I’d be lying if I told you that Iraq was the first time I ate out of the trash.
No . . . that dubious honor belongs to Ranger School . . .
*** 11:55 p.m., October 2007, Camp Darby, Georgia ***
“Psst! Psst! Goldsmith, over here.”
Leon and Newton, two of my bat boy squad mates beckon me towards them in the chill October night air. They are standing by the Camp’s large green trash dumpsters. The Ranger Instructors, or RIs, have just released us for the night after nineteen hours of training. Wakeup is in four hours.
“What?” I say hesitantly as I amble over slowly to them on blistered and battered feet.
“You hungry?” Norton asks me with a kingly air.
Am I hungry? Of course I’m hungry. I’m in Ranger School. I’m perpetually and absolutely famished.
“Yeah,” I respond. “How come?”
Leon answers me. “The RIs just threw out a ton of good food, better grab some before it’s gone.”
Just then, Bailey stumbles past me, his mouth full stuffed full of something and his arms cradling various food stuffs. “Hmmum-umph.” He mumbles incoherently as he shoulders his way past us, walking briskly back to the squad planning bay to enjoy his garbage feast.
“What’d I tell you, Goldsmith?” Leon beams. “Ripe for the taking!”
Leon doesn’t have to tell me twice. I have no shame anymore, not since we landed here, in Camp Darby, a week ago. Not since a week of limited rations, defecating openly in front of a dozen other men, bathing, well, never. Right about now, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for a little extra food.
I look around to make sure no RIs are watching, that this isn’t some kind of a trick, before sliding open the side access slot on the dumpster and throwing my upper body through the two-foot by two-foot window.
Let’s see what we can find.
Newton and Leon did not lead me astray. There are veritable mounds of Army-style pot roast with gravy, mashed potatoes, breakfast muffins, peanut butter packets, and even loaves of bread all scattered within arm’s reach, mine for the taking.
How could anyone ever throw away this much food? I ask myself incredulously. All this gorgeous, lovely, delicious food!
I shove a huge piece of pot roast into my gaping maw and follow it up with two hand scoops of mashed potatoes as I deliberate on what to take with me.
I wish I could fill entire trash bags with this stuff, take it back to the planning bays, and share it with the squad, but that is both foolish and impossible. After all, I am taking a huge risk here, dumpster diving like some pesky raccoon. If I get caught eating unauthorized chow I risk a major-minus, a Day One Recycle, even getting kicked out this course entirely. The moral of the story: I need to get mine and I need to get moving.
I cram another chunk of pot roast meat into my mouth, shove two muffins and a half-dozen peanut butter packets into my cargo pockets, grasp the edge of the access slot with both hands, and pull my upper body out of the dumpster again.
Newton and Lopez are still keeping watch. They give me a thumbs up as they munch on muffins and rolled up slices of wheat bread.
I am tempted to go back for more, but I can’t tempt fate and risk getting caught and, more importantly, I should leave some for the other rangers. Best not to be greedy, even one is reduced to eating out of the trash.
After all, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
“Thanks, guys. I really owe you a huge favor.” I say quietly over my shoulder to Leon and Newton, who stay close by the dumpsters, apparently getting ready for another deep dive, as I furtively begin my slow amble back to the planning bays, moving slowly and oh-so purposefully on my forever devastated feet. I cannot help but smile as I pat my muffin and peanut butter filled cargo pockets.
“Don’t mention it.” Leon says, “Just remember this when it comes time for Peers evaluations.”
I certainly won’t, Leon, I certainly won’t. This unexpected garbage feast has been the highlight of an otherwise miserable and gut-wrenching week. You and Newton have given me a great and unexpected boon today. To anyone else, it was seven-hours-old food cold and congealed food waste, some mediocre pot roast, crusty mashed potatoes, and throw-away packets of generic peanut butter, but to me, to a ranger student, this is a gift from the gods that could never be forsaken.
Most of all, for the moment, I not intensely focused on the ever-present pain in my feet and the endless, hollow, cavernous hunger in my belly. In this moment, I am grateful, in this moment, I am happy.
In this moment, I am intensely alive.
You cannot stand on ceremony and put on airs here in Ranger School. Doing so is a recipe for disaster; a sure route to want, deprivation, weakness, and ultimately, failure. This isn’t the battlefield, after all, where there is some honor at least, this is Ranger School, where anything goes. If eating out of the trash is something, dear reader, that you just cannot ever see yourself doing, well, you just might not have what it takes to be a ranger. We are young, dumb, starving, dangerous hobos, trained to kill but really, just trying to survive, doing our absolute utmost to earn our Ranger tabs, to earn our ticket out of this terrible, terrible place.
It was the first, but certainly not the last time, dear reader, that I would be eating out of the trash in Ranger School.
THE END