After I graduated from Officer Candidate School (OCS), I was reassigned to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland to attend the Ordnance Officer Basic Course. While at the Ordnance Officer Basic Course, I started to distinguish myself from the other students in my class. I think in part because of my prior service and in part because I could retain practically 100 percent of what I heard or read or both. A few weeks before we were due to graduate, we went on a weeklong field training exercise (FTX). The purpose of the FTX was to teach patrolling skills, infiltration skills, survival, escape, and evasion skills, offensive tactics, defensive tactics, field first-aid, prisoner of war handling, suburban warfare, guerrilla warfare, and the crowning touch – a Tactical Road March. The Tactical Road March was to be a 10-mile road March in full combat gear on the last day of the FTX. We were alerted for movement to the field at 0600 hours on the first day of the FTX. It was the middle of August in Maryland, and the humidity was running about 90 percent. That high humidity was running right up there with an equally high temperature. High humidity and high temperature meant two things, frequent rain, and beaucoup skeeters. For those of you that may have led a sheltered life and have never heard the French expression beaucoup, GIs affectionately Americanized the French word and added it to our vocabulary during the Vietnam War. Yes. We spelled it slightly differently. We spelled it as bookoo and as boocoo. The first spelling is the more accepted spelling, but both mean the same thing. The word essentially means much, many, or a lot of. So, when I say there were beaucoup skeeters, I’m telling you there was one helluva lot. What’s a Skeeter, you ask? Awesome question. It’s my affectionate expression for mosquitoes. Now here’s the thing, my fellow classmates were really worried about the skeeters. They took enough skeeter spray to kill an elephant. I don’t think it killed a damn one of those skeeters though. Not a damn one. And my classmates were drowning themselves in the bug spray. They used that shit like 19-year-olds use aftershave, Cologne, and perfume. Way too damn much. They smelled like the cosmetic section of a damn department store like Macy’s or Sears. Or better yet, like the inside of a cheap brothel. You could smell them for days. I think the bugs could too. Seriously. Cuz let me tell you, those idiots were getting eaten alive. Every few minutes, one of them would walk over to me, swatting and slapping himself silly. Invariably he would ask me, “Masters, what in the hell is your secret? I never see you swatting skeeters.” I would look at the poor suffering slob and say you’re absolutely correct. I don’t have time for that shit. I bought a couple bottles of high potency multivitamin B stress tabs. The thing about stress tabs is they’re cheap and they’re effective. I read in the Vitamin Bible that skeeters hate the smell of one of the B vitamins. I don’t know which one it is, and I don’t care. Cuz stress tabs have all that shit in there. And stress tabs are potent. So, I put one stress tab in my left shirt pocket, and I put one in my right shirt pocket. Then, I just let body heat and sweat dissolve those things. Skeeters don’t touch this.” “Man, I wish I would have talked to you when I was getting ready for this FTX.” “Well, look at the bright side. You know what to do next time.” “Fat lot of good that does me now.” “Well, look at the bright side.” “What bright side?” “Somebody’s gotta feed the skeeters.” “Thanks a lot asshole.” “It was my pleasure. It was the least I could do. The absolute least. You should probably get your foxhole dug. It looks like it’s going to rain.” I had learned from my many field training exercises in Georgia that when it rains on the East Coast, it doesn’t rain, it pours. Thus, I built a little lean-to roof over my foxhole to provide shelter from the rain. I had a rain jacket and a poncho. So, I used my poncho as the waterproof barrier for my lean-to roof. Most of my classmates did not take the hint from me and they got soaked in the ensuing downpour. The following day was a training day filled with exercises such as field first-aid, prisoner of war handling, heat injuries, and suburban warfare. We divided into teams to practice suburban warfare, and we went to a mock village to practice building clearing and to identify friend or foe targets. The third day, we practiced patrolling techniques. Since patrolling involved a lot of infantry heavy skills, our Teaching, Advising, and Counseling (TAC) officer chose people like me who had prior service and infantry skills or Ranger skills to lead the patrol teams. Thus, I was one of the patrol team leaders, we had one Ranger in the class who was a patrol team leader, and we had two other prior service lieutenants who were also patrol team leaders. The fourth day, we practiced all of the offensive maneuvers and infiltration. When we practiced infiltration, quite a few people found out that they can’t crawl through the weeds like a snake with immunity. You’re probably asking, what in the hell does that mean? Here is what that means, so all those strange little weeds and wait-a-minute vines ain’t just strange little weeds. Oh, hell no. Nothing is ever that easy. So, some of those weeds are poison ivy and some of those vines are poison oak. About a third of the people in my class found out that they were allergic to that shit. There was some poison ivy where we camped the first day, and we had a couple of cases of poison ivy exposure where students had to be evacuated back to Garrison for medical treatment. But when poison ivy and/or poison oak wipes out a third of your soldiers, that’s a heavy casualty rate. The fact that it happened on the second to the last day of the FTX spelled trouble. It spelled trouble with a capital T. I’ll explain why in just a bit. But the poison ivy and the poison oak weren’t done ravaging our troop strength yet. We still had to practice survival, escape, and evasion. The TAC officer picked a few of us who hadn’t been affected by poison ivy to be the people who survived, escaped, and evaded capture. We were told to do whatever was necessary to repatriate ourselves with the good guys by any means possible without getting captured or killed. The only way that was going to happen was to crawl through snake territory. That meant a lot of wait-a-minute vines and a lot of poison ivy. For some reason that shit doesn’t bother me. I can swim in the stuff. Other people are not so fortunate. Case in point, our little survival, escape, and evasion exercise claimed a few more victims to poison ivy. Hell, when I got home, my wife and daughter got poison ivy just from touching my pioneer gear. Go figure. I was wearing the shit and didn’t get so much as an itch. I even had to totally detail the inside of my van because my wife and daughter got poison ivy from riding inside my van. That was bizarre. But here is why the poison ivy casualties were such a heavy toll during the FTX. Even though a whole lot of soldiers got evacuated on the fourth day of the FTX, all of their weapons were left behind in the field. For individual weapons that wasn’t so bad. But for crew served weapons such as the M-60 machine guns, that was a heavy toll. Each of the M-60 machine guns also had a spare barrel and a tripod that had to be carried. Normally, that spare barrel and tripod could be distributed among other soldiers to lighten the load. However, there were no other soldiers to distribute spare barrels and tripods to. I was one of the machine gunners. Thus, I was carrying my machine gun, my spare barrel, and my tripod. Additionally, I carried all of my field gear packed in my rucksack and my load bearing equipment. That was a helluva load. About five miles into the 10-mile road march, the second machine gunner fell out of the road march due to foot injuries. As a result, somebody had to carry his machine gun, his spare barrel, and his tripod. I took the extra machine gun. Another Lieutenant took the spare barrel, and a third Lieutenant took the tripod. Another mile into the road march, the Lieutenant with the spare barrel fell out of the road march due to foot injuries. As a result, somebody needed to take over the spare barrel. So, I took it. By the eighth mile, the Lieutenant with the tripod fell out of the road march as well. Then, I had two machine guns, two spare barrels, and two tripods, in addition to my normal combat load. When we got back to Garrison, the TAC officer came up to me and asked, “Lieutenant Masters, are you all right?” I looked at him with a funny look on my face and replied, “And what makes you think I wouldn’t be all right?” “It’s just a hunch. Do your feet hurt or are you walking funny?” “Yes, and yes.” “What in the hell does yes and yes mean, smart ass?” “All due respect, Einstein. You asked two questions. Yes, my feet hurt. And yes, I’m walking funny. Duh.” “Then, you need to go to sick call and have your feet checked out.” “Excuse me sir?” “I didn’t stutter.” “I think I know if I need to go to sick call. How long have you been in the Army sir?” “I’m coming up on four years.” “That’s what I thought. I’ve got more time in the toilet than you’ve got in the Army. I think I know when I need to go to sick call. My feet hurt because you made me carry a whole lotta other soldiers’ shit. If I rest tonight, my feet will be fine tomorrow.” “I think you have blisters.” “Horse shit. Take a look sir.” I pulled off one of my boots and showed him the calluses on the bottom of my feet. The calluses were thick. I said, “You get calluses like this from doing a lot of walking and doing a lot of running and I do both. I told you my feet will be fine.” After that, the captain left me alone. And he walked away. He went off in search of another exercise in futility, void of survivors of the poison oak and ivy massacre.
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