Recollections of Basic Combat Training, Part 3

The DFAC (Dining Facility)

My niece has had many comments on my eating habits of late. She says I eat way too fast. I admit, I do eat rather quickly, and I'm trying to actually slow down and taste my food now. I blame the Army for my current eating habits.

I really looked forward to chow time, not because of the chow, but because they (drill sergeants) couldn't smoke us much in the chow hall. They'd generally wait until afterwards, so that they could smoke the whole lot of us at one time, without any wasted expenditure of energy on their part. Time was always a constant enemy of ours during chow at BCT. The drill sergeants would wait until the majority of the platoon was through before going through the line, and by the time they got up from eating, God help us if we weren't all outside in formation. So if you were one of the last ones to go through, you were pretty much screwed. You had to "eat your food now, taste it later."

The food wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. It's like going to Picadilly everyday, but without that number of options. There was cake and pop, but we were told that if we touched any of that, that we'd have to sweat it all out. Not to say that there were times that we were tempted, but just the mere thought of having to do PT afterwards on a stomach full of DFAC food sent the hardiest of malcontents scuttling away from the dessert table. We did have one occasion where we were allowed to have cake, nay, even forced to have it, and that was our Thanksgiving dinner (which happened the day before Thanksgiving). It was good, but the goodness led to all sorts of badness the next day. There was left-over cake and some of us (not me!) was under the impression that it was ok to partake of the sugary goodness. What befell us next was right out of a scene from a Shakespearean tragedy, with plenty of name-calling, finger pointing, pointless exercising, and even a fight breaking out. Somebody had the foresight to ask the drill sergeant if it was ok to have cake, and then after getting a negative, actually said that there were recruits already eating the cake. Once outside with the whole company (normally we went in platoon formation, but since it was a holiday, there was only two drill sergeants on duty instead of the normal four to eight), the finger pointing started. After listening to that for a couple of seconds, the drill sergeant dropped the whole company and started doing "front, back, gos." {You start in the front leaning rest position (push up) and start doing them (head toward the DS). If the DS called out "back", you'd get into the sit-up position (with the head away from the DS). If the DS called out "Go", you'd get up and start jogging. And they would vary it, like thus, "Front" wait a minute, "Back" wait another minute, "Go" wait two minutes, "Front" wait a second, "Go" wait two seconds, "Back" wait a second, "Front", etc, etc. By the end of the session, you were filthy with dirt, because you'd end up rolling around in it just trying to figure out what exercise you had to be in.} The whole company is on field (all 220 of us) doing "Front, Back, Gos". After about 30 minutes of this, he calls us to a stop and says that we'll finish with our smoking if we can all do 10 push-ups together. Sounds easy enough, but they're six-count push-ups, and the whole company has to do them correctly for them to count. And if enough of the company does them wrong, well, it takes away from the count. {An 6-count push-up by the way is this: Starting position is standing, 1st count - go to the squatting position, 2nd count - thrust your legs out together and straight out and you'll end up in the front leaning rest position, 3rd count - down, 4th count - up, 5th count - tuck your legs underneath your body in one smooth motion, once again legs have to be together, and 6th count - come back up the the standing. That's one, count it, ONE push-up.} After forty minutes of being stuck between 3 and 4, some bickering started out as even more people started pointing fingers at the slack asses who weren't doing the exercises correctly, and a fight broke out, which the DS allowed by throwing them in a middle of ring of people and letting them fight under the combative rules. None-the-less, it made for an interesting Thanksgiving day.

Hmmm, this post has turned into more of one on punishment more than the DFAC. Oh well. Thankfully, the food did get better at AIT, as did our time constraints. Hopefully, I'm not bringing up to many bad memories in Alan.