Everyone had a Gomer Pyle in their company. Some were worse than others, but we all had one.
During a critical inspection; "Gomer" knew he was going to fail, and since we had been instructed that anyone who failed would die, he knew he was about to expire.
As he was approached by the instructor, he thought it wise to "have a seizure", and proceeded to mimic one by flailing on the deck while rolling his eyes up into his skull. It was complete bullshit and everyone knew it.
Of course, they carted off his worthless carcass and examined him; and surprise surprise, he doesn't seem to have any affliction. Guess how we all were notified.
Here's the funny part.
From then on(until he washed out), he did not have permission to walk on the deck inside the barracks. If he had to go to the head, day or night, his feet were not allowed to hit the deck. He had to flop across it like a fish.
The shouts of "flop like a fish f'r" at 0300; and the sound of him trying to get to the head past the watch is still one of the most hilarious things i've ever heard.
I'm smiling right now. =)
~W
If the temperature reached a certain level, the red flag was hoisted and we were kept indoors.....I kept expecting my drill instructor to serve us a nice cool beverage or some ice cream.
I failed the eye test and was told to go home.
A friend, however, went through Navy boot camp. He finished it in 1978, got his assignment or whatever it is they give you when you graduate and that evening fell down a flight of steps at the base and severely broke his upper leg bone (the Humerus?). After spending significant time in the hospital and six or eight weeks in a cast then some physical therapy he was discharged because one leg was now 1 1/2 inches shorter than the other.
He doesn’t claim any veteran benefits, I am not sure if he’d qualify or not. He does claim to be the clumsiest sailor of all time.
Please note, this is a second-hand story, excuse any irregularities or things that would have happened differently.
Navy boot camp 1976. We had this kid Ellis who couldn’t speak - he just froze up when he got yelled at. Wouldn’t drop and do 20 or anything - he was just frozen, staring in space. Washed out the first.48 hours but was forever remembered as, “Ellis in Wonderland”
we had a gomer in our company at Fort Knox who dropped a grenade in the pit. the Lt. clobbered him and threw it. he also took a deep breath in the chlorine chamber and got some hospital time. he wore his steel pot backwards for nearly eight weeks and nobody really noticed. often wondered what happened to him.
A LOT of drill.
Senior Drill Instructor wasn't happy with us, so after a LOT of drill, we moved the racks.
And moved the racks.
And moved the racks.
By the time we were done, it was wetter inside from the sweat than it was outside from the rain.
He was constantly requesting to make a head call. I mean constantly. He ended up peeing in the corner of the squadbay. He just kinda disappeared, no idea what happened to him.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One week in basic training (AF) (1985) myself and another Airman were assigned to work with a grounds maintenance guy on the base. He was a SSgt IIRC.
So he wants us to paint some curbs yellow. He had no overalls, so to prevent getting paint on our new uniforms, he tells up to turn them inside out. So we did, then we proceeded to work around the base in that manner.
So lunch time rolls around and The SSgt tells us to just go to the chow hall as is. So we did.
In the AF Basic training chow hall there is this thing called the “Snake Pit”. This is where all the TIs sat while their Flights were eating lunch. They’d spend their lunch eyeballing all the airman eating lunch, and calling them over to the pit to berate them for one technical rule violation or another, real or imagined.
When we walked it, every single TI in the Snake Pit shot to their feet with their eyes as big as dinner plates. They ordered us to present ourselves before the pit to suffer their scrutiny and commenced to yell abusive comments at us and questioned our intelligence in vulgar terms…very loudly.
We explained to them, with disciplined and rigid military bearing that the SSgt had ordered us to do so, and they all seemed to understand. I guessing that grounds maintenance SSgt had a reputation as somewhat of a jokester. We actually enjoyed getting the Tis all riled up as we knew we were under “orders”, so we were covered.
That’s my favorite memory from boot camp.