Posted on 03/18/2018 8:16:55 PM PDT by wheresmyusa
Great post.
That lucky bastard. I hope he got some. Sometimes, you’re just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’m still wondering what that means for me.
~W
She stopped me, got in my face the best she could, being a foot shorter. Green belt, junior DI, she laid into me.
I just had to stand there and take it. Yes Ma'am! No Ma'am! Yes Ma'am! Aye Ma'am! Good afternoon Ma'am!
Obviously she was just showing off in front of her platoon, and it took everything I had to keep from busting out laughing.
Women with that power. (Please don’t flame me ladies, it’s just true.)
They’ll lay into you just because, won’t they? (Seen it.)
=)
~W
When I went through Basic at Ft. McClellan back in 82-83, there was this one dog-face that decided after 4 weeks that he didn’t want to be in the Army after all. He started doing everything he could to get kicked out...didn’t shower, blew his nose in his socks in front of the other guys-and then wore them, and various other things. All it did was get the DI pissed off.
Finally one night, he managed to sneak off the base. He went out the front gate, undetected, mind you...and as soon as he’d crossed the road in front of the base, he called the company and told them he’d escaped...and to come get him.
He did get discharged, but they made him finish Basic. For the next 2 weeks, he was the DI’s puppy dog. He went EVERYWHERE the DI did, pretty much under 24-hour surveillance.
That guy had no idea what he was dealing with, obviously. And that $h-t is hilarious.
I remember in what was called the “P” days; no one was issued a uniform, all they brought with them was sent home already, and the train stations and airports would rat out anyone showing up with their PT gear inside out that went “over the wall”. Lead to a lot of comedic mess hall conversations.
~W
Then there was the ‘short arms’ inspection where we stood shoulder-to-shoulder, naked, with our chins pointed over our right shoulders, being unable to see anything to the left, the direction from which the ‘doc’ was coming. It was one of those things where you are told to cough while he checks for, I dunno, maybe testicular cancer.
So I heard a series of coughs and footsteps as he approached, then there was kind of a scuffling sound. I couldn’t turn and look, but I heard the doc say, “I hope you’re enjoying this, son, because I’m certainly not.”
USMC 1992-1996, 0311.
I’m a little guy, 5’1, which made me a DI magnet. Fortunately I was tough, could run, PT, no problem. Short, not weak. We did, however, have a recruit who would break down crying at least once a week. Everyone gave him crap. Myself included. It was a survival technique. The SWOs have a saying “heat on thee is heat of me.” Social pecking orders always find solace in at least being one rung up from the bottom. Anyway, we were standing outside in formation in front of the chow hall at Edson Range Camp Pendleton when this kid just takes off for the woods. I think he would’ve hit I-5 then the ocean. The DIs all ran after him. We never saw him again. He just disappeared, processed out and sent home. To us it was like he was erased.
Ahh yes the bendoverancough. We remember it well don’t we...
XD
~W
Everything was fine until the eye test. I had never worn glasses, and the Navy doctor told me I needed glasses.
Devastated, I go home and see my opthamologist (former Air Force Flight Surgeon), and he says yes, things have changed and you do need glasses.
So I decided to enlist as a musician instead.
First off...never, EVER underestimate the small guy.
Second, i wish i could ping my dad for the Pendleton reference. God i love that man.
Having said all that...visualizing a bunch of instructors chasing that recruit through it; i’d pay to see it. XD
~W
That’ll suck the life right out of you.
It did for me.
~W
I’ll go one more time.
Everyone gets Hell Week.
It was all a blurr of bull$—t and screaming; but one of the funniest things i saw was all the DI’s ganging up on this guy that was crying, and wanting to go home. It was pathetic. The instructors were all ganging up on him because, obviously, he was a weak link. They were deriding him and made him fully pack his seabag; and told him if he wanted out he had to break out of the cinderblock wall of the barracks. If he could break through the wall with his seabag, he could leave no questions asked. And they forced that poor bastard to throw that seabag against the bulkhead until he either broke through, or couldn’t pick it up anymore. It didn’t last long...and neither did he.
~W
At MCRD San Diego we had a somewhat crazed DI named Sgt Lischin (sp) that was a hoot. We got a lot of squat thrusts in after he would make us laugh
One of his favorites was "snakes". He would claim to hear whispering/hissing in ranks. After that would come:
You girls want to hiss like snakes, get down and crawl like one. Whole damn platoon, on our bellies, slithering along like snakes.
Gave other platoons great fun seeing us slither.
He may have had a bit of sadist in him, but I never saw it. He was the best at keeping us "tight" While up at Edson range, a black guy bailed out and was picked up on I-5 by a DI coming in to work. He apparently claimed Lischin was torturing him. Our favorite DI was soon gone.
Think I saw him again in RVN at a convalescent hospital in-country, but was too CS to approach him.
Our first DI was relieved because by the time we had our second piss test, they somehow reassigned him due to our dehydration.
I never bought that line. I would have rather had him than our replacement. When you said squat-thrusts, that threw me back to “8-count body-builders”. Talk about suck...and we didn’t have to carry a load doing it. God bless our infantry.
~W
The guy that wouldn’t shower... Ours got Brillo’d. Did he?
Rainy Saturday in Oct. ‘59 of Sr. year of HS. I was driving around with two friends and we were all 17. I drove us to NAS Dallas just to see if we could go in and look around.
Recruiter took us from the gate to his office and did his job. He then drove us to our parents’ homes and we got them to agree to our enlistments in the USNR. (This was during the time of the draft.)
He drove us back to the NAS and then we had to undergo the exam of having someone grabbing our junk and telling us to bend over and spread the cheeks. That was really embarrassing (notice that word is sort of like ‘bare assing’). ...........We all went to active duty a year later as E-2s, so didn’t have regular boot camp. Two weeks at the NAS, two week trip to North Island CA with my patrol squadron and weekend warrior duty for a year took the place of boot.
I love reading these stories. My son in law is a DI at Ft. Sill. One of the nicest guys I have ever known. Love him!
I dated a gal back in college (1982 or so) that wanted to get into the army. I helped her train for her PT tests. She went to some summer thing at Fort Benning for Airborne - I don’t think it was the “real” thing - just a few weeks or a month to get the taste of it???
She said she always got the brunt of it - she was one of the few gals there at the time - but she was tough and took it. I recall something about push-ups in the mud - and having to get her face right down in it.
She ended up making a career of the Army - not Airborne - probably as an engineer of some sort (we were at an engineering school).
My brother tells the story from training of the guy next to him getting the grenade caught in the strap of his helmet. My brother grabbed the helmet and entangled grenade and threw it all over the side.
He also told the story of when the DI asked who had a driver’s license. He and others raised their hands - thinking they would get to drive the truck around for supplies or whatever.
“Okay - you three. Take those wheelbarrows, drive them over to the gravel pile and fill them up and drive them over to the site.”
I used to work for a guy that would have made a great DI - but that probably doesn’t count! Thanks to all of you that have served.
One inspection we had, i must have missed a little peach fuzz on my neck when shaving. I knew i’d be busted based on where my adams apple was; and i did everything i could to raise that thing as high as possible and suck it in. (LOL yeah right)
They all had a good old time calling me a tranny and such, but even in the moment they could tell i was just taking one for the team. Looking back they were great, and what a great job they had!
~W
HA! Yep that wheelbarrow story checks out as far as I’m concerned. X)
~W
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