The Joys of Boot Camp: Part 2

The lessons they teach you in Navy boot camp are many. How to fold your clothes. How to iron your clothes. How to correctly tie your shoe laces. While it may seem that all of those things are about clothing (and trivial in the grand scheme of things) they are actually about attention to detail. The military needs you to focus on the details because if you don’t, people die.

In addition to the attention to detail, the military runs on order. This is why we march to places in boot camp. The Navy is kind enough to line you up in height order (tallest to shortest) and THEN march you places. As luck would have it, I’m relatively short. Which meant I was always stuck at the back of the line.

The base at Great Lakes, Illinois was divided by a highway with each portion connected by a tunnel. As a very specialized form of torture, every company of recruits had to learn the words to and sing “Anchors Aweigh” each and every time your company was directed to march through that tunnel.

The training aspect of boot camp is intense – as well it should be. This is the military and you are being trained to prepare for, live through and win a war. And with this being the Navy, much of the focus involves water and shipboard life. Early in boot camp, we were all made to jump 20 feet into a pool of water and then taught how to turn our uniforms into flotation devices. (Pro tip: It helps when the uniform pants they issue you are a pretty sweet set of bell bottom dungarees.)

Life in boot camp is rigid. And when you mess up there is always someone there, literally in your face, to tell you about it. The simple fact is that you cannot and should never take it personally, because it’s not. You joined the military, not the ballet.

The room or “compartment” you live in with your fellow 80 recruits features a large common restroom (that you will have fun cleaning) with no doors on the stalls and is sparsely furnished with simple bunk beds or “racks” and open lockers. As your clothes are meant to be folded in a very specific way, this makes it easier for them to be inspected. If even the simplest item is astray or out of place, you’re going to pay for it.

The most common form of punishment in the military is simple, good old fashioned exercise. It serves a dual purpose though as it helps get you into shape and it is, well, punishing. In the Navy, this is often called “cycling.”

Our company commanders would commonly call us all to attention. We would all have to rush to the end of our bunks and stand straight and rigid with our arms firmly at our sides at attention. From there our lead company commander, Boatswain Mate First Class Bill Chester, would yell, “Abandon ship!!!” and we would each run and pick up one end of the metal bunk beds then move them toward the outer walls. This would allow us more room to be cycled and/or otherwise generally punished. If our offenses were especially heinous we would sometimes be cycled to the point of “making it rain,” a rather disgusting practice of having everyone exercise and sweat to the point when condensation was literally dripping from the ceiling.

During one particularly fun, post-inspection incident the members of my company were called out for failing to do one very specific thing: tightly tie our shoe laces. Amongst all of the uniform and clothing items we were issued was a simple pair of black dress shoes. These were to be kept on top of our lockers with the laces run through the eyelets in a specified pattern and very tightly tied. Apparently, upon closer inspection, some of us had failed to follow the prescribed steps and needed to relearn how things should be done.

We were all brought to attention and Petty Officer Chester growled what seemed like his favorite phrase, “Abandon ship!” and we quickly moved the racks back. From there, Petty Officer Green, our female, slightly junior (but no less scary) company commander, took over. “I want every one of you to go and grab your dress shoes and place them four feet in front of you on the floor. Do it now!” In between following the order, I caught confused glances from some of my fellow recruits, essentially asking, “What the hell is about to happen here?”

Petty Officer Green walked up and down the compartment to ensure every recruit had complied and now had their dress shoes at the requested spot on the floor. “Now here’s what we’re going to do. You are all going to get in the push-up position and while in that position you will untie and correctly retie your dress shoes in the manner in which we have asked. And don’t even think of hitting the floor. Do you understand?” In between quickly exchanged looks of panic, we responded in unison, “Yes, ma’am!”

“Into the push-up position and untying and retying those shoes correctly, now!” barked Petty Officer Green. We all quickly got into a plank position, like we were about to do a push-up, with our arms firmly locked and holding us off the ground. Green began pacing back and forth among the recruits, shouting whatever she thought would motivate us to complete this task quickly and efficiently. “It may hurt, but you will get this right.” “We will not have this issue on any future inspection, will we recruits?” From our strained positions, jostling and balancing ourselves on one arm as we untied or retied the shoes with the other, we all weakly responded, “No, ma’am.”

And then we were all slightly taken aback, “I want these laces as tight as you want your girlfriends back home!” she barked. Petty Officer Green quickly bent down to inspect the retied laces of one unfortunate recruit, sticking her finger through the lowest portion of the tied lace. “Look at how loose those laces are. You know what your girlfriend is doing while you’re here, Seaman Recruit Buell? She’s fucking everyone in town! Undo and retie those laces tight right now!” she screamed. Being close to Buell, I could almost see him start to well up and cry but he did as she asked. Green and Chester each went from recruit to recruit reviewing how we had retied our laces, allowing us to stand again if our laces passed their inspection.

I remember one day in particular, a Saturday, where we as a company simply couldn’t get things right. Someone had messed up in some way and we were made to pay for it. We formed up and marched to breakfast. Along the way, we were instructed that our time in the galley eating would be limited. Specifically, the members of our company would have a whole :30 seconds to eat from the time our last recruit exited the food line.

Being relatively short (and near the end of that line) I had approximately :40 seconds to jam a few waffles down my throat, down a glass of milk and march back to our compartment where we were cycled for a full three hours. Chester paced up and down the compartment, shouting, “If we need to, I could do this all day!”

My friend and fellow recruit Bill Faust was a rarity. He was the only person I ever witnessed who seemed to revel in this form of torture. He was legitimately excited whenever cycling started. In a way, his enthusiasm helped the rest of us get through it all.

After our first round of cycling that day we were marched to lunch. We ate and during the march back, another recruit messed up (by dropping the notebook each of us carried, folded in our rear pockets out onto the street). Again, we were cycled for another two hours upon our return to the compartment and sat for an educational session on the military chain of command – from the lowliest recruit all the way up to the commander-in-chief. We went to dinner and then were cycled again for a full hour upon our return.

By this point, we were approaching our fifth week, generally known as service week. For a seven day period, all recruits are sent work at various places around the base. This could mean anything from mowing lawns and other yard work to the lowliest and most hated of all duties – working in the galley preparing food, washing dishes or other cleaning. Work assignments were picked by our company commanders who had been watching and evaluating us all of this time. Apparently, I didn’t impress them very much because I was assigned to work in the galley.

And then, as luck would have it, I contracted pink eye. Being highly contagious, pink eye meant that I shouldn’t be working anywhere near food. I was reassigned to an office role in the standards and enforcement division. This was the group of petty officers who carried out all of the base inspections and trained new company commanders. I was to do anything they instructed me to do.

When I first arrived, I was personally inspected to ensure that my uniform, boots and knowledge of my general orders were up to standards. Thankfully, I passed. Most of the week was spent making coffee and answering the phones during normal business hours and then cleaning the offices (sweeping and buffing floors) after hours.

My third day on the job I was given a task for which I was particularly well suited. A chief petty officer pulled me and another recruit aside. He was training a group of new company commanders and needed recruits to role play. We were given two scenarios to pick from: a recruit who was painfully homesick and a recruit who thought that they could do a better job running the company than the company commander. For the latter, they needed someone who could really get under someone’s skin. Appropriately enough, the chief picked me. “You don’t need to worry about anything you say in that room. Your intent is to agitate the petty officer who you’ll be role playing with. Again, you can say or do anything that comes to mind as he’ll need to deal with situations like this if he’s to be an effective company commander. I’ll have your back no matter what,” the chief instructed.

The other recruit and I followed the chief into the training room. It had been set up with series of racks and lockers as well as a few tables and chairs so the company commanders in training could learn everything they needed to there before taking command of an actual company. The chief began with the other recruit’s role playing session first and picked a female trainee to work with him. Everything went well for both the recruit and the company commander in training. The chief went over a few other ways in which the situation of dealing with a homesick recruit could have been handled. Now it was my turn. The chief selected a male trainee, a second class petty officer to work with me and instructed me to address him as Petty Officer Smith.

“Petty Officer Smith, can I talk to you for a moment?” I started off simply enough. The trainee smiled, “Sure. What can I help you with?” I paused. “Well, I don’t think you really have any idea what the fuck you’re doing here.” His smile vanished. “I mean how are we supposed to take the way you’re trying to train us seriously?” I continued.

The trainee searched for a response. “How would you do things differently?” he asked me. Even more confident, I responded, “Well, the first thing I would do is replace you with someone who has a clue about what they’re doing.” There was a table between us and the trainee lunged over it to grab me. His fellow trainees held him back and the chief spoke up. “Well, Petty Officer Smith, I think we have a little bit more training and practicing to do,” he then pulled a few dollars from his pocket, “Kaminski, go get yourself something to drink from the vending machine. I think you’ve earned it.” I took his cash and exited the room.

As a company, our days were filled with a wide variety of activities. We had classroom time where we were all made to take copious notes on everything from naval history to firefighting. Many of us learned early on that my friend Bill, an incredibly talented artist, took not only the best notes but also the most entertaining ones – accented with comically brilliant, cartoon drawings to illustrate every point.

From there, we would put everything into action: learning hands on firefighting, firearms training, use of a gas mask (yes, they do really gas you and you would be surprised how much mucous your nostrils actually contain… because it will all come out).

One night toward the end of boot camp, I got a call to report to the petty officer standing duty in our building. The recruit on guard duty in our compartment (who just happened to be my friend Bill) escorted me. The petty officer said I had received a box which he needed me to open.

My grandparents, always interested in feeding me way, way too much, had actually sent me five boxes of different types of Tastykakes. The petty officer informed me that in order for me to take them back to the compartment with me, I would have to individually unwrap each one. I did as instructed and shared every single one of them with my company upon our return.

Soon enough the weeks remaining at boot camp turned to days and then graduation day. We all donned our navy blue dress uniforms (think of the uniform the kid wears on a box of Cracker Jack) and marched off to our graduation. Our ceremony was the last for that year to he held outside. Given the fact that we could all see our breath, it would have been nice to see the inside of the gym as opposed to marching by it one last time.

After graduation, we were all given a weekend to do as we pleased in Chicago or elsewhere (ah, the taste of freedom) and orders to our next duty station. For some people, this meant going directly to the fleet or other bases. For others, it meant going off to more schooling. For me, as I found out that my orders had been slightly messed up, I went off to a place called the Transient Personnel Department (TPD).

TPD is essentially a way station of sorts for people in the military coming and going. That could be people whose orders have changed, people getting out of the military and/or people on legal hold, accused of minor crimes or other offenses. For that very reason, they held daily, random drug tests. At roll call every morning they would call a random number. If that happened to be the last number of your social security number then you were required to pee in a cup before heading off to any assigned work detail. As luck would have it, my number was literally called every single one of the five days I spent there.

Soon I got the call telling me that the issue concerning my orders had been remedied. I was scheduled to leave the following evening by train from Chicago to Indianapolis, IN. From there I would take a cab to Fort Benjamin Harrison where I would attend the Defense Information School (DINFOS) to become a print and broadcast journalist.

- Scott Kaminski

* - All names have been changed.