Swimming — and tear gas!

Another part of train­ing con­sist­ed of swim­ming.  It may be a bit odd to con­sid­er that some young men of our age had nev­er learned to swim.  Their tri­al would be more dif­fi­cult than for the rest of us.

There is a large indoor pool on the base where our swim­ming instruc­tion took place.  We were required to jump from a three-meter board and swim a des­ig­nat­ed dis­tance, noth­ing real­ly too dif­fi­cult, at least for swimmers.

In our pla­toon there was one only Black recruit, J.E. Clowers. He was a small indi­vid­ual and imme­di­ate­ly earned the nick­name – by the D.I.s – of “Sambo.” Imagine doing that today!

Clowers couldn’t swim.  Try as he might, and even with instruc­tion, he just couldn’t mas­ter the tech­nique.   He could make some head­way, but it con­sist­ed of a good deal of flail­ing.  Once, while required to swim the length of the pool, he couldn’t make it and tried turn­ing to the side of the pool.  Swimming instruc­tors were there to help.  Right!  When he reached for the prof­fered hook which he expect­ed would pull him from the water, he found him­self being pushed under with it, to be pulled out in short order, sput­ter­ing and spewing.

At the final part of this train­ing, we were required to jump from the plat­form and swim a des­ig­nat­ed dis­tance, wear­ing our util­i­ties and boots. It becomes a bit more dif­fi­cult under those con­di­tions, but we learned that the first thing to do when going over­board is to get rid of boots. One can also make a flota­tion device from a pair of trousers by tying the legs and fling­ing them over­head to gath­er air.  Not an exer­cise I would want to depend on for any length of time.

A cou­ple of days were devot­ed to the “con­fi­dence course.” The course is a series of obsta­cles and includ­ed a wall made of hor­i­zon­tal logs spaced about two feet apart, about twen­ty feet high. One was to climb up one side of the logs, cross over at the top and come down the oppo­site side.

Another was a sol­id wall about ten feet high which required recruits to work with one anoth­er to get every­one over.

There was a tow­er of plat­forms spaced about sev­en feet apart which had to be climbed and descend­ed over the edges. Another obsta­cle required us to run at a sus­pend­ed rope, grab it and swing over a water-filled basin to the oppo­site side. 

Just beyond that was a rope climb.  We would climb the rope to a plat­form above to which anoth­er rope was slant­ed down across a water-filled basin.  We would grab the upper rope, loop our legs over it and work our way down the slope.  The most dif­fi­cult part seemed to be to keep one’s legs crossed over the rope.  One recruit, strug­gling, was ordered to come to atten­tion.  That meant releas­ing his legs, hang­ing by his hands until plac­ing them by his sides, at which time he plum­met­ed into the water below.

All-in-all it was great fun, even though some end­ed up wet or mud­dy.  On the sec­ond day, we were required to com­plete the course in a spec­i­fied amount of time.  I had no trou­ble with it at all, sur­pris­ing for some­one who nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in any high school sports.

Then came the day when we would be exposed to tear gas. Tear gas! I don’t think any­one oth­er than police forces were using tear gas at that time. Certainly, the use of chem­i­cal agents dur­ing war­fare had been dras­ti­cal­ly cur­tailed by inter­na­tion­al agreement.

We marched to a small build­ing, one with­out any open­ings oth­er than a sin­gle door.  The entire pla­toon could not be accom­mo­dat­ed at one time, so we entered in groups of about twen­ty.  Once inside instruc­tors explained what we could expect from expo­sure to the gas, cough­ing, dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, extreme tear­ing.  We were giv­en stan­dard issue gas masks and shown how to prop­er­ly don them.  Once every­one had a mask in place, can­is­ters of the gas were ignit­ed.  We breathed, some­what ten­u­ous­ly.  But the masks were doing their job!

“Masks off!” 

Almost as one we removed the masks and all began to imme­di­ate­ly to feel the effects of the gas, cough­ing, gag­ging, tearing.

“Alright.  Now let’s sing the Marine Corps Hymn.”

With as much brava­do as we could muster, we burst into a very poor ver­sion of “our song.”

As the final words emerged from aching throats the door was flung open, and we rushed to fresh air.  There was some retch­ing amongst us and all of us dou­bled over gasp­ing for air.

In a very few min­utes the effects had dis­ap­peared, and we await­ed the rush from the build­ing of our remain­ing pla­toon mem­bers, mim­ic­k­ing our ear­li­er behavior.