Sunday December 5, 2004 – Navy Boot Camp June 13 to August 8, 1963

Sunday December 5, 2004 – Navy Boot Camp June 13 to August 8, 1963

Arriving at Navy boot camp in San Diego, the evening of June 13th 1963 was a most depressing experience. After finally getting to bed near midnight, we awoke the following morning to an early reveille—someone in the barracks banging on a shitcan (the term used for garage can) and yelling at the top of his lungs to get our lazy asses up. Stumbling disoriented out of bed, we listened as the sailor banging on the can told us the amount of time we had to make our bunk, get cleaned up before we were to be marched to the mess for breakfast. You have to picture in this camp, barracks after barracks of new recruits all at different weeks in the training process. Us newbies were being thrown into this mix and having to learn the rhythm of the camp quickly. And the camp worked with a clockwork precision to accomplish all that had to be done for the hundreds of recruits being handled at any one time.

Boot camp is the first step in a sorting out process to determine who will make it in the Navy and who won’t. I would guess that we had about twenty percent of my company drop out by the time we graduated. There are all manner of reasons that recruits fail to make it. One is disease and the camp was experiencing a spinal meningitis outbreak when our class began. As a result, the course of instruction for every class beginning just before we arrived had been shortened from twelve to eight weeks. During the eight weeks we were in camp, several more cases of spinal meningitis were diagnosed—among those we heard of at least one fatality. There were also the occasional mental breakdown, someone becoming so distraught as to attempt suicide, of which most failed but did provide the recruit with a medical discharge if the shrinks determine that the attempt was genuine and not a ruse to get out. Others simply went over the fence, using a blanket or some other aid to shield against the barbed wire—I’m sure some enterprising escapee has figure out how to surmount the razor wire of today that has replaced the barbed wire of my time.

The other cause of a medical discharge was sex among the recruits. Invariably, young men discovered in the confines of a male-only barracks longings that may have been sublimated elsewhere. The clever ones make it through knowing that boot camp is the wrong place to express emotions better kept closeted away. There would be ample time and place elsewhere for these emotions to be given vent. Those unable to contain their feelings were rooted out—some homophobe in the barracks snitched them out or the drill instructor caught them in the act. Those caught were pulled out of the general population and assigned to a special barracks of others like themselves. It took time to process a medical discharge and in the meantime, they had to be fed, clothed, and housed—the regimen of boot camp was observed everywhere—and they were assigned details to keep them occupied and providing some useful service while they were being processed.

Then there were the malcontents who had a problem with authority. These were confined to another special barracks lorded over by drill instructors with special experience handling malcontents. The DIs assigned to this barracks were lucky to get one or two of those malcontents back into the general population. Most of them were mustered out of the service unless they had some special talents the military needed and could be molded into a form to serve that purpose.

The process of boot camp is to instill in recruits a strong sense of obedience and submission to a chain of command. At the end of boot camp, the recruit had to know what was demanded of him at all time, not only while within the confines of a military installation but everywhere else as well. If a superior officer commands you to do something in an airport, you were to stand to and do it. From the time we arrived, there was always someone looking you straight in the eye and in some case right in your face telling you that you were the most worthless piece of shit on the planet and you had to take it. Not only take it, you had to do what that mean bastard demanded you do, typically drop to the ground and do 25 pushups or 100 jumping jacks pumping your unloaded M1 rifle above your head with every jump. I got real sick of jumping jacks and pushups.

I didn’t like the hazing and there were times when I wanted to break down but somehow I managed to keep my mouth shut, to take the abuse stoically and to do what I was told. Our drill instructor was this big black Chief Petty Officer who unlike DIs in the other barracks wasn’t into the excessive hazing that DIs in other barracks seemed to really get off on. Our DI did get pissed off when you screwed up and I had my share of screw ups that incurred his wrath. However, around the second or third week, the hazing began to stop. By now, we were into the training phase of the program: the morning calisthenics, always a time for a good laugh as invariably there would be a good deal of body noises to accompany many of the exercises, deep knee bends were especially tuneful. Then, there were the classes on knots—there is a book to be written about the art of tying knots with each having its own unique history and purpose. My skill in knot tying, however, still leaves a great deal to be desired—not my forte.

We spent time learning about the M1 rifle, how to break it down and put it back together, keep it clean, and aim and fire it. I would never be a crack shot but I could hit the target within a ten-inch diameter. The most frightening lesson I learned during camp was fire fighting—my brother-in-law made a career in the fire brigade of Glasgow, Scotland and from first hand experience fighting a well-controlled blaze, I admired his courage and dedication. Decked out in fire fighting gear with high-powered hose in hand we advanced on a blaze in a metal structure that simulated a fire aboard ship. As we advanced the lead recruit had the task of opening the fire hose nozzle and providing a shield of water as we attacked the flame. In another exercise, groups of us were directed to crawl across a smoked filled room bending as low as possible to gather the most amount of smokeless air in the building. It was claustrophobic and utterly terrifying yet every time I felt on the verge of panic, I looked up at the firefighting instructor who was standing upright in the same room we were scared shitless in and knew that the only thing I had to fear was my irrational response to the smoke.

Boot camp became bearable, even enjoyable, because of the regimen. Each day was full from the time you woke in the morning until lights out. The weekends got depressing, though, as we were left to our own devices and invariably we began to realize that we were imprisoned. It was this time that we wrote letters home, performed repairs on clothing—rope yarn Sunday in Navy jargon, washed laundry—we did a lot of laundry, shined shoes to spit-shine glow, and ate more leisurely at the mess hall. The smoking lamp was lit all day on the weekend. During the week, the smoking lamp got turned on and off.

Even in boot camp, we managed to find ways to amuse ourselves. Since we marched from one lesson to another and to and from the barracks, there were ample opportunities to find another company to race from one destination to another. I had been assigned the right guard position in our marching formation and when the recruit company leader gave the word I was to pick up the pace and the race would be on. It surprising how fast a formation of recruits can walk. We were also allowed to sing as we marched and there were a number of raunchy marching lyrics each company devised to insult its opponent.

The eight weeks did come to an end and as the last week finally arrived, we all began to see ourselves as sailors not civilians. We belonged to a community that lived apart from the mainstream world we had all only weeks before been a part of. What began as an obligation we had legally bound ourselves to, now became an allegiance we had mentally and emotionally pledged to a brotherhood of other sailors. Of the two, the latter had far stronger bonds. As in boot camp, everywhere I went in the Navy afterwards, I learned something more about myself and the world around me.