Boot Camp.

fuzzybuddy

fuzzybuddy

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If you are a veteran, how can you ever forget Boot Camp?
Yes, it was your introduction to the military. I was Navy, so my company commander was a Navy Chief. He was second on my hit list. The Navy recruiter, who got me in, was first, Great Lakes Naval Station in winter- ahh yes.
 
For me, boot camp was rather short lived. It was supposed to be 6 weeks long, but one day, after just a little over 3 weeks, the NCO came in to the barracks and told me to pack my stuff. At first, I thought I was being kicked out of the USAF, but after letting me wonder for a minute or two, he told me my tech school was starting in a few days, and my basic training was over....so about all I remember from boot camp is learning to salute, and march.
 
My husband did military boot camp and it was supposed to be only for 10 weeks however there was a police investigation due to some crime committed and he stayed for 5 months.
It is referred to as Basic Training here
 
I spent about 13 weeks at Paris Island. There, we spent many weeks going through rigorous tests of physical challenges, firing weapons, and obstacle courses, including swimming courses. We also spent time learning about confidence, commitment and honor. HONOR is a big deal in the Marines.

At first, I hated boot. We were torn down to being lower than humans and then rebuilt into a Marine. After the 4th week, I began to figure out just what this was all about and it was at that time that I made a conscious decision to become fully engaged in the training. After that day, things went much better.

Years ago, my kids got me a hat that read, “U.S.Marines” And another hat that read “Vietnam Veteran.” I don’t wear either because of my personal choice not to.
 
It was Lackland for me in the Air Force. First noticeable thing was the chow. It was not Mom's home cooking. My first meal there was ham dinner. It was NOT Mom's. Another thing was meeting guys from other parts of the country. There was Oklahoma, Hawaii and Mississippi to name a few. Met my first black guys too. I think the country needs more in the way of military service where you meet others from around the country. You see all different types yet still Americans. It might help the current state of division in the country.
 
USNR only had 2 weeks at Bainbridge MD. Then back to weekly drills at the armory and a 2 week cruise to Nova Scotia the next year. The following year 2 weeks at Engineman school at Great Lakes and the next year after that 2 weeks on a can out of Newport RI.
In 1957 went on active duty on the USS Washtenaw County for 2 years.
 
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Yeah, I remember. The TI's played "good guy, bad guy" with us, among other mind games. Tech Sgt. Olness was the good guy. Tech Sgt. McDougal was the bad guy.

If I ever run into McDougal I'm gonna whoop his ass.
 
In Boot camp, they did things I just couldn't understand. Like folding clothes. We had to learn to fold clothes in the "Navy way". We spent hours folding our clothes. Then we had inspections to see how great at clothes folding we were. We are talking about fractions of a inch off, and they threw them out of your locker. I figured if we were on a ship and the Russians fired on us, we'd throw are nicely folded clothes at them.
We spent a lot of time drilling on the "grinder" , a large drill field. When it got over 92, they'd cancel drills. But our Company Commander got around that, He got us up at 3 AM to go drilling.
Boot camp was a strange time. as a civilian you were expected to provide for yourself; but in the military, everything was provided for you, and you just expected that it would be.
 
Basic training and AIT (advanced Infantry training) were about what I expected they would be. One thing I was glad of was the drilling into your brain that when someone yelled fire... you quit breathing. We were drilled on that because of the extensive use of napalm. Our DI would toss a cs gas grenade down and yell fire. After you suck some of that stuff in, believe me, you'll learn to hold your breath. That training paid off when later in life, I was caught in a fire in a grease pit below an automobile. Dr. later told me that usually burn victims suffer such severe lung damage that it cannot be repaired and therefore is fatal. So, I guess that training helped save me.:) After my return from Vietnam, I became a drill Sargent stationed at Ft Dix NJ. I'd like to think that some of my so called harassment of trainees helped save some of their lives somewhere in the future.
 
Ah yes, the training that teaches you that nothing you learned in boot camp is the same aboard ship. company 343 rtc san diego ca. I volunteered. I didn't have to. I was already in the guard. Could have stayed home and herded cows and maybe got the girl instead of the shaft. Even dumber after finishing one enlistment I volunteered for another six and went to Vietnam.

The university of south east asia taught me a whole lot about who runs this country and who doesn't and what the people back home thought of the whole thing. And to the dude that mentioned 'honor'. honor gets you a pine box, your kin get a flag and your medals. I came home with more baggage than when I left and it took 15 more years to get rid of it all.
And now I want to say to who/whom ever, you send your people to war then let them do the job you sent them to do and keep your damn fingers out of the pie!!!!!!!
 
After we left Paris Island, I was sent to Camp Lejeune for advance weapons training, amphibious assault training and gorilla training. Supposedly, we were preparing for Vietnam, but I didn’t understand the amphibious assault training.

After 8 months, I was transferred to a Recon Battalion. This is where I made my first jump from an airplane. Talk about being scared to the point of having to change my underwear, that was me. As I sat alongside my buddy, I asked him if he was scared. He told me not to talk to him.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Great Lakes Naval Station in winter- ahh yes.
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Great Lakes Naval Station in summer - my most vivid memories: The pungent smell of rotting garbage while waiting in line at the mess hall. Shooting .45s at the indoor range without any hearing protection. - ahh yes.

:what1:
 
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I have to admit that I enjoyed graduation and spending time with family and friends. After going through Boot, it was like a release of stress letting go.
 
Navy Boot camp Great Lakes Illinois in the winter really memorable. Like others in Navy boot camp learning the Navy way was a real process to adjust to. Doing laundry hanging up clothes using a clothes tie [a length of string about 6 inches long] took some getting used to.


Marching --- A couple of midwest farm boys that marched like they were crossing furrows in a plowed field. Out of step bobbing up & down just didn't fit the Navy way. Passing in review training a challenge for the chief. Each company would march past the review stand do 3 column lefts & out the drill hall door. Our company did two column lefts but the chief wrongly called for a column right. As we stumbled trying to stay in formation climbing the blaechers set up for guests the chief was screaming halt. On the plus side the company flag we replaced by a bra brought back from liberty in Chicago wasn't used.


Liberty Called Cinderella liberty because we had to be back to boot camp by midnight. No so for most of our company. There was a new side & old side to boot camp. Those from the new side that had galley duty on the old side at about 4 a/m would show a white badge like pass to the gate guards. No problem passing thru. Our white pass made from blank white paper worked just fine. Exhausted due to lack of sleep but happy for the extended time away from boot camp we got thru the day.


Standing guard duty--- A cold night the mid to 4 a/m on the back porch of our barracks another genius thought using a clothes tie to support the rifle he was supposed to be holding became a problem. The duty office making his rounds expected the guard to adjust his rifle & challeng him with Halt Who Goes There? Didn't happen the tie didn't break while the "guard" was frantically trying to jerk the rifle to the challenge position. We all learned about going on report.


Safety & Theft The Navy as we found out frowns upon theft. According to the weather forecast there was going to be a light snow late at night. That meant the duty officer would make his rounds waking up companies to shovel the walks "for safety" reasons. The 78 boot trainees including me took a handful of salt from the galley that day. Salted walks don't freeze or hold snow. We slept until reveille. All 78 were told that theft was not tolerated & brig time could result if there were any further instances. SHEESH no credit for being innovative.


Poor marching, lost flag, salted walks, beating the liberty system as the chief found out later as were were leaving, something the chief had to endure. But a valuable learning lesson for him.
 
I did mine at Fort Campbell then on to Fort Polk for A.I.T. Many years later I worked with three Marines my age and the boot camps they had were like terror camps campared to mine. I recall how shiny the floors at Fort Campbell were and the barracks were from WWII. My two drill sergeants were more like boy scout leaders compared to the other companies surrounding us. The DS next door to my barracks was a sadist. He always carried the leg of a deer. He put his troops through hell.
 
Tommy said:

Great Lakes Naval Station in summer - my most vivid memories: The pungent smell of rotting garbage while waiting in line at the mess hall. Shooting .45s at the indoor range without any hearing protection. - ahh yes.

:what1:
Click to expand...
That had to hurt, was everyone shooting at the same time!?
 
I went thru basic training at age 24 1/2. My cadre didn't know what to make of me. I enlisted when I found out I was getting drafted and they knew I was coming back to Fort Knox as an MP. Finance screwed up my first paycheck and they couldn't pay me. I asked to use the commander's office for a few minutes with a little bit of privacy. One half hour later Finance called and told my company to bring me back over to be payed. On the way back to the company my XO said "Ah.....do you think I could ask you how you did that"? I replied that if I told him I'd have to kill him. My girl friend was the secretary to the head of the Finance School at Fort Benjamin Harrison. I called her on the Autovon line and asked her to have her boss call Fort Knox to get me paid (it does pay to know people).
One night one of my platoon sergeants was on CQ and got me out of bed to type something for him. I told him I didn't know how to type and he refused to believe me. He ordered me to sit at typewriter until it was done. I of course typed it and went back to bed. "I knew you knew how to type". And, every once in a while I'd drop a tidbit that my friends told me about being in Vietnam. When I went back to Knox as an MP I often ate at my basic training company and the cadre and I joked at how I used to blow their minds. They thought I was some kind of spook. When I went by the barracks at night to see them empty I knew they we in the field so I "raided" the cadre's poker game. I never did let them know how I got paid.
 
I don't wanna recall the hell that was recruit training. They said they made men of boys. They said we'd thank them when we went to our duty stations. I didn't thank 'em and I was the same man that enlisted upon my departure. Half the battle was turning off your braining and only doing what you are told to do. I finished 2nd in a class of 62.
 
1966 in San Diego. My seven weeks of training started on April 15th. I entered service as an E3 because of prior college then I got selected as a recruit Petty Officer so I largely escaped the drudge assignments.
Worst thing I went through was the firefighting training. They locked the whole company inside a concrete replica of a ship compartment and then lit off a kiddie pool sized container of jet fuel. We had to fight the fire with high pressure water mist hoses. The smoke was so thick you couldn't see anything. I spit up black tar for a week after. Most fun was the whale boat races with teams from other companies.
This was during Johnson's buildup so there were lots of men around who had their service extended and they were not happy campers.
Physically it was easy for me but they played a lot of mind games with us to ready us for shipboard life.
In the evenings, we would relax behind the barracks and watch the Marines in their adjoining boot camp run around the grinder and do pt for hours in the evenings.
I won the "outstanding recruit" award for my company...which really didn't mean much.
 
I had forgotten the rotting garbage smell at the mess hall- brought back memories. There was the smoke house. It was a ship like room, which they set on fire. This black thick smoke filled the room. We had to walk through it. Guess to get us use to a shipboard fire. Then there was the gas house. Similar to the smoke house only with tear gas. Someone mention "duty". I had to get up at 4AM to guard a steel beam. They were building a new auditorium. There was this beam-about 80 feet long, 6 feet high, and you needed 2 cranes to move it. But I had to get up in the middle of the night to guard it in case somebody stuck it in their back pocket, and waked off with it. Loved the frigid breezes off the lake, too. We were not supposed to salute the dipsy dumpster- which they shouted at us everyday - so , of course we made sure to salute that truck.
 
Air Force basic was embarrassingly easy except for the silly assed mind games they played with us. Physically it wasn't demanding at all. All you had to do at the end to pass was run a mile in 8 minutes and do 15 push ups. I had been running and lifting weights before I went in and I actually lost some conditioning and strength in basic. One of my buddies who had enlisted in the Army talked of having to run 6 miles every day in AIT. The most we ever ran in the Air Force was a mile and a half and that wasn’t even every day.

We were required to wear jock straps for PT. One day when we were about to go out for PT I could not find my jock strap. Neither could about a dozen other dudes out of our flight of 50. They were gone. And there was no way we could have lost them because you had to have every item folded just so and placed just so in exactly the right place in your locker at all times. So I dressed out for PT without it.

And of course when we got out on the PT field one of the T.I.’s came up to us while we were in formation and asked “OK, how many of you do not have your jock straps on, be honest now?”

I raised my hand as did probably all the others of us without Jock Straps because we knew that if we were caught lying it would go much worse on us. Let me take this opportunity to say that IMO the jock strap is one of the most useless items of clothing ever made. After I got out of basic I never wore one again.

So then the TI commenced to screaming at us and asked us why we didn’t wear our jock straps to PT and I volunteered the answer that someone must have stolen mine. And of course that brought on a whole new round of screaming and butt chewing directed at me. “You mean to tell me you think someone stole your stinking jock strap!!?.

Anyway after the screaming and butt chewing he made us do some extra calisthenics and running. It wasn’t a big deal because like I said, back then Air Force basic was not all that challenging physically. And my jock strap never showed up so I had to by a new one at the BX. But it was cheap. I know the damned T.I.’s took those jock straps out of our lockers just to mess with our heads.

Another way they messed with our heads was with laundry tags. As I said Air Force was Mickey Mouse compared to the Army where my buddy had had to was and iron his uniforms. We got to take them to the base laundry and for 70 cents I think it was they would wash and press them for you. And when they came back those things were starched to the max. They were like a sheet of cardboard. But what the people at the laundry would do was put these little squares of cardboard called laundry tags into the various pockets of your uniform. And if a T.I. found one of these in your uniform during a locker inspection all Hell would break loose. You would get screamed at and threatened to start with. The threats generally consisted of being “sent back to the first day” which meant you would be sent to a flight that was just beginning basic and start all over with them. One of the other threats was that if you didn’t make it here they would discharge you but you would still be 1-A for the draft and subject to being drafted into the infantry and sent to Vietnam in the infantry where you would be humping an M-16 and a rucksack through the rice paddies and jungles hoping your next step didn’t trip a bobby trap that would blow your balls off.

These were mostly idle threats. There was only one dude that got sent somewhere else. One day he was just gone. I don’t know where. He was a nerdy looking kid that looked like he probably belonged to the Math Club in High School. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Poor little feller couldn’t even do one good push up. During PT he would keep his arms locked straight and try to get away with just lowering and raising his hips. And of course the T.I’s would scream at him for doing “Saturday night push-ups.”

Back to the laundry tags. As I said that was another way they messed with our heads because no matter how thorough you were going through your pockets to make sure there were no laundry tags it didn’t matter. The T.I.’s would go into your locker when you were out at chow or something and put more in.

And sometimes they wouldn’t just put in one or two. They would stuff whole handfuls of them into one of your pockets. Then when they did an inspection they would pull them out and toss them in the air like confetti. And of course that would give them an excuse to tear your whole locker apart and throw everything out on the floor so that you would have to redo the entire thing.

There were more mind game that they played on us, but this should give you a good idea of what it was like.
 
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