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"Move over, Dave Barry!"
Foreword to Yes, Drill Sergeant! by Lieutenant General John B. Sylvester,
USA
"Thanks
Yogi! “Déjà vu all over again” very aptly describes how reading Yes,
Drill Sergeant! took me back to my own days in Basic Combat Training
(BCT) at
Ft Dix in the 60s, twenty or so years before Jeff Circle survived basic
training there!
Another
apt quip would be “Move over, Dave Barry!” Jeff’s insider’s humor clearly rivals that of my European Stars and
Stripes Sunday morning coffee companion and blends well with a ‘not exactly
politically correct’ recollection of his days in basic training that will
serve all former soldiers with a humorous post script, and all future soldiers
with a tongue firmly in cheek, yet practical, survival manual of their own.
Jeff,
who survived basic training quite well, thank you, went on to superbly serve
our country as an intel specialist a.k.a. 96B in Korea, then on to Ft Hood,
Texas where he ended up in my brigade S2 shop. The “shop” was really a well run M577, Carrier, armored, full
tracked, command post, which was eventually deployed into the middle of
nowhere with the Army's “Tiger
Brigade” during Operations DESERT SHIELD and STORM in the Gulf War.
As
part of the brigade’s intelligence section or S2, Jeff kept company with a
number of other budding “James Bond meets Lawrence of Arabia” characters
that inhabited my trusted brain pool and were responsible for developing enemy
order of battle and enemy overlays for our fast moving combat operations. I am
even sure there were some wry comments by Jeff on the Brigade Intel Officer who
just happened to be named Lawrence…and we did, after all, start out somewhere
in Saudi Arabia and end up several hundred miles away on the Iraqi border.
Jeff’s
sometimes off color descriptions of his BCT drill sergeants who prepared him for
all of that by taking him from civilian to soldier, quickly gives way to the
solid realization of the contribution these great non-commissioned officers make
in the transformation of these youngsters who would so excel in combat not long
after their training to be basic combat infantrymen.
As
Jeff puts it when describing the intense training every trainee goes through in
the grueling night, live fire exercise (L.N.F.) at basic …“under combat
conditions, our training took over, and the duty to follow orders became
instinct.” Jeff is not quite sure
how 23,420 push-ups and five pull-ups before and after his three squares a day
helped get him there, but he knows the drill sergeants made it all happen.
Jeff
clearly knows from his own combat experiences the values of training. Those same
experiences were often paraphrased by other soldiers who repeatedly, after the
brief but often intense 100 hour Gulf War, told me, “Gee, sir, this was just
like training,” or “Sir, the NTC was tougher than this!” All music to a
commander’s ears... as the oft-quoted General George Patton purportedly put
it, “a pint of sweat [in training] will save a gallon of blood [on the
battlefield.]”
Jeff
Circle did a lot of sweating at Ft Dix, and while his book will not take the
sweat out of any future basic trainee’s life, it will provide a great look at
the adventure that lies ahead and provide a lot of chuckles in hindsight.
One
last thing Jeff…from us old[er]-timers who remember cotton balls and bowling
alley wax on WWII era wooden floors…what the heck is a buffer? "
About
Lt Gen Sylvester : Lieutenant
General John B. Sylvester has served as the Chief of Staff at the U.S. Army’s
Training and Doctrine Command (which oversees army basic training), and served
overseas in Vietnam, Germany, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He commanded the Tiger Brigade Battle
Team into Kuwait City, Kuwait, during the country's liberation during Operation
DESERT STORM.
Lieutenant
General Sylvester’s service and success has earned him awards which include: four Defense
Distinguished Service Medals, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star Medal for valor,
and the Army Aviator Badge. His
most recent command was as the NATO Commander of the Peace Stabilization Force,
Bosnia and Herzegovina. He recently
retired as Chief-of-Staff for United States European Command.
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