You see, I did not go through the boot camp as characterized in the movie Full Metal Jacket.
The boot camp the US Navy provided was a series of schools to produce a
healthier, more compliant resource that would serve the interests of
the Navy and who will not die the first week they were placed in a duty
situation. As you begin this process, the crutches of the past, your 'self', your individualism, the control of your time for eating and sleeping, bathroom needs, the choices you made about clothes, hairstyles, jewelry, even eyeglasses, are all removed. You are left with nothing to worry about except conforming and complying.
At
the start of it all was uniformity. I'm sure you've all seen the movies
of the head shaving, the issuing of clothing and bedding, medical and
dental testing, all of that. There was no concern about what to wear and
no one had to worry about combing their hair in the morning and
shampooing was irrelevant. Naturally, some of us had to go above and
beyond by shaving our heads right down to the skin. For those who had
fairly long hair, there's some awfully white skin under there. Some
people were made temporarily blind by the reflected light. There were several rounds of inoculations, but there were no needles, the fluids were pneumatically blasted into our arms (or rear ends) with air guns, it was all very efficient. Some guys had to see the dentist quite a bit. I was FINE because I had just had all my own work done on my own dime. It's called 'timing' people, look it up.
So, after the 'induction' process was over, we were assigned to our units. Bob Deeter and I had joined together, but we were told there was no guarantee where we would end up. After all this, we were both made part of Company 555. We were the first company to use a brand new building in the new section of the Recruit Training Command. We were on the ground floor right where that red arrow is pointing.
As you can see, this was a large facility. Each of those buildings held twelve companies and there were a lot of buildings. They had to have an efficient process to get us in and get us out.
I
don't have an actual photo of what the interior of the barracks looked
like, but this is a pretty good approximation. Rows of two level bunk
beds with lockers in the center dividing the room. The bathroom, shower
room, laundry room and drying room were all at one end, the rest of it
was just one big open room. One of the first creation steps of the new company was the assignment of leadership roles within the recruit population. There were regular naval personnel assigned to us, but this was a hierarchy within the recruits themselves. There wasn't any discussion of who would do which role and no one revealed what the selection process was. It was simply announced that Bob was Company Commander and I was First Platoon Leader. And that concluded our training. Company 555 consisted of perhaps 80 or 90 men and I was suddenly responsible for half of them. I can't recall if Bob and I ever discussed the odds of the two people who knew each other ending up in the top two positions in the company, but there it was.
Someone
along the line secreted in a Polaroid camera, and I'm very glad he did
since this is the only photo I have of the uniforms we wore as recruits.
So here is Bob Deeter on the right and me on the left in front of the
World War II-era rifles we carried everywhere. Notice that on our right
shoulders we are displaying our recruit rank, Bob with four stripes and
me with three.
The
Navy did produce a Company 555 'Yearbook' for us with actual photos,
but that was lost a long time ago. Perhaps they sent someone in the dark
of night to steal it because it had such sensitive information.
Or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment