Joining the military, leaving Picayune, Mississippi/in May 1966

I decided when I turned seventeen that I was going to join the Navy; my dad swore that I wasn’t, that a war was going on, and that I could be killed. My father and I didn’t see eye to eye, so a few days before I turned 17, I hitchhiked to Memphis, TN, to my Uncle Gene’s house to get him to sign me into the Navy. The next day, he took me to the Navy recruiter office in downtown Memphis; they quickly told me that they were only taking high school graduates and that I should try the Marines; we walked over to the Marines office, it was closed for lunch, dam Gene says, then I see the Army’s office is open, we walk in, and there is a tremendous amount of activity going on, this old Sargent what do you want, my uncle tells him I want to join the Army, come over here sit down, my uncle signs some papers and hands them my birth certificate and tells them that he will be back later today to pick me up, the Sargent tells him that it would be a week or two before I leave, okay and he walks away. I go into this big room. They handed me a stack of papers and told me to fill them out. Afterward, they gave me these tests to see what field I was best suited to. I asked the guy giving the test about three questions when he finally told me to answer the dam questions you are going where we tell you, don’t bother me, about five pages of the question, so I started marking any answer and finished quickly. I handed my test in and sat down to wait for my next task. After sitting for about an hour, a big group of recruits entered the big room to my left, and you could hear them take on the oath to defend the country; as they were exiting the room, this mountain of a Sargent Major came out of the room, what are you doing here recruit, I nervously tell him that I am joining the Army, who is your recruiter he barks out loudly, I have no idea what his name is sir, don’t call me sir, call me Sargent, okay sir, no I said Sargent, yes sir Sargent, he shakes his head in degusted and walks away. After a few minutes, my recruiter comes in with the Major Sargent in tow, and the sergeant asks why he has not been sworn in. The sergeant grabs my arm, helps me quickly, and tells the recruiter to grade the test; we walk into the big room where the officer is finishing packing his briefcase to leave from swearing in the other recruits; sir, please swear in this recruit. He gets me to raise my hand and swears me in. I walk with Major Sargent holding my shoulder to the waiting bus to leave. Sargent, I have no clothes; don’t worry, we will take care of that; you need none. I climb onto the bus wide-eyed and wonder what I have in store for myself next.
The bus takes us to the train station, and the recruiter takes us to an extraordinary car and sets us down for the trip to Nashville. We disembarked from the train on our arrival, and they put us in groups of ten or so men. There was a drill Sargent from Fort Campbell screaming out orders to stay with your group and not do any thinking at all; after 30 or so minutes of nothing but standing listening to this drill Sargent, I decided to get a coke out of the machine, I was trying to get the machine to take my quarter when someone grabbed my shoulder, what are you doing recruit, buying a coke sir, this guy goes berserk, I am not an officer, I work for my living, you always address me as Sargent, okay okay, get back in line. What the hell just happened? These men are borderline crazy. These buses pull up to the curb, and we start loading up halfway. Sargent demands we get back off the bus and try again. This time, I wanted it to be loaded fast, so we again started loading at a faster pace; again, halfway into the loading, he screamed for us to get off his dam bus; now when we got on the bus, it looked like a sprint run with wrestling mixed in together, but this seems to satisfy him, so off we go, “finally.”
We arrive at Fort Campbell at about 4 pm. It’s raining chilly but not too bad; the screaming is even more intense than at the train station—the first bus line up here, the second bus, and the third bus. Thirty of us or so line up in the second bus line. They take us in the second bus line to get haircuts; we line up behind three chairs and watch the hair fly, hum maybe they will not cut it off completely, “if I ask” them to leave a little on top, I sit down on the chair, and this little black soldier a barber looks at me like he can see I have a question, you want something he finally says, yes can you leave a little more on the top. Hence, it is not all gone, no problem; then he cuts it down to the quick, and as I get up, I see the smile on his face. We are then taken to get our clothes. We walk into this line, and they hand us these name tags printed on this military green cloth that they will sew into our clothes. Each location gives them one of your name tags when you get in front of them. We were standing in line with our cloth name tags in hand when my drill Sargent Imhole asked everyone to look at their name tags and make sure they were right; about that time, one soldier told him that his name was spelled wrong, all the drill Sargent’s jump on him quick, what do you mean the name is incorrect, are you accusing the Army of not knowing who you are, do you even know who you are, “recruit,” no sir, no I mean no Sargent, I am just saying it doesn’t match my birth certificate. After about thirty minutes of hell, they ask us all to recheck our spelling to see if the Army is capable of another mistake. Holy Christ, they have my name wrong; instead of Boyanton, they have bayanton, Sargent, I holler out faintly; no one hears me with all the commotion going on, hum I guess I can say my name is Bayanton and leave it at that.
We finally get to the sewing lines, and all our names are sewed onto our new clothes; after that, we go to the barracks and stand in front of our bunks, “with our name on them” Oh shit, they have my name spelled outright, on my bunk, this won’t be good, I know already. I see three sergeants and an officer going bunk to bunk asking for your name, rank, and serial number; spell your last name, and then they bark out your service number. I don’t have my number remembered; I know it is RA 1, “but* I can’t remember. Finally, they are at my bunk; what is your service number, Sargent Imhole hollers? I don’t know, Sargent, spell your last name, Bayanton, spell it again, recruit, Bayanton, we have it, Boyanton, is that on your bunk? Which is it, “moron”? The Sargent has his nose up against mine, screaming and spitting; which is it, moron? Spell your f—king name, moron; what is your service number, moron. Finally, the officer tells the Sargent to back up, and he calmly asks me what is your name, I spell out Boyanton, and he asks me why I hadn’t said that before; I tell him the guy that had said it earlier was jumped on so I decided no way that I was going to be criticized for the Army mistake, the wrong answer it was like a pack of the wolfs, Sargent’s all over me at one time, you are saying that we are wrong, is that what you are telling the officer you maggot, you should be shot. The officer finally calms them down, but it takes a while. He tells me he wants me to remember my service number and know it front and backward; yes, sir. The officer then turns and leaves. I think this will not be good, the Sargent’s again. If you ever tell an officer that a sergeant is wrong again, you will be sorry. Hum, I already am.
The following day, they woke us up at about 5 am and put us in the formation, and the hollering began again; the sergeant came right up to me and spelled your last name and service number. I spelled my last name but can’t remember my service number. Give 25 pushups, and I drop down and start doing pushups. When I reach ten, he screams, “Get up and tell me your service number. I don’t know it, Sargent; get down 25 pushups, get to about ten, and he tells me to get up again? What is your service number? I don’t know, Sargent. This has been going on for quite a while.
The sergeant finally tells me to return to my bunk and remember my service number before I can eat this morning. I go back to the barracks and study for a while, and I am just having problems remembering this dam number. Finally, one of the other recruits told me to write it on the back of my hand, which I did RA12922429, which has never left my memory. My training class is a week away, so they assign all our duties; mine is KP. I tried to change things with everyone, but cleaning dishes is not what I want to do. They wake us up at 3:30 am to go to the kitchen to get our task and start working; I take my time, so when I arrive, there is only one position left: pots and pans, the worst job in the whole place. After washing a million pots and pans with the supper pans only left to do, I am happy to think that tomorrow, I will get up earlier than anyone and become an orderly dining room. But as life will have it, the cook brings me three burnt pans, and I mean he burnt these things bad; he tells me he needs them done before I leave. I don’t try to clean them, so I throw them into the dumpster and go to the barracks. I go in early the next morning to get a dining room orderly job for the day, no more cleaning and washing pans. The next morning at 3 am, someone woke me up. Get up; you have to go to the kitchen. The officer wants to. I tell them to kiss my ass. I have done all my work and am not returning to somebody else’s job, and I go back to sleep when I awaken again. This time, it is a second LT. A soldier comes with me to the kitchen. I get dressed and head to the kitchen; when I walk in, I see the cook who had given me the burnt pans. He has them in front of the counter. He told me I was throwing away government property, which was against the law; why did I do it? I explained that I tried to clean them, but they were burnt so badly that they weren’t good anymore, so I threw them away. The Lt tells the sergeant to put me on pots and pans for the whole week to teach me not to dispose of government property—a hell of a week.
Nothing changes every morning and night. Hell on wheels, my locker turned over because I didn’t remember to lock my lock, my bed ripped into pieces for not being tight enough, this in less remembering my service number over and over. The training was almost a relief from this endless, nonstop harassment. We get to the firing range, and the completion is tremendous, platoons against platoons and companies against companies and battalions against battalions; the higher leadership likes to think theirs were the best. On the first day of the firing range, the sergeant wants everyone who has fired a weapon to come to the front of the platoon. I walk up, and he looks at me and tells me to go back. If I had fired a gun, I most likely missed the target.
The men that he had to go to the front he worked with tirelessly to try to hone his shooting skills. The rest of us were just recruits learning how to be soldiers; there were only two or three expert riflemen in each platoon; everyone else was just added up, but one extra expert shoot could win you the competition. We were tied for second place in the first three tries in the battalion; I had shot very well but was still three shots short of expert; the Captain of our company had us in the formation and asked if anyone here thought they could make an expert on the range tomorrow, I raised my hand. I told him I was three away both times and believed I would do better. He gets the sergeant to take a couple of us out to the range for extra training. The next day, we were the last to go to the range to see how the other platoons and companies had done. We would have to fire as well with the whole company the day before and need at least two more expert shots to win, and this was just a guess. The wind picked up and blew very hard, making our job even more challenging. The first group went to the line, and when we finished, we lost one expert we had the day before; the second group added an expert shot, and it was not one of the men with me in the extra training. The next group was mine, and we had the most expert shots in the company in this group; my first target was far away, I missed, and my next target was 50 yards missed, and I ended up with 63 hits out of 70 experts. I can’t describe the feeling when all the counting was done, and one other soldier made a difference in our winning. I believe this is the first time that I felt like a soldier.
I finished basic training and headed for Fort Sill, OK; this is another hard knocks learning that is not easily forgotten. I will learn how to be an artilleryman with a self-propelled howitzer. The barracks at Sill are cold and left over from World War II. I get in late; they already have two training days when I arrive. My bunk is in the middle of a group of black soldiers, and trouble starts fast. I put my duffle bag on the bottom bunk when this tall, muscular black guy tells me to move it. I tell him I will in a minute; he hits me in the stomach so hard that I double up, and I can’t breathe. He kicks me and knocks me to the floor; I get my breath back, jump on his back, and try to choke him to death. I was trying to kill him, but by this time, I had a lot of support from the other white soldiers as he had from the black soldiers; it became a nasty affair. The company commander brought this black guy and me to his office to find out what happened, I told him this nigger attacked and hit me in the stomach, and he told me right off not to say nigger; I told him that is what he is, we almost get into a fight in his office. I get all the blame because I put my duffle bag on his bed, I get article 15 and lose half my pay; half of nothing is nothing; 70 per month isn’t much. Two or three days later, we are in the chow line, and I am about ten from the front, and he is second; the next thing I notice is that he has let 30 or so blacks in line with him; no one seems to mind, but I do, I go up and get in front of him, he grabs my shoulder but this time he gets it good I slug him so hard in the mouth that he loses his two front teeth, they come right out of his mouth, it is on now. It takes half a dozen MPs to stop the fighting, and I am arrested and put in the brig. The next day, he is unhappy in front of the Captain; what do you think I should do, he says. I tell him this guy thinks he is above everyone, and most of these white guys are afraid of him and won’t stand up to him, so he says he can do anything. He asks me if I knew that I had broken his jaw and knocked out some teeth; I know of the teeth, not the jaw. The Captain shakes his head. I will not blame you for this; I will send you to a different company. I don’t want any more trouble; pack your bags and report back in 30 minutes. My new company is a week behind the one I was in, dam an extra week in this hell hole. But like most things, your past comes with you; my black platoon sergeant lets me know that he will put me in the brig if he gets a chance.
My bunk this time was in the whitest part of the barracks, and this barracks is split right down the middle, with no crossover and no mingling between races; it was divided, not much talking and no socializing. The wind in Fort Sill is coming off the plains; there are no hills, no buildings, no trees, just cold, and I mean cold; loading up these heavy shells and firing them in this cold weather is unbearable. Everything goes without incident till the week before graduation. We are given time to go to PX, and I bump into my old buddy minus some teeth; he has about four or five guys with him, and I do the same. We start with words, of course, hey cracker he calls out to me; I tell him to shut up nigger; he throws something at me but misses badly, but just as it is heating up, two MP walk into the store, and everything calms down. We go back to the barracks, and there is a crowd of white and black soldiers gathered all around talking; when I show up, the white soldiers get me into the front of them to, I guess, lead what everyone was about to happen, again saved by the MPS they show up and stops all the activity, everything calms down, MPs were at our barrack from than to graduation. The intensity of hate between blacks and whites was at a fever pitch; this was my first encounter with whites who were afraid of blacks; where I came from, no one was.

Graduation was a big event. The parents of every one were there, except mine and a couple of other heathens that had no one to love them. They put us in the formation and started calling out duty stations; It was unbelievable. They called out every name, about 450 names, and two soldiers left on parade grounds standing side by side in Fort Benning, GA, for jump school. You have to be kidding; I had forgotten I had signed up for jump school at Fort Campbell. They sent us both to the barracks to get all our stuff so that the military bus would soon take us to Fort Benning. We arrive at the post, and the first thing you can see is the 250′ towers with men going up and falling to the ground; it looks like a lot of fun but scary. This place is another notch up in intensity. You run in place in the chow line. You are running everywhere you go except sleep, even if you are double time, I mean intense. I met some highly motivated soldiers here, both black and white; they were only interested in the Army and doing their jobs, which was much different from training. We run so much and hard that every muscle in my body is as hard as a rock.
I still have this terrible habit of leaving my footlocker unlocked, which gets me in trouble. I woke up at about 3 am. It was the night duty officer; why is your footlocker open? I don’t know, sir. Get up, get dressed, and bring your footlocker downstairs, okay? I arrive downstairs, and he tells me he wants me to run around the barracks and tap on his window each time I come by. At first, it took me about 5 minutes. After ten trips, it took much longer; the officer would open the window and tell me to get running. I did this for at least 2 hours. I never forgot the footlocker lock again. My first jump was out of a c-1 19 box aircraft from World War Two; rivets would hit your helmets, and the planes felt too heavy to get off the ground. I was the first man out the door on my first jump, and it had its moments. The light came on from off to red. The jumpmaster told us to stand up, hook up, and turn right; I walked into the door and looked down to the ground. Dam, this is far; we fly for a few more minutes. I realized that we were not over the drop zone that we were over the wood line; about this time, the plane made a hard right turn and circled back the way we came; it was unbelievable that standing at the door looking out into the ground below me was breathtaking and scary all in one. We arrive back over the drop zone; the light turns from red to green, and the jumpmaster touches me. I go. The jump is exciting. You feel the wind, look up, see your chute open, and look around. Everything looks good. You are told not to look down when you land, feel the hit, and do your PLF fall, and everything will be fine. I did well till right before my landing; I looked down, tensed up, and bounced three or four times, bruised but not hurt, ready for my next jump. My class, number 49th, had less than 40 percent graduating, so after five jumps and three weeks of hell, I am graduating. Fort Bragg and the 82 airborne, here I come.