Is Ft Polk that notorious?
This made me laugh.
Each service has its “Satan’s armpit” duty stations. They are either in the middle of nowhere or have other unredeeming qualities. They are usually not as bad as you think they are going to be, until you realize the standard going-away gift is a photo of the base shown in a rear-view mirror.
a couple of weeks late to this party, but couldn't resist the opportunity to add a couple of Lincoln's...
I was the distinguished honor grad from my MOS training school, and was there was an unwritten rule the DHG gets orders for the top choice on their dream sheet. Turns out when the DHG is kind of a smart-a$$ and the NCOIC of the school tells you that's the reason you're getting orders for Ft. Polk then yes, it's that notorious. Keep in mind, I was not in a combat arms field and this was before Ft. Polk became JRTC.
DW and I arrived there in 1989 on her 21st birthday, there were dark, cloudy skies, and on day one it certainly felt like being sentenced to the "armpit of the earth". We still tell stories of the early search for housing, one trailer we looked at was littered with hundreds of dead roaches as long as a finger, I guess it was proof they just fumigated it and it was "nuthin' a broom an' a trash bag won't fix" according to the manager. DW cried and thankfully the guest house on post was a decent place to stay, but as an E-3, we were limited to a week there. We eventually found a decent apartment in Leesville, but it wouldn't be available for a few weeks, so we found a local motel that rented by the week, the rooms were each 1/3 of a trailer. In that first week, we got the U-Haul unloaded to storage and I finished in-processing and reported in to my unit on a Friday. Just in time too, because we were leaving Monday for a 1 week field exercise and since I was FNG, I got to replace someone on the CQ roster for Saturday night.
Long story short, we hated it when we got there, but it grew on us, we came from an area where grocery stores, fast food and just about everything else was open 24/7. At Ft. Polk, especially in Leesville, the sidewalks literally rolled up at night by 9:00 and by 5:00 on Sundays. We got used to a slower paced lifestyle and value the experience. If faced with a choice today to live there or somewhere else, we'd choose somewhere else, but it would be fun to consider it briefly. Can't say it's on our bucket list of places to visit, but if we ever find ourselves within a couple of hours from there, we'd likely take a side trip for a walk down memory lane.