In The Navy (Boot Camp), Part 6.

The daily bedding problem stopped immediately when the Company Commander was removed. His cronies lost their power too, but they did try to challenge the others at first. It failed miserably because everyone knew they had no recourse.

We had no one leader so the Squad Leaders (SLs) actually worked together to keep the Company intact. While I was a Squad Leader we began doing these timed runs in the big gym building. It had a track and we had to do 2 or 3 miles in a certain time, 15 minutes I think. My smoking didn’t lend any assistance to my ability to make these runs in time. I would lose my breath and drop out ¾ through. Of course I was on the Chief’s shit list for it and lost Squad Leader quickly. At first I was made to do extra runs over the weekends, not much help…I wound up too tired during the week. Then I was sent to a glorious Saturday of Physical Training (PT) hell.

It was a fairly small building with a long thin room, where I was greeted by a few guys and one girl who drilled all of the flunkies from all of the companies going through Basic Training at the time. We asked each other “what were you in for?” like it was prison, when we had a break. It was actually very much like that, from what I have seen in movies…I’ve never been in prison myself. We were made to do musket training (ever seen a Marine do the gun tricks in Dress Uniform? Like that), but the guns were filled with lead. They weighed a ton. Every muscle in our bodies burned before we were done. We were put through all kinds of calisthenics (jumping jacks, run in place, pushups sit-ups, you name it. All the time keeping the rifle in hand(s). It was brutal. One word, sore.

After that, I started running laps on my own anytime we had free time, but it was not enough. I kept failing the full run which prompted the Chief to call me in his office and proclaim “You will not graduate with the rest of this company”. He called me a fag too. I thought I would have to take basic over again! I was waiting to be another disappearing act (we had a few of those, one guy even went AWOL and never came back).

I was assigned extra guard duty, which was mostly patrolling the barracks at night. You would have several buildings that you had to mill though. The empty ones were dark and creepy, but you could grab a quick sit down rest in those. You had to be very quiet when you patrolled a full room. If you woke people up, you might get an ass whooping. Trip on a trash can and you would probably be toast. You did get to sleep in the next morning, but all of the other noise around meant you rarely really slept.

Late into boot camp, we were made to watch some pretty nasty movies about VD. They depicted all types and included gruesome sores, rashes and madness. One had a catchy tune/jungle/lyric that went like this; “If there is a THING on the end of your THING, (now the singers…) then get on down to the clinic!” It was bizarre to say the least, but it’s still a funny tune to me. We also watched movies about the marvels of the US military. The big battleship guns, torpedoes, different weapons and some naval history. After each we had to answer questions about the topic.