One by one, he called up officers who had done something that displeased him, had them turn and face the others, and yelled out each of their deficiencies. One had been observed getting food ahead of the enlisted sailors in line, and disparaging the drill instructors behind their backs. He was dismissed on the spot. A lieutenant was called up for filling her CamelBak liquid dispenser with soda, also forbidden. He took it off her back and flung it across the room.
It felt like I was back in middle school, and like any bystander to the disciplining of one’s peers, I kept my eyes down and waited for it all to end—not realizing my turn was next.
After dispatching his last victim, the commander glanced down at a crumpled piece of paper in his hand, then looked back up at the group: “Now. Who in the hell is Lieutenant. . . . Buttinger.”
No one budged. Slowly and with dread, it dawned on me. I was Lieutenant Buttinger. As soon as I came to terms with this inevitable reality, I was on my feet. I stood front and center, staring dead ahead of me, getting yelled at, confused.
“You want to argue with a drill sergeant, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir!”
“You realize what these guys have been through and what they do to make sure you’re ready for a combat zone?”
I sure did. I admired the drill instructors from the South Carolina Army National Guard who spent their days showing us sailors how to function as soldiers. I also had no idea what he was mad about. But I knew enough not to reveal any perplexity, let alone try to plead my case. “Yes, sir. No excuse, sir.”
“Get back to your seat,” he said, seeming to have unwound just a little.
“Yes, sir.”
A few days later, I was back under the gaze of Commander Clark, whose countenance and demeanor gave him more than a passing resemblance to Steve Carell from The Office. “Well, Lieutenant Butterig, it looks like I owe you an apology.” It turned out I had been confused with another trainee, and he had called me into his office to clear it up. I appreciated that gesture, though it would have been nice if he had done this in front of the others. (Our class division officer later took care of that at morning formation.)
The mistaken-identity case was the final seal on the status shift I had experienced, going from a mayor in charge of a small bureaucracy to a minor figure in the biggest bureaucracy in the world. At home, I was accustomed to people being angry at me, perhaps over a policy decision, police controversy, or pothole problem. But at least that was for things that actually happened, based on who I actually was. The one indignity I never experienced at home as mayor was someone mistaking me for someone else. But here, even as an officer, I was no one in particular. At the mayor’s office, my name is printed on the door. But here at Camp McCrady, my surname wasn’t even spelled right on my camouflage uniform when it was first issued to me. The rank was all that mattered; the name was a minor detail. Indeed, the most vital piece of information on me was neither name nor rank, but the letters “O POS,” punched into the metal, below my Social Security number and above the abbreviation EPISC on my dog tag.
“Do not guess your blood type, shipmates!” the NCO had joked as we filled in the forms to go to the dog tag maker. We all chuckled, but when they came to pass them out, it felt like we held in our hands an emblem of our mortality as well as our military identity. I was told to separate the two tags I’d been issued. “Do your family a favor,” someone had said, showing me how to lace one tag into one of my combat boots, while the other stayed around my neck. That way they could figure out who you had been even if your leg wound up in a different place than the rest of you.
“WHO HERE THINKS YOU WON’T BE going on a convoy?” asked the admiral introducing the final round of training. He was a cheerful two-star, tall and lean, seeming to enjoy having an occasion to wear the camouflage uniform instead of the dress blues of the Pentagon. His talk had been engaging, and now he let the dramatic pause linger after his question. Like all admirals, generals, mayors, and bishops, he was a politician.
Most of us figured out that the question was rhetorical, though it was also puzzling. Our group consisted of personnel specialists, medics, intelligence analysts. In theory, very few of us would wind up in a convoy. Still, it seemed like “yes” was not the correct answer here. Only half a dozen na?ve hands went up.
“Guess what: all of you are probably going on a convoy.”
We all understood that our deployments were not traditional naval assignments; we would be nowhere near a ship, and should be prepared for unconventional duties. We were the “individual augmentees,” mobilizing one at a time to join other units, rather than with a company or a ship’s crew. Still, the idea that we needed to learn convoy security seemed peculiar; we had joined the Navy, not the Army. But by now it was clear to us that we needed to be ready for anything. Months later, as I counted my hundredth time outside the wire behind the wheel, I thought of that moment. We may have started our Navy Reserve careers learning about ships and cruise missiles, but right now we needed to learn about Humvees, medevacs, and IEDs.
The culminating event of the three-week combat training sequence was an all-day convoy simulation, where we proceeded through a threat-filled third world village, a slice of Afghanistan (or Somalia or Iraq, if you preferred) in the South Carolina woods. Advice was dispensed along the way, with occasional reminders that we were not supposed to be in combat roles, but would have to learn these things, just in case. We learned the procedure for what to do when your vehicle is stopped, scanning the immediate area and outer radius for signs of an IED. But there was only time to learn the basics. None of us would be defusing bombs, but we needed to know how to act if we encountered one.
“DRILL SERGEANT, is there a standard procedure for what to do if you actually see one during the walk-around?”
“Yes: get your ass back in the vehicle.”
The response was typical of the drill instructors, brusque enough to make sure we understood the stakes, but also marked by the camaraderie and gruff humor of frontline soldiers. Some of them had been through five or more deployments, even though many were younger than I was. They wanted us to be prepared for all of the things they had seen downrange. Our magazines were full of blanks, but the rifles we carried were the ones we would take to war.
There was downtime in between stages of the simulation, but every minute was supposed to be for some purpose, if only double-checking your weapon and your battle buddy to make sure they were in good shape. “If-you-are standinaroundnotdoinnothing . . . You. Are. WRONG!”
Halfway through the scenario, some sailors forgot their guidance, got ambitious, and decided to clear a building. Wrong move: the correct course of action here was to retreat to the armored vehicle and assess the threat. Unimpressed, a drill instructor pointed to the tallest, heaviest sailor in the group: “You’re dead now.”
The rest of us, left to drag him back to the vehicle as shots rang out from all around us, remembered the lesson.
After it all ended, we gathered for an after-action review. Sweating under our body armor, we shifted our weight from foot to foot, taking the occasional pull of water from our CamelBaks and holding on to our rifles as the instructors reviewed what we’d done right and wrong, blow-by-blow. Good job spotting the first IED. Don’t forget to talk to your gunner. You should have had all the lines of the medevac report ready before getting on the radio to call it in.