“Where Are You Crawling To??”

As a young man in 1969, I was inducted into the U.S. Army as a private E-nothing and sent to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri for enlisted basic training. Being a good old southern boy bred and raised in Georgia my entire life, I had never flown on an airplane and never been out of the Deep South. I considered the flight to Fort Leonard Wood from Atlanta a great adventure. Upon arrival, I was immediately processed, outfitted in GI issue, processed some more, and assigned to my basic training rifle company. The company had three platoons, with four squads each, consisting of eight men per squad. Each squad had a separate room in the company barracks.

The first night we introduced ourselves and told a bit about our background. To my surprise, the fellow in the bunk next to mine said,"I was convicted of stealing a car, and the judge said 'Jail or the Army for two years?' So I chose the Army. I’m eager to get a gun and go to Vietnam and kill some Viet Cong. I hope they send me straight to Nam after basic and let me skip Advanced Individual Training!”

I thought, “Stay clear of this bozo!”

Then the next boy related, ”I got drunk and beat a man senseless in a bar fight and also was sent to the Army by the judge.” So it went from high school dropout to criminal around the room until the next to last man. Jim was his name.

Jim said, “Well, I guess I’m the black sheep of this squad. I just graduated with a B.A. degree from Kansas when the draft board swooped down on me and drug me here kicking and screaming. I’m not at all eager to be sent to Vietnam to kill anybody.”

Next was my turn. “I just graduated from the University of Georgia with my Masters degree in microbiology. I have an application in to get a commission as a captain and be a laboratory officer. And I definitely don’t want to kill anybody or anything!” So, began the adventures of our squad.

The next morning, or maybe it was still the middle of the night for civilians, three sergeants came yelling and blowing whistles for us to fall in outside dressed in proper uniform. Pandemonium ensued! Finally, we were all more or less dressed in uniform and more or less in formation outside. Of course, it was not done fast enough to suit the sergeants, so we got to go inside, undress, and repeat the process three times before they were satisfied…or just gave up. They called us to attention and gave us numerous instructions and information, but one fact stuck in my mind. They said our company should do really well because we had a higher education level than most companies – our company averaged a tenth grade level.

Before long, members of my squad started kidding me about being “the brain” of the group and called me ‘doc’ because I had told them I intended to earn my Ph.D. when I got out of the Army. They took open delight in outdoing me whenever they could and relished every dumb mistake I made throughout training.

After weeks of training with bayonet, rifle, and grenade, we finally came to the exercise where we had to crawl the range under live machine gun fire at night. The sergeants warned, “Don’t panic and stand up. Crawl completely off the course before standing up. Last year a recruit stood up and had his head blown away by the machine gun fire.” The course was approximately 80 yards long and consisted of sandy, bare ground with pits scattered about throughout. These pits were bounded by sandbags topped with barbed wire and contained explosives that were to be set off to add to the realism of crawling under live fire. I thought this was fantastic! We were going to crawl under live fire – probably the only time in my life when I would be under fire. They were sending recruits down the course in waves separated by a minute or two intervals.

When my platoon’s turn came, the sergeants gave the order and out of the trench onto the range we went. It was pitch black! I could not see a foot ahead of me. I started crawling. Overhead the machine gun bullets were whizzing, every fifth round a tracer so that their paths appeared as red lines above us. I crawled forward … forward ... until I came to sandbags. A pit! I’d need to go around the side of it. I turned at a 90-degree angle and started to crawl. Just then a flare went up high into the sky. We had been told to freeze if they shot off a flare so that we would not be spotted by the ‘enemy’. I rolled over onto my back to look up at the flare and the red lines cutting through the sky. “Neat,” I thought. KABOOM!! The pit that I was up against exploded, bouncing my body inches off the ground, followed in a second by a wave of water, wet sand, and mud from the pit falling over me.

My face was covered with mud and wet sand, coating my glasses and getting into my eyes. I could not see! My eyes were burning from the debris in them. I was momentarily disoriented. I tried to clear my eyes, then started to crawl again. I crawled forever, it seemed. Then I encountered another sandbagged pit. I had to crawl around the pit, changing directions several times. I crawled, and I crawled. Then, I felt someone’s boots, someone standing.

“Where are you crawling to, recruit! You are twenty yards beyond the finish line, down by the headquarters building. Get your butt up here!” Sheepishly, I stood up to find myself face to face with a major. “Come with me,” he ordered.

We walked over to where the sergeants were gathered discussing world economics … or whatever sergeants discuss among themselves. “Does this belong to one of you?” the major barked.

Mortified, I was claimed by my platoon sergeant. “Where have you been, Private Gilleland? The whole platoon has been waiting for you.” I mumbled something about being disoriented and blinded by the explosion, but he was walking off briskly, motioning for me to follow.

Back at the barracks, I was led into the sergeants' room. The rest of the company’s sergeants poked fun at me, asking “Got lost on a firing range, huh? Don’t think that’s ever been done before. And aren’t you the recruit with six years of college?”

Trying to deflect their razzing, I asked, “Who is the woman whose picture you sergeants have on the wall there?” The reply came, “Why, that is the legendary Vivian Zabel. She is our hero. She is such a tough taskmaster that she can even get poets to write short stories. All drill instructors would like to be as tough as that!”

Needless to say, news of my adventure soon spread throughout the company, and for the remaining weeks of basic training I heard a constant stream of “Are you gonna march like the rest of us, or had you rather crawl?” followed by laughter. Now, looking back, it has grown into a funny memory instead of an embarrassing one. And it was the only time in my life where I was under live fire!

Word count = 1263

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