The urge to crap (let’s face it, we all do it) always hits at the worst possible moments, doesn’t it? Your body always seems to wait until you’re in a meeting, sitting in the back of a cab in traffic, or sprinting down the sidelines for a touchdown to say, “we need to crap NOW!”

So there I am in the sweltering heat of Fort Benning, Georgia in May, 1992-a basic Airborne student with about 500 others training away. We’re practicing door exits by jumping out of the 35-foot Airborne towers and sliding down the cables to a dirt berm where our fellow students catch us and release us from our harnesses like fish being thrown back into a pond. All is going fine until…

“I have to crap. And I can’t hold it,” I tell my buddy, roster number 14.

“Well go then. They can’t tell you no,” he says.

“You’re right,” I say before trotting off to the Airborne latrine.

As anyone with any Army experience knows, these porta potties are not designed for comfort. They’re small, hot, and reek of…well, crap frankly. And this particular one outside the 35-foot towers had no toilet paper, which I didn’t realize until my solid waste smacked into the mountain of other Airborne crap below me.

“Dammit,” I mutter. “Now what?”

This wasn’t one of those dry dumps that leaves no remnants that you can safely walk away from and wipe later. This was the product of nine beers and super beefy nachos the night prior. There was no getting out of this latrine without some post drop cleansing.

Luckily I’m crafty and came up with what I thought was a brilliant field expedient solution. I whipped out my Gerber multi-tool and unfolded the knife blade, stripped off my Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) top and pulled my t-shirt down to make it nice and tight. I made a small incision and tore it all the way around my body, taking off the bottom four inches of the shirt. I then cut it in half so I had enough for two wipes and proceeded to wipe happily.

“Damn I’m good,” I thought as I put my BDU top back on, exited the latrine, and trotted back to my position on the berm catching students. I could feel my half-shirt dangling under my BDU top, but no one could see it, so I was good right?

Wrong.

“We’re now in heat category 4,” The Airborne instructor (usually called black hats) said. “Everyone strip your tops off.”

“Uh. What?”

“Get your tops off, now!” he repeated, not asking, but telling.

“Of course,” I thought. “Just my luck.”

Sure I could have said, “Sergeant. I sliced the bottom half of my t-shirt off so I didn’t have to walk around all day in my own waste product and possibly get badly chaffed. I need to go get a new t-shirt before I can strip my top off.” But this didn’t seem like a good idea to a 23-year old Lieutenant. The only thing going through my mind was, “pull your pants up and t-shirt down so no one notices” which is what I did.

BDU pants were never meant to be hiked up to the wearer’s chest, but then again the people who designed it never met a dumbass like me. I pulled those pants up higher than the dorkiest gym teacher with a concave chest while pulling the remnants of my t-shirt down so hard that it looked like a v-neck. I made the two meet in the no-man’s land between the navel and nipples with considerable difficulty and proceeded with my Airborne training as if nothing was wrong.

All was okay for thirty minutes until I reached too far up to retrieve a jumper and my raggedy ass t-shirt came dangling out, revealing my six pack abs (it’s my story, dammit).

“What the fuck is wrong with your uniform?” a Black Hat said, walking up to me as I desperately tried to tuck the half-shirt back in and yank my pants up to my throat. “No no! Put your trousers back down to your waist, Airborne!” he said.

I was horrified. Not only was I busted, but the Black Hat’s voice raised the curiosity of the entire class and I was standing on a berm ten feet off the ground for all to see. It might as well have been a Broadway stage.

“What are you, a homo stripper? You need a pole to dance around, little fairy man?” The Black Hat said as I stood there at the position of parade rest in a half shirt. There was nothing I could do but be honest.

“You did what?!” the Black Hat said when I finished my story. “Oh this is too good!”

By the time every Black Hat had heard the story I was nicknamed Lieutenant Asswipe, which stuck for the next two weeks until graduation. Looking back on it, a t-shirt is a bad idea when in need of field expedient toilet paper.

Socks are better.

Comments

comments