Ruck You
C July 6, 2006

I just completed a 12-mile ruck march, which is one of those little joys that come along every once in a while that make the Army so pleasurable. To heighten our entertainment, we were asked nicely if we would please draw our weapons at 4:45 a.m. so we could leave promptly at 5:30, and, by the way, it would be really nice if you could cram 35 pounds of junk into your rucksacks.

My first thought upon hearing this was that I should be taking photos of it. But, no, this was MY road march too, to be enjoyed by me, and I wasn't about to let myself become distracted by the slavery of having to do something I've been trained to do and am well prepared for. I wanted to RUCK!

Besides, I carried my camera on a 4 mile march, and 12 is asking a bit much.

I shall summarize the march in quarters. The first three miles I hung around the middle and talked to some officers that I would ordinarily be nervous around, except they were as delirious as I was. The second three miles I surged because, lets face it, I'm insane. By the third three miles I had endorphins running through my body making me go crazy. I loved ruck marching! I wanted to beat everyone to the finish line! I had energy to spare!

The nine mile marker came up, and that's when everything started going to hell.

To be honest, I still had the energy. I have willpower in reserves, and can usually manage to succeed through stubbornness alone. However, I was afraid I had broken my left foot, and I was feeling blisters pop out all along the soles of my feet. The positive side is that all this distracted me from the wrenching pain slowly throwing my neck out of joint. On the downside, I could no longer walk more than a few meters without having to stop to take a break. Things were no longer going well.

But remember what I said about will. I vowed that I would cross the finish line if I had to crawl the rest of the way on my knees, which I basically did. In fact, as the sun and dry air began to bake into my brain, I noticed Jesus walking alongside me offering to help carry my ruck.

"HA!" I yelled at Jesus, "You're just upset because I'm going to break your record. You carried your cross, what, maybe three miles. And it probably wasn't even as heavy as this! Screw you, Jesus, I'm going to do this all by myself, the way I do everything else."

Then Jesus frowned and walked away, because he knew I was right.

This story has a happy ending, because I finally limped in at 3 hours and 35 minutes, 25 minutes short of the cutoff time. Come to find out, Col. Dodd is the one who set this ridiculous annual ruck marching standard, and expects every one of his Soldiers to be able to do it in under four hours.

I did not see Col. Dodd out there.

Col. Dodd did make several appearances during our four-day field exercise we had later on, however, therefore I have no right to complain about anything

…

Of course you know I’m lying. The field exercise was one huge load of undiluted military bullshit. I’m still getting my thoughts together about it.

It started out simply enough, and oddly, probably the most unpleasant part about it was weapons draw 0400 Monday. That meant if I wanted to have a good breakfast, I would have to wake up at 0300. I had a bowl of Cookie Crisp, the last real food I would eat for four days.

It took twenty minutes longer than expected for everybody to get their weapons and line up their vehicles, which led the commander to yell at everyone that we should be able to accomplish this simple task sooner. He wanted to start training promptly at 0800, and at this rate we might not make it.

Fast forward to 0900, when the trainers still had not arrived at the campsite. We amused ourselves by setting up our cots, which would be our homes for the duration of this exercise. We tied strings around trees and tried to set up roofs with our poncho liners, points apparently going to those with the most unique geometries. It was yet another testosterone-induced competition, but let’s face it, most of life is.

It was only after we began training that I noticed the young private that joined us from another unit. I noticed him because, for some reason, he decided to latch on to me.

The first time he asked me if he could take a smoke break, it took me by surprise. I looked around to see if anyone else was nearby.

"Did your team leader say you could take a smoke break?" I asked.

"Roger, sergeant! She did!"

"Um... okay, you can take a smoke break," I said, apathetically.

A few hours later, I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to exploit someone. I began making demands in exchange for his smoke breaks, like finish the training at hand, or wait until lunch, or give me the Skittles in your Meal-Ready-to-Eat. Stuff like that.

Besides building up layers of sweat and dirt, the rest of the day passed without serious incident. I began reading Stephen King's The Stand and freaked out when I had to sneeze. By the second day, the dirt and sweat had congealed into a single layer of mud, topped by yet another layer of sweat, and coating all of it, sand. I also noticed that everybody was beginning to smell faintly of urine and gasoline, for what reason I am not certain. We would build up more layers as the hours passed.

I note that we did not smell like feces. That is thanks in part to the quality of our Meal-Ready-to-Eats. Apparently, the Army has arranged its field rations to make soldiers would deposit feces irregularly and in compact blocks. I imagine this would be useful in a combat environment, when you would have to bury your excrement, but for training purposes, it was just annoying.

Around the third day I noticed that the latrines and the MRE's began to smell more and more alike. I was not entirely certain which was making the transition, I just knew I was getting sick of MRE's.

The fourth day was interesting. You might expect the fourth day would consist of us waking up, cleaning and moving out, but that would be far too simple. Col. Dodd's guidance (Col. Dodd once again did not participate in this exercise) was that we needed to execute a 100 mile convoy and then burn off 10,000 rounds of ammunition (really). The convoy was easy, because I'm not licensed to drive a troop-carrying vehicle, so I forced the private to do so while I fell asleep in the passenger seat.

The needless burning of 10,000 rounds of ammunition is a story in itself. Suffice to say the company commander, Cpt. Klein, who is actually cooler than any other officer you will ever meet, made it clear to his soldiers his priority was to use up the ammunition as quickly as possible within regulations. Every soldier in the platoon "qualified" with their weapon's 13 times that day, though the last 11 times only took about a half hour. It was really amazing. I could not possibly be making this up.

Nevertheless, we didn't get finished turning in weapons until 8 o'clock at night, at which point the drive-thru at Burger King was clogged with soldiers rushing to get a decent meal, in much the same way our intestines were clogged with processed MRE.

All which paved the way for a full day of cleaning weapons, a story which might possibly provide more insight into the nature of the Army than this entire narrative. But if you want to hear it, you'll have to wake me up.