Reply #11: What not to say to a drill sergeant

[jmowreader]

It was December 1981. We're sitting in a classroom on Fort Dix learning some damn thing that Sergeant First Class Cloud had previously described as "all bullshit so far." Suddenly Sergeant First Class Simental, our senior drill sergeant, strode to the front of the room to announce the terrible news: The Soviet Union has invaded Poland and we are going to war to defend the Polish people. He then went into detail about how he was going to deploy to Germany tomorrow morning to prepare for our arrival; that Saturday we would be boarding a C-141 to fly to Ramstein Air Base because we were going into combat on Monday morning.

Then the floor was opened for questions.

I rose to my feet and struck a solid position of parade rest. "Senior Drill Sergeant, why is the United States going to go to war to defend a Warsaw Pact nation that's had Soviets stationed in it for forty years?"

When I went to Fort Devens in February 1982, there was a letter from my senior drill sergeant taped to the front of my 201 file: "This soldier still owes me 915,000 pushups. Please ensure that he does them."