Although I don’t remember him saying so in so many words, when I was young I don’t think my dad though I would amount to much. He was nearly right. I am intelligent enough, it’s just that I lacked motivation and would rather play and daydream than apply myself. School wasn’t important to me. And apparently it wasn’t that important to my parents either because I can’t remember a time that they checked whether I had done my work or if it was done correctly. They would ask me, or send me to my room to do it, but they never checked. I was horrible about homework. It was so bad that I am completely embarrassed now at all the lame excuses I came up with in the 5th grade for not doing my homework. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Fallstaff, must have either thought I was insane, or just given up on me. By the seventh grade I was failing all my classes and headed for real trouble. Fortunately for me, my mother got sick (I still feel partially responsible for that) and my grandparents came to get her, my sister and I and moved us in with them across the country. My grandmother, Florinda, was the child of Italian immigrant parents and a force to be reckoned with. There is a family story that as a newlywed she once dumped hot soup into her Italian father-in-law’s lap because he made some paternalistic comment that made her angry. She was loving, but she didn’t tolerate laziness or disobedience, so I pulled it together enough to get by.
I was a boy that needed someone to hold me accountable, responsible – frankly, I needed a kick in the butt. My parents didn’t do that. I remember later in life asking my mother “What were your guiding principles for raising us?” She replied that “We thought that Dr. Spock’s theories on raising children was the best information available back then, so we tried to follow that.” I will have to read his book someday before I die, but as near as I can tell his philosophy must have been “Let them figure it out for themselves.” Well, I figured it out all right: do the least you have to do to get by. I was a “baby boomer” – a child of the 60’s, and though I didn’t have the courage to just leave home, I mastered the “turn on, tune in, drop out” motto popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966. Gratefully I didn’t turn on with drugs, but I was (am) really good at daydreaming…don’t try to confuse me with reality. As a matter of fact, one of my all-time-favorite comics is “Calvin.” In one comic strip Calvin is daydreaming in class about fighting dinosaurs when the teacher yells “Calvin, what state are you in?” Calvin replies calmly: “Denial”, and the poor teacher can do nothing but roll her eyes in exasperation because he answered the question truthfully.
I honestly do believe I would not have amounted to anything if I hadn’t joined the Army and years later gotten married. I learned some hard lessons in the Army: Discipline. Effort pays off. Personal responsibly. And I learned many of them the hard way – painfully. I needed a kick in the butt; the Army put me on the ground and put a boot on my neck! It took a while, but they eventually got my attention. Later, the responsibility of being married, combined with my ex-wife’s love for, and patience with me advanced the maturation process.
Lesson one: Discipline
Discipline in Webster’s online dictionary is defined as: “Self-Control”. Self-discipline as: “correction or regulation of one’s self for sake of improvement.” In the context of this essay I define discipline as: “The self-directed behavior you use to do what needs to be done whether you want to or not”.
I would not say I was completely without discipline as a child. I was mischievous and I did get in trouble, but all in all I was fairly compliant, especially after my mother got sick. I don’t remember minding mowing the lawn or other household chores, and I did weightlift three days a week at a local gym. But I certainly didn’t self-direct myself when it came to schoolwork or preparing for a future.
In the Army I learned that it was just easier to do what they said or what you needed to do to prepared. Doing so avoided needless hassles. I learned small things like cleaning and shining my boots at the end of the day, so they were ready for tomorrow rather than putting it off until morning. Looking good sometimes kept me from getting assigned unpopular duty, because there were plenty of guys who seemed to be content acting like the comic character Beetle Baily, and “Sarge” was always after them. I learned to do it because you are told to even if it doesn’t make sense. The boss may be wrong, but he/she is still the boss. If it doesn’t violate the Geneva Convention rules of combat just do it. Doing so in basic training avoided needless pushups. I learned to accept that the system isn’t set up to meet your desires. I learned don’t put things off. I learned that while I might like my shirts on hangers so you can reach for the hanger with your left hand and unbutton the buttons with your right hand, that is fine on a day-to-day basis, but you will have to switch everything around so they are hung with patches out for inspections. I learned don’t give up just because you don’t like it. You signed a contract. Fight with them and they will win. Bend don’t break over the small stuff. Save your energy for the important things. Some of the best advice I received from a more experienced soldier: don’t pass up a promotional exam because you don’t plan on making the Army a career. If the country you serve goes to war you might be in the Army for a long, long time and that extra rank might prove beneficial. As I write this, I realize that much of what I did was still just doing the minimum to get by daily, but seeds of the habit of self-discipline were planted and grew. I just needed a real reason to develop it further. Marriage and becoming a father provided that real reason.
Lesson Two: Effort Pays Off
When I went to see the Army recruiter I was 20. I wanted to fly helicopters. Poor eyesight prevented that and probably saved my life because we were in the middle of the Vietnam conflict and helicopter pilots had a relatively high mortality rate. The recruiter was a smart one and after informing me I wouldn’t be able to fly helicopters because I wore glasses he started flipping through a picture book and one photo jumped out at me – PARATROOPER! Well, if I couldn’t get my pilots wings like my dad I could still (even with glasses) get my jump wings! “Looks cool to me, where do I sign up?” The recruiter didn’t offer, and I didn’t even think about asking about other skill training in addition to learning how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes into hostile territory. You know, something like helicopter mechanic or something else I could use if I survived and got out. I call it testosterone poisoning. Most young men of my generation had it to some degree or another. I’m not so sure about the young men of today. Many of them appear to have been emasculated. As an aside, my dad never had to jump out of an airplane, and he would never even consider flying in a helicopter because “they defy the laws of physics.” This is a guy who flew planes in the pacific during WWII, getting his planes shot up and flying out over the ocean and then returning to land, all before radar existed. I can only imagine what he thought of my decisions.
I joke that when I went to take the Army physical I walked through the door marked “Eye Exam” and they figured I could both see AND I could read!
I made it through basic training at Fort Ord, California and jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, then found myself assigned to artillery in the 82 Airborne Division. I hate loud noises! I complained some but they checked my records and sure enough, I only ask for “82nd Airborne” when I enlisted so they put me where they needed me. I even tried to get transferred into infantry (more testosterone poisoning for sure). Curse you, Sargent Stallworth my recruiter! I would beat you up yet today if I met up with you if it wasn’t for the next part of this story.
After six long months on a 105mm howitzer it turned out that the 82nd Airborne Division was short of Artillery Surveyors, so they picked out a few of us with some of the high test scores or college and offered us a chance to go to Artillery Survey school at Ft. Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma. I didn’t have to think long about that opportunity and quickly said “Yes Sir!” Let me digress for a minute to put this in historical context. In 1972, the internet didn’t exist. We didn’t have cell phones, cell phone satellites or GPS. If you wanted to know where you were on the face of the earth, you got out a map and guessed, or you started from a known location and went a certain direction and distance to pinpoint a new location. No computers; all the calculations were done using worksheets. Two of us independently completed the calculations by hand (no calculators either) and then compared our answers to see if they matched. We were taught to calculate latitude using star shots, moon shots or sun shots depending upon the time of day and season, using the same celestial navigation books mariners have used for decades to calculate position. We measured distance, even long distance, by having a man on each end of a 30-meter steel tape with plumb bobs and steel pins that we stuck into the ground. “Pull”, “Stick”, “Stuck”, over-and-over-again, clearing a path with machetes as we went. Sometimes for miles. Simply put, my job in the Army doesn’t even exist in this day of computers and GPS. But I remember, and in a grid-down situation I am ready to go if they call me to help save their butts. But I’m a lot more expensive than I was over 50 years ago!
When I arrived a Fort Sill I realized I had been given an opportunity. I was still a paratrooper, but instead of digging firebases, humping 105mm high-explosive rounds and all the other associated duties of a “gunner” I would be an artillery surveyor, working in the field, yes, but it gave me an opportunity to use the brains I was starting to realize were a pretty good alternative. So, I decided then and there, that for the first time in my life I was going to really make an effort. I was going to study! One of my Army friends was also selected to attend the school. He later became an electrical engineer, so he definitely had the ability. He was probably smarter than me. But I studied and he didn’t. When the results came in at the end of the three months I graduate top in the class. That felt really good, and it was a new experience for me. But that wasn’t the lesson. The lesson was what separated me from my electrical engineering friend who graduated number two in the class: two one-hundredths of a percentage point. That is correct, 0.02 points separated number one (me) from him, and that only happened because I studied. The lightbulb in my brain lit up like I had been struck by lightning! Effort pays off…what a moron you have been for all these years! That was a huge turning point for me. Not only was I proud of myself for maybe the first time in my life, but I KNEW I HAD EARNED IT!
Lesson Three: Personal Accountability and Responsibility
I have rarely or never shared this story. It is the second largest failure/disappointment of my life, and some will look down on me for it. My biggest disappointment is my failed marriage, but I have written about that previously.
I applied for and was accepted into the US Army Ranger School. That was unusual for someone in the artillery. I knew one other enlisted person in my division that had been accepted, except for officers. For officers I imagine it was a career-boosting accomplishment. For us enlisted troops it was strictly an honor to be accepted and completing it a demonstration of your grit. It might have benefited our career, but very few of us stayed beyond our obligatory term of enlistment. Back to Fort Benning Georgia I went, also the home of Airborne school. Ranger School was hard, and for a reason. It wasn’t so much the physical difficulty as we were all capable of handling that. It was the sleep deprivation and constant tempo of go, go, go, go, go, combined with a certain amount of inter-personal competition. I am sure it is designed that way to weed out the physically or mentally weak. Near the end of the second week I made a stupid decision, tried to side-step the system and got caught. I won’t even try to defend my decision because I can’t. Over the years I have wished over-and-over-again that somehow I would get the chance to go back and try again. This is so important to me that I would even go today and attempt to complete the training or die in the trying. But I learned that sometimes in life you just don’t get second chances. I have had to resign myself that I will never wear the Ranger patch; I will never be one of that elite group of people who have overcome their personal challenges and completed the training. That really sucks because more than winning, I hate losing. It is so much harder when you know it is your own fault and only your own fault.
So, what happened? Late one day near the end of the second week we were taken out to a compass course and given instructions to follow. Our mission was to travel to three separate points in sequence using map, compass and measuring distance by our pace, and record the information we found there. We had to find at least the first two points to pass, and we couldn’t come in to eat or rest until we had either found all three points or until they came and rounded us up. Things went well at first, after all, I was artillery survey and knew how to read maps and use compass. We even picked up a M79 grenade launcher someone had forgotten along the way, thereby saving his butt. We had found the first two points – enough to pass the course. Our third and final point was near a lake. Around midnight the group I was with met another group that had located a position near a lake. We figured “that must be it.” We recorded it and confidently returned to base camp. That’s when things fell apart. What we didn’t think of was that there might be multiple points near that lake! There were, and the Ranger trainers had a really hard time believing that our compass bearings and pace (distance) could be that far off. If my mother were alive she would tell you that I never could lie, and you can see the struggle on my face. I did some quick mental calculations, realized we were …. (insert your favorite word here for “in big trouble”), and, hoping they would send us back out, told them that I had run across another team and without the knowledge of my two teammates I filled in the information for the (supposed) third point. I mentioned the honor of attending Ranger school earlier. Well deception or lying is a violation of that honor code. They didn’t give me a second chance. My teammates professed ignorance and were docked 50 points each. I was kicked out of Ranger School. I have never forgotten that I, and the fact that I alone am responsible for, and accountable for, my decisions. Don’t even bother trying to make excuses for a decision you have made that turned out to be a lapse in judgement. Be honest with me and I will weigh the cost of your decision against my judgement of your character. Try to cover it up or blame someone else and you’ll get no mercy from me. Own your decisions. Learn from them. Move on. Make better decisions in the future. Live with the disappointment and consequences. You’ll be a better person if you do.
There you have it. The US Army took a smart enough, but lazy and unmotivated, testosterone-crazed young man and taught him life-lessons that changed his future. I owe my parents for giving me life, but I owe the US Army for giving me a life worth living.
Kahle K Jennings, July/August 2019
is “the ability to control one’s feelings and overcome one’s weaknesses, that ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it.” (: