My first and only duty station, at the time I arrived I had no idea it would be my last duty station. It was definitely not in my career pathway. I was excited to arrive and I had left all of my basic training problems behind me, they were all in the past, it could only get better from here right? I arrived at Ft. Hood after 36.5 hours of driving, with two cats and my Husband, on a Friday. It was already too late for a duty day and they couldn’t get me into a reception group until the following Monday.
I was told to go arrange a stay in the barracks, I had to fight this tooth and nail. I was with my Husband and two animals, we couldn’t all stay in the barracks. Regardless I ended up having to go waste time at the reception barracks just to tell them I was married and that I needed to secure a hotel on base for my stay, until we could secure other housing. Eventually an NCO came around and told me that I could go stay at the Holiday Inn on post and that I was to report to the field next to the reception barracks at 0600 on Monday. A three day weekend, oh my was it relaxing. I literally laid in the bed at the hotel and ate birthday cake oreos and caught up on The Walking Dead. We explored off post as well, it was so hot in Texas, a heat I was definitely not used to due to growing up in Oregon.
On Monday I would report to the reception area at the proper time, in the proper place, in the proper uniform; exactly as they had taught me in basic training. The military is that simple right? Right time, right place, right uniform, that’s all. We were given a packet with how we would spend the next week being “received” at Ft. Hood. It included tasks such as more SHARP training, filling out and submitting travel vouchers for pay, medical exams, some PT, and then finally after getting everything signed off on; hopefully by Friday of that same week. Someone from your unit would come get you and get you settled into your new Unit.
Nobody from my unit came to get me, there was nobody there. Someone else who was also an MP at reception had someone from their company come and “receive” them. It was a specialist, NCO’s were supposed to sign off on your reception documentation, otherwise you became stuck in reception land. I looked at this specialist and asked him to take accountability for me. He told me I likely wasn’t in his company but that he would sign for me and we could try to find out the specifics of it later. Which we did, I was not in that MP company, there were multiple MP companies on Ft. Hood. I was assigned to the 64th MP company, or as they are so appropriately called, the shitty fourth.
Myself and another soldier met with the first sergeant and were assigned platoons. Nobody was ever held accountable for not going to pick us up at reception. A mere walk across the yard from our company’s barracks. We began our lives at the shitty fourth, doing everything we were told and going the extra mile. Both of us were female soldiers, a bit older, and both of us had college degrees. This didn’t mean much to anyone, other than the platoon sergeant who threatened us by stating he did not accept PT failures. If he had read my records he would have known that I was outstanding at PT, however instead he made an assumption. I was just coming off of a 3 week no run, jump, march profile due to the horrid pneumonia I got towards the end of basic training. I was having a difficult time running for even short distances. Apparently this led the platoon sergeant into thinking that I was incapable of passing a PT test, which was completely inappropriate. I will delve into my first PT test with the shitty fourth later.
Meanwhile, as I was now graduated and a “real soldier and not a trainee” the AIT SSG that I had mentioned previously had added me as a friend on Facebook. He hadn’t added everyone from basic, honestly he hadn’t added many of us at all, so this was weird to me. He began to make odd comments and inappropriate comments as well. He knew I was married, he was married, but still he would mention how he thought I was good looking, etc. Later this would lead to more predatory behavior and him adding me to snapchat because he kept trying to get me to send photos to him. He continued this behavior for almost a year. Eventually I told him that I would never send him photos, that I was not a naive little girl, that I was faithfully married, and eventually, approximately 2 years later, he disappeared from my life forever. However, this led me to wonder how many other girls were subject to his predatory behaviors? How many were younger than me and didn’t know better? What became of this SSG and his wife? Did she know what he was doing? I would later confide in my past drill sergeant via Instagram, due to my fear that this sergeant would continue his predatory behavior and for fear that he may have done these things to female soldiers during basic training. To this day I do not know what happened to that AIT SSG. I can only hope that nothing happened to any female soldiers who mistook his niceness and offers of help, to only be sexually harassed or worse.
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