Personal Horrors

Personal memories of the Army and combat.

First, I have to be honest with you and say that I hated the Army. I knew we had to do what we did but I sure did not like the Army. The second best day of my life was when I was honorably discharged!

(The first was when I married my lovely, powerful, intelligent and pain-in-the neck wife.)

There are a great many things that I owe the Army. For one, I got almost all my education as a result of my military service and got paid while I was getting that education!

For another I found out about survival, life and people primarily as a result of my Army experience. In combat, as I have written innumerable times all values are stripped down to their barest essentials and you quickly learn that bias, prejudice, arrogance, conceit, ego and wealth are relatively meaningless in life.

But, back to my personal military experience:

The food was superb and there was no limit to what you could eat.
The clothing was good but nothing ever fit, except shoes.
It was not an infrequent experience to be thrown in with homosexuals who would invariably make advances (verbal as well as physical) to the young ones.
There was zero privacy in all personal matters. You showered together and you defecated together.
The vast majority of GI's spent their free time drinking and womanizing. Prostitution was an open affair and prostitutes were available to anyone who had the money for whatever reason.A weekend without getting drunk was wasted, to too many.
Most officers (but not all by any means) spent a good part of their time drunk the moment they got off duty.
It was not unusual for non-coms to strike someone of lower rank. Abuse was part of the military.
The language was despicable and to this day I can teach some of Hollywood some words they still dare not use!
Cleanliness was taught but too frequently not practiced.
Money was a most scarce commodity. I used to end up each month with about $5 net pay!
We paid for everything that we got. We paid for life insurance, allotments to our families and laundry and, of course, all the daily conveniences.
In my outfit, at least, about one third of the GI's could not read or write.
Many of the GI's with whom I went into combat had never worn shoes before they entered the military.They had never taken a bath, brushed their teeth or wiped themselves after defecating.They generally smelled to high heaven and more than once we had to forcibly scrub them down with yellow laundry soap!
Their personal habits were all horrid. They spit anywhere and everywhere, blew their noses on the floor and broke wind whenever the occasion arose.They never changed their clothes unless forced to.The worst part was that it was almost impossible to teach them anything!

All the above was before combat. Did combat change anything? Yes, it got worse, much worse.

After I was wounded I was put on limited duty. All the above was just as true on limited duty as during combat or training in the U.S.. More than one GI consorted with prostitutes know to have gonorrhea or syphilis and when they got it then laughed and went into the hospital for their "shots". Sex was everywhere and prostitutes were available for a cigarette. Cleanliness was absent a good part of the time and personal habits were, in general, disgusting.

If there was one thing true about military experience it was that you could not pick the people with whom you had to associate. If that makes me a snob then so be it!