The Hard Road

Boot Camp cannot really be described. It has to be experienced. I've been asked occasionally over the years, what I thought was the toughest part of being a Marine, and my answer has always been the same. BECOMING one. Even Vietnam wasn't as demanding as San Diego. Nowhere close.

Every platoon is assigned 3 Drill Instructors: A senior D.I. and 2 "Junior D.I.'s. These guys are hardcore professionals, who are in much better year-round condition than any recruit ever was. They're almost ALWAYS combat veterans, (I think SOME of them might have been on the edge of being a little "psycho"). These guys dedicate their lives towards making YOURS as miserable as humanly possible.

In Platoon 184, our senior D.I. was Staff Sgt Montgomery, followed by Sgt. Johnson and then Corporal Fish. Johnson, the "middle man" rank-wise, was clearly the toughest of the three. Montgomery and Fish pretty much trained via the "guidebook," and would take us to our physical limits and then beyond a bit. When it was one of JOHNSON's days with us, we KNEW we were gonna get pressed, especially if somebody screwed up and "mass punishment" followed.

Mass punishment IS necessary, so everybody learns to work together. A single screw-up in combat can get an entire squad or even a platoon wiped out. I think we all understood that, but he'd get us out on the "grinder" (huge asphalt parade deck), for close order drill, and sometimes it would only take one guy getting out of step, and he'd halt EVERYBODY............."Drop down and give me 25, ladies.........READY------BEGIN!" If the weater was hot, so was that asphalt. Another one of his favorites was having us hold our rifles out at arms-length until he was satisfied that enough time had passed. An M-14 weighs a shade over 9 pounds, but it felt like 90 by the time Johnson would let us rest.

Boot Camp is extremely physical, and you already start the day with a run in platoon formation, squat thrusts, push-ups, etc. This is all before shower & shave, and morning chow. Everyday is programmed with close order drill, P.T.----(a LOT of P.T.), once in awhile we might get an hour of classroom indoctrination on Marine Corps history, combat tactics, hand-to-hand combat training. There were personnel inspections, wall & footlocker inspections, "junk on the bunk" inspections, rifle inspections-----------and any dirty rifle would get LOTS of P.T, for EVERYBODY. Not good...........especially later that night!

We ran the obstacle course 3 times a week, with a PFT (physical fitness test) every Friday, and this was ALWAYS a very nervous day..............

You had to do a certain number of push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, timed rope climb, and finally a 3-mile run with all your gear, helmets, rifles, packs and 2 FULL canteens.

Each Friday the numbers you had to achieve were increased a little. If you failed, you were sent back to a platoon that was a week behind YOURS, for more conditioning. If you failed again with THAT platoon, you were sent home. These first few weeks are where you generally lose whoever isn't going to make it. Because of the pace they run down there, if you make it past the 4th or 5th week, your odds of graduating start looking pretty good, because even though they're "raising the bar" a little each week, we were getting into "boot camp shape" at a little faster pace than they were "raising that bar."

I remember us losing a few more on the obstacle course (even the sand is hard if you fall from the top of a few of those obstacles), and one guy cracked from the day-to-day strain. He was found missing at "lights out", and they found him in the latrine, curled-up in the corner, in the fetal position, shaking and crying. (As I recall, we "paid" for that one too!) But HE was gone the next day.

The idea, I suppose, was to push you harder than you think you can go, so if you're GONNA "snap", it happens in San Diego, not on some beach head.

You could NEVER please these guys, no matter HOW good you did something. NOTHING was ever "good enough". NOTHING.

They were on your butt, in your face, and back then they COULD punch and slap you around if they so desired, and if you even THOUGHT about taking one of them on, you'd quickly become a casualty. They did this crap year-round and were in phenominal shape!

And you were a MAGGOT-------everyday you were there. You would never be a Marine until Graduation Day, which seemed like an eternity away.

There is I believe, a "point of no return" down there (and Parris Island as well). Over the first few weeks, you ache everywhere from doing things you never did on your high school football field. Your sleep was interupted anytime a D.I. decided to get everybody up a little EARLIER for some extra P.T. "Just for the good of the Corps."------------it was very tempting at times to just think, "SCREW THIS! all I have to do is fail the PFT twice & they'll send me home, and I can grow my hair back, be a civilian again and not have to endure this anymore. And besides, it's gonna get WORSE!"........."This is INSANE!"

But, I didn't exactly HAVE that option. Back home in San Jose, I had run my bragging mouth all over the neighborhood, and among fellow classmates about what "pansies" THEY all were for joining the other branches (or not at all)........"I'M GONNA BE A MARINE!"...................................(oh yeah, I'm gonna be another friggin' John Wayne, and Hollywood will surely be making a movie about ME someday!)

I guess I had always known it would be tough, but was not prepared for how physically & emotionally grinding it would actually turn out to be. I think somewhere between week 2 and week 3, I was getting concerned about it. What if I COULDN'T cut it? You can't run your mouth like I had done, be the braggart I had been---------------then get SENT HOME because you couldn't survive it. Can you just imagine the FLACK back home? For the next week or so, I was more dedicated to NOT FAILING, than I was about becoming a Marine.

As time passed, I toughened up with the rest who were still there, and along with that, came confidence. On the other side of that "point of no return", you're determined to make it, if for no other reason, than it would be a crime to take all this crap for SO LONG, then "blow it" in the last week or two. All the torture would have been for NOTHING!

Something else I think is noteworthy...........the Marine Corps is as much "attitude' as it is physical. Maybe more so. Some of the "buff football jocks" you got off the bus with, aren't around after the first couple of weeks. They don't HAVE "time-outs" on the obstacle course or 3-mile runs. At the other end, some little guy who looks like a book-keeper but has the heart of a lion, might end up as the Honor Grad. You have to want it.

MARINE is a 6-letter word, and if you see Graduation Day, you know you've earned every letter of it. You really feel it on that last day, when you're in pre-breakfast formation, and the senior D.I. yells out, "Good Morning Marines!"................instead of "Good Morning Maggots!"

A couple hours later, you're out on the Parade Deck (grinder) for the last time, marching past the bleachers during "pass in review", and when the band plays the Marine Hymn, it sends a chill down your spine. No matter how often you may have heard it, before or since, it'll never mean more than it does right now.

Afterward, you get about 3 hours of "base liberty" so you can visit an actual snackbar and PX (Post Exchange). During your entire training, you got 2 hours of letter-writing time on Sundays. That was it. No phone calls.

From there we'd be going to Camp Pendleton for MORE training!

But before we go to Pendleton, my next post will on something very special to me, something that has helped shape a LOT of who I am today.

The Springfield M-14.