In bayonet practice, you have to growl with each movement. This is to intimidate the enemy. Every five minutes or so the instructor will shout "What's the spirit of the bayonet?" and everyone shouts "To kill! To kill!"

Since I've been in the army, I've noticed quite a lot of drugs. I'd say between one-quarter and one-eighth of the people at my army base used drugs of some kind...In Vietnam the stuff grows wild and free.

Sergeant Swith was born twenty years ago in Eugene, Oregon. Throughout high school, he was an erratic student, played lead in several plays and helped write a new student body constitution. He earned a National Merit letter of commendation in his senior year and scored 1300 on the college board. Last year at the University of Oregon, he ran for freshman class vice-president during first term, lost by 20 votes, compiled a 1.2 grade-point average out of 4.0 and went on academic probation. Second term he flunked out.

His father is a building superintendent for a home town bank, and neither he nor Sergeant Smith's mother graduated from college. He is sending back one-half of his base pay to allow his mother to finish back courses for her degree.

He was drafted in September and, after completing Basic Training, entered army meric school in Texas. Presently, he is spending his furlough in Cambridge before entering Officers Candidate School. He scored 97 out of 100 on the National Draft Test.

(As told to Jeffrey C. Alexander)

After the reception station, where you report for induction, you go to your basic training company and they split you up there into platoons and they give you a DI, a drill instructor. He wears one of those little Smoky the Bear hats, like a forest ranger, you know, but you don't call them Smoky the Bear hats because they would get irked about this.

You get your first taste of army organization right away when you meet an executive officer, a commissioned officer and a training officer and you learn how to salute them. You spend three of the eight weeks on shooting a rifle, the M14. I'd never shot a weapon before--that's what you have to call it, not a gun--but they say the M14 is supposed to be pretty good.

They run you through courses--infiltration, obstacle courses--and they give you live ammunition to shoot. These courses have little pop-up targets on them, some of them have little Chinese faces which say "Joe Chink" at the bottom with little slant eyes and things. At first most of the guys are amused. It's funny to see a little target like that popping up in front of you and then you're shooting at it. It's funny, you know, but then at night when you think about it, maybe it's not so funny.

They run you through these courses with their little pop-up targets and you shoot them or you stab them with your bayonet until it becomes sort of a reaction, like Pavlov's dogs. I guess that's the point....

We had a lot of practice on the bayonet. They take you about 500 men at a time, actually between 300 and 500 depending on who has bayonet practice that day. They line you up in rows of 100 and you have all your field gear on--your packs and weapons--and the bayonet with the six inch steel head. In front of you on this platform is one of the drill instructors and he's got a megaphone and he shouts you through the various moves. You know like "On guard, ahh" and all this kind of stuff. You have to growl with each movement you make. This is to intimidate the enemy and every five minutes or so he'll say, "What's the spirit of the bayonet?" and everyone shouts, "To kill, to kill." And they're serious....

They give you about 12 hours of hand-to-hand combat which is a cross between Judo and Karate and boxing and, once again, you growl with each movement. They tell you it's very important that you growl. In the first place, it reduces you to an animal. I mean that's what you feel like, Tarzan the savage beast of the jungle facing unarmed a thousand foes. I don't know how much hand-to-hand combat I learned, but I developed a damn intimidating growl....

Army propaganda is funny because it hits at a very high level and also, at the same time, a very low level. It has a double meaning. But it's not so subtle--you can see it and ignore it. The best propaganda movie I saw was in my medic course. A guy gets up there on the screen and he says "Would you like to know what Communists call you in different countries? In London they call you bubble gum chewers. In France they call you gangsters. In Korea they call you murderers!" And he makes this a very personal thing. He points out at you from the screen and says "This is what they feel about you! How do you like being called a bubble gum chewer? You don't like it? How do you like being called gangster? How do you like being called a murderer?"...

Nobody ever talks about things like this, whether they're good or bad. Like they'll joke about going to Vietnam, "Well, you're going for sure" or "Any more demerits and your boots not shined and you'll be there for sure." But that's the only kind of thing you'll hear. They don't joke about whether or not we belong there. And there's a good reason.

When I was in basic training, I was talking to the basic training officer for my company, a young second lieutenant, and I was asking him what he thought about the war in Vietnam and he gave me this patriotic stuff that it's safe to put out. He asked me how I felt and I said I wasn't sure; I told him that if we were in there to gain something then we were wrong and we should get out. And that's all I said.