Recently I was reading George E. P. Box’s memoir, An Accidental Statistician: The life and memories of George E. P. Box. When I got to a story on page 20, I burst out laughing because it reminded me of my Air Force basic training in 1972.
During George’s first week in the British Army, at the beginning of World War II, he was told to check the company bulletin board every day for orders. When he did, he found his name listed as the ‘key man.’ He asked what that meant, and was told that some time during the evening the bugler would sound the ‘Buckshee Fire Call’ (the real fire call, followed by two Gs indicating it was just a drill). Then the key man was to run down to the company office, and answer his name. George was curious, so he asked what the key man would do in case of a real fire. Even the Sergeant Major could not tell him immediately. But the next day he was told the key was a spigot (wrench) for turning on the water supply valve (on a hydrant) for firefighting. Still, no one could point out the location for that key. Fortunately, there never was a real fire while George was the key man.
In July 1972 I went to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for basic training. Each flight was housed in a leftover World War II vintage dorm. There were rows of single beds with wooden footlockers at their feet, as shown above. Our footlockers had a prescribed display of items. As shown above, the top tray insert held items like a bar of soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor, and shaving cream. These all were regularly inspected by drill instructors. But they took what were intended as common-sense sanitary requirements to absurd levels (just demonstrating willingness to follow silly orders).
For example, a discrepancy could be written up if there was even a single hair on the displayed soap bar. My flight was composed of enlisted reservists, who averaged a couple years of college. We creatively complied with the letter of those regulations, which we regarded just as Mickey Mouse crap. The open soap bars on display stayed pristine - because they were never actually used. We were allowed to keep a wrapped-up spare bar of soap in the bottom of our footlocker. So, each day one of us would donate his spare, which was broken in half, used by two squads of eight men for the entire day, and then flushed down the toilet. An entire squad used a tube of toothpaste and a Trac II razor cartridge.
Other aspects of basic were equally silly. Fatigue pants only were issued in waist sizes with an increment of four inches. When I arrived, my civilian pants had a 34-inch waist, so they instead gave me 32-inch ones. So, I lost ten pounds until I fit them – but also lost much of my resistance to disease. Eventually I got a serious upper respiratory infection. Then I lost a week lying around in a leftover flu ward and popping Tylenols like candy, until my temperature got back down to normal.
Images of a World War II dorm and footlocker came from Wikimedia Commons.
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