july 1968: fort polk, louisiana

I was chatting with my co-worker Jeff this morning, and the subject of my military service came up (Most people who know me can't believe that I was ever in the Army).  That conversation has me mentally lingering on where I was in the mid- to late-summer of 1968:  Two months of Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) at Fort Polk, in the swamps of central Lousiana.  It was a summer of heat and humidity and foxholes and snakes and armadillos and M16 rifles meant to prepare me and my fellow trainees for the jungles of Vietnam.  It was the summer that I swore that I would never go camping the rest of my life or ever return to the state of Louisiana.  So far I have kept those pledges.