Bill Cushing

 “Bully?” You bet’cha

“When you were at high school,” my wife asked as we packed for my 45th reunion, “did they have bullies?”
“You kidding?” I laughed. “It was military school: it was built on bullying. Though they called it ‘character-building’.”
My first memory from proves this. The academy was based on West Point and supervised largely by British Royal Marines. First-year students were called plebes, from the Latin “plebeian,” the lowest order of the Roman socio-economic classes. Plebes reported early for initiation to the military environment of dressing, drilling, marching, and traditions and rituals of the school. Upper class students handled the training while competing for various officer and sergeant positions.
One of those was David, a cadet who became our company’s first sergeant. Anyone who’s served understands that first sergeants form the backbone of discipline in military units, being intermediaries between officers and troops while maintaining order. One way of instilling order is a form of “psychological readjustment” that breaks down one’s concept of individual personality, integrating uniformity and unquestioning obedience.
In the service, it’s boot camp; for us, it was plebe year.
For the first several weeks, we were drilled, yelled at, run, and generally harassed. One steamy August evening, we were rousted from our bunks by bats banging against metal trash cans and voices screaming.
“Fall out. Get in overcoats, and fall the fuck out. Three minutes!”
We lined up, shoulder to shoulder and wearing the winter woolen jackets, sweating from heat and fear. Meanwhile, the upper classmen who’d yanked us awake walked around in skivvies, quite comfortably screaming at us both en masse and one-by-one.
Once David appeared, we really tensed up. Bear in mind, this is largely a bunch of 14-year-olds with facial peach fuzz whose testicles have just barely dropped. On top of that, David’s expertise in this process seemed particularly proficient. He even looked the part: lean, with sharp angular facial features and intense eyes that could emit a psychotic stare.
“Attention!” he bellowed, then led us to the weapon racks along the walls. As we passed the M1 rifles resting in wooden cradles, we were handed one and told to position it in what we recently learned was “right shoulder arms.” Returning to the end of the hallway, David stopped the first plebe, ordering him to return his weapon along his right side to “order arms,” having each of us successively do the same. Our backs to the cinderblock wall, we formed a U-shaped collection of young bodies, massed together, wondering what was next.
“All right., you maggots!” he screamed. “Grab that piece by its muzzle and hold it out in front of you. Now!”
Compliance proved difficult: most of us didn’t weigh much, and we held a 9 ½ pound rifle with stiff, mostly skinny arms—fighting fatigue and gravity. The sharp edges of the weapon’s forward sight dug into the web of skin between thumb and forefinger. Meanwhile, David and his cohorts continued their ritual of barking, taunting, screeching, and making our lives as miserable as possible.
“Hold it up. UP!”
Several rifle butts had inevitably sagged.
“Arm straight out, you idiot!”
And of course, someone yelled the ever-reliable, “Do you miss mommy yet?”
This treatment had become the norm, but the real lesson was yet to come. Eventually, David stopped in front of Bob, a fellow plebe standing next to me.
“Are you getting tired?” David glared at him.
“Yes, sir,” Bob shouted, quickly correcting himself. “Sergeant!”
“Does your arm hurt?”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
“Do you want to use the other arm?”
Sensing relief, Bob answered in the affirmative.
“Wait right here,” David spat, turning on his heel to go back to the remaining rifles, returning with one.
“Hold out your left hand,” he ordered. Bob complied. David stuck the second rifle in his free hand and then backed away.
Bob let his right arm fall, still clutching the piece with a shaking hand.
“Who said you could do that?” David yelled. Bob’s face showed natural confusion. “Now hold them both up!”
Thus endeth the lessons of that night. First, never, ever complain about anything in any way and learn to live with whatever the current situation is because someone can always make circumstances worse.
The second thing we learned was that David spent many of his weekend passes traveling to other military schools, “networking” with first sergeants at those academies to find out what they did to screw with subordinates. This guy was actually using his free time to research and learn other methods of making our lives miserable.
Did we have bullies at high school?
We had experts in the field.