For me, it all started in Sept. 1969 at Fort Dix, NJ.

I remember the first day we got off the bus at 3am in the morning. The DI's were in our face's barking orders. From that day forward, we ran a mile every morning before breakfast, had training, pt before lunch, more training, pt before dinner, and more running. We were always in a hurry to get somewhere just to sit and wait.

As there are so many things that I can remember from basic training, the one thing that stands out is when we had our first general inspection.

After a full day of training, we were told to get ready for a general inspection the next day. Our barracks had to be cleaned from top to bottom, all brass had to be polished, beds made so tight a quarter had to bounce when dropped on them, lockers opened with clothes rolled and uniforms hung in a specific order, dress shoes and boots shined to a mirror finish so they can see their face's in them.

We also had to learn our general orders, know who the General in Command, Secretary of State and the Commander in Chief were. So as you know we did some hustling until late in the night to get this done.

The next day arrived and here we all were tired and nervous as hell, waiting for the General to do his inspection. We hear the DI holler out "ATTENTION!" and who walks in, the Company Commander, not the "GENERAL!" that we were expecting.

Boy, were we naive or what!! Regardless his rank, we were still nervous! Well, as he was inspecting each of us he would ask us a general order or something like who the Commander in Chief was.

When he got to the private, directly across from me, and started to ask him questions I could see that the private was extremely nervous and sweating profusely. Sweat was dripping from his hands so much that there was a six inch puddle by each foot and he wasn't there more than a couple of minutes.

I never knew someone could sweat so much. I felt so bad for this guy because the day before he had showed me how to spit shine my boots.

George P Lockwood, Lisbon, Ct.