I'm sure there are a few Marine Corps FReepers who'd like to share their recruit training experiences...I'll drop a few in here periodically.
Happy anniversary and thanks for your service. In '59 I joined the Army Reserve. When I stepped off the bus at the reception center at Ft. Ord, CA, I thought I was pretty grown up. Upon leaving Ord after 6 months of infantry training, I realized how wrong I had been.
LOL. Thank you so much for your service to our great nation.
I was never in the armed forces, but I'll share the memories of an old friend, now deceased, who joined the Marines at 17 with a lie about his age and a forged note from his father. He was English but wanted to fight for us in Korea. He remembered being asked to draw a picture, as some sort of psychological test. He was an artist and had drawn many men, so he drew a man, and was then suspected of being homosexual. Finally he passed through and fought bravely against the N. Koreans and the Chinese.
Thank you both, and all others who served.
As any great Sea Story begins... Now this is no s#&t...
Way back in time when I enlisted I was scheduled to leave for USNTC San Diego on 27 Sept 63 but prior to that date, I discovered a couple of buddies from high school were scheduled on 30 Sept. I talked with my ever accommodating recruiter to see if I could be rescheduled.
"Well, Absolutely, Dave. Anything you want, we'll provide. Just be here at the recruiting station at 0800 (that would be 8 am, but you'll soon learn all about time) on Monday."
0740 I walk into the Post Office bldg in downtown Spokane. A few minutes later, my buddies show up and we're all ready to get going to serve our country and avoid the draft.
Now this first day should have been a clue to the uninformed. Just because they told us to be there at 0800, doesn't mean they were ready to wave goodbye just yet. "We need to go over some final paperwork. Just have a seat, or better yet, go ahead, wander around but be back here at 1000 hrs."
More hurry up and wait and we get the word it's chow time. Be back at 1300. Okay, we can handle that.
Back in the office after lunch - how did they ever come up with that "chow" name?, we sign a few more papers, raise our right hand and are sworn in by a US Navy Commander. That oath BTW, has no expiration date.
At 1500 hours, they tell us to be at the airport at 1700 hours. Great!, 2 more hours of waiting. I took advantage of the time and talked with my high school sweetheart who would later become a Navy Wife and my beautiful bride.
1730 hours, and we are standing in line to board a United DC-6 for my first airplane ride to Portland, OR via Pendleton, OR. Arriving in Portland, we have a lay-over for another United flight (707) to San Francisco. Another lay-over in SF they we board another 707 to San Diego.
Seventeen of us joined the Navy that day. Another promise by our recruiter, a bus would meet us in SD and take us to our new home.
We arrive at USNTC Recruit Training Command at around 2230. It appeared that about 500 guys arrived that night from all parts of this great nation. 80 man companies were formed that night and at around 0130, we were lead to a temp barracks so we could get a good night's sleep. That sleep was rudely interrupter at 0500 by some screaming Company Commander banging on the 30 gal trash can with a nightstick.
That's how it was that first day in the Navy. I think I'd like to do it all over again, but a recruiter I talked with in May told me I was too old and broken-down.
Thank you, all of you, for your service to us.
Happy Aniversary.
Thank you for your service.
To get in the door at the center, we had to run a gauntlet of war protestors, hoots, hollars, thrown trash, grannie ladies screaming "killers", long haired hippies handing out anti war leaflets, strange looking men in suits offerring rides to Canada, Police on horseback bucking against the crowd, riot geared up cops busting heads, and my first wiff of CS gas...
The rousting we recieved at FT. Ords recieving facility seemed like arriving at the Waldorf after that...
During NBC training, the drill sergeant would line us up 3 at a time and tested us on putting on the protective mask in less than 9 seconds. So, I'm next in line with two other guys, and all three of us line up in front of the DS. He yells, "Gas!" The two other recruits started putting on their gas masks while I just stood there. The drill sergeant asked why I did nothing.
I said, "Drill Sergeant, the NBC instructor earlier in the day told us that the signal to put on the mask is "Gas! Gas! Gas!" You just said "Gas!" once."
The drill instructor rolled his eyes and then said, "So basically you're telling me I don't know what the f**k I'm doing?"
I replied, "I did not say that, Drill Sergeant."
He said, "OK private, go into the drill sergeant's office and tell the other drill seargent that I'm all f**cked up!"
So I went into the office and told the 2nd drill sergeant that the 1st one was all f**ked up.
The 2nd sergeant screamed, "What did you say!?!"
I said, "The 1st drill sergeant told me to come in so I could tell you that he is all f**ked up."
The 2nd drill sergeant just sort of stared at me for a second, and then yelled, "Private, go tell the other drill sergeant that YOU are the one that is all f**ked up!"
So I went back to the 1st drill sergeant and said, "Drill Sergeant, I'm the one who is all f**cked up!"
He replied, "No sh*t?"
Then he went on to say, "Do you know what your problem is, private?"
I said, "I'm all f**ked up?"
He said "No private! Your problem is that you think too much!"
(As you can tell, I was a bit of a Gomer Pyle in Basic.)
June 1955 basic training at Parks AFB, Ca. Enlisted in Tucson, spent the night in Phoenix and rode a super connie to San Fran with a stop in LA. The stewardess took a few of us to her apartment on the beach and we stayed there a few hours until the next flight.
1975: I've been in boot camp for almost two weeks and have started planning my escape through the mudflats to the river...
(I am still convinced that if had I tried, I would have made it too using a foot locker and the tides to get off the island)
First, thank you and all the other Veterans on this thread for your service to our country.
Your post really brought back memories for me. It was 1969, and my big brother had enlisted in the Air Force. We acutally have home movies that my late daddy took, of the night before he left....hugs to all in the family...tears and pride, and him hugging his highschool sweetheart like he never wanted to let her go.
Mom made me go to school the next day, I was in the 8th grade. That day was pure torture for me, all I could think of was my brother leaving, and not knowing when I would see him again. After school, there was a basketball game, and although all I wanted to do was go home and cry, I had to go through the motions of a majorette routine at halftime. I probably looked like an idiot, standing there twrilling with tears steaming down my face...:)
Our story had a happy ending, my brother married his childhood sweetheart, and he came home safely after serving 4 years in the Air Force. He now is living a good life, working and spending time with his children and grandchildren.
However, I will never forget that day. I was so proud of my big brother, and still am to this day.
Others didn't make it home, and we should honor them everyday, as well as the brave men and women serving to protect our freedoms now.
I was lucky enough to be in the first platoon of the our "series" (three platoons made up a "series"), meaning that my platoon ended up in the "forming" phase for nearly a week (IIRC).
Then, after we graduated in April we were immediately assigned to some barracks in the WM part of the island because we all had to be available to testify at the court martial trials of our three drill instructors. (Our DIs were a little nuts and we had a sissy "alligator" in the platoon.)
So anyways, without being recycled, my platoon (at least, the 37 out of the original 60 of us who stayed with the platoon all the way through) spent a solid fourteen weeks on Parris Island.