Go ahead, naysayers, naysay the military draft. Conscription was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
It was 1965, Vietnam was ratcheting up, and the letter read: “You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States.” I graduated, hugged my parents, and boarded an Army bus.
Fort Polk, Louisiana, seemed unchanged since the Jurassic. It was humid, hostile, and green — green swamp, green machines, green men. It was as different from Ole Miss as hell is from Heaven. Here I met the man who would transform me from adipose to iron, from slouch to straight, from long hair to no hair, from sleeping late to never sleeping. I was welcomed to this Ultima Thule of obedience, discipline and fitness by the toughest man alive: Drill Sergeant Sylvester “Sluggo” Smith.
He was health incarnate, with glossy black skin, a stiff moustache parallel to his drill sergeant’s hat brim, and the amber eyes of a nocturnal leopard, stalking prey. Countless chevrons striped sleeves of a starched uniform covering rock-hard muscles. He was my worst nightmare.
In a bullhorn voice he roared, “Bullet stoppers, att-en-shun!” My blonde hair, longer than pre-Delilah Samson’s, irked him.
“Private Reek, you need a haircut.”
“My name is Reed, not Reek.”
Holding up a folder, he said, “You callin’ me a lie, boy? These records show you were raised on a Mississippi Delta plantation, went to a fine university. You pampered, pitiful, pudgy, pimple-faced pantywaist private, you on my farm now.”
Day and night he was in my face. “You ain’t gonna make it, boy. You’ll be recycled. You’re mine forever.” I lived in terror.
Once during inspection, I presented my weapon to Sergeant Smith and shouted name, rank, and serial number. He looked at my face.
“You shave this morning, soldier?”
“No, Sir, didn’t need to.” Nearly beardless, I could go a week without shaving.
“In this man’s Army, we shave daily. Get your razor.”
I was ordered to shave, with no mirror or cream. For an hour, while inspecting the company, he kept shouting, “Shave, boy.” I scraped until blood dripped from my chin. Finally, he stepped before me and said, “That’s what I call a close shave, Reek. Dismissed.”
The days dragged on. I dreamed of Mama’s cooking, while shrinking from 180 to 150 pounds. Somehow, I completed boot camp.
On graduation day, I thought about this man who had changed my life forever, for the better. He instilled in me a sense of unfaltering patriotism. He taught me the surest way to build character is through self-discipline, and self-discipline is built by applying oneself relentlessly, as if every day is the last. He defined precisely what Rudyard Kipling meant in these lines from his famous poem, “If—”:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And, which is more, you’ll be a man, my son!