You Shoot Like A Girl — How My Drill Sergeant Awoke Me To Feminism
His breath smelt like stale mint and bile. He was hovering so close that I could see each individual bead of sweat on his sun beat face. They tumbled down the indent of his sharp jaw line — a steamy, fleshy, salty water slide. Each stubble of day-old five o’clock shadow was visible. I saw the milky brown lines in his eyes streaking away from his pupils — a mayan sun. Behind him, the Kentucky sun (less brilliant, just as hot) basked in its own 5 o’clock shadow as it hazily sank closer and closer to the horizon.
It was the time of evening when everything looked shiny yet rusty at the same time. When a tint of brassy gold made love to every color. As for Drill Sergeant Peterson’s shadow, it stretched out far behind him. A midnight colored figure pasted on the crumbling pavement of the Fort Knox Army Base. A distorted version of the man with the big hat — who was currently bent over at eye level with me, breathing all over my hot face, with lips pursed so hard they were quivering, staring straight into my petrified soul as if searching for something he lost.
“Boese!” He spat. My gaze remained constant and focused on the clumsy mess of sun out beyond the top of his left ear. My expression unchanged. “Yes Drill Sergeant!” I mustered. He leaned even closer, if that was at all possible. His forehead was hovering just centimeters away from mine. I caught his gaze and he peered into my eyes. With the same aggressiveness and power but with a lowered voice so that just I could hear him, he said slowly and with an exaggerated thoughtfulness, “Are you really…going to let them...” he gestured with one arm at the motley crew of my fellow cadets lined up in formation waiting behind us “…are you really going to let them walk all over you like that?” My heart dropped. That was not what I was expecting. I didn’t know how to respond. Drill Sergeant Peterson, who had been tormenting us and trying to break us all for the past six weeks, finally struck a nerve.
After the initial overwhelming fear of the Drill Sergeants subsided (okay, it never really subsided, but hey, by the end it had gotten a little better) I soon found them hilarious (though I would have never let that be known) and with our best interests in mind. I came to see them as people. As mentors. And I respected them on a level I had never before known.
That was why, when Drill Sergeant Peterson called me out for my inability to assert my dominance as a female in front of a platoon with only three other women in it, I cracked. I felt as if I had let a parent down. Failed to live up to a role model’s expectations. Failed to impress someone I unconsciously desperately wanted and needed to impress. And that someone was not in fact Drill Sergeant Peterson, though for a while and at the time I thought it was. That person was myself.
This was the absolute most valuable lesson I learned during the absolute most valuable six weeks of my life. It is what made me a leader.
But let’s back track a little.
I attended Basic Training in the summer of 2017. I knew absolutely nothing about anything related to the “Army” or “Military” or “Basic Training”. If you think you don’t know a lot about it either, I can assure you — I knew less. Nada. Zero. Zilch. It was a complete shot in the dark.
People ask me “why” all the time. All the time. Maybe it’s because joining the Army is incredibly rare. But probably because being a female in the Army is even rarer. On top of that, I was not a girl who had ever expressed any interest in the military. I couldn’t even finish American Sniper because it was too violent. But for as long as I could remember, there was always a little voice in my head telling me that there was something more to me. Something special that I could give to the world. A possession of capability that reaches beyond most people. I knew that I needed to feed this fire in my soul by pushing myself beyond my constructed limits, physically and mentally, and I always had a hunch that joining the military was the way to do this. When I finally got serious about it, it was a decision that felt so utterly right that I knew it was exactly what the universe was urging me to do all along.
So off I went. A real life “Private Benjamin” in the flesh.
Our company’s barracks had four floors. The bottom three were for males, the top was for females — and there weren’t even enough of us to fill the whole floor. Right off the bat, I was an utterly alienated minority. A clueless female in a sea of the most “manly-man” men in the country. To make matters worse, these weren’t guys who had no idea what they were doing (like…me). These were guys who lived and breathed army green. Who had this dream since they were children. Who came from military families. Who played air-soft and war games and — heck — even knew how to shoot a gun (something I had never even held in my life). I could not shake the distressing thought of how looked down upon and unworthy I must have seemed in their eyes.
My platoon consisted of thirty cadets. Four of us were females. I do not possess the words to describe my affection for each and every member of my platoon. In six short weeks, thirty strangers morphed into thirty (actually, by the end there were only twenty four of us) best friends who shared morale-testing, soul-thrilling, life-threatening, and life-changing experiences every single day, leaning on each other as we made our way through hell. These bonds are of the rare, once in a lifetime sort. I will never forget them.
However, though I considered them my brothers, the males in the platoon had a collective power complex that, unconsciously or not, pushed us four females down to the bottom when it came to making decisions, being responsible for key roles during field training and battle drills, taking charge during courses, being picked for Squad or Platoon Leader each week, and just in general being listened to. Our attempts to assume leadership roles were squashed before they even became legitimate attempts. We were women in a setting that history had determined women do not belong. And so we were treated as so. We were invisible. Centuries of patriarchal sexist implications and stereotypes followed us around like a parasite and we could not seem to shake ourselves free of it. And I will be the first to admit that I was perfectly content in this passive position behind the scenes. I was incredibly overwhelmed with the experience to begin with and I reasoned that I could work on my leadership after I became more comfortable with this whole “Army” thing.
But Drill Sergeant Peterson had other plans.
“Boese!” He screamed from a distance. It was 4:30am. Week Five. The homestretch. The sky was lilac and orange but the air was still dark. It smelled of dew laden grass and the birth of humidity. Our sleep-deprived platoon was lined up in the fog outside of our barracks, watching the Drill Sergeant storm over to us with an energy and urgency that should not be allowed to exist at that hour.
“Boese!” He called again, almost mockingly as if calling for a lost dog. “Ooo Boeseee” someone teased from behind, “what’d you dooo?”. The same question was running through my mind. “Shut up asshole” I taunted back with a false coolness. My stomach was in knots and I felt like evaporating into the Kentucky dawn.
“Front leaning rest position!” He called as he reached us. We all dropped down into pushup position and waited for him to begin counting out reps. Instead, he called me up to the front of the group and proceeded to tell everyone that I was now the Platoon Leader for the week. He was not happy that he had not seen a female as Platoon Leader yet and deemed this unacceptable. He released everyone from their plank positions and with that, walked away, leaving me gawking in front of the mesh of incredibly, capable, strong, opinionated, type-A dominant male personalities, waiting for orders. From me.
I stumbled a lot, those first few days. And when I say a lot, I mean, like, everything I did was messy. I physically shook from nerves when giving orders and instructions. Un-confidence gives an aura. It is sensed by others and the guys in the platoon picked up on mine rather quickly (immediately).This undermined my authority greatly, opening the doors for them to override my decisions without any resistance offered on my part. No one took me seriously. They were not about to listen to a girl. Especially one who clearly did not even see herself as a leader.
I constantly doubted my decisions and went back on my orders. I hesitated a lot and relied heavily on the guys in the front row to whisper hints or suggestions of what I should do or how I should act. When the others realized they too could have this power, the platoon disintegrated into a disorganized oligarchy of jumbled and conflicting suggestions, plans and decisions — none of which were made by me. The particularly dominant “super star” army enthusiasts in the group started to gain their own followings and this only prompted me to back off even more. I was scared to intervene and mess with these guys who quite obviously knew more than me. What resulted was an incredibly in-cohesive, ineffective group who lacked a sole leader and therefore could not carry out simple tasks and trainings.
As the brutal days wore on, I became more comfortable and confident in my position at the front of the platoon and, simultaneously, more frustrated that no one would listen to me. They saw me as a weak leader as a female from day one and it seemed an impossible task for me to change that reputation. The more I let others tell me what to do, the more power I gave away. I had become a follower in a leader’s position. And that simply does not work. It is unsustainable.
I made a few feeble attempts to address the situation, but because of how close we all were, these quickly turned into jokes and laughs, even on my end. At night however, as I sweat on top of my bunk on the fourth floor of the barracks, I held back tears of shame and frustration. I had never felt more embarrassed of myself. So purely incapable.
Fast forward to Drill Sergeant Peterson, who had been observing this play out for the whole week, hunching over to meet me at eye level, intimidating me on an unbelievable level and speaking only to me with a tone that moved something deep within my soul.
“Are you really going to let them walk all over you like that?”.
I knew that the “them” he was referring to were the males in the platoon who refused to acknowledge a female as an authority figure.The idiotic males who made fart jokes in formation, who had sword fights with their rifles, who dared each other to eat the match sticks that came with each MRE meal (they were convinced it was secretly a laxative), whose egos overflowed intoxicatingly. That one simple line implied that he knew I was capable of rising to their level. He saw that they were no better than me and he also saw that I had not yet realized that for myself and probably guessed I wouldn’t get there without a little harsh reality check. Thirteen words was what it took for me to finally unlock the confidence that I had been desperately seeking, frustratingly to no avail until that moment. We were soldiers. Not male soldiers and female soldiers. Gender does not exist in the Army — we were all equals. Drill Sergeant Peterson knew this and that one soul-piercing phrase was what it took for me to finally realize it too.
“No Drill Sergeant” I finally let out, after a moment of blinking back burning tears and swallowing my self-pity soaked shame. No, I would no longer let them walk all over me. I was determined to prove myself as a leader, and both my Drill Sergeant and I knew that I would have to work twice as hard to do that than any man would. It is unfair and wrong and maddening but it is also what awoke me to the stunning strength of female power and ambition.
I walked calmly back to the platoon and the pestering immediately commenced, “What did he say?”… “What did Drill Sergeant want?”… “What happened Boese?”. I called them all to attention and surprised myself by announcing “Drill Sergeant Peterson made me Platoon Leader for a reason. From now on, I don’t want anyone giving me any suggestions. I can make my own decisions. You haven’t done that with anyone else who has been up here so why me?” For once, silence. “We’re here to learn how to be leaders and you are not letting me do that. I love you guys but this ends now”.
Of course, this didn’t magically change anything. As soon as I stopped talking, there were snickers and whispers and a few “Ooo Boese’s mad” jokes. But it was not about them anymore. It was about me and how I handled myself in the role. I realized I had choices. I did not have to listen to them. I was, technically, their superior as long as I was Platoon Leader. From that point on, I carried myself with a fake confidence and soon, others started to notice it. I gave definitive orders and stopped doubting myself. Even if no one listened to me (which, at first, they did not). As for the ones who felt it necessary to give their input and offer their two-sense on every matter? I completely ignored them. This did not stop them immediately, but after a while of not giving them the satisfaction of knowing they had influenced me, they stopped trying.
Ultimately, what changed was that I stopped giving away my power to outside forces such as fear, doubt and other people. Once this happened, I realized that I did in fact possess the skill and capability all along, I just wasn’t able to access it because I was looking elsewhere for the necessary tools (i.e the dude who stood next to me in formation whose tactical knowledge could have qualified him as a ranger). I did not automatically become a great, or even good leader. But, for the first time not only in my training but in my entire life, I was in fact a leader. And that was all that mattered.
To this day, in fact, that has remained the only thing that matters. Thanks to Drill Sergeant Peterson, I realized my full potential on that hazy July evening in Fort Knox, Kentucky — a place I had never dreamed I would even find myself in the first place. And that realization has knocked down every obstacle, fear, insecurity and adversity I have faced since. I proved to myself that I could be a leader under the most difficult circumstances and I have identified as one ever since — because a leader must believe in themselves before anything else. The rest is history.
