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.