Spring at Fort Campbell, Kentucky isn’t horrifically dissimilar from the springs I had experienced at home in Northwest Indiana. Slightly hotter, more humid, but still a similar experience. The major difference was the field training. I didn’t do field training back home, but I sure did at Campbell. We were ramping up for deployment, the 9/11 terror attacks were a very recent memory and my unit would be one of the first to go in during the official invasion.
If you’ve never been to Kentucky, do yourself a favor and keep it that way. I didn’t hate it, but the “back 40”, as we called it (turns out this may be a reference to an old agricultural term) was not a very forgiving place. Mosquitos, venomous spiders and snakes, and the terrain itself all create a hazardous training environment. The foliage is dense, and almost impassable in places, with thorns, brambles, and plants like poison ivy and sumac presenting their own set of dangers.
Spiders are arguably one of the more dangerous animals to encounter out there. Black Widows are consistently ranked in the top 10 most dangerous spiders, and while most people do not die from a black widow bite (It’s actually around 1% mortality rate), their bites can cause muscular pain, stiffness, and swelling. They can also cause cramping, sweats, nausea, and in rare cases seizures or death. Oh. and are indigenous to Kentucky.
I say all of this as a preface. I want to introduce you to the Army that I grew up in, and the culture of “suck it up and drive on” that thrived during my years of service. I’m not writing this to bitch, nor to complain about the military. I’m writing this in the hopes that young servicemembers read it and take it to heart. I hope that they understand and hear my warning and take the time to rest, heal, and recover. Remember, at the end of the day the Army won’t care about you. Soldiers will, veterans will, people will. The Army isn’t a people, though, it is an organization, a cold and unfeeling machine, and when it has exhausted you and taken everything it can from you it will leave you behind to pick up the pieces of yourself.
I had enlisted prior to 9/11, but didn’t reach my unit until after. I showed up and was greeted by an intense op tempo designed to prepare the unit and its soldiers for an upcoming deployment. We didn’t know where we were going, only that we were, and we would have lots of field time to prepare.
I believe we were in March. I don’t know why. That month just seems to stick in my head. The weather matches, so I think I’m remembering correctly. We had live-fire ranges, trench and bunker clearing, lots of walking and lots of shooting. All-in-all, it was going to be a very busy 2-3 weeks out.
March in Kentucky can have some wild weather. It can be extremely weird. As a person that grew up not far off of lake Michigan I’m pretty accustomed to odd weather, but the Kentucky climate was one that I struggled to get used to. Cold and rainy most of the winter, spring was like early summer, as was fall, and summer was like a more summer -summer. Just a hotter, more humid version of what I had grown up with. What made the weather so strange was that we would get such an eclectic mix of natural disasters. Sometimes it would be a tornado. Sometimes it would be a sinkhole. Other times hurricanes would blow up through Georgia.
It was within the first couple of days of the “field problem” that this happened. A massive hurricane (I say massive, but I really have no sense of scale as it’s the closest I’ve ever been to one) had blown up through Georgia.
What a long and miserable night. Branches ripped from trees, rain soaked everything around us, and because we are “super hard infantry fuck yeah” we didn’t use shelters or tents, and the little bit of shelter we did have didn’t stand a chance against the tropical storm raging overhead. I was so empowered by this I could feel both my biceps and my penis grow multiple inches while I endured.
I remember tossing and turning, trying to do everything within my power to get to sleep. It wasn’t happening. I rolled, and rolled, and then I put my hand down. A sharp stabbing pain in the back of my left hand and I immediately recoiled. I looked to my hand and didn’t see anything, I then shined a light only to see a small shiny spider disappearing into the darkness, its little black body disappearing into the darkness.
I didn’t actually identify it, I just saw that it was shiny and black. I immediately went to the Doc. He and another soldier in the platoon worked together to wash it and treat it. They smashed aspirin and applied it as a topical paste, and wrapped it up. It didn’t take long for my hand to swell, and you could almost see it happening as they worked to treat it.
Now we need to get the Squad Leader. We went and spoke with him, and within an hour of the bite the swelling had spread from just my hand all the way down to my fingers and up into my wrist. While this was concerning, it wasn’t even the worst thing that had happened to me on this field training – So I thought. I had previously fallen into a ravine and had a branch stab my eye. It wasn’t serious, but I had to wear an eyepatch and get checked out. In the moment I thought a spider bite was minor. SL decided we should go to First Sergeant so we can get it treated.
We all walk together to see the First Sergeant and explain the situation.
He’s a small man, though so am I, but he’s a little shorter than me. He looked me up and down, a half pound of chew jutted from his lower lip.
“Hey there wild man. Can you move your fingers?”
I wiggled my fingers on my left hand. They didn’t move much, but they moved.
“Let me take a look at that.”
I lifted my hand and he looked at the bite, which had localized swelling and a dark reddish dot where the puncture was.
Doc explained that he thought it was a Black Widow based on my symptoms and my vague description of the spider. We weren’t certain, but that was the best assumption he could make and that it should get treated right away.
“I don’t think so, wild man. That looks like a brown recluse bite.” He retorted.
The doc casually and subtly disagreed with him, and urged medical treatment. Even if it were a brown recluse bite, treatment would be necessary, and he asks when he can take me in.
“I think we just need to monitor it for a few days. Fuckin damn, check it out and see what’s going on” (This is a direct quote. He was so eloquent with words)
There was some minor grumbling, protests, and even some talk about needing treatment, but First Sergeant shut it down almost immediately.
I did manage to finally get a little sleep. I had no concept for what time it was, but I know I didn’t feel any better after resting. I woke up and tried to get my life together only to find that I cannot lift my arm up very high. It mostly hung limp and lifeless at my side. I also found that I couldn’t feel it. When the doc poked and prodded it I could feel that, but it was like it was empty and hollow. My fingers looked like polish sausages, swollen and chubby, and I noticed that the veins in my arm had started forming little red lines in them.
I immediately reported to my Squad Leader, who in turn, took me before the First Sergeant once again.
He was planted in the same place as if he never moved from the spot, the same mouth full of chew hanging from his lip. It was probably the exact same chew.
“Yeah, there wild man. Definitely a brown recluse bite. We’ll keep an eye on it” was all he said. Again, some protests, but again immediately shut down.
At this point I was infuriated. I couldn’t feel my arm, my veins were changing color, I had already sustained an injury that required me to wear an eye patch (Another story for another time), and my fingers were swollen enough that I struggled to bend them. I stomped back to my ruck and prepped for the day. Today was trench clearing if I remember correctly. Though the exact mission may be wrong. I just remember some of the details that followed.
We walked. We were infantry, that’s what we did, but the walk was longer, more painful, and more unpleasant than they usually were. I struggled to keep pace. I didn’t bitch, I didn’t complain. I just didn’t really participate either. Whenever we had to fire or 3-5 second rush, or anything else I slowly went through the motions, not as a protest, but because my god damned arm hurt and I couldn’t really move it. My squad leader and my team leader both understood what was going on, and there was a mutual agreement that this was currently the best course of action.
I went through about half of the day like this. Humping my SAW, occasionally hip-firing it in the direction of targets, and giving the vague impression that I was participating in training.
Then we had to climb. This was an obstacle that I just couldn’t overcome. The rain had turned the side of this hill into almost pure mud and wet clay. It was slippery, steep, and I only had 1 good arm to steady myself. Our squad was supposed to be at the top of the hill. I believe we were the fire support for an assaulting squad, but I couldn’t really tell you how accurate that is. What I can tell you is that when you are setting up to be firing support you are supposed to move with a sense of purpose, and the Battalion Commander wants to see you move with a sense of purpose. What the BC doesn’t want to see is the support squad’s SAW gunner moving like old people fuck, and he let us know.
I could hear him screaming at my squad leader, trying to figure out why I wasn’t laying the scunyon down range, which in turn meant that he had to yell at me. He didn’t do it to belittle me, but as a reaction. Shit, BC is yelling at me to fix something, I’d better fix it.
Now I hear my squad leader yelling, telling me to get my ass up the hill and start firing. Instinctively I just start trying to climb as fast as I can. I’m slipping and falling and dragging myself and my SAW up the muddy hill, and when I finally am able to get upright I begin hip-firing. Not because I think its cool, but because I’m all kinds of fucked up.
This draws the ire of the BC, as you are absolutely NOT supposed ot hip-fire your machine gun, and he begins yelling all over again. All of his yelling has now drawn the attention of the first sergeant, and I can feel the Bohica getting ready and preparing for penetration.
When it was all said and done, nothing had really come from the hip-firing incident. The BC had called my squad leader over, then took a look at me from afar and just dismissed everything, understanding that I was doing the best I could in the current situation. This meant the First Sergeant didn’t need to get involved, which kept old Bohica at bay.
Once again we approached the first sergeant and I was told to just wait it out. I was feverish at this point, and that is when my Squad Leader had had enough. He convinced the medics to sneak me back on to post and he took me into the hospital himself. He sat there with me while I received antibiotics and got grilled by the doctor, a Major. He was curious as to how we let it get this bad, and let me know I was dangerously close to a long-term hospital stay. He put me on quarters for 72 hours and I went back to the barracks and scrubbed the mud from my ass.
I slept exceptionally soundly that night. My hand had a golf-ball sized lump on the back of it, but the swelling was down, my veins were returning to normal and I was able to move things a bit again. I got up, went to formation, ate chow and went back to the barracks only to be greeted by a truck and driver waiting to pick me up. At this point we had 1-2 days left in the field and that rat-fuck sent a truck to pick me up to spend the last 24 hours out with the unit despite being on quarters. I went out, showed him my profile and he put me on radio duty. Sure bro. Pretty sure that’s what quarters means.
At that point I had spoken to my squad leader and let him know that I needed to file a complaint with IG about how the whole situation was handled.
“You understand that because you told me, it is my duty to inform the chain of command, correct?” Yes. I did. I didn’t care, and I know he respected my decision.
Within an hour I was at Parade Rest in the First Sergeant’s office. He asked me a bunch of questions about what I thought had happened, and generally the conversation went like this:
1SG “Walk me through …. (any part of the situation)”
Me “First Sergeant, I was bit, asked for medical attention and was told no.”
1SG “Well that’s not what happened”
This back and forth was exasperating. Sometimes he would ask a question only to cut me off before I could fully answer. After a few minutes of this I was heated. Don’t ask me a question if you don’t really want the answer. We did this song and dance for a bit longer before I finally lost my temper.
“First Sergeant, why are you even asking me if you’re just going to tell me what you want to hear anyway”, My words may not have been this accurate, but I can tell you that despite my tone my word choice was still acceptable. I wanted so badly to tear his head off.
More than once my Squad Leader was told to get me under control. Eventually I was sent out to speak with the commander, who took the role of “good cop” in the scenario. He prattled on about the unit, and thinking about unit integrity.
“Like the unit thought about me.” this response turned out to be a real conversation ender, and really what brought the whole charade to a close.
This process went on for a bit, with them trying to gaslight and bully me. In the end, I made the call. I don’t know if anything ever came from it, but I made it.
Later that week I had to get my hand lanced and drained. I still have a small discoloration on my hand from it, and I’m pretty sure there are some pictures out there of it.
This. This is the Army I grew up in. And interactions like these are why so many good soldiers leave. If you’ve stuck through all of this, I want you to take away one thing. Do NOT let anyone tell you not to get medical treatment. Do NOT let anyone tell you to not get looked at.
You only get one mind and one body, and like I said before, the Army doesn’t love you. It doesn’t care about you. It will use you and it will break you, and if you didn’t get treatment it will also do everything within its power to ensure that it doesn’t have to pay you or treat you later in life when the abuse you endured for it takes its toll.
-Chris