Field training in Fort Campbell is a miserable experience. The foliage is thick and dense, and most of the training areas lack any real discernable trails, not that we would use them anyway. Summer training exacerbates this by turning the canopy of trees into a veritable sauna. Spending weeks living in the stuffy sticky woods with no access to a shower meant that salt, sweat, and grime were able to cake on, forming a swampy marinade all over our rancid bodies.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Many times you look back on those off-putting memories and remember the fun that accompanied them. In the infantry we learned to lean on each other and “embrace the suck” as a group. We found ways to entertain ourselves even in the most miserable of times. It is a useful trait that imprinted on me early on in life, and has stuck with me through many traumatic experiences and tragedies.
Recently I was reminded of one of the stranger and more humorous memories that I’ve carried with me throughout my life. It was just before my first deployment, the invasion of Iraq. I was a Private First Class (PFC), and I was in a fireteam that comprised myself, two other privates, and a specialist. The other privates, John and Chad (Not their real names) were fairly new to the army also, though I was still the newest. The specialist, Simon, was older, not just because of his time in the army, but was actually older. I remember him being in his early to mid-twenties. It seems so young now, as I look back on my life, but when you are a young private anything older than you seems old.
We also had a team leader, whom I’ll refer to as Commandant. There is an interesting, but far less entertaining, story behind this. Perhaps I’ll share it later on. The story that I’m about to tell focuses on Commandant, John, and myself, though I’m mostly a bystander and provoker.
It was a hot day. Absurdly hot. Really it wasn’t the heat that made it oppressive, it was the humidity. The air was thick and hurt to breathe, you almost felt like you were drowning with every breath you took. We had been out in the field performing various training exercises, the details of which escape me at this point in my life, which tells me they weren’t as important as they seemed at the time. We had set up a patrol base. In its simplest terms we simply set up a perimeter with our leadership in the middle. We spent a lot of time in patrol bases, and a lot of time simply lying in the dirt staring down the sights of our rifles.
This time was different, however. We were on rest, which meant a lot of sitting, laying, card playing, shit-talking, or whatever else could be done in the general confines of the area we were in. At the time of this present exercise we were eating.
I sat, with my back to a tree, caked in dirt and grime. I picked up the brown bag that felt like a weird combination of nylon, plastic, and rubber, and cut it open with a knife. I closed the knife and tossed it into my k-pot. This is just a jargon term for a helmet. I spent a minute rooting around for the wet-wipe that came in every bag so that I could sanitize my disgusting hands. We had more colorful terms for them, but I’ll do my best to keep this as pleasant as possible.
Across from me, and against another tree, was Commandant. He was an exceptionally large man, though at 5’6” most men are large next to me. He towered over me and was built like Captain America, he resembled the current iteration of him also, with his blond hair and blue eyes. He played tight end for a fairly large university prior to enlisting, and he definitely looked it. He was calm and confident in almost everything he did, though he was also a bit of an ass and antagonizer, though those are trends you saw throughout the infantry. I actually enjoyed my time with him a lot, and he and I went through a few major events together.
On another tree was John. John was interesting. He was a good human, but a terrible soldier. At the time I didn’t know the two could be separate, the army really tried to get you to think that bad soldier meant bad human, but as I got older I learned the nuances and subtleties of both being a human and a soldier. He was doughy and built in this funny way that made it look like his chin, neck, and shoulders were all kind of a straight line. Like a sperm with legs.
The three of us sat there peering into our grab bag of putrid delicacies, offering bits of our lunch to each other for trade. Maybe you don’t like jalapeno cheese spread, trade it to your teammate that does and get something you dislike a little less in return. I say it like that because almost no one likes MRE’s. They’re terrible, and they all give off a very similar and distinct odor no matter what “flavor” it is.
Anyway, we sat there, Commandant lazily propped against his tree, his body sprawled out before him, John hunched over his brown bag, and myself sitting upright eating a vegetable cracker. A brief moment of silence had fallen over us as we began our lunchtime meal. A gentle breeze rustled leaves overhead, but it was far too dense to penetrate down where we sat. The constant chatter of soldiers all around us kept the air from being too still or quiet, and the weird smell of magnesium heaters and substandard food carried through the air.
“Hey. John,” Commandant said as he thumbed through his bag a bit more. He had this weird shit-eating smirk on his face, and his voice and smirk immediately caught my attention.
“Yeah, Commandant?” John asked, only slightly peering up from the disgusting tin-bag of slop that we called food.
“You like pound cake?” Commandant asked. It was an interesting question, and I was instantly curious to see where this was going to go. I stopped eating my cracker and immediately looked to both men.
“Yeah, I like pound cake!” John sounded genuinely surprised and happy. He seemed excited at the thought of getting a pound cake, as they were only in a handful of the meals. They weren’t good, but they passed as a dessert, and were some of the least bad things you could get.
I watched as a brick of cake wrapped in tan foil sped from Commandant’s hands. It raced through the air until it found purchase on John’s face. Smacking into his cheek with a hard thud. The impact sounded painful, and reactively John yelled.
“What the fuck!” The only words he could muster.
Still grinning Commandant responded, “Why don’t you take that cake, and pound it up your ass!”
I lost it. The fact that the question, the throwing of the cake, all of it was just the setup to a stupid punchline killed me. John, however, did not laugh. At all.
“Don’t get hurt,” is all he said in response. This was a common phrase that left his lips. It was laughable at the time. We all knew John couldn’t, nor wouldn’t hurt any of us, though there is a great story in this as well.
Afterward, however, we all had a great laugh about the whole situation, as well as the joke itself. It became a sort of game for us, finding different foods we could do this with.
“You like Strawberry Jam? Take those strawberries and jam them in your ass.”
“You like Popcorn?”
And so on it went. A running gag that still carries on in my life to this day. I was speaking with a buddy I served with, though it was neither of those two, and I had asked if he liked pound cake. We were playing a game online and I was on the headset. I was so wrapped up in what I was doing I didn’t think about the fact that both my son, 8, and daughter, 12, were sitting in the same room as me drawing. The punchline dropped. We had a good chuckle over an old memory, but after a second or two of silence the joke had settled into the brains of my kids.
It was a worm crawling its way to the core of an apple, and once there they immediately broke out in giggles. Now not a day goes by that I don’t hear some absurd attempt at making a new version of the joke. I’ve ruined their childhood.
I know not every detail is correct, and they never will be. Time makes memory change, as does perspective. But the joke itself, and the spirit of the camaraderie shared is still there. We were just young men that were “embracing the suck” together, and we used humor and creativity as our weapons against boredom.
Chris