Anchor Struck

Despite the unsettling events of my first night of Marine boot camp, I was able to fall asleep. While it was still dark (and this was on June 24th), I was awakened the next morning by a drill instructor bellowing “GET OUT OF THE FUCKING RACK!” All of us recruits readily complied. All but one. He was on the top rack of a bunk bed, his face level with the D.I. The recruit smiled at the D.I., who smiled back and pulled the bunk bed over. The recruit smacked his face on the heating stove in the middle of our quonset hut. His only piece of good luck was that it was summer in San Diego and the stove wasn’t working.

This inspired the rest of us to dress as hurriedly as the D.I. insisted. We went outside for physical therapy, then chow, then classes, more P.T., chow, more classes, chow, more P.T. and bedtime. This became our routine for eight weeks. The only joy I could derive from it was running the obstacle course. That was not unlike being back on the playground.

Early on, one of the D.I.’s told me to administer a P.T. test to one of the other recruits, Gary, who was quite overweight. “He flunks,” the D.I. instructed. He probably did actually flunk, but I made sure he didn’t pass by not counting some successful push-ups. He was sent to motivation platoon, which was even tougher than regular boot camp. It was a second chance for recruits with physical and/or behavioural problems. At the end of boot camp, as we were on a bus taking us to the next level of training, the bus was stopped at an intersection as motivation platoon ran through. One of the recruits sent out from the platoon to stop our bus was Gary. He had lost so much weight I barely recognized him. He smiled and saluted us.

As we became less civilian and more Marine, things got easier. We even got Sunday mornings off to go to church, read and write letters. Halfway through we went to Camp Pendleton, between San Diego and L.A., for two weeks of rifle range, where they went a little lighter on us. They eventually let the smokers in our unit have a cigarette just before lights out. One of the other recruits, Eddie Weekfall, told me he took up smoking just for those few moments of nobody yelling at him.

At the end of our eight weeks, we were all lean, green fighting machines. I was chosen as Platoon Honor Man, the top recruit in our group of 75 boots. On our last night, we were told our MOS (Military Occupational Specialty). I already knew mine would be 0141, admin clerk, because I had extended a year of my enlistment to be guaranteed that. I figured that would be safe. (Wrong, but much more on that soon.) Eddie, a hulking soul brother from the mean streets of East St. Louis, Illinois, was assigned an 0311, infantryman. He winced, knowing that he’d almost certainly go to Vietnam.

My next phase of edification was Infantry Training Regiment, four weeks of humping the hills of Pendleton and fam(iliarizing) firing weapons such as the Browning Automatic Rifle, bazooka, M-60 machine gun and hand grenade. No one yelled at us and we had evenings and weekends off. I even got to Disneyland one of those weekends. We were getting cocky and called ourselves rugged motherfuckers. I was on the phone to my folks one day and said “Yeah, Mom, I’m a rugged mo — man, Mom.”

My final month of training was as an admin clerk at Camp Del Mar, on the beach just north of Oceanside CA. Duly educated, I got my first leave and flew to Shreveport LA to reunite with my wife Suzy and meet my infant son Chris. The first time I held him, he farted on me, but I was a Marine. I could hack it.