Fire Guard? What's Fireguard?

And There I Was #7 Fireguard, What’s Fireguard?

            I stood at the top of the stairs with my mouth agape while a flashlight rolled down the stairs with a hollow thump marking each step. This day had not gone as I imagined, though to tell you the truth I don’t know what I expected. All can truthfully say is, “This wasn’t it.”

            Early that February morning in 1981, I’d said goodbye to my parents in Abilene, Texas, and boarded an American Airlines flight to Dallas Fort Worth (DFW), with the ultimate destination of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Saying goodbye to my mother was as one would expect, however, saying goodbye to my father was quite interesting, but that’s an entirely different story altogether. The flights to DFW and on to Kansas City and the small commuter flight to Fort Leonard Wood had been uneventful. Late in the afternoon, I stood with a small group of trainees on the tarmac of a small airport listening to the quiet ping of the turboprop cooling down. A disgruntled NCO looked us over in disgust and drawled, “Boys, and I call you boys ‘cause you aint men yet, welcome to Fort Lots-in-the-Woods, in the state of misery. Little Korea we call it. You in deep kimchee now!” I had no idea what he was talking about, and the crazy hadn’t started yet.

            First, they took us to a huge warehouse with an enormous mountain of field-jackets, pile caps, and gloves, all marked with a red dot. While the NCO in charge of us watched and smoked, we pawed through the pile looking for a jacket, cap, and set of gloves that fit and were in some fashion serviceable. I found out later that these were all deemed unserviceable, thus the red dot, and used to keep trainees warm while they waited for a company to form and uniform issue day. When the Army decides something is indeed unserviceable, it’s unserviceable. Finding an appropriate set took each of us a while. Being one of the first ones finished I was allowed to stand outside in the cold gray evening and smoke. As other trainees finished the little smoking group grew. We clustered there on the loading dock looking suspiciously like a group of convicts in our red-dotted attire. Eventually, the disgruntled NCO came out with the last trainee and flicked his cigarette off the loading dock and growled, “Get in the #$%*’ing truck. We all flicked our cigarettes down as he did and shuffled toward the truck.

            “What in the @#$% do you think you’re doing,” he screamed? “Form a line and police up all those butts!” With much shouting and a very generous application of profanity, we all endured our first police-call, learning about the odd capriciousness of the Army. Once he was satisfied we all climbed into the back of the truck and headed off into the gloom, eventually stopping at a white clapboard building surrounded by pine-trees. We shuffled up to the door and entered our first DFAC, where a bored-looking soldier in stained cook-whites asked a weird question, “RA, USAR, or Nasty-Guard?”

            I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. But, wanting to eat and knowing that he was the gatekeeper, I mumbled, “RA,” and shuffled inside, grabbed a tray, and got my chow. Being a graduate of a large public high school, I knew how to work my way down a cafeteria line. We wolfed down our chow and then headed out into the dark, shivering in the back of the truck. Eventually, we stopped at a small cluster of WW II “temporary” barracks.

            We trooped inside and were told to occupy the second floor. There ensued an age-old Army tradition of hip-pocket training. The NCO rattled off instructions for fireguard. I remember being fuzzy on most of what he said, as I had not learned the Army habit of replacing key words with profanity. Eventually, I learned that trick…perhaps too well. What I understood was, one of the other trainees would wake me up. I was to wander around the barracks with a silly cone-toped flashlight for thirty minutes and then wake my replacement. The NCO emphasized knowing who your replacement was and where he would be sleeping. He told us that lights out would be at 2130…whatever that meant. We loitered around the steps of the barracks smoking and joking until the NCO stepped out on the small porch and told us in no uncertain terms to get in our racks. We put our cigarette butts in the ubiquitous red butt-can and slouched off to sleep.

            Sometime in the cold February night someone shook me awake and said, “Dude, it’s your turn for fireguard,” and handed me my scepter…the flashlight. I had no idea of what to do. There was no fire for me to guard. So, I wandered around the ancient billets reading the cold-war vehicle and aircraft identification posters. Odd, how that would be more important to me when SQT tests rolled around. Sometime in the middle of my watch as I was standing there reading the same poster for the umpteenth time, one of the other trainees stirred, tossing in his sleep.

            Suddenly, he sat up wild-eyed, but not seeing the same thing I was seeing. He let out three ear-splitting screams and then lay back down and started snoring again. Startled, I had dropped my flashlight, which rolled down the stairs, its loud thumps echoing off the ancient wooden walls. Several of the other trainees in bunks near the now snoring oddball set up wondering what was going on. In a few minutes quiet and darkness once again secured the AO. I retrieved my flashlight and wondered what in the world had I gotten myself into. First day in the Army.