In mid-1968, I entered basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and began my training on my first wedding anniversary. During mid-cycle of my training, our drill sergeant woke everyone up at 2 or 3 a.m. and had us fall out in the company street. Apparently we had a bayonet missing from our bayonet box from earlier in the day. We had to crawl under our barracks in our skivvies and look for it. We never did find it, and it turned out later that the drill sergeants had miscounted when they retrieved our bayonets that afternoon.

They were all accounted for in the end. We were all very tired from running up and down on "drag-ass" hill, across the street from our company.