Life
No Free Lunch
When I went into the Army the first time, I took basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey during the cold February of 1973. I did not mind the running, other physical training, and all the other types of training, but at the time I felt like they could have given me more to eat than what they did. One day during the snow, we hiked out to the rifle range. We had to rush through the chow hall, eat fast, as we usually did, and get out to the military formation. We would move in the formation from there, over to the weapons room to get our weapons, then go on foot out miles through the woods to the firing range.
Since I was slow to eat my breakfast, I thought I needed some extra calories to help keep my feet on the ground. I had it all figured out, I thought. The mess hall had these trays sitting out with multiple breakfast items in them, some with fruits in them, and some with those small boxes of breakfask cereals in them. What a nice opportunity it was, since I was wearing an ammo pouch on each side of my belt buckle. I grabbed two boxes of cereals and put them in one ammo pouch and grabbed two oranges and put them in the other ammo pouch. I picked up my weapon with the rest of the troops and we all headed out to the firing range. I felt better knowing that I had something to eat when the urge hit. We got to the range, and did our crawling around and firing, running and firing, and the other lock-load-fire maneuvers. Anytime that I got more ammo, I put it in my pockets, since I had the ammo pouchs full of food, and I had so many pockets on my clothes anyway.
