A Weekend Enlistment

A weekend enlistment

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

The last sliver of purple sun is retreating behind the Laramie Range for its nightly slumber as I peer out the window of an unmarked white van bouncing along ice-streaked I-25. Face pressed against cold glass, I take it all in.

I observe from the back corner of the darkened van, illuminated only by the yellowed headlights splashing across the road and the blue glow of open cell phones, as Korn blasts through the speakers. In front of me, two adolescent young men battle through a testosterone-filled game of mercy.

After a couple songs, the driver grabs the iPod from the passenger and starts flipping through it.

“If I run into country music, so help me.”

“It’s not mine, it’s my brothers.”

“This is your brother’s? He’s got chick music on it.”

The iPod wheel stops spinning and the unmistakable sound of a rainstorm fills the van. Piano notes start dancing over a melodic bass line. Thunder booms. Rain patters. Jim Morrison wails.

“Into this world we’re thrown

Like a dog without a bone

An actor out on loan

Riders on the storm”

That’s what I am, an actor out on loan, thrown into a world I don’t know. For me, this isn’t real. But for everyone else – the other six inhabitants of this white blur speeding north on the interstate – this is their life. I am the imposter, the intruder. I am out of place.

I am in the Army. For a weekend, at least.

***

I watch the tree-speckled Laramie Range on the horizon as I lie prone in a makeshift trench on a hillside west of Casper. Seconds turn into minutes turn into chunks of an hour. Still, I repose quietly. I am a terrorist in the snow-packed mountains of Afghanistan. In my own head, I am.

Wind gusts of 45 mph scream across my face, covered in a black mask, muffling all sounds and forcing me to pop up from my covered position every few minutes in anticipation of the intruding Humvees.

With a Gortex jacket and three layers of pants on, I’m surprisingly warm. But I keep worrying that my weapon will freeze and I’ll be left out-gunned in the midst of an ambush.

I have specific instructions. Along with the three men beside me in the hovel, we are to wait for the four approaching Humvees to get sniped, then wait for the men inside to exit and start up the hill toward the entrenched snipers. Then, when they are exposed on an open hillside, we will start mowing them down.

Of course, the only constant in war is that there are no constants. The caravan spots a sniper before they reach the hillside. They stop far away, not even close to our firing range. They start up the hill and across a field, a dozen men in full camo with faces painted to match the snow and black weapons in their hands.

We make a decision, we must get closer. Two of us pop out and run a few feet, then flop prone to the ground. The other two follow. We leap-frog across the snowy tundra, stumbling along the uneven, rocky hillside.

Still out of shooting range we are spotted. I lie down behind a bush with my fellow insurgents on either side of me. We start taking out a few approaching soldiers. But soon there are too many of them. They start picking us off. Finally, a pair of paintballs slam against my hand and shoulder. I am dead. I flip over onto my back, lay my gun at my side and stare up at the blue sky as the wind howls past my ears.

Despite my death, I can only think of one thing.

“Boy, this is fun.”

***

It all started on a cold November morning in front of the American Legion here in Douglas. Staff Sgt. Paul Peterson of the Douglas Armory branch of the Army National Guard spotted me taking pictures on Veteran’s Day and remembered a recent column I had written about practicing with the football team.

“When you gonna come drill with us?”

“Ha, I don’t think I could make it.”

“No, seriously. In December we’re heading up to Casper and we’re going to be driving around in Humvees and shooting paintballs. It’ll be fun.”

Humvees? Paintballs? Now we were getting somewhere.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

***

So here we are, rumbling toward Casper. Sgt. Peterson is driving and alternately dishing out insults about most song choices.

In the front seat is Pvt. Brock Hladke, from Lusk, but a member of the Douglas unit. The second row is Krista Switzer and Brenden Krejci. The third row – where the epic battle of mercy is taking place – is Mike Meadows and Tyler Halverson.

At 5:20 the brilliant lights of Casper burst into view on the horizon. Ten minutes later we are turning off of CY Avenue and into the armory.

***

Pop-pop-pop-pop.

We are under siege. I am not sure if we just ran over a firecracker or we are taking fire. The van slams to a stop and we all look around puzzled. Then, the faint shadows of several men slip from behind a parked tank. They carry weapons. They are pointed at us.

I am a little scared. More confused.

We get out of the van, I glance around for mortar fire. Instead, the remnants of a dozen yellow paintballs have left starbursts of warning along the entire side of the van.

“That is the realism,” Staff Sgt. Marty Frank says.

Having been informed we would all be dead if it was a true road-side ambush, we enter the armory. We are ushered into a classroom filled with about 20 other guardsmen. Many are so new they don’t have their ACUs (Army Combat Uniform) yet.

Before we can drill, we must learn. We sit down in a classroom, long, brown tables lined with chairs. Cinderblock walls hold two white boards at the front and a bookcase and a television stand line the walls.

We go over cover and concealment (cover stops bullets, concealment doesn’t). We are taught the rudimentary basics of tactical evasion, escaping from armored Humvees, setting up a security perimeter and when to engage the enemy.

We go over the basics, the different ranks of enlisted men, the five levels of warrant officers and the hierarchy of commissioned officers. I learn that there have been only five five-star generals in 200-plus year history of the Army, and all five fought in World War II. (Let’s see if you know them, I’ll give you the answer at the end of this story.)

We talk about noise and light and litter discipline. We learn to tape anything metal that we carry and to not leave trash behind because it could provide clues to the enemy. Before we fight, we must learn.

We are split into two teams for trivia, except this is extreme trivia. If you lose you are punished with pushups or lunges or arm circles. I get two of my three questions right and I am happy.

Finally, about two hours after arriving at the armory, we are fed pizza. Newly enlisted scramble for seats closest to the food, but are quickly taught nothing comes that easy in the army, as the food is moved to the back, closest to those who had the patience to wait. It comes in unmarked cardboard boxes, like some kind of government-issue dinner.

At 8 p.m. we are dismissed and retreat to our hotel. We are warned not to drink, not to drink and drive, to watch out for the other “idiots” on the road and not to partake in unprotected sex. Check, check, check and check.

***

5:54 a.m. – I leave my room for breakfast. I scarf down cereal, a bagel, waffles and juice. I am convinced I will need plenty of energy for morning PT (physical training).

6:45 a.m. – We arrive at the Casper YMCA for morning training. I have heard two stories.  One has me dragging myself through a two-mile run, grunting through pushups and straining through sit-ups. The other has us playing dodgeball. I’m calling in favors with the man upstairs to make sure it’s the latter.

We stretch in formation, but first, because there are so many newbies (I am quite thankful, otherwise I would have been the only one screwing everything up), we have to learn how to stand in formation. We learn to put our hand on our hips and touch elbows with the men (or women) on either side of us. We extend our arms in front to determine where to stand.

7:10  a.m. – It’s dodgeball. I can barely contain my excitement. It’s like the first time I saw sports in high definition. The feeling is nearly incommunicable.

But this is the Army, and in the Army it’s never just dodgeball. There are a few wrinkles. First, if you get out, you must do 20 pushups before you can re-enter. Sergeants play, but they can’t get out. And if your team loses, have fun with the punishments.

Our team loses the first game and we are instructed to do suicides. Having trudged through several basketball practices in recent years, I’m prepared.

We lose the third game and we have to lie on our backs and perform butterfly kicks (riding an imaginary bicycle with your legs). Try it sometime. It’s spectacularly difficult. At this point sweat is dripping down my face, and I am considering giving up. My mind races through alternative options I could offer to get me out of the punishments. Maybe they’ll let me bob for live grenades in a barrel of battery acid. They can water-board me. Anything.

More dodgeball games, more punishments. Arm circles and slow-motion push-ups send my shoulders into full-fledged revolt. I am pretty sure they planned to start a revolution against my brain at one point.

8:10 a.m. – We are back in the van. The sweat that has soaked my clothes is now freezing against my skin. We are headed back to the hotel for a half hour of “personal hygiene.” I guess one of those favors was returned.

8:45 a.m. – Back in the rear seat of the van. Headed to the armory. It’s paintball time. I hope. I pray.

***

I have just died. I am lying on my back behind the bush with yellow paintball juice dripping from my shoulder. All the insurgents are dead. Our ambush has failed. We will soon learn why.

Sgt. Frank gathers the two dozen guardsmen around him. First question: “Who were the four who were on the hillside and broke their cover?”

Me and three others raise our hands.

“Why the hell did you move. You should have just waited for us to get closer. Who was the first one to pop out?”

It was probably me, but there’s no chance I volunteer this information. It’ll either go to my grave with me, or I’ll write about it in the newspaper. One of the two.

Three more trips out and two more times I’m on the losing side. Probably not a coincidence. in fact, the one time my team doesn’t lose, I am assigned only cover duty on the backside of the Humvees, where no insurgents ever appear.

***

One thing I learn quickly is that at the armory – and in the Army as a whole I’m sure – the end of the day is not the end of the day. When you finish, you’re not done.

After a day in the fields and bouncing over snowpiles in fully-armored, field-ready Humvees we must spend close to two hours cleaning. We must scrub every weapon, every facemask, every jacket. We must scrub the classroom, wiping down every table and chair, vacuuming the floor. We must mop the halls. We must work. The lesson, as always, is that even a good time doesn’t come without hard work.

And that’s the lesson I left the weekend with. I knew that Guard weekend would be a combination of fun and work, but I didn’t realize the level of cause-and-effect that is drilled into each activity.

It is the same in the battlefield. To borrow a famous science phrase, each action has an equal and opposite reaction. For every minute of blindly splaying paintballs across a field; I must clean, or sit in a classroom and learn proper tactics.

Too many times in life people get to enjoy the spoils of something without suffering the consequences. Not in the Guard. They share the benefits and the punishments. Dodgeball is fun, but running sprints are not. Eating pizza is fun, but sitting through two hours of learning insignias is not. Winning a trivia game is fun, but circling the room doing lunges is not.

So that’s it. In the end, that’s what I took away from my weekend drilling with the Guard. It’s fun, and it’s not. But would I do it again? Hell, yeah.

Oh, and the answer? Gen. George C. Marshall, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Henry Arnold, Gen. Omar Bradley (later of the Air Force).