Sensible traveler Destinations Where they went Travel gear Student travelThe mother of all walks
By Diane Daniel, Globe Correspondent, 10/13/2002
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Sensible traveler Destinations Where they went Travel gear Student travel |
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Brodney, 20, who grew up in Canton and will return home next summer, is a specialist in the US Army stationed in Vilseck, Germany. He does reconnaissance work and is about to do a tour of duty in Kosovo.
Almost 40,000 civilians and military personnel attended the 86th annual walk, which starts in Nijmegen, in the eastern Netherlands. The march started as a military training exercise and is now one of the world's largest gatherings of walkers. (Its Web site is www.4daagse.nl.)
Brodney marched with 18 members of his battalion. Unlike civilian walkers, the military marchers must walk in team formations. They are also required to wear boots instead of the sneakers and hiking boots they might prefer.
''It definitely killed my feet,'' Brodney said. ''I wore a pair of Vietnam jungle boots, Marine ones. Your feet get really hot.''
And it gets worse. ''If you're on a military team, you have to carry 22 pounds.'' His backpack was filled with extra T-shirts, socks, sandwiches, ''and about 7 pounds of water.''
The event was ''unbelievable,'' he said. ''We stayed at the military camp. There were soldiers from all over the world - Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, Australia. There were a couple Russian teams, and even a team from Africa.''
The day before the walk started, ''they had a beer tent probably the size of a football field. Everyone was buying drinks for each other.''
Soldiers would socialize at the end of each day as well. ''I met a lot of people, and everyone was really nice,'' Brodney said. ''We were all in uniform, so we were all comparing uniforms and trading medals.''
To train, his team ''did road marches for three months. We walked about 300 miles before we went there.''
Still, he was unprepared for the back-to-back days. ''We started between 4:30 and 5:30 every morning and walked until 3:30 in the afternoon. At the end of the first day I was honestly, like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. Then you wake up the next morning and you can barely move. I had to stretch for 30 minutes. I was hurting more every day. After the first night I was getting my feet taped. There was a lot of support from the Dutch army. They had massages for free and they'd tape your feet up.''
Brodney, it turned out, developed an infected foot (now healed). Not wanting to wait in a long line to see a doctor, he didn't get a diagnosis until he got back to Vilseck and went to a hospital.
Some walkers fared much better, including an 87-year-old woman using a cane. ''She'd done the march 62 times. I walked by her and started cheering for her and shook her hand.'
One special sight for him was the Nijmegen Bridge, which the walk crossed. ''It had a big part in World War II and there's a memorial for American soldiers there.''
He also saw ''a lot of nice Catholic churches. And the typical cobblestone roads were everywhere. They weren't fun to walk on but they were nice to look at.''
Because Brodney's team finished together, it received a team award from the military. Also, every walker to finish the four days gets a Vierdaagse Nijmegen medal and certificate.
Though Brodney didn't realize it until he got to the event, one of its sponsors is New Balance, a company he's quite familiar with because his father, David Brodney, is a vice president for BV Development, which developed Brighton Landing, site of New Balance headquarters.
Would Brodney consider the walk again? ''I think I'd do it as a civilian, so I could wear comfortable shoes.''
Send suggestions to ddaniel@globe.com.