Personal Narrative Essay: Fort Lost In The Police Department

I woke up as the bus trundled down the road through the Ozarks of Missouri in the early hours of a winter’s night; it was frigid. I was wearing only jeans and a flight jacket. In the back of the bus, two old guys shared a paper bag between them. Well, being only seventeen they seemed old to me. The smell of booze and rancid men invaded the bus for a long ride from Kansas City to Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, through the Ozarks. The sun was starting to come up, but the temperature was still below freezing; there was not even so much as a head in the bus, so we pissed in coffee cups.
Finally, we drove through the gate at Fort Leonard Wood into the recruiting area, which turned out to be old WW2 barracks. Standing up from the backbreaking seats …show more content…
We snapped to and wondered what awaited us. The Sargeant Major introduced the Commander of the Training Brigade as Colonel Burns. The Colonel started out by welcoming us to what we fondly called ‘Fort Lost in the Woods,’ and told us the processing procedures for the next week. As a final note, due to someone’s lack of detail, our cold weather uniforms were not going to be available until the following week, and we were to wear our civvies until further notice during processing. As we all shuffled out once again, we formed lines that we would later learn were our squads. We were then assigned to the barracks to commence the processing procedure. Next came the chow hall. We had not eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours, and we were starving. To my astonishment, they had chocolate milk; all you could drink, and coffee, which I had not taken to as of yet. After a long wait in line in the low temperature, we finally got to the chow hall only to find we only had just ten minutes left to eat. After chow, we fell out, returning to our barracks and our ranks. We spent the rest of the day getting to know some of the guys that had filtered into our new home. The Sergeant assigned to watch over us was a short timer back from Nam and wanted nothing to do with us. During the rest of the week, we were marched from class to class, test to test, while we waited for our Army clothes to arrive, and be assigned to a training …show more content…
There was a post from each firing position and a round culvert buried in the ground beside it. I was leaning on the post, holding myself up, and did not realize my temperature was high. It wasn’t such a smart idea to be responsible for a live weapon firing an automatic burst at a target in my condition, but I persevered. We had passed the 6-week point in our training, the usual basic infantry format, and this weekend was to be our first pass. That night, laying on top of my bunk burning up with fever, I didn’t want to turn myself into the sick bay. The following day I took my first weekend leave, managing to get to the Greyhound bus station and back to Kansas City even though I felt as sick as a dog. When my parents met me at the station, I could barely stand up. They took me straight to the ER. The prognosis was, thankfully, not the meningitis that was killing so many troops at the Fort. The doctor gave me medication and suggested bed rest for a week, but there was no way that was going to happen. He contacted my Commanding Officer with the details, and the Captain said, “No problem,” which surprised me. I was apprehensive about not being able to graduate with my