;  I slowed down, stepped out of line, and braced myself for the yelling and abuse that was sure to come. 

Instead, he fell back to walk beside me again.  He calmly and quietly told me to keep going.  I said I couldn't.  He said I could.  This discussion continued for several minutes.  Then he said, "See?   You just went fifty yards farther than you planned on".  He kept talking to me,  and finally I really had had it.  I was about to fall out for good when he said, "You look tired,  'Cruit...You wanna quit?"  I told him I was dying and I had to stop.  He told me that that would be okay.  I was shocked!  I expected all manner of abuse and "motivation" but instead I got permission.  Then he explained that all I had to do was to fall forward face-first...then at the last second chicken out and stick my foot out to stop my fall.  Then do it again on the other foot.  If I continued to do that, I would go for hours longer.  I got mad.  He was playing with me.  But surprisingly, it worked.  I got to the top of the ridge.  We were given a break at the top;  we fell onto the ground using our packs for backrests, sweating profusely, guzzling water out of our canteens.  Some lit up cigarettes, but most just closed their eyes and rested.  I looked around and saw that I wasn't the only one who had been close to dropping out.  Almost everyone looked done in.

The break only lasted about ten minutes.  When I got up it seemed that every muscle in my body was on fire.  But we got formed up and started out again and within a few minutes the fire dissipated;  I got into the stride of it, and I was ready to walk however far I had to because I knew how to do it.  That long hill had come at about the fifteenth mile of our twenty mile march.  When we got back to the barracks and put our gear away, we all ached and moaned and nursed our blisters and rubbed our sore spots and laughed and joked about what we had done.  And bragged about doing it.

Most of Basic Training was like that.  We were pushed not so they could measure how much we could do;  it was designed to show us what we could do.  We had to learn to blast out of our comfort zone and push until it hurt, and then push harder. 

There were a lot of incidents that summer that tested my endurance.  Many, many times I just wanted to curl up and rest, close my eyes and let a cool breeze blow over me.  Instead, in my head, I just fell forward and at the last possible moment, I stuck out my foot and broke my fall. 

I can still hear the sergeants yelling at us, "I'm gonna watch you work until I sweat"..."It's all mind over matter, 'Cruits...I don't mind and you don't matter"..."It ain't nothing but a thang...but it's my thang and you better get to it"..."Does it hurt yet? Gooooood"... "You better keep on keepin' on"... "Keep pushin', no one gets outa here alive"...

Then one hot afternoon on some course or another that required crawling in the dirt (seemed like all of them required crawling in dirt unless it rained...then it was crawling in the mud), I was not making my sergeant happy.  We were supposed to crawl into the face of enemy fire and keep the edge of our helmet down on the ground to protect our face and eyes from sand or dirt kicked up by the enemy's bullets.  I just couldn't keep from popping my head up;  it was just a little, but enough to make the sergeant bend over me screaming about all the things that happened to soldiers who couldn't keep their helmet dragging in the dirt.  He finally decided to put his foot on my helmet to help me remember to keep it down.  He screamed at me to push his boot up that hill.  It was working, too, because he kept enough weight on the helmet that I was unable to lift it up any more.  We moved up the hill like that for several yards, me crawling with his foot on my helmet and him hopping beside me with one foot pressing down on me.  He bent over me again to abuse me some more...then he yelled with obvious surprise in his voice, " 'Cruit?   Are you smiling?  What the hell are you smiling about, 'Cruit?" 

I realized I was smiling.  It was kind of a mark of pride that I had been pushing SSG Meyers' boot up the hill, and I would have a great story to share in the barracks that night.  I yelled back to him, "WETSU !  Sergeant, WETSU!!" (For the uninitiated, the Army is very fond of achronyms, using the first letters of words in a phrase or title to form a word...Commander-in-Chief becomes CINC - pronounced 'sink', for example.  WETSU in an achronym for We Eat This Sh...uh..Stuff Up)

I graduated from basic training that September with about 200 other guys who had had a glimpse into their inner selves and seen gristle and grit in there that they hadn't realized was there before.  We came away confident and cocky and singing cadence songs and feeling all gung ho about whatever came next.  It was a good feeling.

Thanks, Sherabella.