My Army Service Required Embracing the Suck—and Squeezing in a Few Good Laughs

 Serving in the military is a lot of things. Absurd and funny are definitely part of the story.

When people think about service, they think about combat or embracing the suck, and they are not wrong. However, my experience in the Army was filled with fun stories that didn’t teach me a lesson or give me the spicy memories that made me wake up late at night in a pool of sweat. Many times, it was just fun.

Let’s be honest: Unless you were career military, most of our service took place when we were kids. We did stupid things that could get us killed, but what was the difference between jumping out of a two-story barracks window and jumping out of a plane? There were horrible times, but there were also profound moments, like watching a purple sky as the sun set in Iraq. And there were fun times, like getting a win over an authority figure. Writing these stories made me remember our fun times being absolute nightmares to our chain of command. If you were one of those people, I apologize for making your life harder. I was young and stupid. I can now, honestly, say I am no longer young.

‘He Doesn’t Know Who We Are … Run!’

One morning, while I was stationed at Fort Liberty in 2009, my platoon was out for a run for the morning’s PT. We were taken to a place called Area J, a forested part of Fort Liberty that is filled with hiking trails. After some time, we all started to realize that we were running so far out that we would not have time to run back to the company and get released at 0800 to shit, shower, and shave. Everyone began to look at each other in combined understanding. Everyone looked like they thought it was funny, but I was deeply concerned since I had only been in the Army “since breakfast.”

As the run progressed, we went deeper and deeper into the woods until the platoon sergeant called us to a stop. He quickly had us stretch for a minute or two and then shouted, “Zonk!” and everyone scattered. I had never heard this before, but in the military, if everyone scatters, you do too. So, I ran and ran, sometimes following a trail and sometimes through the brush in the general direction of my barracks. Soon, I was running with two other troops from my platoon, trying to find our way back to our barracks. Suddenly, we were no longer running on dirt trails in the woods but onto pristine grass.

We knew we were fucked.

But without a better plan, we pushed on and ran even faster. That’s when we heard the sound that no lower enlisted ever wants to hear:

“STOP!” the division command sergeant major (CSM) shouted.

One of my friends stopped in total reflex, so we all hit the brakes and turned to face the CSM. We jumped to parade rest. That was when I realized just how fucked we were—we had come out of the woods into the Division Headquarters.

Walking on this grass is absolutely forbidden. If possible, they would suspend the private who cuts the grass above the field so it never feels the revulsion of being disparaged by a human’s foot. The CSM stared us down, fuming from the steps of the Division Headquarters.

“Do you know who I am?”

Now, of course, we knew who he was as he was wearing a vest over his PT uniform that clearly indicated his rank and position. Then, to my astonishment, I heard a voice challenge his: “Do we know who you are? Do you know who we are?” The voice seemed familiar, like it was coming from one of my fellow runners. It couldn’t be him, I thought, as a comment like that would give us a one-way ticket to Leavenworth. The CSM puffed up and scrunched his face.

“No, I don’t know who you are,” he shouted back. “Who are you?”

At that exact moment, my ballsy friend looked toward me and our fellow castaway and screamed, “He doesn’t know who we are! Run!”

I don’t know what happened next, but that is the fastest I have ever run in my life. We must have run another five miles, making sure we were not followed. In and out of the woods, into different barracks, and then sneaking out. All the while, we were sure that the CSM was right on our tails. Somehow, we made it back to our barracks, seemingly undetected.

Still, we knew we would have to go to work call, and the CSM could put the division on lockdown until he found us. To this day, 15 years later, I am still amazed he didn’t, and we got away with walking on the CSM’s grass. We never heard anything about it. I wonder what happened after we took off. Was he fuming mad and taking it out on someone undeserving, which is the custom in the military? Or did he take it for the loss that it was and think, “OK, well done. They got me.”

Sometimes when I am alone in a room and I hear a knock at the door, my first thought is, “Oh shit, the CSM finally found me!”

Don’t Give a Tornado Grenades

When I was a specialist working at Fort Liberty in 2011, I fixed three belt-fed, fully automatic grenade launchers called Mk19s. When I finished, my warrant officer told me these weapons should be tested. I was excited because I rarely got to test the weapons I worked on. So I called around to the people I knew who might be running a range and sure enough, C company, 2nd Battalion, 504th Infantry was at range 30. I quickly checked out a Humvee, grabbed a driver, and headed out without noticing the storm clouds gathering.

As we approached the private guarding the entrance, I put the seatbelt over my rank and told him we were expected—easily getting access. At the range, I told my driver to set up the guns online while I talked to the range officer. It turned out he was a friend from my last deployment, and he was happy to let us use his ammo, but everyone had to requalify on the Mk19, so we needed a trainer to recertify our qualifications. I agreed and helped my driver set up the three weapons on the shooting line.

The trainer had us shoot a tank three times with the Mk19, and we were qualified magically.  Now, it was time for some fun. We ripped off the traverse bar, dropped the Mk19 as low as possible to have maximum range, and sent out a volley. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. Then we listened and watched for the explosions way down range.

But nothing happened.

So we sent out another volley. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. Quickly, we heard and saw pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I turned to the driver and asked, “Was that the first volley or the second?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. So we sent out another volley of grenades down range.

Almost immediately after the last round left the barrel, the PA system from the range tower blared out, “Tornado Alert. Everyone get back to the shelter immediately. Clear your weapons. Ore, check the line.”

You see, the Mk19 has an unusual clearing procedure. The operator has to remove the belt and lock the bolt to the rear just like all other belt-fed machine guns, but they also have to pop out the last round with a screwdriver or something similar. As the weapons expert, I knew this and had my Gerber ready. We cleared our guns, and my driver and trainer ran to the shelter. But I still had to run down the line of Mk19s, occasionally popping out 40mm grenades and stuffing them into my pocket while a tornado was 150 meters away. What I now realized was even more alarming: I had just armed the oncoming tornado with the same grenades.

It’s at times like these, when you suddenly find yourself running across a firing line, facing an oncoming twister, that you start to question all of your life’s decisions. If only I had worked a little harder, I would have never dropped out of college, and if my girlfriend hadn’t dumped me, I would have never walked into that recruiter station. That recruiter told me serving in the Army would give me stories to tell, but I never wanted my story to be the day I gave a tornado grenades. When everyone ran for cover, I filled my pockets up with more fucking grenades and was running in front of the tornado like the worst game of Frogger.

When I got back to the shelter, everyone asked me what I was doing, so I showed them the 12 grenades I had and shouted, “We are going to have a class on how to properly clear your Mk19s!”

I don’t know how tornadoes work, and I can honestly say I don’t know where the grenades we shot into that tornado went. I mean, 40mm grenades fired out of an Mk19 have a detonation percentage of like 99.9999%, so no good can come from looking into it, and I never have. But if something randomly exploded at Fort Liberty in late 2011, it might have been the tornado’s fault. Definitely not mine.

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This War Horse reflection was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

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