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My first day in the army was September 5 and our bus got to Fort Leonard Wood at about 8 PM. After orientation they assigned us to our reception station barracks where we would spend the first week getting vaccinations, taking tests and learning things like close order drill. It gets cold in the Ozarks at night even in September. They made us keep all the windows open (I surmise to limit bacterial growth). The open window was right at my head on the top bunk. Needless to say I caught a cold that first night. With the rigorous physical activity and constant lack of sleep, I never got well. It got worse all the way through basic. To prevent malingerers, if one wants to go to the dispensary for an illness, they would harass you to the point that it was less hassle to just deal with the illness or injury. One could only request medical care at morning formation.
Every day I felt worse and worse. It got so bad that I would fall asleep in formation and once I fell asleep marching. I was at a field class on the LAW (light anti-tank weapon). The lecturer was the most monotone speaker imaginable and he put me right to sleep. Busted, I had to spend the last hour of class in the front leaning rest position. At that moment, I decided that at morning formation, I would request to go to medical. After the LAW class, we prepared to go to bivouac. As we were about to load onto the cattle cars, word came from battalion that it was our company's turn to provide soldiers for the next day's KP. The drill sergeants and officers were upset that not everyone would experience the first night of bivouac training. As luck would have it, they always went in alphabetical order and I was among the 9 guys to go back to the barracks for that and the next night since KP was from about 4 AM to 6 PM and would be too late to truck us out since we wouldn't be able to find them at night,so we were to go out the morning after.
On a side note, our company was housed in some of the very old wooden WWII era barracks. There was one platoon housed in each building. Also, as luck would have it, my building had no heat or hot water the entire time I was in basic. The furnace and hot water heater were both broken. It got quite cold at night and cold showers just made a sick person feel worse. Worse yet, we had perfectly good, brand new, long underwear neatly rolled in our lockers and we weren't allowed to wear them. We had two wool blankets but could only use one. When they woke us up every morning, everyone had to be wearing a white t-shirt and white boxers. On the coldest night, it was 28F inside the barracks when we woke up.
When we went back for KP, since we weren't closely monitored because our drill sergeants were in the field, we all decided we would sleep in another platoon's barracks. So for the first time in basic, I had 2 consecutive nights with hot showers and slept in a warm building. I drudged my way through KP, enjoyed another warm night and when we lined up for formation the next morning, I informed them that I had to go to medical. They were so mad, steam was coming out of their ears but I wouldn't back down no matter how they got in my face. It was about a 1/4 mile walk to the dispensary where they weeded out the malingerers from the truly ill. My fever was over 102 (and probably had been for a long time). They then transferred me to the hospital. Not the new brick hospital. They determined that I had an acute respiratory disease and they had several wards just for that problem in the WWII vintage wooden hospital. I was in there about 5 days. There were actually cracks in the walls to the outside with light and cold air entering. Instead of complete bed rest, we each had to do cleaning tasks like mopping the floor and cleaning the latrine.
Each morning they would put a table at the entrance to the wing. A doctor would sit on the other side of the table. We'd line up at the table and they'd take our temperature. The doctor would ask a question or 2 and then either release us or send us back into the ward. After 5 days of no improvement, the doctor's prescription was for me to take a cold shower, then lay on top of the blankets shirtless. 3 hours later, they took my temperature. It was about 97. They declared me cured and released me back to my unit. On the plus side, I did have (except for KP day) several days of much needed rest AND I had missed my unit's entire bivouac. I actually, though still quite ill, I felt stronger than I had since I went in.
The other guys told me that on the first night it rained and they all got lost in the woods.
In one's backpack, there is a shelter half. It has to be mated with another soldier's shelter half to make a whole floorless pup tent. Some of the shelter halfs had snaps, some had buttons. If you couldn't find someone with the appropriate mating half, you were out of luck and had to sleep under the stars. They said that about 2/3s of them didn't have shelter the first night. I believe a night sleeping in the cold rain would have been the last nail in my coffin.
They took me from the hospital to the site of that day's training where I would meet up with my unit returning from bivouac.
The assault phase of individual tactical training had a course on a high hill, slope and valley. There were logs, fences, trenches and other hiding places arranged in lines from the top of the hill to the bottom. We were lined from the top of the hill to the bottom behind the first obstacle. On their command we would all go over that obstacle, run and dive behind the next. This is with a full pack, rifle and steel pot. We had to run the course twice. It had been raining most of the time I was in the hospital. I noticed that the trench at the bottom of the hill was completely full of water. I was thrilled to be at the top of the hill. The thrill didn't last long. The next run through, I was lined up at the bottom of the hill. When given the command to jump from behind the log and move to the trench, I had to dive into that ice cold water and I was completely submerged. The rest of the day we were standing around on the top of that windy hill, soaking wet.
I had bronchitis for several years after getting out of the army.
