Article December 10, 2001 Issue

Safe in the shadows

By Warren Bolon Sentinel staff

Fort Polk, Louisiana, was a bleak place in November of 1969, and that night it looked gloomier than usual. Several men in my barracks were sick. Our company of Army basic trainees had gone through a battery of shots that morning, and we were told that maybe we'd been given bad vaccine.

That evening we were ordered to line up outside for a physical checkup. I felt confused, mentally darkened. And I began to feel sick myself. The worst part was the feeling that, even in a large training company, I was totally alone.

Floodlights washed the exercise field where we gathered. I walked away from the line into a shadowed area where—strange as it may sound—I felt safer. Not so alone. It was easier to pray in the privacy of darkness. Call it in military jargon, "a field-expedient closet."

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