Today is the 31st anniversary of me arriving in Camp Cornwallis on Basic Training. There is no other three month period in my life which was as memorable. Yet it really wasn't that great a lifestyle change...I was in Cadets and the Militia before I went off to the Regs, so I should have known what to expect.
I don't think it was really all that hard. Physically it was no more difficult than a hockey camp. Mentally, it was a "sea change". Becoming a soldier (or a sailor or an airman) means leaving behind all the "comfort things" of being a high school kid. Clearly some kids had more trouble than others.
When you watch movies about basic training, they focus on the things like obstacle courses, and teams of soldiers stripping and assembling exotic ordinance. The reality is that it is a series of soul deadening jobs like spit polishing boots, station jobs, parade ground drill and long distance running. Memorizing the names of Commadants is considered more important than being able to shoot (say) downhill at dusk. The obstacle course is welcomed as a welcome break in the routine.
The other thing that happens is that you get the mother of all colds, and everything you do during your time in Basic is punctuated by hacking, sneezing and coughing. It is the inevitable result of lowered bodily resistance brought on by lack of sleep, too many innoculations in too short a time, way more PT than us fat kids were used to, and too many people from all over Canada in the same room. This results in a generally slimmer waistlines , and lowered body fat levels. This lower body fat levels....this can lead to problems.
Trouble was....I was SUCH a bad boy when I was in school. Early '70s, lots of drug use. I had spent most of 3 years stoned out of my mind! When I decided to clean up my act, I went the whole way....got my hair cut, quit drinking, quit smoking dope, quit dropping acid. PCPs, LSD, and the rest of the alphabet were definitly part of my life. Not that I have anything against a nice pot rush, but thats just it...it was TOO nice. I was watching my life disappear in a haze of pot smoke. Darned if I can remember grade ten! Even large chunks of grade eleven are gone for good....and this scared me a little. So, I joined up and in May of 1975, I was on the plane to Camp Cornwallis. (and incidently, it worked....I never did recreational drugs again! Well, aside from Red Rock Lager and Woods Dark Rum. )
The loss of body fat was unexpected, and it had really unexpected side effects. All those chemicals in my body fat started coming out, and so not only was I sick, miserable, tired, but I was also stoned out of my feakin' skull the whole time I was in Basic Training. This may be one reason why I remember the time with a certain fondness. However, the mother of all "bad trips" is when you focus in on that pretty halo of light and discover it is a really a drill sergeant screaming at you to (multiple explitives and suggestions about parentage and anatomical impossiblilties deleted)
They knew about it of course...I mean, you don't, can't and should't keep that sort of past secret. Which lead to a memorable afternoon. We were wearing out our shoe leather on the parade square and the usual hacking, coughing and visual hallucinations were happening. The trees that day were bright pink. Nothing else was. And they were staying that way. This was disturbing. So at the break, the DS calls me over and asks me how I am doing. He was a little concerned about one of his "troopies" and I told him that it seemed to be a lot worse today. He asked me "How so?" And so I explained my difficulty. He looked at me. He looked at the trees. He looked back at me. Then he put his face in his hands and shook his head. "Stag, you idiot! This is the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia in May. Those are cherry and apple trees. OF COURSE they are pink! Those are cherry and apple blossoms!!!". Hey I grew up in Manitoba, we don't have cherry trees there, like, how was I to know!
Picture courtesy of http://www.fotosearch.com/BDX428/bxp65754/
4 comments:
LOL!!!
Oh, Stag. My hat is off to you for deciding to clean up your act, and carrying it through. Well done. I had no idea that weight loss and lowered immune levels would cause a body to secrete hallucinogenic drugs from the system. The only illegal drug I ever did was speed, back in college, when I was grossly overweight at 75 pounds.
Cherry blossoms. Sometimes reality is stranger than drugs.
I had no idea about the pharmaceutical effects of weight loss either.
And THIS generation thinks they invented sex and drug use! Hah!
Quite seriously though, even thirty one years later, the smell of pot smoke makes my nose twitch with interest. I didnt quit using it because I stopped liking it! The effects are VERY nice! I just remember wanting to write a book because I, like so many young people, "Had Something To Say", went to the trouble of learning to type, even bought a typewriter with my allowance money, and then forgetting all those ambitions in a haze of pot smoke. Pot is the "ambition" killer. It has its place....prisoners and inmates of nursing homes should be allowed as much of it as they want for instance. Anybody who wants a future career in ANYTHING should stay away from recreational drugs, and PCP generators such as pot and hash in particular.
If I believed in the devil (which I don't), I would call Crystal Meth the tool of the devil. Alcohol is a close second!
Some of that sounds a little too familiar for comfort--only I had two months, not three. I was in South Carolina and had my 18th birthday a little over halfway through Basic Combat Training (BCT).
I remember the two month cold; I even wound up in the ER with a 105F degree temperature (normal is 98.7F, I think).
I also think I may have been the only person to actually gain FAT when I was in BCT. When I joined up, I was almost too skinny to even be enlist. My recruiter was trying to force food into me before the final weigh-in. I gained over 20 pounds in the two months of BCT. Yeah, some of it may have been muscle, but most of it was FAT. Believe it or not, the food there was excellent. Meals were the highlight of my day. Becuase we only had a limited amount of time to eat, I would load up my plate and use a fork in each hand to shovel as much food as I could into my body. Every time I left the chow hall, I felt like I was going to explode. ('Course, when I went to the next stage of training, I lost it all).
Yeah, BCT. It was really weird. Can't say that I ever saw and pink trees... natural or otherwise.
DJ
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