The Joys of Boot Camp: Part 1

Many people have a certain image in their mind of what exactly boot camp or, in the case of the U.S. Navy, what is referred to as “recruit training” is like. Whether some glamorized version found in movies or something they’ve seen in documentaries, the truth lies somewhere in between. Then again, I can only really speak my experience so you’re welcome to believe whatever you’d like.

From the processing center in Baltimore, MD, a group of us boarded a bus to the airport and flew to O’Hare International Airport. Once in the terminal, we got our first taste of boot camp – a U.S. Navy petty officer who was not happy about drawing the late night duty and all too happy about yelling and then lining us up so we could board the bus which would take us to Recruit Training Center Great Lakes, Illinois.

Great Lakes or “Great Mistakes” as it’s commonly called is now the Navy’s only training base for recruits. A large base with a highway running through the middle of it (we’ll get to that later), its only purpose is to churn out young sailors to serve in the fleet. Before that happens though, you need to be scared, molded and shaped into being a sailor.

After filing out of the bus, we were walked as a group into one of the larger buildings on base to start our boot camp experience. We were told to line up alphabetically and then brought into a room and seated at school style desks to fill out more forms. The petty officer in charge of this station clearly loved seeing new recruits.

“I want every recruit in this room from Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia to stand up and count off to 32!” he barked. A large portion of our 80 recruits stood up and promptly counted off as ordered. The petty officer smirked, “You know what you have there, gentlemen? That’s a full set of teeth standing right there.”

He glanced at one particularly tall and largely built recruit who was now standing amongst the group of recruits. “Goddamn! You’re a corn fed motherfucker, aren’t you?” The recruit, a Virginian named Watts, responded in a deliberate, slow drawl. “Yes, sir I am.” The petty officer smiled and instructed all of the still standing recruits to be seated. They complied.

A female lieutenant commander came into the room and we were all snapped to attention for the first time. “At ease,” she said and we were all instructed to sit down. She casually began going through each recruit by last name and conversing with many of them as we all sat in awe of our first officer. She came to me.

“Kaminski.” I stood up and quickly responded, “Yes, ma’am.” She looked me up and down, “Are you aware we have a baseball park named after you in town?” (She was referring to the similar sounding home of the Chicago White Sox, Comiskey Park.)

“Yes, ma’am,” I nervously responded. “Well, I’m not much a baseball fan anyway,” she said offhandedly. “Go ahead and take your seat.”

From this room, we were sent to the supply outfitting station. In a single file line, we told members of the supply depot our names. As we had all been measured for uniforms in Baltimore, each man received a pre-made stack of uniforms, boots (or “boondockers” as they prefer to call them) and toiletries, sheets, a wool blanket and was sent to stand in front of an empty cardboard box. At that point, each recruit was ordered to remove each part of their civilian clothing – everything from shirt, pants and shoes down to even their underwear – and place in the box in front of them. From the pile of newly issued clothes you were to put on a fresh pair of underwear and navy blue sweatshirt and sweat pants set emblazoned with a large white “N” for Navy.

Each recruit sealed their cardboard box containing the last shreds of their civilian life and wrote their mailing address on it to be shipped home. Years after this moment, my mother recounted how receiving this box from Great Lakes, Illinois seemed odd and unexpected to her. Not knowing the contents, she immediately opened it to find the clothes I had been wearing when I left home earlier that week. She got choked up when she saw it, even though she had been though the same experience with my brother just about three years before.

Once we were all neatly uniformed into our sweat suits, we were marched to a temporary sleeping compartment for the night, told to handle our business in the bathrooms and get to sleep. Whether we liked it or not, it was past “lights out,” a time when the military is kind enough to turn off the lights for you because they don’t trust you to get enough sleep on your own.

The next morning came early. Make that very early. And in a very Hollywood-like, stereotypical fashion. We were all awoken by a Navy company commander (the Navy’s version of a drill sergeant) waking us up by banging a nightstick around the inside rim of a metal trashcan. It was very loud and, well, very motivating.

We were introduced to our company commanders, Boatswain Mate First Class Bill Chester and Electronics Technician Second Class Erin Green. Each wore distinctive red ropes attached to their uniforms where their left shoulder and shirt sleeve met, denoting that they had each successfully shown that they were ready to train recruits.

Chester, the senior company commander, was obviously a man who had spent a lot of time at sea. His face seemed to be lined and weathered by the salt air – and he had an attitude and booming voice to match. Green, was more junior and, to our surprise, a woman. Either way, both were experienced enlisted sailors tasked with preparing us to join the fleet.

As you could imagine, our first full day at boot camp was a busy one. One of our first stops was to the barbershop. Being a barber in the military has to be one the cushiest gigs in the known world. There are no special requests and no complaints. You don’t even have to wield a pair of scissors – just mow scalp after scalp with an electric trimmer.

I can tell you from experience that the first time you lose all of your hair, it’s odd. Like a boy discovering that the thing between their legs has sensitivity, you can’t keep your hands off of it. The company commanders know this because they are the ones constantly yelling at you things like, “Quit touching your damn head, Kaminski!”

After receiving our fashionable, new haircuts, our group was led to a bank of phones and instructed to call home as this would be our only opportunity to tell our family members we had safely arrived until graduation. I called home, but apparently my mother was out (most likely putting together plans for what to do with a recently vacated room in our house). We were instructed that if we did not get through to someone, we would be given one other opportunity later on to reach out to someone and let them know we were still alive.

One of people I immediately become close with in my company was a fellow recruit named Bill Faust. He looked kind of like a human version of Mister Peabody from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. His father was actually an Army colonel, but Bill chose to enlist in the Navy instead.

Bill was an incredibly talented artist, able to sketch or draw anything in an instant, with his own style and unique sense of humor. I think what I liked about Bill the most was his childlike wonder at everything. People would ask him questions and he would respond in the sweeping, varying tones of someone who was just discovering something for the first time. He was also exactly the opposite of anyone you would think to see in the military.

Later on my second day, I was permitted to make another call to home or another family member to let them know I had arrived safely. Instead of my calling my familial home, I called my father at work. The owner of a small janitorial supply business, I was confident he would be there. The dial tone rang through and I finally heard his familiar voice. “Dad, it’s Scott.” I stammered. “How are you son?” he asked sympathetically. “I don’t think I’m gonna like it here,” I whispered cautiously into the receiver to him. He laughed. “You’ll be fine, son,” he said reassuringly. I was given a sign to wrap up the call. “I have to go. I’ll call you when I can. Love you, Dad,” and then I hung up.

As I was about to learn, I hadn’t seen anything yet.

- Scott Kaminski

* - All names have been changed.

I Miss the Old Man

Losing one or both of your parents, unless you outright hated them for one reason or another, sucks. I was 23 years old when my father passed away. And here I am at 36 years old, soon to have a child of my own, missing my Dad.

Born in September 1948, my father grew up in Northeast Philadelphia in a typical family home with my grandparents and his younger brother, my Uncle Charlie. He was raised Catholic but through his childhood years lost his faith in God. I remember asking him when I was a teenager what prompted the change. Ever the source of reason and logic, his answer was simple: “I saw kids afflicted with and dying of cancer. To me, no benevolent god could ever allow that to occur.”

He excelled in school, in some cases to the dismay of his teachers. He refused to carry textbooks or notebooks to class – any class. Instead, he would arrive each period and unfold a single sheet of paper (which he would use for all of his classes that day) on which he took notes. Despite his aversion to books and other school-related baggage, he did well and earned mostly A’s and B’s in all of his courses.

Having always been a tinkerer of sorts throughout his formative years (building model cars, planes and the like; constructing and wiring his own HO train platform; reconstructing and repairing his 1949 Zenith radio), he began to show an interest in more grown-up forms of transportation – primarily cars.

During his teens, he had begun working at a service station. He understood cars. They made sense to him and he was a natural at understanding what made them run, how they were taken apart and – somewhat more importantly – how they were properly put back together again.

During his senior year of high school, my father inadvertently influenced his high school administration to change one of their policies. At the beginning of the year, he discovered that he could schedule his classes in such a way that the last period of each school day would be a study hall. Instead of attending these study hall periods, he would simply get in his car and drive home or head to work. At the end of the year, he was called to the principal’s office and informed that he would have to make up the time over the summer in order to get his diploma. “Are you seriously going to make me come in over the summer for study hall? You’re kidding, right?” The principal relented and instead changed the policy.

After high school, he attended automotive technical school while keeping up shifts at the service station. After graduation, my grandparents agreed to take out a loan so my father could open his own service station. After a few years, he was doing well enough that he repaid the loan and opened up a second service station.

He specialized in Volkswagen repairs. According to my grandfather, my father could have a VW Beetle motor removed, replaced and running again in about an hour. He also acquired a number of cars: a 1939 Pontiac, a 1955 Chevy, a 1963 Cadillac Convertible and many more. On the day I was born, my father drove my mother to the hospital through a foot of snow in his tow truck.

I, of course, only knew him after many of these mechanical escapades. But from the time I was a child, I knew my father knew how to handle himself around tools. The man could pretty much fix anything.

I remember one Sunday afternoon when I was around 10 years old that my mother had gone out shopping. My father was walking in our attic and slipped on a beam. My brother and I heard a racket of sorts and looked up at our dining room ceiling to see his leg dangling down through a newly made hole. My father had the ceiling patched, repaired and was vacuuming up debris by the time my mother returned later that afternoon.

During my late teens, my father was diagnosed with malignant melanoma or, as normal people call it, skin cancer. He had surgery to take care of it and was doing well – eventually going from three-month check ups to six-month check ups and so on.

Years later, after I returned home from my time in the military, my father went with me to help me purchase my first car. I took him from lot to lot on endless Saturday mornings looking for just the right car – no matter what the weather was.

When I got in driver’s seat of the 1987 Chevrolet Caprice Classic I eventually bought, I turned the key, but the car didn’t start. My father smiled and suggested that I pump the gas once or twice as the car was most likely carbureted instead of fuel injected (it was). 

Later that year, my father noticed that he just couldn’t shake a persistent cough. When he did go to get things checked out, the doctors discovered that cancer had again come back to his body. And this time around, it was spreading.

My father was quickly put on a course of chemotherapy and radiation. He went from having a strong, robust build to growing somewhat smaller and constantly weaker. Things really got bad in April 1999. That was the first time he went for an extended stay at the hospital.

As much as I hate to say it, I really don’t remember much about the time when he was really sick with a few limited exceptions. Two days before my father died, my mother called me from her vigil at the hospital. She had obviously been crying.

“The hospital says the only way your father can be brought home is if we have a ramp for his wheelchair,” she said over the phone, through choked up tears. “I need you to build something.”

Being the tinkerer that my father was, there were ample supplies to work with. In the sweltering, July summer heat, I cobbled together a very poor representation of what, if someone looked at it from the correct angle, one could discern was some sort of ramp over the steps leading to our front door. Sturdy? Yes. Up to code? Most definitely not.

I called my father’s hospital room to let my mother know that a ramp had been built. My father came home the next day.

As the ambulance pulled up, the EMTs surveyed my work. And then, being the type of kind, compassionate people who should be EMTs, they promptly swept aside my makeshift ramp and carried my father in his wheelchair up the small flight of steps to make it into our home.

Unable to breathe very well due to a tumor which had developed ever closer to his windpipe, my father slept sitting up in a reclining chair in our living room. The night was rough for him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes muttering random, dreamlike responses to unasked questions.

Early the next afternoon, the chaplain from the hospice arrived to administer last rites. My mother, brother and I surrounded my father in his chair and placed our hands on him, primarily because that’s what we felt like we should do at the time.

While my Dad wasn’t a religious man, he took his last breath and peacefully died while the chaplain was reciting The Lord’s Prayer. I’m not going to read too much into that. Why? Because I am my father’s son.

My father was capable of fixing many things during his nearly 51 years of life. Sadly, cancer was not to be one of them.

On the day my father passed away, I just happened to be wearing a Superman t-shirt. I only mention this because that moment was perhaps the most helpless that I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

Which brings us back to today. While I could spend time cursing the cancer which took my father from me and everyone else who populated his life, that would be doing a disservice to my Dad and his memory. Cancer simply marked the end of his life, it didn’t define the whole course of his existence. My task now is twofold: to use the lessons my father gave me and to pass those down to my unborn son. Oh, and also to never feel that helpless again (whether I’m wearing a Superman t-shirt or not).

- Scott Kaminski

Poke Me, Prod Me, Process Me

Early in the morning on August 22, 1994, I was scheduled to depart to join the Navy. In addition to my mother and father (my brother was still away doing his own stint in the military), three of my friends from high school – Ben, Mike and Sid – were at my house to see me off. To capture the moment, my mother and father had even borrowed a VHS video camera from a friend of the family (we could never afford such a luxury on our own).

At 5 a.m. that morning, my Navy recruiter Tom arrived to pick me up. My friends all wished me luck and told me I would be just fine. I suppose I looked like I needed that sort of encouragement at the time. In fact, the look on my face could probably be read simply as, “Oh my god, what did I actually get myself into here?”

My parents both hugged me and again re-assured me that I would be okay. I think my mother cried a bit at seeing her youngest son head off the join the Navy. Since I’m not 100% sure that she did, let’s just imagine she did and move on.

We set off to go to Penndel, PA first to pick up another recruit who was joining us. From there, we were going to drive to a recruit processing center in Baltimore, MD. There was one closer to my home right in Philadelphia, but I was sent here because I was, shall we say, a little on the chubby side. I guess the Baltimore office was a little more forgiving for someone with a diet and exercise plan as poor as mine. And besides, I was going to be doing a lot of push-ups and sit-ups in a day or two anyway, so what did it really matter?

Passing by Penndel’s Airplane Restaurant in the dark of the early morning, we picked up Eddie, the other recruit, and headed south to Baltimore.

It was at this Baltimore facility where I learned firsthand the term “hurry up and wait.” The processing center was really just a series of stations you were sent to in order for you to be checked out, checked in, poked, prodded, questioned and sent on your way to the next station. The hurry part was that you had to be at your next station as soon as they were ready for you. The wait part came because people obviously have different issues and speeds at which they work. Either way, it was going to be a long day.

One of the most embarrassing parts of the day for me was when the small group of recruits I was going from station to station were asked to strip down to our underwear (boxers for me… not a tighty whities fan) in order to measured for our individual height and weight. The military has a preset table of the minimum and maximum weight you should be for your given height. Having worked with the recruiters on this before, I knew that I did not fit within these guidelines – actually, I wasn’t even close. At 5’8” in height, the maximum weight the military expected me to be at the time was 176 lbs. It’s possible that I hadn’t weighed 176 lbs. since I was in the 6^th grade. At the time, I weighed 223 lbs.

The man at this station tasked with recording the height and weight of recruits worked fast and I was the last in the group to step on the scale. Recruits would hop on and off the scale quickly as he worked at an almost auctioneer-style pace, “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” Until he got to me: “Whoa! Fat boy!” Not fitting within the guidelines, he instead needed to measure my neck and waist to compute my body fat percentage. Having practiced this exercise with the recruiters (yes, that can be part of their job), I knew how to position my neck and suck in my gut for the best reading. I barely passed, but they would let me proceed.

From there, it was on to see the doctor. Most doctor visits are pretty standard. Everyone expects to get their blood pressure checked, have the doctor peer into your ears and then make you say “Ahhhhhh” when attacked with a wooden tongue depressor. This visit included two extra special checks. First, the doctor cupped my genitals and made me cough (always a good time). And then, made me lean over the table and spread my cheeks (not normally my expectation of a good time). Thankfully, this station was quick and relatively painless. To this day, I still wonder how he would have ever responded if someone asked him, “So, how was your day?”

The rest of the afternoon included lunch, more fun stations and a question and answer session with a Navy personnel specialist. “Do you squeak?” she asked me. “What?” I replied. “Do you squeak?” she repeated, as though it were the most normal question one person could ask another.

“What do you mean?” I asked quizzically. “Well, it’s just that every other recruit I’ve dealt with today has been in trouble with the law, had a drug problem, etc. You’re an Eagle Scout who doesn’t ever seem to have been in trouble. You’re clean,” she said. “Well, I guess I am. Or I just haven’t been caught yet.” “Good answer. And I recommend you don’t get caught. You can go off to wait for the bus now. You’re done.”

From there, I joined the other recruits to wait for the bus to take us to the Baltimore airport for our flight to Chicago and then on to boot camp. It felt odd to be traveling with no luggage. And, as I was soon to find out, a full head of hair.

- Scott Kaminski

* - All names have been changed.

So You Want to be a Sailor?

I had signed up to join to Navy during my junior year of high school. My father, ever the voice of reason, had given me an ultimatum of sorts: I was allowed to have the summer after I graduated high school off, but by that fall I had three choices. 

1) Start going to college full-time.
2) Be working full-time somewhere.
3) Join the military.

My grades in high school were decidedly average and I had honestly not even really looked into the prospect of higher learning opportunities. Also, my parents didn't have the means to support or help me in any way. At the time, college just didn't seem right for me.

Even though it wasn't the right time for college, it CERTAINLY wasn't time for me to up and join the workforce either. My mother had a high school education and my father had gone to automotive technical school but eventually opened his own janitorial business and then a janitorial supply company. I had no interest in joining the family business, or the civilian workplace right away.

While my father had never served in the military on account of a knee injury sustained during a Boy Scout camping trip, both of my grandfathers had served during World War II. And my only, older brother had signed up right out of high school and was close to finishing up his four year tour.

For me, the Navy held a tremendous amount of allure. Not only would I have the opportunity to honor my grandfathers and their service, but I could also travel the world on the government's dime, save a little money for college and hopefully make my family proud.

All I had do now was make it through the physical and mental screening processes and boot camp (you know, that place where they make you "drop and give them 20"). Little did I know what kind of fun was in store for me there.

- Scott Kaminski

Join the Navy, See the World...

I joined the U.S. Navy while I was still in high school. My brother had joined just three years before and, even though his tour had been pretty much a walk through the book of Revelations (the extreme cold of a Chicago winter, the Los Angeles riots and a Japanese tsunami), I decided to take my chances.

My mother drove me to our local Navy recruiter’s office. I spoke to them about what I wanted to do. Always having more than a passing interest in English and writing, I told the recruiters that I wanted to be a military journalist. They instead told me that I should become a nuclear propulsion technician because I would receive a sizable signing bonus. No matter what, I had to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery or ASVAB test in order to see what I might be qualified to do. Regardless of whether you're swabbing the decks or steering the ship, taking the ASVAB is the price of admission.

The ASVAB measures everything from mathematical knowledge to mechanical ability to code breaking aptitude and more. A recruiter picked me up from my house early in the morning on the appointed Saturday. He also had with him one other potential recruit. 

I had always done okay on standardized tests. I was never at the top of the class, but certainly not scraping the bottom of the barrel either. After finishing the test, I felt I had done my best. All three of us went back to the recruiter's office to discuss our individual results. 

The recruiter addressed the other potential recruit first, "Anthony, you've got to work on your math skills. The minimum score to make it into the Navy is 31 out of 100. You scored a 29." Apparently, Anthony had taken the ASVAB on multiple occasions only to fail each time, regardless of how much studying he had done. 

With that, he turned to me. "What do you want to do in the Navy? You scored an 82 which means any job is open to you." I again repeated that I wanted to be a military journalist. And they again pushed for me to become a nuclear propulsion technician. They said I could work on submarines, as if that was supposed to appeal to me. Again, I refused.

Next, if I agreed to join the Navy, they would take me to the recruit processing center on Cherry St. in Philadelphia to fill out some paperwork (with my parents’ approval, as I was still a minor at the time) and see if they had an opening available so I could become a military journalist. If a slot was available, I would have to pass a typing test.

Yet a different recruiter took me to Cherry St. on another Saturday. Since I was entering what they called the Delayed Enlistment Program (DEP), it was really just a bunch of paperwork to be filed out and to see if a journalism school slot was available. Of course, one wasn't available. 

Instead, they offered that I sign up under the Seaman Apprenticeship program. This would allow me to join the Navy and work on board ship, but in my free time I could work with the journalists on board and eventually petition to go to military journalism school or take a test to show that I had received enough on-the-job training to be recognized and work as a full-fledged military journalist. It wasn't ideal, but after talking with Bruce, the recruiter of the day, I decided to sign up and join the Navy anyway. I asked them to keep an eye out for a journalism slot, should one become available.

A few weeks later, A.J., one of the recruiters in the office called me with good news. He had taken a potential recruit to sign up and he had been offered a slot in journalism school. The potential recruit’s response, to quote A.J. was, "Journalism? Why the hell would I want to do that?" If I remember correctly, he opted for the nuclear propulsion program (and the signing bonus). A.J. asked if they could hold the slot open as he had someone interested in it – me. He told me to practice typing as the following Saturday I would need to type at least 20 words per minute to earn my spot.

By this time, it was summer between my junior and senior years of high school and I was accompanying my parents each day to hang out and help out with our family business. It was also the only place I knew that had a typewriter besides my grandparents' house. So I practiced typing as much as I could.

When it came time to take the test, we again went to Cherry St. A very nice woman, an Army sergeant, took me to a room with a computer, instructed me on how to proceed. Nervously, I put my fingers in the predetermined spots on the QWERTY keyboard, took a deep breath and started.

The test itself took me only 5-10 minutes to complete. Afterward, I opened the door to indicate that I was done. The nice Army sergeant came in to review my test results.

"Well, it looks like you managed to type 19.5 words per minute." I looked at her like someone had just murdered my puppy right in front of me. With that, her look softened. "Do you promise me that you'll practice typing over the summer?" I smiled, "Yes. Absolutely. I promise." She smiled back, "Okay then, you've got your spot." 

And with that, I was on my way to becoming a sailor...

- Scott Kaminski

* - All names have been changed.