Word: sergeant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Drill sergeants must have huddled for generations over precisely what exercises, in precisely what order, cause young men to scream the loudest. The sergeant, a very funny guy when he wanted to be, had the routine by heart: push-ups, sit-ups, bicycle kicks, squats of all varieties, shoulder touches, arm twirls - more than I can remember, until the lifting of hand over head was quite nearly impossible...
...armed forces are experiencing in recruiting qualified young people these days, we think his experiences and impressions are worth sharing. Here is the fourth missive; others will be posted as they arrive. I just got myself dropped. As in push-ups. As in on the floor of the drill sergeant's office while the afternoon football game - oh, the outside world! - murmured off to the left. "Ged down dere," he drawled in his Philippines twang, and we did, me and my bunkmate, the one who'd gotten us in trouble in the first place. The one I'd insisted...
...there were the 77 soldiers who the chaplain had said had come to see him within just a few weeks, all begging for passage from purgatory. There was the Jamaican who affixed a padlock to his belt and started beating guards; the kid who was sleeping in the drill sergeant's office because he'd threatened to kill himself in front of a corporal...
...tension between perpetual boredom and perpetual readiness is purportedly a skill they teach us, a horrible patience.?But it is just as often apparent that a mix-up or a missed assignment has occurred at the hand of some sergeant?or other, and no one ever seems in any hurry to get things moving again...
...commanders will sometimes admit, ineffective. Almost every day at Incirlik is Groundhog Day, as in Bill Murray's 1993 film. "You wake up, you come in, you get ready to launch the aircraft, you launch the aircraft, they come back, you recover them, you go home," says Staff Sergeant George Palo, who maintains aircraft fuel systems. "We don't have a lot of calendars around here, because the only day that counts is the day you get to go home...