It takes a lot To make a soldier....

 The unit also shot the M-1 poorly .

After an initial trip to the range to qualify for marksmanship only a handful passed. This required another trip to the firing range. In the pits where Jack and the few who had qualified, mark the shots on target were waving Maggie's Drawers. The red flag indicating
misses.

To avoid still a third trip to the range, holes were punched into the targets and with Jack being in the pits can you guess whose idea that  was.

Later he remembered he would have to fight along side these non-shooters.

Kitchen Police the dreaded detail, all soldiers are called to perform is sickening.
Names are chosen from the company duty roster. The K.P. elect is supposed to tie a
towel on the end of his bunk to let the C.Q. know in the darkness whom to awaken.

How many times did some guy tie the towel on another bunk and grab some extra sleep? This ruse would work temporarily but the K.P. when found out would be the grease-trap cleaner. Jack almost puked his guts when having been made to clean one of these sewers. All the days' dirty grease and food particles float to the surface and must be skimmed away. Stink galore.

During a recent tour with the Army Reserve in Germany Jack noticed the Army now uses civilians to do the menial kitchen jobs and to that he says "Hurray and Amen."

Guard duty is another function created to keep the troops busy. Jack's first time chosen for guard duty is memorable. After lining up in formation the Lieutenant stood in front of him, looked at the seventeen-year-old peach fuzz on his cheeks and said to him" Soldier, you've got thirty seconds to shave and be back in formation."
 
Needless, this was his first shave and a dry shave at that! Jack removed the razor from his foot locker display and raked it across his face, previously smooth as a baby's ass and from that day shaving has been a torture.

While on guard duty day time hours things are pretty normal. After dark and especially in the wee hours the hands of the watch somehow seemed to advance. With two hours on and four off the darkness seemed forever.

After being told to take over the new guard would after one hour on even less he would turn the clock ahead to his quitting time. With only the one watch to go by, the replacement really doesn't know what the real time is.

He, depending on his integrity may or may not turn up the time. Imagine when the morning comes. The watch says  five o 'clock but it's only three o'clock and nobody knows who the culprit is!

In movies when the dodo, after pulling the pin of a grenade, just stands there it is supposed to be funny. Bull, in reality there is no jocularity when some recruit freezes and does not heave the grenade, instead nothing but panic. First, after seeing John Wayne use his teeth to pull the pin. Let us state for the record, this is  IMPOSSIBLE, teeth would be lying all over the place. Second, a hand grenade weighs over a pound and one-half and it must be shot-putted as opposed to pitched as shown in Hollywood movies. It is simply too heavy.

Now another fallacy is exposed. The infiltration course always thought to be so dangerous really isn't. They had heard how close to the ground they must stay to avoid being shot.

Every thing in the services is done competitively. One unit against another is the general
rule of thumbs. If First Platoon completes the "course" in five minutes then Second must do it in four minutes and 50 seconds. During the daylight Jack saw that the machine guns were at least four feet above the ground. He secretly told many of his buddies that crawling on hands and knees were going to be safe. This was naturally much faster than crawling on their stomachs and elbows.

Guess what? They won in a breeze! In the darkness they, on hands and knees almost ran the course only stopping when flares lighted the sky like daylight.