A week or two before I was to head off to Basic Training at Fort Benning, I got a call from my uncle, Robert. He's my Mom's youngest brother, and travel for his job had brought him to New York City. He wanted to get together, buy me dinner, and give me some advice about what I was about to take part in.
So we went to a nice deli style restaurant, and enjoyed a companionable meal. The talk ranged over quite a number of subjects, but as we came to dessert, the topic of Basic came up.
Robert had a number of good suggestions for making my time in training as smooth as I could, but the most interesting thing came about because of a flip answer on my part.
"Look," Robert said in his deep, somewhat intimidating tones, "There are some things you never want to do..."
"Never volunteer, right? I volunteered to get in, and that used up my quota?" I piped up.
"No, not at all." He said after a moment of thought, "You just have to be smart about what you do. Use your head. For instance, at the end of our course in Basic, my platoon had to make a twenty mile march. Right before we left, they asked for volunteers for a detail, so I raised my hand and nudged my closest pal to raise his. When we got called out, he asked me if I was crazy. I reminded him that everyone else was about to walk twenty miles, and asked him what they could have us do that was worse.
"Sure enough, we loaded a truck, and drove out to the end point of the march, where we set up everything for the breakfast the guys were gonna be served when they got finished with the march. Then we sat around for a couple of hours."
Smart guy, Robert is.
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