In basic training we had the stupidest drill sergeant possible. I think it was done on purpose because fourth platoon was derided by the rest of the company as “the aighead platoon.” All of us were bound for language training and/or the Army Intelligence Center, which of course to a combat engineer or truck driver immediately equates with “buncha pussies.” So Staff Sergeant Campbell was visited upon us, dumb as a hake.

All drill sergeants must pass rigorous courses in Drill Sergeant School in areas like Browbeating & Belittling, so all of them had a series of ready-made epithets to hurl at slow, lazy, or eggheaded trainees. This idea should be familiar from films like “Full Metal Jacket” and so on, but I never heard the word maggot thrown around. Instead, the abuse followed this very simple formula:

“Whudda yew lookin’ at, + [epithet] where [epithet] = [accoladic noun + ironic delivery] + ?”


This typically fell within very narrow parameters and yielded results such as “Whudda yew lookin’ at, HE-RO?” although “Whudda yew lookin’ at, KILLERRRR?” was also popular, and of course if your collar was up you could count on “Whudda yew lookin’ at, ELVIS?” The dripping ladleful of irony was lost on no one, egghead or not. Except maybe Sergeant Campbell, because he did not follow the formula they taught in Browbeating & Belittling. His formula differed radically in the second element and looked like this:

“Whudda yew lookin’ at, + [epithet] where [epithet] = [nonsensical proper/compound noun generated at random + sincerity] + ?”


Sadly, the list of epithets, which we as diligent Intelligence eggheads collected avidly, has been lost in the mists of time. The only one that I can recall for sure, with absolute clarity, was Mr. Peabody. I thought for a while that Jar-Jar Binks was also on the list, but that turned out be apocryphal and, what’s more, chronologically impossible. We have no idea how Sergeant Campbell’s random-name-generator worked.

But! Through the magic of Javascript, we can re-create the experience of a browbeating from Sergeant Campbell. Just click on the first half of the belittling formula to generate a random Campbellian epithet. (Note to parents: this device also works well if the first element is changed from Whudda yew lookin’ at to How ’bout we change that diaper.)

 

Graduation, BCT

Vote for your favorite epithet in the comments.