“In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March, on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing
All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning in the window”
LINK (Cover)
Casimir Pulaski Day
Fort Benning, Georgia (1994)
This is the day I finished Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) right before I headed off to Airborne school.
When I enlisted, I weighed 240 and was bench pressing 375 lbs.
(I had a goal to bench 400 lbs. but I eventually gave up on that when my elbows started giving out on me.)
When I finished Basic, I weighed 180 lbs. and could run two miles in 12:30 (6:15 mile.)
I could do over 120 push ups in two minutes and tied for the highest PT score in my company.
The physical aspect of Basic and AIT was not difficult. It was a joke, in fact.
It was the lack of food and my shin splints, honestly.
The guy next to me is Chris Hall. He was a Kappa Sigma from the University of Indiana and he enlisted after college, too. We clearly had a lot in common.
My parents came down for the ceremony and my Dad took this picture.
The most hilarious part was Drill Sergeant Mudd. He was an intense and wiry dude who looked like Freddy Kreuger’s younger brother and had a tattoo of a rooster on his calf that he’d tell us was his “low hanging cock.”
When it came time to graduate, he gave us a little speech:
“All right, you fucks. Tomorrow you graduate. Now, some of the Drill Sergeants here might not mind meeting your parents or your wives or your fucking girlfriends. But I’m not like that. I don’t want to talk to any of them. And I don’t want to ever talk to you again. Am I making myself clear to you?”
“YES, DRILL SERGEANT!”
March 1, 2021
From FB:
“The name of March comes from Martius, the first month of the earliest Roman calendar. It was named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and an ancestor of the Roman people through his sons Romulus and Remus. Martius was the beginning of the season for warfare and the festivals held in his honor during the month were mirrored by others in October, when the season for these activities came to a close. Mars is similar to the Greek god Ares, Tiu or Twaz of Central and Northern Europe, Teutates of the Celts, and Tyr of the Norse. While Mars was worshiped in Rome as a god of war, he was also the protector of the ‘most honorable pursuit,’ agriculture.March is considered a month of renewal. This aspect of growth is present in the Frankish name for March, Lentzinmanoth (literally ‘renewal month’). The full moon of this month (March 9th) is called the Worm or Sap moon in the American backwoods tradition.”
Song Of Ajax 