What I consider my best summer, many who shared my experiences remember as their worst: the year I graduated basic training and Infantry school.

I’d dreamt of being a soldier since age 5. I read Sgt. Rock comic books and watched “Combat,” “Rat Patrol,” “Hogan’s Heroes,” and John Wayne. When I was 10, I mailed a fan letter to WWII cartoonist/infantryman Bill Mauldin and he replied.

Then in 1982, at Ft. Benning, GA: home of the Infantry – home of heroes – I found myself wearing their clothes, standing in their shadow. The wooden barracks I lived in had housed troops training to fight in WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam.

Every new experience was a fresh thrill: singing cadence while marching, hurling grenades, running around like idiots with rifles. “Fix bayonets!” It’s a guy thing. I can still get my boots shinier than yours to this day. Kiwi and spit. When it’s just a job, it’s misery. When it’s the realization of hopes, it’s glory.

The day we marched 6 miles under the sweltering Georgia sun to the machinegun range, was the first time I’d ever seen men sweat so much that as it evaporated, salt crystallized outside their clothing. But the sheer testosterone rush of grabbing the spade grips of a Browning .50 caliber heavy machinegun, and pumping tracers into a scrapped vehicle over 1000 yards downrange made it all worthwhile.

“Fill your canteens at the lister-bag, and take ten in the shade. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Form-up for chow at the whistle. Fall out!”

I spent that entire summer feeling like a spectator, except in this war movie I was one of the characters. Thanks to your tax dollars at work, dreams do come true.

Mike VanOuse
Lafayette