My Army Story: Part III

Part III: The Garrison Life

I was still an emotional wreck when I reported to Fort Hood. My dad had procured a hotel room in Copperas Cove, a matchbox community located just west of the base. He only had two days to hang out with me, so we spent them frantically figuring out what the heck I was supposed to be doing there. We got my vehicle registered to drive onto the base, located the building my unit was in, and checked out the town. When he flew home to Colorado I’ve never felt so alone.

I was assigned to the 7th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment (7th MPAD) which consisted of 15 lower-enlisted Soldiers (privates, specialists, and sergeants), three captains, a first sergeant, and a major commanding. MPADs are very unique units because journalism is an unusual field of work in the military. For example, most majors in the Army are in charge of 80 - 150 Soldiers when ours led 15.

I was dreading what my new routine might be, but it wasn’t terrible once I got used to it. Being a Soldier “in garrison” is similar to having a nine-to-five civilian gig, but with a million more rules and a much stricter dress code.

Fort Hood itself is a dystopian flat landscape stretching mile after mile and sectioned off into blocks of asphalt parking lots, chalky green lawns and indistinguishable tan buildings. There are very few trees or any other kind of shade to park your car under during the ungodly hot summer days that seem to last all year.

Workdays started at the butt crack of dawn in a grass field near the office, where we would form up and salute as recorded bugles played Reveille over huge speakers on poles while the American flag was raised in front of the III Corps Headquarters building for the day. Then we’d do physical training (PT) together for an hour. Afterwards we’d drive home, clean up, and meet right back at the office. This was not optional. (In the Army, nothing is.)

This I learned: Soldiers exist to serve and fight and are required to stay prepared to do so at the drop of a hat. Physical fitness is everything. If you want to be a Soldier, you have to stay in shape. If you can’t, you’re out.

The Army checked our fitness levels at least once every six months, when had to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) [In 2022 that test was changed to the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT)]. The test was how many push-ups you could do in two minutes, how many sit-ups you could do in two minutes, and how fast you could run two miles. We were graded on a scale according to age groups. Since I was in my 40’s, I didn’t have to do as many push-ups or run as fast as a Soldier who was 23 to pass. However, there are also maximums you can hit to get a perfect 300 score (100 in each event). Getting “three hunnys” on an APFT is the surest way to earn respect in the Army. Conversely, failing an APFT is the fastest way to lose it.

Once I saw a lieutenant colonel – a senior-level officer that had probably given at least twenty years of his life to the Army - literally crawl across the finish line to complete his two-mile run in time. He tore his knees into bloody pieces and nearly had a heart attack doing so, with medics rushing to give him oxygen and an IV as he lay there gasping, but he passed with about ten seconds to spare. If he had failed, his career would have been over. Hopefully he eased up on the chicken wings after that.

I was old, but I grew up in the mountains of Colorado and fitness had always been a part of my lifestyle, so I was in better shape than most of the young Soldiers I worked with. I made it a mission to max every APFT, all age groups. (I usually got about 80 push-ups, 80 sit-ups, and ran my two miles in 12 minutes, 30 seconds give or take 20 seconds.) The “Old Man Scar” jokes subsided after that, but now I had a reputation to live up to – which might have been worse. I stressed out to a completely irrational degree before every APFT I ever took.

As my first months as a real Soldier went by, I started to understand how vast and complex the Army machine really is. It can be a frustrating bureaucracy. The human beings that make up its workings can get ground up in its colossal gears if they don’t keep reminding the people around them that they exist. As a result, there are a lot of squeaky wheels. Somehow, that makes the Army both incredibly efficient and insanely inefficient.

It also turned out the Army wasn’t full of just rednecks and dumb jocks. I served with Soldiers from every walk of life imaginable – farmers from the Midwest, former gang members from the inner cities of Chicago and Los Angeles, more than a few proud Puerto Ricans, gays, straights, Muslims, atheists . . . the Army just might be the most diverse workforce in the world. But that doesn’t mean every Soldier’s a gem.

The rules Soldiers have to abide by are made for the lowest common denominator – i.e. the fuck-ups and least intelligent among us – so the daily routine can get real stupid real fast. For instance, our commander was required to round us up every single Friday afternoon and give us our “weekend briefing” which included valuable advice like: Look both ways before you cross the road, don’t get drunk and barbeque, don’t get drunk and drive a boat, and don’t get drunk and rape people (I am not exaggerating here). Of course, the biggest dead horse of them all was don’t kill yourself.

The Army has put a heavy push on keeping Soldiers from committing suicide, a problem that was greatly exacerbated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nobody seemed to think of the possibility a Soldier might use the Army itself as a tool to that end. I was under the radar.

I struggled hard with depression through those first few years. My estranged wife and I decided it was best if the kids stayed with her in Colorado during the school year, and I’d take them on holidays and during the summers, which left me alone in Texas for most of the year. That was something I never saw coming. After fourteen years of being a family unit, the stillness in my apartment was like being buried alive. I became a highly functioning alcoholic. Most mornings I’d show up at PT either still drunk or hungover. I cashed in on a lifetime of fitness to keep my APFT scores up.

Things got worse when we finalized our divorce. The big Army, in its robotic wisdom, decided to take my basic allowance for housing (BAH) away. This is the money the Army allots Soldiers with families to pay rent and live off base. Once I was officially divorced, the Army – whose official positions are still in many respects stuck in the 1940’s - concluded that I didn’t have a family.

I was now a lower-enlisted “single soldier” and ordered to move into the barracks with the other single soldiers, even though I was a 42-year-old father with two kids and eleven months left on my apartment rental contract.

It was my turn to become a squeaky wheel.

It basically took my first sergeant, my commander, and an act of God to get my housing allowance reinstated after more than a year of appeals to the Fort Hood housing authority. In the meantime, I was still paying rent, going broke, and getting drunk.

I completely ran out of money just in time to put all my stuff in storage and deploy to Afghanistan.

-- Next up, Part IV: "Afghanistan" ---