Quote Originally Posted by CSM View Post
Love it!
That reads like it is in a book. Very well formulated.

My experiences don't come to me with the detail of yours.

Basic training in my era did not have ropes to climb on nor mud pits to crawl in.

We did have a muddy area under machine gun fire and we were told to not try to stand up.
I recall the pop pop pop of the bullets as they flew over me. I can see that Fort Ord was not like Ft. Sill. I was the group leader on the train to Ft. Benning and the train came into El Paso and it was day. I recall the desert like mountains there and nothing I saw from the train beckoned me to ever return. LOL

We had the cattle trucks but they were trucks with a long bed and solid wood rails. I guess so nobody could escape. LOL.

Very few times was I ever in the cattle truck since most of the time we marched.

I enjoy this well written piece. Thanks for telling me about it.

I plain did not sign up and as a draftee my wish was to be let go back home.

But the Army had other ideas. I am still not certain why but the company commander assigned me to be a platoon sgt and I had the black armband with 3 stripes on it. The CO told me and the other 4 platoon Sgts we would not have the bad duties, such as KP or Guard duty. It was perhaps it infantry AIT that I got assigned to the job one time only as Sgt of the guard and though I did not guard a post, I had the duty to get the guys out to the posts.

KP, did not ever do it. In Germany I also was exempt from all such things.