Sgt. Bilko Was Much More Fun Than These Guys

A TIME Daily Special: The second installment in a series by our man in Fort Jackson, S.C., Frank Pellegrini, who reports from the trenches of boot camp.

By Frank Pellegrini Tuesday, Nov. 09, 1999
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EDITOR'S NOTE: TIME Daily writer Frank Pellegrini, at a ripe 27 years, has taken a leave of absence to join the Army Reserve. He is currently undergoing basic training — boot camp — and then will spend several months in an Army journalism school. Given the difficulty the armed forces are experiencing in recruiting qualified young people these days, we think his experiences and impressions are worth sharing. Here is the second missive; others will be posted as they arrive.

I have been here 24 hours, possibly the longest and slowest day of my life.

Fort Jackson is in a sort of paralysis. The specialist who met our Basic Training class at Columbia Airport thought we might be "processed" — the purpose of our current limbo at the Arms Reception Battalion — in three to five days, before moving on to the real thing, boot camp. That now seems a vain hope, and it seems unlikely we will have completed Basic by Christmas. I talk to two privates at dinner chow who've been here for three weeks since processing; they're still waiting to move on.The currentin-the-wind estimate for the 13th Platoon is two weeks from today.

The popular "hurry up and wait" quip was funny when we arrived last night at midnight; it is already a meaningless hash of a clich. Processing tasks generally take about 15 minutes, and occur at the rate of perhaps three a day. Today was the issuing of Army t-shirts and a laundry bag, the taking of blood and the X-raying of teeth. Tomorrow, we hear, will be haircuts and dealing with pay issues, possibly even the issuing of BDUs (fatigues). Standing in line for chow takes hours. Standing with the platoon at parade rest: more hours. We stand and sit and idle for hours and hours, supposedly as part of a grand military ethos.

The tension between perpetual boredom and perpetual readiness is purportedly a skill they teach us, a horrible patience.But it is just as often apparent that a mix-up or a missed assignment has occurred at the hand of some sergeantor other, and no one ever seems in any hurry to get things moving again.

Morale is low — not because the Army is hard, but because it is so slow. Sergeants here bristle but rarely bite; privates a few weeks ahead of you are generous with their time, anecdotes and advice. But they are as angry as we are. Those on active duty want to get wherethey are going after boot camp, Brazil or Germany or wherever. Reserves feel a sharper pain, though; two weeks down the drain like this seems time truly wasted, coming directly out of their civilian lives.

Grumbling is constant. Someone in the 20th Battalion has gone AWOL earlier in the day. And across from me a private, who is about to go home for a week because his mother died, is staring up at the underside of the bunk above and reading whatever someone has scribbled there: "The Army teaches you truth, and tells you lies." I feel sorry for him well past lights out.

Until he starts to snore.

More dispatches soon


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