WHERE’S PEACHES ?(repost because I need a good laugh even at my own expence)

Time for morning formation to fall in. after several days of bivouac it was nice to be back at the BTC barracks of Delta 2 3. It was still dark so I couldn’t see which D.I. was calling us to fall in, but I figured it out real quick after he shouted his first two words and it wasn’t the usual “FALL IN !” command. No, his first two words were “WHERE’S PEACHES “ screamed at top of his lungs.

 I just hung my head and muttered, “shit” under my breath. By now the whole company was laughing their ass off, save one. Of course my buddies were giving me some serious shit to add a little icing on the cake that was made of shit I was still eating two days after I picked up that infamous nickname. “Damn” I thought to myself ‘it’s going to be another long day!”

Basic training was winding down, 10 days or so to go till we graduate and become soldiers instead of “punk men”. There were a couple of  D. I.’s I sure as hell wouldn’t miss, but I never had anything against Drill Sergeant Ganard,….. until now.

This was the late fall of  '73' and a lot of the D.I.’s assigned to our BTC had recently rotated back from Vietnam. Maybe that explained their really bad attitude concerning 200 plus raw recruits who would never have to worry about doing a tour in Nam.

Drill Sergeant Ganard was on of the older cadre and hadn’t been in the bush for a long time so he was a lot more mellow, he was actually kinda funny even when he was chewing some recruits ass off.  He reminds me a lot of Gunnery Sergeant Lee Emory, the guy who used to be a marine D.I. He was a technical consultant on the great move Full Metal Jacket. They let him read for the part of Drill Instructor Hartman and he got it. That movie cracked me up, some of the insults were the exact same ones used on us. Do they give these guys manuals with all the obscene insults to use on us?
There were similarities I shared with the character "Private Joker" on the left side of the picture as far as we were both wise asses and just didn't know when to shut our mouth. By the time the peaches/donut incident occurred, I was already well known by the D.I.'s.

My plan to remain anonymous to the D.I.'s during basic training had fallen on it’s ass long before the peaches incident, but now it was in full freefall mode. This latest FUBAR had started a couple of days prior when bivouac was almost over. Bivouac started out bad and just went downhill from there. The day before bivouac started I had busted my foot on the confidence course which is like an obstacle course that you can die on. My foot was so swollen I couldn’t even tie my boot.

The weather was cold and rainy and managed to soak everything in our pup tent. We were living on C rations, if you call that living. I know it was a damn site better than being hunkered down in the jungles of Vietnam, but still that fact didn’t make us like being out there.

Midway through bivouac they finally started to chopper in hot chow, it was still the same shitty foot we had been getting at the mess hall, but at least it was better then C-rations. I grabbed a tray and joined the line and started looking up the line to see if there was anything worth eating. When I got close enough to the chow to see what was being served I could not believe my eyes; there on a big tray lay a shit load of doughnuts! Oh, praise be to Jesus! Donuts! Store bought donuts, the army cooks didn’t have a thing to do with cooking these babies so I know there gonna be good! I hardly noticed all the other shit being slopped on my tray; my eyes were trained on those little circular pieces of  heaven.

Something broke my concentration however, when I was just a few trainees from grabbing my donut, A guy up ahead had got rejected when he reached for his donut. What the hell was this? What evil had befallen this poor wretch? I didn’t know this poor schlub who’s whole pastry world just fell apart, but I could certainly sympathize with his plight I know how I would feel if such a thing would happen to me. He pleaded with the cook to no avail, I could finally make out what was being said, apparently there was an option, you either got peaches or a donut, but not both !

Seems no one told this poor fool about the donut/peach option at the peach station and just flopped the two quarters in heavy syrup on his tray. He walked on dejected and I move one man closer to pastry nirvana; then I looked down at my tray. Nooooooooooooooo! I didn’t ask for those, I didn’t put them on my tray, I didn’t even know I was in possession of them, but there they were, two peach quarters in heavy syrup nestled in a neat little compartment on the right side of my tray!

I felt the blood drain from my face, panic started to take over but I fought it, my head was spinning, I couldn’t give up, I had seconds to act, my basic army training had honed my reflexes razor sharp! I hatched a brilliant plan and executed that plan in milliseconds.

 In the blink of an eye, I took my right hand off the tray and in one fluid motion I backhanded those cursed donut-denying peaches off my tray and into the dirt some 6 feet away. Wheee! My plan had worked to perfection except for one tiny detail; Drill Sergeant Ganard had witnessed the whole thing.

I never read the Military Code of Justice, but apparently there is a section in there that forbids the molestation of peaches in any way. Drill Sergeant Ganard grabbed me out of the chow line screaming at the top of his lungs, he ordered me to assume the front leaning rest position where I was staring directly at the now dirt covered peaches I had just murdered. For you civilians, there really is no rest in the front leaning rest position. It’s the position you assume when you are getting ready to do pushups and you just stay in that position with your back straight, it’s a really effective form of punishment.

The whole time I’m in this position staring at the peaches, Drill Sergeant Ganard is circling me kicking dirt on me and acting like he was going to kick me in the ribs while calling me every obscenity he can muster.

Finally after the 30 minute reaming, and noon chow almost over, Drill Sergeant Ganard ran out of steam. My arms shoulders and back screaming with pain Ganard says “Ok dumbass, you get up now, grab your tray and you get you some taters and you get you some beans, BUT YOU AIN’T GETTIN NO DONUTS! AND YOU AIN’T GETTIN NO

   P     E      A         C           H              E                S     !    !     !    !   !   !    !    !

I know it may be hard to believe, but even after living on c-rats for days, I had lost my appetite. Noon chow was over anyway and it was time to get back to training and I did have a can of c-rats squired away that I could chew on later.

I took some consolation over the fact that because of my actions they immediately modified the "either or policy" regarding the peaches/donut controversy by informing the recruits at the peaches station that if they took some peaches they would be denied a donut. Hmm lot of fricking good that did me, I am proud to say that after the example I set there were no more reported cases of peach molesting in our company.

It took a long time until I could see the humor in the peaches incident. Today some 37 plus years later, maybe not every time, but most times when I grab a donut at a tech meeting or open a can of peaches in heavy syrup, I kind of get a slight grin on my face and think about that stupid 18 year old kid back in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri who just wanted a damn donut.

Sometime when I’m on this train of thought, I think about Drill Sergeant Ganard and wonder if he is still around. If he is, I wonder if when he grabs a Frosty Crème or dives into a peach cobbler, does he ever think about that day when he made a federal case out of some young dumb trainee slapping some fruit out of his tray 37 years ago. I can almost see him grin and say;

“What the hell was that kids name? Oh yeah, Peaches!”



P.S.
Oh my God, I just found out there is something called a donut peach, the best of both worlds!

(ok, I'm done with the reruns for a while)