Welcome to Boot Camp
Boot camp certainly has changed since RTC (W) Bainbridge. No more duty letters sent home once a week? No boondockers to polish? No chalkboard demos? No PN Fenstermacher snapping ‘Get your hands out of your pockets, young lady!’? Pffft!!
I watched all those new barracks going up every day while commuting to work on the train. They are barely a quarter mile from the sandy shores of Good Old Lake Michigan. Nice and cold when the winds blow off the lake…. 🙂
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Navy
They rode a bus to BASIC?
Hell, we had to low crawl the New Jersey Turnpike all they way to Ft. Dix from the induction center.
Uphill the whole way.
Through barbed wire and cut-glass!
Wimpy wussies. Double timed from MEPS ATL to Hard Knocks in July 71. Climbed Misery & Agony Hills doing sideways jumping jacks. Then it got hard.
Wolves snapping at our heels.
The tolls were waived so we had that going for us.
I did boot in San Diego from Dec’83 to Mar’84 which sure beat the hell out of going to Great Mistakes. I was in drill company which was hands down better than going thru in a BMT company. Looks very familiar except we wore white hats, leggings, and carried M1 “pieces” for a few weeks. They had us learn the 16-count manual of arms (maybe I’m saying wrong) too. We did drill (band, flags, and rifle team) stuff the last 4 weeks. I performed in 3 graduation before I got to go through my own. I hated it while I was going though it, but looking back it doesn’t seem so bad.
TRUE STORY: The bus driver from Beaufort was a commercial bus that had made the run before, he was on the way to NYC with a busload of civilians and said he’d take all 12 of us going to MCRD PI. He dropped us off at the MUSEUM. It was about 10pm. We stood outside for about an hour in a line at parade rest not knowing WHAT the hell to do. A corpsman driving an ambulance stopped, told us to get inside and drove us down the block to receiving, on the backside between the hospital and receiving. We got screamed at, taken inside, and began processing. Long story short: I never got to stand on the yellow footprints, all because some idiot bus driver dropped us off at the wrong building 22 years ago. I feel cheated.
Watched all the episodes on online Navy Times then they showed all the episodes as one flick. Different than when I went to the Great Lakes in October of 1963. Took my physical and was sworn in at the Whitehall induction Center in lower Manhattan then to Grand Central for the overnight trip to Chicago then another train ride to Boot Camp. We had rope yarn Sunday the day we lost Pres. JFK
“I watched all those new barracks going up every day while commuting to work on the train. They are barely a quarter mile from the sandy shores of Good Old Lake Michigan. Nice and cold when the winds blow off the lake…. ”
Ah, yes! Great Mistakes! I remember (all too) well.
My boot camp experience was unusual to say the least.
My company was the F Troop of boot camp companies. We couldn’t do ANYTHING right. Marching? Rocks. PT? Rocks. Academics? A little better.
Our first Company Commander got fired. He was tearing his hair out over us.
We actually never finished our “work week.” We got pulled out after 2 days to learn how to march…and march…and march…and march…and.
We got through the rest of our 8 weeks or so by the skin of teeth.
Graduation day arrived. All the companies gathered in the big hall at Great Mistakes and got into formation. Other than us, one of the other companies there was what they called a “Ball Company”, one that was sponsored by a pro football team, the Redskins I think. They were the antithesis of my F Troop company. Squared away. Proud. LOUD. Arrogant as fuck.
Anyway, we ended up standing in formation FOREVER listening to the drivel that is always spewed at these things. Finally, the pass in review arrived.
The company who did the best pass received “Captain’s Liberty.” I can’t remember if it was Cinderella liberty or all night. But it was good. And we all figured we didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.
We all marched past the reviewing stand and got back into formation, thankful that we had gotten the chance to just move after so much time standing at parade rest.
“The winner of the “Captain’s Liberty” is…
Company 256!”
Silence in the hall. Stunned silence in the hall. Gobsmacked stunned silence in the hall.
We, F Troop, had won the fucking Captain’s LIberty!!! No one was more surprised than us. Except maybe for the arrogant pricks from that “Ball Company.”
One of my sweetest experiences in the USN. And I had just started!
From the for what it’s worth file – During my time in the USAF I would, from time to time, find myself aboard the Naval Station Great Lakes. I was always impressed. The buildings just inspire awe in the beholder. I was also aboard the Naval Station Newport; I wasn’t as blown away as I was at Great Lakes.