National Training Center

Then it was September of 1990. I was in Headquarters and Headquarters Company-HHC 4/35 Armored Battalion. It was a tank battalion. It was deployed. And I went right along with it. Right to the National Training Center, the most feared place in all of the U.S. Army, Ft. Irwin, California. For thirty days, I was sentenced into exile, training for war in the middle of the desert. I spent long hours of daylight just trying to find some shade. One hundred twenty degrees in the sand, rock, hills and gullies. It all looked the same. It was hot. Hot enough to fry an egg on the top of an M-1 Abrams tank turret. There were no trees. No shade. No relief at all.

Seventy degrees at night, as if a snowstorm had suddenly rolled in. Pitch black. So dark that you had to feel around at night without a flashlight. We spent hours at night driving around. Where? I don’t know. It all looked the same, with the exception of the lake. Well, it used to be a lake. Drylake was what they called it. It was a big twenty-acre outline of soft sand, appearing as if a lake had once been there. Everything else looked the same.

I mean identically the same. The rocks and the hills, the lack of any sign of life, except for rattlesnakes and lizards, and the huge, black flying crickets. Really big crickets. It was the book of Revelations, a chapter right out of The Bible. Crickets big enough to take the M-113A2 Armored Personnel Carrier. That was the ambulance I used in an armor unit.

They were metal, square rectangular boxes, holding four litters, or two litter and six ambulatory patients, or twelve ambulatory patients. The armor was thick enough to repel M-16A1 bullets. A fifty-caliber machine gun would completely destroy it. I didn’t feel safe inside. I was the driver. I was an E-4, a specialist. It was like driving a bulldozer with two laterals shooting straight up in front of a metal seat. It wasn’t built for comfort, just transport of patients from the battlefield to the Battalion Aid Station. It was grueling training, day and night.

I spent thirty days in the wonderful southern California desert. Three hours northwest lay San Bernadino, California. NTC was just north of Death Valley and Mexico. You didn’t want to go too far south, the temperatures only got hotter. About 300 miles northeast lay Las Vegas, Nevada. At least that was the rumor. It’s further than that. The rumor was another unit, deployed for thirty days of training, had unintentionally ended up driving until they could see the lights of Las Vegas. That was the rumor. That a couple of M113A2’s got lost on the convoy and kept driving, finally seeing the lights of Las Vegas. It wasn’t true. Those things usually aren’t true. For one thing, they would’ve run out of fuel long before coming into view of the lights. Secondly, they would’ve gone off a cliff or something. It was fantastic fiction though. It kept you going when times got too bad. And there were plenty of them. Little sleep and lots of training. That’s if you didn’t end up in the boneyard. The boneyard is a place we politely referred to it as instead of the junkyard. It was the headquarters for maintenance. If you broke down, you got towed to the boneyard. That’s where you caught up on all your sleep, while the mechanics spent hours and hours trying to get you fixed.

If you were really lucky, the mechanics had to order parts. That bought you an extra day. Kowolski. He was my favorite mechanic. He had a knack at stalling things for you when you came out of the field bone tired and weary. He could add an extra day to a normal four or five hour down time. It was great. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not lazy in the slightest. I believe in the value of a good day’s work. But when you’ve spent seven days of two and three hours of sleep a night, you can’t wait to have some down time. So any time it came, we took it.

Consequently, the initial road march out landed me in the boneyard. But only after two days of sitting in an oven, baking in the southern California sun. Non-commissioned officers would stop by and ask if we had Meals Ready to Eat-MRE-and water. We did. We always did. Sergeant Preston was good about that. He was short and pudgy but could scrounge whatever he needed when he needed it, like a rodent searching for food. He was a great squad leader, the best. I’ll never forget how many things he did for me. He taught me everything I ever wanted to know about being a medic in the field. The rest I learned in a Troop Medical Center, a TMC, under the tutelage of a Physician’s Assistant, Chief Thakurdeo Bhiro. He was Indian, an India Indian. And he was one of the best PA’s I’d ever met.

I used to come in and catch him smoking in his office. “What are you doing, sir,” I asked.

“Smoking,” he’d say.

I would look at him as if he’d committed a felony. “You can’t smoke in here. Can you sir?”

“What are they gonna do? Fire me.” He would wink at me and smile. He was the best.

The night before the initial road march the cooks had fed us all steak and potatoes. That’s when you knew something bad was about to happen. They fed you a really good meal. Because they knew you weren’t going to have one for the next 28 days. The Army did things like that. It was nice. It was more then they had to do. That’s the part of the U.S. Army I miss, the little things, the things that identified you as special.

Anyway, the next day we geared up to roll out. We did. We rolled out of the Dust Bowl-the place we stayed while drawing MILES gear-Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement Systems-and getting our vehicles that we took with us off the railhead. It was a big row of twenty-foot, aluminum carports, open to blasting sand, which created dust. Lots of dust. Hence, the Dust Bowl.

The road march was going fine. It was great. We were rolling along with goggles and handkerchiefs covering our face. Suddenly, there was an explosion, like the sound of a backfiring car, the track bellowed white smoke and rolled us slowly to a stop. I tried cranking it up again to no avail.

“Crank it up,” Sergeant Preston yelled. “Now, Davis!”

I looked up as the convoy continued into the desert. They were drawing further and further away. My heart began racing as I tried cranking the vehicle again. “I’m trying, sergeant,” I replied.

The track wouldn’t start. The mechanics pulled up next to us and pronounced the “track” dead, that was the name we gave the M113A2 Armored Personnel Carrier. It had five road wheels on each side of a rectangular box. On top of the road wheels, lay track. Like those half-track vehicles you saw in World War II. Only this was all track, with the grooves of the track fitting between the roadwheels. The track moved, spinning the road wheels. That was how it worked. We weren’t moving anywhere. Meanwhile, we waited, for two days. Until somebody showed up and gave us a tow to the boneyard. It was in the boneyard that I had the moment. That moment I talked about. The moment I knew I was a U.S. soldier, a U.S. Army soldier. We were waiting for the mechanics to fix it after being towed, and the sun slowly began to sink in the sky. It was orange. Not like an orange in a grocery store, but an orange red hue. It was beautiful and big, as if you could almost reach out and touch it. One of the most beautiful sunsets I had seen in a long time. Well, I climbed on the front deck of an M-1Abrams tank. The Abrams are the best tanks in the Army, a top speed of sixty miles per hour with hydraulic turrets. You get one shot at a tank. If you miss, you’re dead. Simple enough.

It was about seven o’clock in the evening and I had my Walkman out. It wasn’t a CD player. We didn’t have those back then, just tape players. After getting on the front deck, I leaned against the turret, listening to Boston’s, “More Than A Feeling.” A few of us stopped talking and gazed at this brilliant orange-red sunset. Suddenly, two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters flew right in the middle of the sunset, cutting the sun in half. It was stunning, breathtaking. One of the most picturesque moments I’ve ever seen. For a brief moment, they were there, and then they continued into the horizon as we watched them go by. Slowly, my head turned back to the setting sun. It was in that moment that I realized what it was all for, what we were really doing out here. All of the training had come to this one ten second climax. After that moment, I realized why I had signed up in the first place, what it all meant.

I never felt like a U.S. Soldier more than at that moment and time. Those few that experienced that moment felt it too. It was awe-inspiring. I have never forgotten, nor will I ever forget the National Training Center. It was in the middle of the southern California desert that I experienced one of the most patriotic moments of my life. It was fantastic. A moment every person in America should feel. Even liberals.

Especially liberals, then they would know. They would know why conservatives love the country the way they do. Liberals would know why soldiers love the country the way they do. It's the beauty of the whole thing. It’s about America and Americans, and the freedom to choose anything you want to choose. That’s what all those hours, days, weeks, months and years of training mean.

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