— Andy Mohr
Induction into the Army
On September 8, 1968, I reported to my home town draft board at Albany, New York’s Federal Building. Some of my high school friends had already signed up months earlier to avoid the draft and had some favorable military options. Wayne, who lived on my street, had signed up for the Air Force. He was a great high school saxophonist, and wound up playing in the Air Force Band. Richard, who lived on the corner of an adjacent street, went into the Marines and became a cook.
I, who had no interest in a military career, went into the Army as a reluctant draftee. I stripped down to my underwear in an open hall, along with other draftees. All sense of dignity was lost. Doctors briefly examined us, checking only for a pulse and a normal temperature. I mentioned my childhood heart murmur, and that my parents did not encourage me to participate in sports.
“You’re good,” said the doctor who re-checked me.
“How about a second opinion?” I wanted to say, but didn’t.
The Army gave us a military aptitude test in the form of quick verbal questions.
“Do you drink a lot of water?” I answered, “Yes.”
“Do you like camping?” I answered, “No.”
If you guessed that I was trying to game the system, you’re right.
There were some questions on military history. They got me on this because I was an avid reader of WWII tank battles. My answers gave me away.
Since I had a college degree, I was offered a slot in OCS, Officers Candidate School. For me this choice would mean a five-year hitch as a commissioned lieutenant versus two years as a private. Five years versus two years? A no-brainer for me. Besides, in war movies, the lieutenant was usually the first over the top and the first casualty. Too risky for me. Plus, I knew I couldn’t stand the officer cadet training crap. I couldn’t lead men into a war I didn’t believe in. I gave up my potential officers’ club membership for a two-year hitch as a grunt, an infantryman. We were all ordered to stand up and swear an oath to protect the Constitution. Every other man was ordered to step forward. By luck, I stood in the right place. The guys who had stepped forward were sent to the Marines. The rest of us were now in the Army.
I passed the first hurdle.
Fort Dix Basic Training
From the bus station, before traveling to Fort Dix, New Jersey, I was allowed to make one last phone call home. My mom answered; my dad was at work. This felt like the one telephone call given to a prisoner, stripped of my freedom, coerced into an unpopular war.
“I’m off to Fort Dix, Mom.”
Luckily, I had a quarter for the pay phone. The Army didn’t give out quarters.
All I remember was my mother’s warning: “Don’t volunteer for anything.”
This was not a cheery conversation, for her or me.
After a long ride from Albany to Fort Dix, the bus arrived at eleven o’clock at night. We were exhausted and disoriented, led off to an old WWI warehouse where we were issued our army uniforms and gear. The middle-aged civilian contract workers literally threw the stuff at us. At that late hour they seemed sadistic. I wanted to throw the stuff back at them. Was this the Army’s way to toughen us up, turn mild civilians into fighting warriors? I guessed training had already begun.
There was a time called Zero Week when we waited for enough draftees to fill out a training company. Then came the haircut. Army crew cut, which I always hated as a kid. I liked my hair long like British dudes. I believed it appealed more to the girls. My hair was so long it jammed the barber’s electric hair clippers, my last act of resistance against the Army, the Big Green Machine.
Training began on the rifle range. Drill Sergeant yelled a warning that a gun is a weapon, not a gun or rifle.
“It’s a WEAPON, Trainees! DO YOU HEAR ME, Trainees!”
Then Drill Sergeant shouted, “Who has never handled a weapon before?”
I raised my hand, signaling I had never before shot a gun, oops, a weapon. With a big grin on his face, the Drill Sergeant waved me over and placed a loaded 14-pound, M-14, 7.62mm, NATO weapon on my shoulder. He put my index finger on the trigger and cautiously turned me around to face the target. I pulled the trigger. There was a bang and a big kick. The target was hit. Sarge smiled with approval.
“Not bad for a first time, Trainee! You didn’t ‘bolo.’”
At the time I thought ‘bolo’ meant a low bowling score. I was embarrassed to learn that the term came from a 1900’s Philippine insurrection. Native guerrillas used a bolo weapon, a type of machete, against U.S. soldiers with rifles. Bolo became drill sergeants’ jargon for bringing a knife to a gun fight.
The next major lesson was to learn how to throw a grenade.
Yes, a live one. Like over-hand pitching a baseball, but more edgy.
Sarge instructed me to crouch behind a sandbag barrier. In front of me, at maybe thirty feet, was a square opening, the target. I had to pull the pin and within five seconds, throw the grenade into the strike zone.
I was sweating. I could see sweat on Sarge’s forehead, too. He probably made it through a couple of combat tours in Vietnam, and now some dumb-ass trainee like me might finish the job. I pulled the pin and like a pro hit the target. The grenade exploded without killing me or him. We both got to live another day.
I’d read that marching in formation had been an Army tradition, but I was surprised that it was still continued in my day. We marched everywhere. To class, around the parade ground, to the mess hall. Left-Right-Left. When two of us trainees acted as road guards, there was a double-time jog out of formation to protect the company from traffic. The fun part was having to double-time jog back to re-join the formation.
Drill Sargeant Lucas called out the orders and cadence of march. To the rear, March! Company, Halt! Dress-Right-Dress! Pre-SENT ARMS! While marching, we repeated Sargeant’s words in unison.
We trainees made up our own lyrics to the marching song: “Love, Love, Peace, Love.” Sargent put up with our antics as long as we stayed in step and kept in formation.
On weekends trainees who didn’t have a pass for town hung out in the barracks. When we heard Sarge coming down the hall looking for KP volunteers — KP is short for Kitchen Police; the Army term ‘policing’ means keeping things clean and organized — I and Tom, a guy from my home town would jump out an open window on the barracks’ ground floor. We hid until Sarge finished searching the squad bay for potential volunteers. Meanwhile, we crouched outside, under the concrete window sill, not moving or making a sound. In a way, we were practicing our trainees’ manual instructions on how to avoid capture titled “Evade, Escape, and Concealment from the Enemy.”
Besides my mom’s advice to never volunteer for anything, I learned another important lesson in the Army: Never be the first in a chow line or any line, for that matter. Better to be in the middle where there’s safety in numbers. All too often I witnessed trainees rushing up to be the first in line, eager to eat, waiting impatiently for the mess hall’s screen door to open. When the Mess Sergeant opened the door, he would pick the first five guys in line for KP duty. After spending a grueling time cleaning up pots and pans, they were the last ones to eat.
Among other essential lessons to be learned was the most serious one: handling sucking chest wounds. Vietnam was becoming famous for them. The enemy’s use of home-made, anti-personnel devices was widespread, found on roads, in the jungles and villages. These primitive forerunners of present day IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) were made from whatever trash materials the enemy could find: dud rounds, bamboo, tin cans, old batteries, and communication wire. These materials cobbled together would cause horrific wounds that required quick action. Just the sound of the words, “sucking chest wound,” made us trainees pay attention closely. The method involved how to respond in the field using a folded rain poncho and a belt you had to pull as tight as possible to stop the bleeding. After the sucking wound demonstration, the ugly reality of war began to seep into our psyche. Our boyhood days of playing soldier were over.
After six weeks of basic training, double-timing in the deep sands of Fort Dix, and doing laps around the track, I was in the best physical shape ever. The Army had achieved its goal. However, I came down with a virus and went to sick call. First Sergeant Dodge was highly suspicious of my supposed illness. He scowled at me intently, “Shamming, Trainee?”
Shamming is an Army expression that means faking it, pulling a fast one. But the medic’s thermometer registered my fever at 102 degrees and I was sent to the base hospital.
In the recovery ward, I saw my first TV in weeks. Newly elected President Nixon patted the front of his suit jacket on television, proclaiming, “I have a plan, peace with honor.”
Along with the other guys on the ward, I hoped his words meant this would be the end of war. As it turned out, his pocket was as empty as his words. There was no plan, just more war.
Andy Mohr was born at the end of WWII in England. His father was a GI who fell in love with his future English wife who was in British military service. Their son Andy returned from Vietnam, attended graduate school, became director of a museum in the Adirondacks. He was PR director for the D&H Railroad, worked as a train dispatcher for its XO Tower in Mechanicsville, and retired after 33 years in Rail Division of NYDOT. Both Andy and Liesse Chable, his wife, have been OLLI members since moving near Tampa where they live close to their son, his wife, and their three grandchildren.
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