In early August of 1968, I attended Basic Training at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, the armpit of the country. After initial processing, my group was bused to our Basic Training Company C in the 1st Brigade. As was the case in thousands of other camps, upon arrival we were rudely ordered off the half ton trucks, the slower guys received encouragement by being thrown facedown on the ground, and ordered to stand at attention in the hot August sun. We were then introduced to the Officers and NCO's and to our Platoon DI's. Don't get me wrong, I was not a novice to profanity and had not been shy about using it when the situation warranted for sometime. It was obvious the Army was not either as we were called every name in the book both as a unit and individually.

While this was going on, I was busy mentally scouting the NCO's to see who I would like and who I did not. The DI for the first platoon was a short guy, Garns, who was one of the nastiest there. Years later I noticed that Lee Ermy in Full Metal Jacket could have been his twin, physically and personality wise as well. I was glad I was not in his platoon and was relieved to be in the 2nd platoon as we had a DI who seemed to be a lot more calm, Sgt. Chesney. He soon proved that assessment to be very wrong! After all this indoctrination we were sent into the barracks to be assigned to squads, bunks and bunk mates. These were WWII barracks that had no air conditioning, fans or any other type of ventilation. Due to my last name beginning with E, I was in the 3rd Squad and was given a top bunk. The Sgt. who lead us was Sgt. Ascension, who appeared to be much more calm and understanding than anyone I had seen so far. We were standing at attention in front of our bunks, when someone I could not see did something I did not know of and earned the wrath on Sgt. Ascension. He immediately made all of us assume the "prone position". Now when that had happened before, it always meant we had to begin performing push-ups with the order of "down" and then "up". This time, that order did not come and we were left in the prone position. Ascension began delivering a diatribe in the most colorful of speech about something he did not want us to do again. He then shut up and left us dangling on our arms. Sweat was pouring off each of us and onto the floor. Several folks began sagging in their backs as their arms tired. Someone I could not even see all of a sudden began a low moaning sound. Almost on cue others began picking it up and soon all of were moaning and grunting as we tried to hold the position which we had now been in for several minutes. I have to admit we did not present an armyesque demeanor making noises that were not pleasant at all. All of a sudden Ascension had had enough and yelled very loudly for us to quit moaning (expletives deleted). He then informed us that moaning and groaning would not make any of us feel any better in our pain and agony and would only further upset him and therefore we had better be quiet. He stated that we would not be allowed to recover to a standing position until we could all be quiet to his satisfaction, that meant be totally quiet for an extended time.
It soon dawned on me during my now silent suffering, that he was exactly right. I felt no better nor worse being quiet than I did when I was expressing my discomfort with the others. I saw no benefit to the exercise, though, then nor do I now. I do not believe that that or any of the other humiliating, painful and degrading acts that were forced upon us accomplished anything at making us better troops. But I did learn that my showing my discomfort never did anything to ease or shorten my punishment and soon developed a dislike for anyone who did not do the same. From that moment on I, and pretty much everyone else, proceeded through our Basic Training in quiet agony and did not give our leaders further reason to extend or strengthen our suffering. Goodness knows they sure found plenty of other reasons to do that!