Goodbye, Parris Island

There were times when a recruit would either need to talk to the drill instruc­tor or (worse) would be sum­moned to appear. Either way, the recruit would go to the DI’s office, stand out of the door­way and knock three times on the door frame.  In our bar­racks that frame had been pound­ed so many times that it was actu­al­ly indent­ed.  Occasionally, the response from inside the office would be “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”, at which point the recruit would be forced to deliv­er three addi­tion­al blows to the door frame, this time with more vig­or, result­ing in sore knuck­les and a door frame slight­ly more indent­ed than before.  If the sec­ond “knock” proved accept­able, the recruit would hear “CENTER THE HATCH!”, at which point he would take one step for­ward, per­form a sharp right-or-left-face and announce, SIR, PRIVATE SO-AND-SO REPORTING AS ORDERED, SIR!” 

Very few of us vol­un­tar­i­ly imposed on the DI in office.

It was mid-November when we left the island.  For the first time since arriv­ing at the island by bus we were being trans­port­ed some­where, rather than walk­ing or march­ing.  For the past twelve weeks we had walked to every des­ti­na­tion. We were in our “greens” and, as the bus was load­ing, our DIs were stand­ing by watch­ing.  I had to won­der what might be going through their minds at the moment.  Were they proud that they had suc­cess­ful­ly grad­u­at­ed anoth­er pla­toon of Marines?  Were they con­cerned that some of us would nev­er be good Marines?

I exit­ed the bus and walked up to LaCoursiere. “Sir, Private Witt requests to speak to the Drill Instructor, sir.”

“What is it, Witt?”  It was impos­si­ble to know what he might have been expect­ing.  His demeanor exhib­it­ed the same stern­ness that had man­i­fest­ed itself dur­ing the pre­vi­ous twelve weeks.

“Sir, thank you, sir.”

I don’t recall him say­ing any­thing.  Maybe he didn’t but I think we shook hands.  I did a brisk “about face” and re-board­ed the bus.  I’ve often won­dered what his thoughts were, a recruit thank­ing him for twelve weeks of harsh treatment.

I don’t remem­ber if we were ever paid while in boot camp.  Maybe we were.  There was cer­tain­ly noth­ing on which we could spend any mon­ey.  We had nev­er been allowed to go shop­ping for any­thing.  The only time we were ever allowed out on our own dur­ing all the weeks of boot camp was the last day before leav­ing when we were allowed on-base leave for a few hours.  Everything we had been ini­tial­ly issued had last­ed us the time we were there so we had no need to pur­chase any­thing.  We did have to pur­chase the “year­books” before leav­ing so we obvi­ous­ly had mon­ey to do so. Pay for a pri­vate in 1958 was $78 per month.  I recent­ly dis­cov­ered that a private’s pay in 1820 was $10 per month and was aston­ished that the pay rate had changed so lit­tle in 138 years!

Every pla­toon of recruits is sup­posed to serve one week of mess duty, ris­ing at 3:30 in the morn­ing and return­ing to bar­racks in late evening after all meals had been served and all kitchen equip­ment and areas had been metic­u­lous­ly cleaned.  Apparently, Platoon 195 was on a fast track since we did not have to serve that week. I believe we were all grate­ful for that.

One night, late in our train­ing cycle, the DI (I don’t remem­ber which one it was) had just turned off the squad bay lights and was prepar­ing to exit to his quar­ters.  He asked, “You peo­ple going to be pray­ing for me tonight?”

I nev­er knew who it was who respond­ed, “I’m pray­ing you get hit by a fuckin’ freight train!”

Since I heard the remark I’m sure the DI must have also.  He nev­er said a word, con­tin­ued his walk to his quar­ters and – I sus­pect – was chuck­ling to him­self, try­ing to keep from laugh­ing out loud.

I doubt that any of us on that bus to Geiger had any idea what to expect dur­ing the next three months of train­ing.  For some, escape from Parris Island may have been a god­send.  Since I had expe­ri­enced no par­tic­u­lar hard­ship dur­ing boot train­ing, this was just anoth­er tran­si­tion for me, anoth­er experience.

We had been for­tu­nate to be at Parris Island from September to November.  The weath­er was nev­er bad dur­ing that peri­od, nev­er too hot or rainy and nev­er too cold.  We would be issued our first field jack­ets and win­ter wear after reach­ing Geiger.  I don’t expect win­ters in South Carolina are ever real­ly hor­ri­ble, but train­ing there dur­ing June, July and August must be, at times, mis­er­able.  In fact, there was a sys­tem in place which lim­it­ed train­ing dur­ing peri­ods of high tem­per­a­tures and humid­i­ty.  All across the base were flag­poles on which were dis­played col­ored flags, green for nor­mal train­ing, yel­low for reduced lev­els to watch for heat exhaus­tion, and red which meant that no out­side extreme activ­i­ty could take place.  During my peri­od there, the red flag was nev­er raised.

Aside from the clothes we were wear­ing as we board­ed, every­thing else in our pos­ses­sion was encased in our seabags.