Old drill sergeant stories never die. But on the Internet, at least, they do fade away.
Dan Caddy, a sergeant first class with the Vermont Army National Guard who started "Awesome Sh*t My Drill Sergeant Said" on Facebook in 2012, realized that axiom fairly quickly, long before his site grew to 830,000 "likes" and a weekly reach of between five million and 10 million readers.
"I knew at some point in the future, rather than just posting these things to Facebook, where … that comment is just pretty much lost forever, this is just too good," Caddy said. "It needs to be seen by more people."
He started squirreling away some of the best material, and in 2013, he got the call from HarperCollins, a book publisher with a fairly relevant track record — "Sh*t My Dad Says," adapted from a popular Twitter feed, came out in 2010.
Caddy worked with HarperCollins editors, ditching initial plans for longer stories and instead focusing "on the hilarious and creative way drill sergeants are able to master words," he said. "[They] make you laugh, and then make you stop and think about it afterward."
The resulting book, with the same title as the Facebook page, is a quick read at 177 pages, offering pearls of often-profane wisdom from the Army's master instructor/motivators:
- "I do not discriminate. If my own mother was in basic training, I would smoke her ass, too."
- "Privates, I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror and realized there were two bad [m-----f---ers] in this world … and I'm both of them."
- A top 10 list of things a given private is "more [messed] up than." "Clown porn" barely cracked the top five.
Caddy, 32, said early response to the book has been positive among both military and civilian readers. His editors, he said, helped shave some of the over-the-top military jargon from the final product, making the drill sergeants' offerings accessible to those who think "Shark Attack" is the last scene in "Jaws."
Along with expanding his audience beyond those in uniform, Caddy also wants to engage it. Shortly after ASMDSS went live, the 14-year soldier started Battle in Distress, a nonprofit dedicated to stopping service-member suicides. What started as a crisis-response team set up through the humor site after a post from a desperate reader trying to help a troubled battle buddy (he told the story to Army Times in 2013) is now a social media-based outreach group that's taken on more than 5,000 cases.
Battle in Distress is always looking for volunteers, Caddy said, and its mission is outlined at the back of the new book — another way to use laughs to bring attention to a serious cause.
"No matter how important it is, a lot of times, [readers of serious posts] are just, 'Nah, I'm not dealing with that," said Caddy, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008-09. "I can post a … one-liner or jokes, and it gets 100,000 people reached. A serious post about veteran suicide, about three comments. But if we get people there with the humor …"
Part of Battle in Distress' goal has been to make soldiers more aware of help available to them before their problems reach life-threatening levels. For that reason, Caddy's particularly pleased that only 20 percent of the all-volunteer group's cases now involve troops contemplating suicide — down from 40 percent in the first year.
"They're hearing the message and reaching out before they find themselves in that spot," Caddy said. "There's so many resources for people who are suicidal, but why are we waiting until they are suicidal before giving them an avenue to seek help?"
More information on Battle in Distress is available on its website. The book is available at most major online retailers in electronic and hardcover versions.
Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.
