A Basic Training Texas Hurricane

Many autumns ago I was anxiously awaiting a hurricane to hit me and a barrack’s full of my friends. It all began with a plane trip from Philadelphia to San Antonio, Texas. Then a bus ride in the middle of the night to Lakeland Air Force Base for basic training.

Meeting a bus load of raw recruits was a towering dark figure in uniform. He seemed 20 feet tall as he stood in silhouette on top of the barrack’s steps. It was Sgt. Danforth, our T.I. He welcomed us in a bellow that we were his now, all his for six weeks of hell.

We were tired and terrorized, dirty and depressed and would be awakened at 5 a.m. to start our transition into soldiers. He snarled that he couldn’t wait.
The next morning 40 sleepy guys in their underwear all tried to shave at the same time in a cramped bathroom in ten minutes tops. The slashed and wounded faces made it look like a scene from a botched blood drive.

Soon Sgt. Danforth became our mother, father and principal. He told us when to get up, when to eat, when to do pushups, when to sleep and always what to do. If we did everything just right he taught us songs to sing while we marched under the baking Texas sun in the choking dust.

If we got sick he reluctantly took us to the infirmary. He gave us our mail, or withheld it if we didn’t yell “Here!” loud enough and run fast enough to get it when he shouted out our names.

He inspected us, rejected us, dejected us and once in a great while neglected us for a few minutes. We thought he was Thor and tough as a chow hall steak, hard as Hitler’s heart and so strong he could break ball bearings like ice with his teeth.

We weren’t allowed newspapers, magazines, a radio or TV. So the outside world and what was happening there was as foreign to us as another galaxy in another dimension. Our whole world was the Air Force, our base, our barracks, Sgt. Danforth and his orders.

Literally nothing else existed until one windy early autumn evening when Sgt. Danforth suddenly appeared at the barracks in his civilian clothes. That alone was a shock because we didn’t realize he even had clothes, other than his uniform. He called us to attention and warned us that a hurricane was headed our way. If we heard it about to hit, we were supposed to roll up inside our mattresses to protect us partially from flying broken glass.

He said he was going to get in his car and evacuate the area with his family. He wished us luck then left. Suddenly we were all alone, thousands of miles from home with no way to leave and our god-like protector gone.

The wind wailed and the rain pelted our pre-WWII rickety wooden barracks in anticipation of becoming one big splintered coffin. When it really started to rock and rattle our roof, I wrapped my moldy smelly mattress around me and saw in my mind the almighty Sgt. Danforth fleeing a mere hurricane in the family station wagon.

He had abandoned us in a hurry. I was stunned that he was human after all. The hurricane leveled a vast area of Texas just south of us. Sgt. Danforth returned smaller somehow than when he left.

This opened the door for us to become more equal and friends before I completed basic. He actually turned out to be a nice guy with a God complex, which was actually part of his job description.