A GI party isn't as hot as it sounds

Years ago, when I was resisting brain-washing at basic military training, I often looked for an excuse to get out of the day’s planned activities – running, marching, standing in formation, being yelled at by TI’s, more marching. There were very few opportunities to avoid these things, but fortunately for me, my mother had gone through the same abuse-filled summer camp just years earlier, and before I left for San Antonio, had given me two exceptions to the cardinal rule of not volunteering for anything. Ever.

My mother taught me that a GI party, while it sounded fun, was nothing more than a complete and thorough cleaning of the dorms, followed by inspection, which no one ever passed thus followed by laps around the training field. So, for example, I knew before I arrived not to volunteer for the “bunny patrol,” which entailed lying flat on one’s stomach and wiping dust and hair from under bunks and lockers, not as the name seemed to indicate, standing outdoors and watching for fluffy-tailed mammals.

Two things that at first might seem distasteful, however, I should by all means take part in. The first, it seemed, was road guard duty at chapel. This conjured up thoughts of standing at attention all day beside a traffic barrier on asphalt in the southern Texas heat. I was skeptical, but followed Mom’s advice and volunteered. It turned out that being a chapel volunteer got you out of most of the Sunday GI party, since you spent much of the day at church, where the chaplains, unlike every other non-trainee at basic training, behaved like actual human beings, and treated you as such.

And the actual work we did consisted of spending twenty minutes of the very early morning standing beside a barrier, waiting for the base commander to arrive for chapel service so we could move the barrier and salute his car as it drove past. Once he arrived, we were free to come inside and have a soda or snack and sit in the chapel courtyard until the first service was over, until it was time to go back out and move the barrier and salute again. The rest of the day we spent standing at the doors, handing out programs to our fellow airmen as they arrived for the various denominational services. During each service, we were free to either join in – and some time I’ll post about that – or again, sit in the courtyard and chat with the other ushers. At about six, we all marched back to our dorms, to be greeted by our flight-mates who had been working hard all day, glared at us, begrudging the fact that they had volunteered for the wrong tasks.

The other thing my mother urged me to volunteer for was KP duty. I had watched enough Bugs Bunny cartoons and Bob Hope comedies to know that KP was usually a punishment handed down to screw-ups; nevertheless, I again took Mom’s advice, and when the day came that our flight was tasked with the duty, raised my hand. KP sucked. The actual work of it anyway. For one thing, those on KP duty had to get up at three, knocking out two hours of sleep, a precious, precious commodity at basic training. And we didn’t get to do anything glamorous like peel potatoes or spoon slop onto airmen’s trays either. No, we spent our time washing dishes. It was hot, physical, gag-inducing work, but the upside was that in between meals, after all the dishes were cleaned and set out for the next meal, we were allowed to eat.

Chow time at basic on a normal day meant standing in line, at attention, and waiting to get into the chow hall. During this wait, any number of TI’s might approach you, ask a question from your Airman Training Order (the military bible which you were meant to memorize), and send you to the back of the line if you answered incorrectly. Or worse. Once you finally got your food and got to your table, you stood at attention behind your chair until the table was full, and the last airman to arrive announced that you could all be seated. Once seated, you were required to drink three glasses of water before picking up a fork (this was to prevent dehydration in the San Antonio heat).

The food, for the most part, was under-seasoned, and all condiments and other yumminess – like ice cream and beverages other than water – were located in the center of the diningroom, where we were welcome to venture once we’d polished off our water. The problem with this was that the path to the condiment and beverage bar went right past the Snake-Pit, the appropriately-named table where the TI’s sat and dined and randomly called upon airmen out of their seats to answer questions from the ATO, and just in general, humiliate us. Few were brave enough to get up.

Besides the fear of the Snake-Pit was the fact that chow time had a limit. A flexible limit that was often set according to how well the flight had performed that day or whether or not the TI had gotten any the night before. Sometimes, all we had time to do was drink our water before the TI called our flight back to attention and we had to bus our trays, throwing out all the food we might have actually liked to eat, so wasting time by getting pepper or a glass of milk was too big a risk to take.

Thus, spending a few hours scraping off plates of barely-eaten food and wet napkins seemed like a fair exchange for three leisurely meals. And ice cream.