Drugs in the Army--Then and Now

This drug testing class is not very much fun. Forty hours of how to fill out paperwork and supervise urinalysis drug tests. This program started in 1971 and continues with more and more emphasis for nearly 40 years.

From the perspective of someone who served at both ends of the program, the class never addresses the really important difference 38 years of drug testing has made in the military. For me, the primary difference is that people inclined to use drugs know they are going to be hassled for all of their career and, thankfully, they mostly decide to get out.

Back in the 70s, that was not the case.

When our unit got a new platoon sergeant in the 1970s, everybody hoped it was one of the young guys with only one tour in Viet Nam, or better yet, none. Because you never knew back then if the guy running the tank platoon was going to be an experienced NCO who knew tanks and soldiering really well, or a burnout who was just trying to get to 20. The great thing that continuous testing does it make it hard for addicts to stay in. Most soldiers who really want to do drugs end up getting out before they are in charge of anything.

Most, not all. The bind the Army is in is that they instill pride in us. But pride is a sword that cuts in two directions. Once you make a soldier proud in a positive sense, you have given that soldier everything he needs to believe he can do anything. So there will always be a few cases of the senior sergeants and officers who take the pride that got them the rank and let it convince them they are smarter than everybody else.

Wrong End of the Digestive System

All this week--Monday through Friday from 0830 to 1630--I am in a class with 40 other sergeants on how to monitor drug tests--specifically how to fill out al the paperwork necessary to properly conduct a drug test. All of us were assigned this job as an additional duty. There are people from the unit I am in, various units around Fort Sill, drill sergeants and recruiters. Unfortunately, this testing is necessary because no one wants to give soldier on drugs a loaded weapon.

But I really feel bad for three people in that class. One is a cook, the other two are the instructors. First the cook. For various reasons, the Army does not have cooks cook our food. When my friend the cook gets deployed, he will be filling out papers about food service, but will not be baking, roasting or frying. Although the Army won't officially let him put our buns in the oven, he will be putting his initials on bottles of urine. I would rather see my friend the cook be a cook. But he's a good soldier, so he will be working the Exit of the digestive system rather than the entrance.

Maybe a worse situation than the cook is the instructors. These two must face a class of 40 or so men and women who have taught many classes and present information that dull hardly begins to describe. Both of the instructors are good natured and resist the temptation to make any of the jokes that are being whispered in various corners of the room. And since they are experienced teachers in this subject, they have heard all of these jokes over and over.

Tobacco

If you have been reading my recent posts you know that we are banned from sex and alcohol (except on pass) for the duration of our deployment. But a few a indulgences remain within bounds. There are no limits on music so devotees of Death Metal, Gangsta Rap, Country and Gospel can be roommates. Also tobacco, both smoking and chewing, is allowed. The smokers have to go outside to designated smoking areas, but they are no more restricted than in public places in civilian life. The 20-year-olds can, for the most part, smoke and pass the PT test. The most fit 30-somethings can also smoke and run.

The weirder tobacco habit, at least for me is chewing tobacco. A lot of ex-smokers turn to chew because they can be more fit and still use tobacco. Since I worked for several years on the dock at Yellow Freight, it looks reasonably normal to me to see a half dozen men in the motor pool with their lower lip swelled out spitting into Gatorade bottles. Gatorade had a wider mouth than a soda bottle.

What will take a while for me to get used to is seeing young women chewing and spitting into those bottles. I know we are all soldiers, but seeing women the age of my daughters carrying spit bottles still looks wrong to me. Maybe after a year, I will be completely used to it. I hope not.

Best Day in OK

Today we had nearly the entire day off. We had one formation at 1300 hours followed by a briefing from the commander than off the rest of the day. I went to chapel at 0830 then rode for more than an hour. After the the meeting and formation I rode again. altogether I rode 38 miles, the most I have ridden in one day this year. Usually riding in Oklahoma means fighting a steady 25mph wind. Today the wind was only 15 mph. It seemed like still air after the usual wind here. The temp hit 55 degrees, also better than the last few days.

Besides the bike riding, the Mob Cafe served real turkey with cornbread dressing for lunch and dinner. It was really good.

Tomorrow we are up before 5 for morning PT. But one day of sleeping in until 0730 was really nice.

Anthrax Chapel for Church

I returned to the Anthrax Chapel this morning for Church. The last time I was in it, I was part of a gas mask training exercise that ended with a test of how fast we could put on our mask. This morning there were no gas masks, but many of us had weapons.


Church looks different when 40 or so men and women in camouflage with weapons are singing hymns. The sermon was about the difficulty of hearing God's voice. The chaplain is a man who readily tells jokes and had one on himself on this topic. He opened the sermon by saying that if we traveled back in time a hundred years or more the thing we would notice most was the silence. (Since I was seated in the Amen corner, I shouted Amen at this point. I was alone.) Then he pointed to his shirt pockets saying he had two cell phones, and when he is home he lives alone, leaves the TV on and listens to the radio/CD the whole time he is in the car. His advice was to hear God's voice by seeing needs and meeting them.

But for many soldiers, they can have more silence in a barracks than in many places back in the real world. Soldiers are serious about sleep and lights out rules mean the metal music and slasher movie fans have to put on headphones at lights out.

We don't have formation today until 1300 (1pm) and the whole barracks is quiet because most everybody is sleeping in. Many of these soldiers live in homes with TVs and other media on constantly.

Going to war may be the best chance they have for a few months of real quiet.

Then and Now--My Team

Early in 1976, when I made sergeant for the second time and I was a new tank commander, I was in charge of three men, my crew. We trained together at Fort Carson, Colorado, for several months with the specific goal of qualifying at annual tank gunnery. As an ex-Air Force soldier, I really wanted to qualify distinguished (expert in tank weapons), since the Army considers service in the Air Force somewhere below the Cub Scouts on a difficulty scale. The three men on my crew were 19, 19 and 21 years old. One of the 19-year-olds was married with one child and one on the way. He was my loader. The other was married with no kids; he was my driver. The 21-year-old was single and my gunner. I was among the oldest 25% of the unit at 23-years-old.

We did fire distinguished in August of that year. Partly because I drilled my crew more than most of the other tank commanders and partly because my gunner was mostly a rumpled, grumbling lousy soldier, but he was an awesome gunner. The targets on the final test, the moving range, were pop-up panels the size of tanks in the open and tank turrets behind berms. We mostly fired armor piercing, a round with a flat trajectory at distances below 1000 meters. But the final shot that got us the top category was a truck-sized target at 2350 meters. We had to fire a high explosive shell at that target. HE is low velocity with an arc of 50 meters above the gun at 2350 meters distance. My gunner punched a hole in the center of that target with the second shot.


Tank Commander is wearing the beret, loader is wearing the helmet. The driver sits in the middle, front, just visible underneath the gun. The gunner is inside the turret just ahead of the tank commander.

My team now is simply three members of the maintenance team who tell me when and where they are when they are not in the barracks or at work. In the 1970s, I would have described the typical soldier as a 19-year-old from either the inner city or the rural south, married with one child and one on the way. His wife was 17. He enlisted because he needed a job with health benefits.

My team now are a 20-year-old welder, a 21-year-old dispatch clerk, and a 47-year-old mechanic. I see them at formations and get text messages from them when they go to the PX or the gym. I do work with the mechanic at times, but for the most part, everyone has different training specific to their jobs. Very different from the training combat units go through.

Anthrax Chapel on Improbable.com

Marc Abrahams, editor of "The Annals of Improbable Research" (Subscribe Today!) and the Web site www.improbable.com, posted The Anthrax Chapel on his site, complete with my camera phone picture, properly oriented. This may be the first connection between the Ig Nobel Prize and training barracks at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.


Marc at AIR staff meeting