Mini Boot Camp Part 2

March 10, 2009

Camp Johnson

19:05 - I can only write for about a half hour today, so we'll see how far we get.

So I found myself crowding this school bus to get off and it was pretty hectic. I'd never been so nervous in my life, and things only seemed like they'd get worse.

We finally got off the bus and into a formation (I'll explain more how these look in the boot camp sections). Basically, a platoon formation consists of four columns. I'll find a picture or make my own later. We had all of our crap, which included sleeping bags, blankets, duffle bags, and pillows all bear hugged in our arms when the DI came back and told us to face to our right. This is the first time I ever marched (or drilled) out side of marching band, which gave me a head start. It was the first time also that I ever heard Marine Corps marching cadence. It's an interesting thing to hear for the first time, and not what you'd expect. Essentially, the drill instructor sings the marching cadence "left right left right," but it's cooler than I can simply express with text.

We marched into a small building at this place after setting our gear down and filed into a room with chairs and a large projector screen with a Marine in cammies waiting for us. "Did I say sit down!?" he yelled at one of the poolees who sat and then stood up quickly. I recognized this Marine as one of the liasons from MEPS. "No, so stand the hell up!" HINT: Never do anything unless you're told, and don't do any more or any less.

We were again briefed on the drug policies and they told everyone to stand up who "had something they wanted to 'tell us'." The rest of us left the room and the ones who stayed basically confessed that they'd lied and actually HAD done drugs at some point either recently or in the past. The Marine Corps tries to guilt trip you into confessing a lot of things, wither before or during boot camp. This often works on the weak minded and young, but as a cynical college student, it never worked on me, even if I did ctually had something to confess.

After all the wimps made their confessions during what was later referred to as the "Mock Moment of Truth," we were all moved outside to a chain link fence enclosed concrete area in the middle of a large grassy area. Here we sat, the Champaign/Springfield/Effingham group amongst many other poolees from around the St. Louis recruiting district area. There were a little under 300 of us total, which was enough to make three platoons for the next day's worth of fake training. Guess what, there were three DI's from San Diego too, so that made it all pretty convenient didn't it? I bet they were proud of theirselves and made it sound like they'd actually planned ahead of time. Don't let the military ever convince you that it's organized or that anyone in it ever has any idea what they're doing, unless they're infantry. They're hardcore.

We got in a sort of formation again and sat down in this concrete area from possibly about...6 PM till around 10 PM. This was a miserably retarded waste of time, but it occurs even more often in the military, and normally lasts longer. "Hurry Up and Wait" should be the title of the book that this blog gets published in because that's all the military is.

At 10, when we finally stood up after a four hour period of being "motivated" by recruiters, we were taken to some large tents where we had put our gear. We went inside and it was too dark to find anything but I somehow found my crap. We then met our DI, Sgt. Reyes. Scariest moment ever at the time for me.

Drill instructors constantly demand volume, so if you respond with "yes sir!" than they come back with "Yeah, right! Do you understand me?" and you respond with "YES SIR!" By the way, at the end of almost every sentence, a drill instructor will almost always ask "do you understand me?" "got it?" "hear what I'm saying?" and so on and so forth, so you respond "YES SIR!" about every ten seconds. It's aggravating and causes pretty much everyone to lose their voices.

We were put to sleep after about twenty minutes of our DI screaming and calling someone "DISGUSTING!"

Every thirty minutes, two people had to be on fire watch, which was a joke. They each had to stand in one of the two tent openings (this was a huge tent, there were easily fifty of us in there) and escort people to the porta potties. I didn't get fire watch, but I barely slept at all anyway, and it got really really cold in that tent. I pulled my arms out at one point only to have them freeze, and then I put them back in the sleeping bag. I also remember my water bottle somehow spilled under my sleeping bag and soaked into me during the night which made me more cold.

Finally, at 4 AM we were awoken.

To be continued...

P.S. This wasn't supposed to take more than one entry, but I'm short on time because I'm trying to get other stuff done at the library here, and it closes at 8 PM. I know, what the heck?