[August 4, 2026] It was a bad day. I’d been caught chewing gum by our Drill Sergeant while I was in Advanced Individual Training, U.S. Army at Fort Gordon, GA, sometime in late 1974. My punishment, euphemistically called “reinforcement training” was cleaning the urinals in the men’s barracks … with a toothbrush.
I was a Private (E-1), the lowest of the low ranks. Most of us had started there, and it was okay because we had very little responsibility except to do as we were told, and our leaders, the ever present Drill Sergeants, were always there, making sure we didn’t stray off their structured path and do something stupid. I have no idea how I got a hold of a stick of gum, but I did and it represented a kind of freedom and perhaps a bit of rebellion since chewing gum was forbidden.
I was caught outright. And I was alone in getting caught too. My new-found friends in school were just better at hiding their infractions than me. My punishment was to clean the urinals on Saturday afternoon, while everyone else was given a 4-hour pass around the military base. Who would know that more than a half century later, I’d be writing about it.
Cleaning urinals with a toothbrush is a classic form of corrective training or punishment detail in many military organizations. It is deliberately low, dirty, and tedious. The lessons are practical:
A soldier who half-asses a latrine will half-ass a weapons inspection, a vehicle PMCS, or a fighting position. The toothbrush forces you to focus on something most people would rather ignore. If you can make porcelain fixtures meet inspection standards with the wrong tool, you can maintain gear, paperwork, and yourself when it matters.
Rank and prior achievement do not exempt anyone from basic soldiering. Being ordered to perform a demeaning task strips out the ego. It reinforces the fact that military standards outrank personal comfort or self-image. Leaders who have done similar details themselves often understand why they matter and are less likely to issue meaningless “gotcha” work later.
Motivation is easy during live-fire or field exercises. It is harder when the task is solitary, filthy, and pointless by civilian measures. Completing it without complaint builds the habit of executing lawful orders promptly and thoroughly. This is the foundation of unit cohesion and reliability under stress.
The punishment is meant to be unpleasant. Learning to absorb it, do the work correctly, and move on without self-pity or resentment is training for larger setbacks. Soldiers who treat every corrective action as a personal attack tend to become liabilities; those who treat it as temporary improve.
For NCOs and officers, watching how a Soldier handles such a detail reveals character faster than many formal evaluations. Does the individual cut corners when unsupervised? Complain loudly? Do just enough? Or finish it to standard and report completion without drama? That informs trust decisions later.
These details are not primarily about hygiene. They are low-cost, high-visibility methods for enforcing that every member of the unit is expected to maintain order, follow direction, and accept that personal preference is subordinate to collective standards. When applied fairly (not as sadism or favoritism), they reinforce the same principles that later show up in combat discipline, equipment readiness, and mutual trust.
And, you bet that I never let them catch me again chewing gum. My next punishment, however, was KP duty for something entirely different.
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Please read my books:
The horror. I could never.
For those unfamiliar with what the thumbnail shows, for this article, it is a typical open barracks latrine (that is not longer in existence from my understanding). Note that the toilets (across from the “pisser”) have no partitions. There are no stalls. All is open and the toilets are close together. Now, the first time you have to “go,” and use these there is an intimidation factor that is hard to explain. But, hey, it sure strips away your need for privacy and it does so quickly. Gen. Satterfield is making several great points here, some unintended. One unintended is that our way of being so “private” in our lives is something new to human society. The past gave us today great privacy but also distance from others that is difficult to understand and we get less from our lives for it. I suggest that Gen. Satterfield update his book “55 Rules for a Good Life” and add more rules that deals with issues like this.
Civilians will never understand. Good try, Army Captain. But to Gen. Satterfield’s point, cleaning a urinal with a toothbrush is demeaning, but there are important lessons behind it. Doing this demeaning job will not teach you tactics or strategy but it does teach discipline and that is very very important.
Very good discussion on the pros to cleaning with a toothbrush. I’d personally just not have chewed tghe gum. But of course I was not there and have no idea what’s going on in an army training place. But I do admire Gen. Satterfield for giving us some of his experiences in story form.