The Boot of Pain

This is a story about a military hazing incident I witnessed.  The story takes place in 1989 at the enlisted club (E-Club) on Adak Naval Air Station in the Aleutian Islands.

Where:

Adak Naval Air Station

Adak was a hold-over from World War II.  It was constructed in the 1940’s to launch attacks against Japan and was part of a chain of bases along the Alaskan Aleutian Islands.  After the end of the war, the Air Station continued service as a buffer against the Soviet Union.

Weather on the island was usually cold, wet, and foggy.  In short dreary. Hiking was discouraged due to sinkholes and old unexploded ordinance and mines.  Which meant any off duty activities were confined to the small, drab enlisted men’s club.  To my knowledge, there wasn’t even an officer’s club on the island.

Adak was also notorious in aviator circles.  For some unknown reason the airfield was laid out with the takeoff end of it pointed directly at the island’s one mountain.  After reaching wheels up, pilots had to push the engines to full military power and pull up violently to miss crashing into the mountainside.  Due to this danger, the Seabees were tasked with leveling off the top of the mountain.  They were busily engaged in this endeavor and were bringing the mountain top down at the ‘dizzying’ rate of one yard a year….

What:

We were on the base to conduct air operations.  We’d fly out on lengthy missions then come back to the airfield to refuel and rest.  In between missions we’d either be at the base gym or in the enlisted men’s club.

One night at the club, things got a little out of hand. 

One of our team, Steve D, had recently earned his Naval Aircrewman Wings, which meant an official ceremony.  This had already taken place at our home base in Japan.  The brass convened an all hands award ceremony on the quarterdeck.  The CO announced the sailor’s certification as a Naval Aircrewman then affixed the wings onto his uniform.  Standard procedure.

After the CO attached the wings to the uniform then rest of the detachment, in descending rank order, would shake the Aircrewman’s hand and “pin” the wings on.  “Pinning” the wings on meant punching the wings while they were still on the aircrewman’s chest.  Hazing of a sort but pretty minor.  It was condoned by the brass (they were right there while it happened and most participated) and the backers were still on the pegs.  So no real injuries ever occurred.  The worst that could happen was you’d wind up with two red spots, where the two backers were, from repeated punches.  I should mention that to pin on someone’s wings you had to have already earned them yourself.  Otherwise you just got to watch.

Steve had recently received his ceremony.  But this night he decided he wanted the other, unofficial, wing pinning ceremony.  He got up and asked for the boot of pain.  I about shit myself.

The boot of pain was the stuff of legend.  It had never been performed in the three years I was with the detachment.  You only heard about it late at night from the old salts and only after several beers at the club.  It had been fairly routine at one point especially with one of our detachments more brazen groups.  But it was so heinous and potentially dangerous that by unspoken agreement it fell by the wayside.

But here was Steve, wide eyed and sober, requesting the boot.  He got his wish. 

One of his flight boots (all leather mid-calf, steel towed) was retrieved from his bunk and brought down to the E-Club.  A can of cat food had been obtained from somewhere.  This was opened up and the smelly contents pushed down into the toe of the boot.  Steve’s gold aircrew wings were then firmly implanted into these tender vittles.  Next the crowd at the E-Club was solicited for shots of alcohol.  About a dozen different shots were bought.  Whiskey, vodka, schnapps, you name it.  It went into the boot.  The contents of a used ashtray were also dumped into the boot (I kid you not!).  On top of this several, freely given, female hairs (not from their heads) were added.  And to finish it off, a cheap beer was poured in for volume.

Steve was then handed the toxic, boot sized concoction.  With only a little hesitation, he upended the boot and chugged the contents until only the wings were left.  Stuck in what was left of the kitty chow.  A few vigorous shakes and the wings dropped down where he caught them in his teeth, to thunderous applause.

At this point a friend stepped in and jammed his finger down Steve’s throat.  Forcing him to puke out the toxin.  You had to have this help.  If you didn’t vomit you were going to the hospital.  So a second was designated to help, almost like a second the samurai used to help them commit seppuku.

And that’s how it went down. 

Steve had regurgitated the boot quickly enough that it didn’t even slow him down for the rest of the evening!  It was a successful Boot of Pain initiation.  However, unsurprisingly, there were no other volunteers for the boot while I was at Atsugi.

Other Incidents:

The Q

Wing Pinning, how hard you got hit depended on who was throwing the punches.  Most people just tapped the wings but every now and then someone would throw a hard right.  I once saw a sailor throw a powerful cross that skipped off the wings, bounced up and hit the guy right in jaw.  Nothing serious but it did draw some laughs.

On an aside, there was a wing-pinning in the Philippines that I was dragged into.  One of the Q-squadron guys we flew with had just earned his wings.  Generally, we didn’t hang out with the Q when off duty and they kept to themselves.  This night however, the Q came over to my seat at the bar we were in and asked me to help “pin” on the guy’s wings. 

They grabbed me because I was the biggest guy in either the Q or our detachment.  (about all I did when I wasn’t working was lift weights or eat food in the chow hall.  The weight room at Atsugi kept me sane!).  They really wanted me to blast this guy.  So I played along.

I walked over.  Grabbed the guy by his shirt and pushed him up against the wall of the bar.  I lifted him up onto his toes.  He was visibly shaking at this point.  I then placed my fist over his wings (which his shipmates had pinned onto his T-shirt in the bar).  Pulled back and launched a cross at his chest.  Which I pulled short at the last instant…then tapped the wings as light as a butterfly.  I shook his hand and congratulated him.  The look of relief on his face was priceless!  He later came over and bought me a couple beers.  He was a decent guy and good shipmate.

U.S. Army Air Assault Wings

In 1991, after the Navy, I was able to talk my way into Air Assault training at Fort Gruber Oklahoma.  Fort Gruber was one of three Army bases qualified to train troops in helicopter-borne (heliborne), infantry assault tactics and skills.

I was on Fort Gruber with about 100 other troops.  Our class was split fairly evenly.   With about half of them 82nd Airborne paratroopers, the other half Opposing Forces (OP-4) troops (troops trained to simulate enemy tactics, and act as the enemy during training exercises), a smattering of special forces, and one Air Force F-16 pilot.   Don’t ask, I don’t know what the pilot was doing there.  I’m not sure he did either!

Fort Gruber was run by an Army Major who was BAT CRAP CRAZY.  We only saw him three times during the two week training course.  He was an old Vietnam vet and I had the feeling the army placed him at Fort Gruber to let him retire but at the same time keep him from causing any real harm.

The first time we saw him was hour-one of day-one.  He came out and addressed the class as we stood in formation.  His speech consisted of telling us that if we disagreed with anything any of his black hats (slang for Army instructors) said or did we were free to come to him and complain.  After which you would be failed from the course and sent home in disgrace.  Regardless of your rank.

The second time we saw him confirmed that he was indeed completely nuts.  It was about a week into the course.  Our training Plan-of-the-Day (POD) had us scheduled at that time to run the obstacle course (O-Course).  However, a thunderstorm with lightning had rolled in over the plain.  You could see it coming from miles away.  This was Oklahoma after all.  Lightning strikes were coming down everywhere and the thunderclaps were deafening.  So the black hats took us into one of the classrooms to wait it out.

A few minutes later the major burst in and started screaming at the black hats that the POD stated we were supposed to be at the O-Course and to get our asses out there.  They hastily formed us up outside in the storm.  Seventy guys (we’d had heavy attrition during the course) in steel pot helmets with metal M-16 rifles pointed skyward at shoulder arms.   Like seventy lightning rods all in a row.  The black hats then double timed us out the O-Course.  Once on the course, in the pouring rain, shouting over the thunder, the black hats told us the POD said we had to be at the O-Course.  But it didn’t say anything about us staying at the O-Course.  So they immediately turned us around and double timed us back to the classroom.  At the classroom they broke down and spoke to us for the first and only time like fellow human beings.  They apologized for putting us in a field during a lightning storm.

The third time we saw the major was at graduation.  He came out to address the graduates, about sixty of us at this point.  He congratulated us and instructed two of his black hats to pin on our Air Assault wings. 

Only this wasn’t an ordinary wing pinning.  It was blood wings.

As the major watched from his podium, two sergeants went down the line.  The first sergeant pinned the wings onto your battle fatigues and asked, “blood wings?”.  If you said yes, he left the backers off of the posts on the wings which were now stuck through your uniform.   The second sergeant, a hulking guy, then stepped up, shook your hand, and punched the wings INTO your chest.  The posts were now firmly embedded in your flesh.

The two sergeants went down the line pinning the wings.  Out of the sixty graduates only one declined the blood wings.  A major who was an Army chaplain.

After the ceremony, I had a buddy pull the wings out of my chest.  I’ll never forget looking down and seeing two rings of my flesh stuck onto the notched ends of the posts!

As a post script.  In 1997 a video surfaced of an unauthorized Marine Corp, blood wing hazing ceremony.  After the video went public on news channels the military cracked down on all forms of hazing.  To my knowledge hazing was almost expunged.  But wartime has a way of bringing this stuff back.  When peoples legs are getting blown off from IEDs, blood wings suddenly seem trivial.

The Night My Girlfriend Stabbed Me

The Night my Girlfriend Stabbed Me;

(or the title of my new country song!)

Where:

NAF-Atsugi

Naval Air Facility – Atsugi, Japan around 1988.  NAF Atsugi was (and still is) the Naval base that housed the air wing for the U.S.’s only forward deployed aircraft carrier.  CVW-5.  It’s in the heart of Japan about 50 miles South of Tokyo.  Atsugi is an unusual base, it’s a Joint facility occupied by both the USN and the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force.  When the carrier was in port (the USS Midway at that time), the air wing flew off the carrier and took up residence at NAF-Atsugi.  Both Japanese and US military personnel worked together on and off the flight line.  It was my home for three years. 

The Barracks

I lived in one of the barracks off the main road.  Not what you imagine when you think of a military barracks.  It was more like a college dorm.  Three floors of rooms in a U-shaped building.  Each room had a narrow hallway off the entrance.  A large set of full size lockers on the left and a bathroom and sink off the right side of the hallway.  Then it opened up into a square room about 12x12.  Depending on your rank, you had either three, two or just one person per room.

I was an E-5 at the time (equivalent to a sergeant) so I had one other roommate.  But, he’d moved in with his local Japanese girlfriend.  Thus I usually had the room to myself.  As was the case this particular night.

The Bar

The night started off base.  As it usually did, just outside the main gate at the ‘Oz’ bar (just confirmed the name with my shipmate who used to help out there).  If you walked out the main gate and kept straight for about 50 yards, on the right side of the street was small unmarked entrance in the line of buildings.  The entrance had a set of slender steps that lead up to a landing.  On the left side of the landing was a windowless door to a local bar with a sign that read, “No Americans”.   Very welcoming.  To the right of the landing was a glass door that lead into Oz. 

A tiny place.  It was essentially a narrow closet maybe fifteen feet long by six wide.  A small counter ran along the right side with stools and a couple two top tables were on the left.  But at the end, with a view out over the street was another two-top, set along the window.  This was the best spot in the place.   The street the table overlooked lead straight down to the local train station.   Which was about a half mile from the main gate.  The street was lined with cherry trees and due to the train station had a constant flow of cars, bikes and pedestrians.

The bar itself was decorated with plants and travel posters.  Oz had a warm feel to it and was a favorite hang out for our unit.  It was run by a former Geisha from Tokyo (Mako) and her sister (Kotoji).  She’d saved her money working as a Geisha for several decades.  Then came back to her hometown to open her own establishment.  Quite a feat for a single, female mom in 1980’s Japan.  Women were definitely second class citizens.  You saw it everywhere.  Women were nearly invisible entities to be pushed out of the way (literally).

The Night

The night started off with a dinner plate of fried rice and Sapporo beer at the table overlooking the street.  It was a late summer evening with near perfect weather.  There was steady foot traffic to watch while we listened to a mix of American rock on the bar stereo.  The window was open for fresh air. (On an aside – fried rice was different in Japan.  The rice itself was different.  It stuck together but was light at the same time.  It was great and the owner knew how to prepare it correctly.  It was the best fried rice I’ve ever had)

My longtime, Atsugi girlfriend, AKP, was with me.  AKP was a Korean American.  To be exact, a Korean orphan who was taken off the streets of Seoul and adopted by American parents.  She’d joined the Navy out of High School and was trained as a parachute rigger.  She was a top notch rigger who prepped and maintained the air-wing’s survival gear.

She stood all of five feet tall (in shoes) and weighed maybe ninety pounds.  We were quite the contrast and got a lot of stares whenever we walked out in town.  In town, AKP was frequently mistaken for Japanese, which incensed her.  She had a mercurial temper (which she would readily admit) and could be a handful.  To be fair, I knew I could be a pain as well sometimes.

The evening started off with dinner and a couple beers.  Then we made the fatal mistake of switching to sake and limes.  Which were just what the name implies.  A lime drink with a heavy dose of sake.  Ordinarily, I couldn’t stomach sake.  It was served warm.  Had the consistency of watered down syrup and tasted far too much like vodka.  I’d had a bad experience with vodka prior to joining up (a story for another time) and couldn’t even smell the stuff without a gag reflex.

But if you mixed sake with a lime base, you had something completely different.  You couldn’t even taste the sake.  What you got instead was a very smooth, silky tasting lime nectar.  Which is what made them so dangerous.  The sake was potent and you could knock back a couple water glass sized sake-and-limes without realizing how much you’d had.  And that’s exactly what happened.

I can’t even remember the walk back from the bar to the barracks.  My next recollection is of standing in my barracks room with my shirt off along with AKP.  My aircrew survival knife was lying on my desk.  AKP then reached over, took the knife out of the sheath and said, “What would you do if I stabbed you?”  Being three sheets to the wind on sake, I came back with the classic response, “You won’t stab me.  You haven’t got the guts to stab me.”

This is about the dumbest thing you could say.  It’s right up there with, “Yah, go ahead, shoot me.”  AKP then took the knife and placed the tip against the flat of my stomach.  And this knife was a razor.  It was the standard issue, Naval Aircrewman survival knife.  And I’d honed the blade to near mono-molecular sharpness.  But more importantly for me, the tip was basically a needle. 

At this point (no pun intended) a battle of wills ensued.  AKP kept increasing the pressure on the tip while I stood there daring her.  She sunk the tip into my stomach about a quarter of an inch when the realization cut through the alcoholic haze that, “Hey, she’s not going to stop!”  Sanity then stepped in and I slapped the blade out of her hand.  After that, I covered up and defended myself from a flurry of rabbit punches and front snap kicks.  None delivered with any real force.  I think I was laughing at this point which only spurred AKP on.  We then both passed out.

The next morning I woke up and went about business as usual.  I was fortunate.   The tip of the knife was so narrow that, despite sinking in, no real damage had been done.  The wound healed on its own without stitches.  The incident didn’t even affect our relationship!   AKP and I continued dating for at least a year afterwards.

I later lost the knife when I left it in the back of a U-Haul rental van in Florida.  I’d pay a lot to have that knife back.  It got better acquainted with me than most people I’ve known!

My First Post

This is my first post in my first blog.  I'm not a trained writer but I will try my best to keep the stories clear and concise.  I don't intend to record the stories in any type of chronological fashion.  I think that approach would quickly become old for me and any potential readers.

Instead, I'll try to keep the stories moving in a fairly random fashion.  Keep it changing because variety is the spice of life.

The purpose of the blog is to place down a written record of the more unusual events that have occurred in my life.  Before I forget them and they're gone.  This point was brought home rather forcefully at my recent class reunion.  I met a classmate I hadn't seen for a very long time.  He reminded me of a mini-riot we were caught in at a local recreation center.  I'd forgotten.  How do you forget about a riot?!?!  Well, that was the final push I needed to publish.  Mostly for myself more than anyone else.

For the first story, I had picked a humorous incident that happened down at FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center).

However, I decided to add another story from the Navy.  So now there are two posts!  I hope you find them somewhat entertaining.