Three times a week Kevin’s Army unit would run at 6 o’clock in the morning. He found it hard to run before your first cup of coffee. During that time the Army had a recruiting commercial that said “we do more before noon then most do all day”. Kevin kind of wondered how that would encourage people to join the Army. At least they could say “stop complaining we told you that you would be busy”.
On PT or physical training mornings the team would muster on the quad dressed in jogging shorts and tea shirts when instructed they would line up in 4 squads that formed a platoon. There were 2 platoons in the Battery and they all ran in formation (everyone lined out in columns). The first sergeant would come out and holler.
“Fall-in”
With that everyone would scramble to their assigned position and stand at attention. The first sergeant would then give a series of command to start the unit on its way to the slow 3-4 mile run.
“Left face”
“Forward march”
“double time march”
That would get the unit moving in the down the road at a steady slow pace. During the run other leaders would come out of formation and take a position next to the running unit to call cadence. The leader would call it out in a song type manner and the entire unit would respond in unison.
Leader:
Jodie this and Jodie that
UNIT:
UPON YOUR LEFT
Leader:
Jodie’s got your Cadillac
UNIT:
YOUR LEFT YOUR RIGHT YOUR LEFT
Unit:
Singing left right
all night
in cadence count
Oh baby 1,2,3,4
upon your left
upon your left
upon your left your right your left. HAY
That cadence would continue with Jodie not only using your car but getting your girl, on your telephone and more. GI’s learned to hate Jodie but it prepared the guys for what normally happened. They get dumped by their girl friends when they got home.
After that little ditty was done that leader would fall back into his assigned position in the formation and another would jump out to call his favorite cadence.
Leader:
They say that in the Army the coffee’s mighty fine
It looks like muddy water and tastes like turpentine
Oh Lord, I wanna go
But they won’t let me go
Oh lord, I wanna go hoo-hoo-hooome- EH!
Leader:
They say that in the Army the biscuits mighty fine
One rolled off the table and killed a friend of mine
UNIT:
Oh Lord, I wanna go
But they won’t let me go
Oh lord, I wanna go hoo-hoo-hooome- EH!
This went on and on they would sing about training, pay, PT, food or anything they could think of. Once the leader got tired or ran out of ideas he would fall-in back to the formation and another would take his place. This pattern would take place for the entire run.
An interesting part of each run was at the end. About two blocks from the quad the current leader would cut the “Young hero’s” loose. That meant some of the guys would break free from the formation and “hall ass” racing back to the unit as fast as they could. Kevin was in excellent shape and took off every chance he got to show off. Sometimes he would come in first and sometimes second or third depending on how “hard” of a night he had the night before.
Anyway, Kevin had a reputation of being in good shape and he talked smack about how he was so good at wrestling in high school. That was the norm for most guys in the Army. They took liberty in embellishing the stories they told of the past life at the “crib”.
As it happened that each year the Army puts on amateur boxing exhibition on the base. The base gym manager would take all the volunteers and matches them against someone based on size, weight, and experience. It was great fun and built comradery and unit pride. Each unit’s soldiers would show up to cheer on their brother in arms. It was important since it was also for bragging rights for that year.
This year the guys in Kevin’s unit were really after him to get in the ring and duke it with someone else from another unit.
“Come On Marks you are always telling us how tough you are” said one of his buddies.
“Yea! This is a chance to really put your money where your mouth is” said another.
All Kevin could think of was how scared even the thought of getting into the ring was. He had not had a fight since 3rd grade and that one he had lost. As Kevin contemplated all this he kept going back to his wrestling days in high school. He was good at it. He had only wrestling Junior varsity but he beat everyone he had wrestled that year. Most coaches from other schools told Kevins coach “Kevin would be on the varsity team at any other school”. Toward the end of the season day the coach came to him and said.
“Hi Kev, Are you ready to go Varsity this week?”
Without thinking Kevin replayed “No I am not ready yet.”
He never got the chance again. He always looked back at that moment in his life as a defining moment. If he had only the courage and confidence to tell the coach “yes! I have been waiting for this moment for a long time.” Things might have been different. Collage, scholarships.. Girls.. Haha.. Kevin actually found he chuckled out loud as he though of the possibilities of that one decision.
His buddies were relentless nagging him to fight.
Come on Kev.. It will be great fun. The entire unit would come out to cheer you on. They all kept talking up his skills so much he Reluctantly he agreed and signed up.
The word got around quickly to everyone in the unit. Some laughed and told Kevin they would show up for the slaughter. Others encouraged him to get out there and kick butt!
Most of the time there was a noticeable separation between enlisted and officers. Officers were not allowed to fraternize with enlisted and vise versa. But with this turn of events Kevin found the officers were telling Kevin that they were in his corner and go get’em. He was sure there was a lot of talk at the officers club about how good each unit fighters were. Bragging right in the military was huge, and this would be an entire year of bragging.
All this attention just made Kevin more and more nervous. It did not keep him from picking up the pace of running to get in better shape or even shadow boxing while running down the street. Kevin’s mind kept going back to the one fight he had years ago. All he wanted to do was not make a fool out of himself.
The big night came and it was not like pro boxing matches where the contestants came out from the locker room at the time of the bout. They sat around watching the other fights first. This increased Kevin’s anxiety to a feverish level. The other bouts were not really boxing at all. The bell would ring and both contestants would dart to the center of the ring swinging wildly hoping that one punch would take the other boxer out. The crowd would be hooting and hollering the whole time. If a fighter went down the crowd would erupt in a defining roar. It was mayhem at it best.
Kevin sat quietly trying to figure how he was going to survive this mess he had gotten himself into. After much thought it came to him, Late in the Rocky movie Rocky was being beat to a pulp. He came up with a strategy to come out of the corner crouching almost like a duck walk. Kevin figured if he came in that low that most of those wild haymakers punches would go over his head. The others would be deflected by his arms protecting his head. He figured if he could get one good shot in he could save face even if he later got knocked out.
The time came and when call Kevin climbed in the ring. He felt his whole body shaking with fear and only hoped that no one else noticed. The bell rang and Kevin slowly duck walked the center of the ring. He never got there. The other fighter ran across the ring arms flailing like a wounded bird. Kevin stuck to his plan and stay low blocking a lot of the shots coming at him. It did not take long before his opponent was huffing and puffing and the blows started to slow down. Just then he saw his opportunity and he sprang up from his crouching position to catch is opponent right under the chin with a huge upper cut. Instantly he went to the mat. They told Kevin later that the crowd went wild with cheering. Kevin was to focused on the fight to hear anything. The match was not over yet. The opponent got up and started to close in on Kevin again. This time the haymakers had stopped and he was more cautious. He would not fall for that trick again.
Now, growing up Kevin spent many hours on the air hockey table and was fast with the left back hand. He decided to use that type of punch on his opponent. It was not a jab or a hook it was more like shooting at the air hockey puck. It was not a hard blow, it was more distracting then anything. Kevin found that like in air hockey he could make that same move over and over very fast and every time Kevin would hit him, even though it was not hard, he closed his eyes and lost his bearing. Just then Kevin again saw his opening. While trying to get his bearing due to all the “slap” punches he left himself open. Kevin came in again with a straight right hand directly to his nose. Down he went again this time he did not get up in time. As his opponent was counted out Kevin ran around the ring with his hands up and jumped on the second rope like in a movie with his arms up in victory. His mind quickly went to “ I wonder if this is how it would feel to wrestle varsity”. With that thought he found he chuckled out loud once more.
For a few days Kevin was the talk of the unit. Congratulations came from all over even some of the mess hall cooks congratulated him. He picked up a new nick-name that stuck with him for the rest of his military tour. He was to be know from then on as Rock. The “trash” talk came to a new level but no one cared. It was a great night and one of their buddies had looked fear in the face and lived to tell it. Rock would never let on how really scared he was to get into that ring.
