Boot Camp Part 6

April 13, 2009
Camp Lejeune
8:51

Saturday

The next day is considerably more relaxed than the scream-fest that Black Friday was. That’s not to say that we’re laid back, “smokin’ and jokin’.” Sgt. Saldana is almost always on the prowl. Sgt. Virto is around all the time as well. SSgt. Arzola hasn’t really addressed the platoon since his speech yesterday.

On Saturday we wake up early as usual. Waking up in the training platoon is a little more intense than waking up in the receiving squad bay. When the lights turn on, either Sgt. Saldana or Sgt. Virto run down the drill instructor highway screaming “LIGHTS LIGHTS LIGHTS LIGHTS GET OUTTA THE RACK GET OUTTA THE RACK LET’S GO! WELL, YOU HAVE 100 99 98 97 96 95…”

“10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, YOU ARE…”

“DONE SIR!”

We do a thing called morning BDR (Basic Daily Routine) which involves making our rack, brushing our teeth, and taking a piss. Most of us are about to wet our pants because we’ve been drinking a lot of water, and were out cold so we didn’t go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

We do things half the platoon at a time in the morning. Each side of the squad bay is either the Port Side or the Starboard Side. I’m on the port side I believe, and we’re first to go to the head. We literally run in there and start doubling up on urinals. This is a daily occurrence. I could probably count the times on one hand that I pissed in a toilet by myself while I was a recruit. Of course we are counted down to do this. I’m not sure if I’ve stated this yet, but getting counted down to do something is called doing it “By The Numbers.”

When we’re finished with that, our half of the platoon runs out of the squad bay and back on line in front of our racks. The other half of the platoon disappears with one of the DIs and we’re left with one of them who starts counting us own to make our racks with out any wrinkles. This is done utilizing the buddy system, and Miranda (who’s actually in the same room with me as I write this) is somewhat of a useless rack mate. He just moves kind of lethargically. He’s the opposite of Wick, who when he’s nervous tries to do everything really fast. Miranda just kind of locks up and I get really frustrated by it. We finish that garbage and the other half of the platoon comes back out.

Now it’s time to get dressed by the numbers.

“BLOUSES ON THE BODY NOW!”

We put on our blouses in a time limit. We put our pants on. We put our “go-fasters” on. We look retarded, I’ll have to draw what we look like at different stages to illustrate this.

We go to chow and come back. Saturday is sort of a day for us to learn how things are going to be done in the squad bay on a regular basis. On the training matrix it’s called “in-house procedures.” The training matrix is funny because it only lists one thing for each day even though we wake up around 5AM and go to sleep at around 9:30. I’m pretty sure we do more than one thing per day…

We’re sitting around on the quarterdeck (the front of the squad bay) in a classroom formation. That just means that we’re sitting in rows. We sit “left over right” which is how they describe the Indian style way of sitting. We sit that way because it’s a shooting position and they think that sitting in that position without a rifle will somehow make us more used to the position when we actually do it with an M16.

Sgt. Virto is going over all of the info on how we’ll do laundry, when we’ll do it, what we’ll wash, who we’ll wash it with, when we get mail (he’ll make us wipe our ass with it if he sees us reading it outside of free time), and some other things. He starts assigning the platoon billets. I think at this point Syer was appointed the guide. Syer’s a pretty big kid from Missouri who’s Puerto Rican. Sgt. Virto picks the scribes initially as Wilkerson, Rohl, Boyle (Number 1), and one of the Ramirezes. Wilkerson is a big guy wearing BCGs (Birth Control Glasses, the thick brown glasses that get issued at boot camp, I hadn’t gotten mine yet) who’s also married. I’m sure he got picked because of the glasses. The same with Rohl, though he was wearing his civilian “portholes” still. Rohl was a nerd, but he ended up being a pretty fun guy to talk to despite his weirdness. Scribes usually get picked for their level of nerdy appearance. Their job is to write down a lot of stuff and keep track of records. Boyle…I’m not sure why he got picked. Boyle’s the guy who’s the stereotypical tall, slow person. At least that’s what his first impression seems like. Ramirez, J is picked as the fire watch scribe. I never got to know him that well and I talked to him a few times. He seemed like a pretty laid back guy. His job was to make the fire watch roster.

The squad leaders at the time…I have no idea who they were. They were changed pretty often, but I’m positive one of them was Uzzel (pronounced “uh-ZEL” I think, at least that’s how I said it). Uzzel was pretty much a squad leader throughout the entire cycle, fired only a few times.

Sgt. Virto then needed “house mice” whose job it is to clean the duty hut during field day (cleaning). “Who’s my shortest recruit?” Sgt. Virto asks. I turn my head to see who’s going to stand up.

Tran

This is pretty much the first time I realize who Tran actually is, and I try not to laugh but I can’t help it. He’s just so…funny looking. He’s a tiny Vietnamese guy who’s the exact opposite of what you expect when you hear Marines. He’s always got a strange confused look on his face. His English is decent, but he speaks slow and in a voice that is a couple octaves up from what E.T. sounds like.

“Well, you’re definitely my ugliest recruit,” Sgt. Virto responds. He makes him sit back down. Sgt. Virto takes this time to make fun of people’s names. “Shube,” he reads from the roster. “Lube,” he adds after pausing. Of course there are confusing names like Niswonger, Tinejero, Tijerina, and such that Sgt. Virto has a little trouble with. He gets my name right from the start. He probably reads Uzzels name wrong. SSgt. Arzola refers to him as “oozle.” Than of course there’s Santos, the 30-year-old Filipino college graduate with a wife and kids. His voice is ridiculously high pitched and his English is not good. Sgt. Saldana often makes him “sound off” over and over again, so every day at some point I hear an “AYE AYE, SIR!” screeching over and over again.

After sitting around we get a religious brief in the big red room with the TV screens again. The whole company is in there; both series and we wait for the Chaplain, who’s a Lieutenant in the Navy. He finally comes in and starts going over this power point of why it’s important to go to church, how he won’t help us get out of boot camp, and other things. He starts getting groups of religions to stand up. He asks the Lutherans to stand, a few people do. Some guy raises his hand and asks if Christian Science is like Scientology. The Chaplain says it’s related. I almost fall asleep. We go to afternoon chow, we go to evening chow. Whatever else we did that day must not have been that important, because I don’t remember it.

After we hygiene by the numbers, it’s time to learn how to do our hygiene inspection. Every night we have to be standing online in nothing but our underwear wearing our shower shoes. First the guide goes to the duty hut and pounds on the piece of wood on the wall.

“GOOD EVENING GENTLEMAN! THE TIME ON DECK IS 20:30! PLATOON 1067 IS ONLINE AND READY FOR HYGINE INSPECTION, SIR!”

And then the platoon repeats that.

Than we hear a muffled “turn on the radio!” from inside the duty hut. We then repeat “TURN ON THE RADIO AYE AYE, SIR! CLICK CLICK!” and then everyone hums a pitch, it sounds awful. Then the guide starts “FROM THE HALLS…”

“OF MONTEZUMA
TO THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI!
WE WILL FIGHT OUR COUNTRY’S BATTLES
IN THE AIR ON LAND AND SEA!
FIRST TO FIGHT FOR RIGHT AND FREEDOM
AND TO KEEP OUR HONOR CLEAN!
WE ARE PROUD TO CLAIM THE TITLE OF
UNITED STATES MARINES!”

All out of tune and tempo. It sounds pretty bad. Then the DI comes out of the duty hut with a flashlight and we have to do a stupid little report when he shines it at us and says “HIT IT!”

“SNAP! GOOD EVENING SIR! RECRUIT MILAS, CHAMPAIGN ILLINOIS! 0300 REGULAR SIR!”

We scream that with our elbows locked to our sides, our palms straight out and facing down, and our forearms parallel to the floor. Our head is turned all the way to the right.

The DI says “FLIP!”

We face our palms up and our head pops to the other direction.

“POP! THIS RECRUIT HAS NO PERSONAL OR MEDICAL PROBLEMS TO REPORT AT THIS TIME, SIR!”

“SPIN!”

“SPIN AYE AYE SIR!” We do a 180 so our back is facing him. We must turn to the right, not the left.

“POST!”

“POST AYE AYE SIR! GOOD EVENING SIR!” Than we put our shorts and shirt on and wait for everyone else to go. The whole platoon takes about 30 minutes because we do this in groups of four usually. There’s the occasional night when the Senior is on deck and has everyone do it at the same time because he wants to go to sleep.

After the hygiene inspection we get a 5 minute prayer time. We get a short period of time to say something in front of the platoon. We put our “shoe display” on top of our footlocker, and we go to sleep.