Marine training: Getting ‘geared up’

Our first des­ti­na­tion was the bar­ber shop where we would lose our civil­ian coif­fures.  Since I had sport­ed a flat­top all through my teen years, I was set to lose a good deal less hair than many of my com­pa­tri­ots, and unlike the time-con­sum­ing and care­ful hair­cuts we were accus­tomed to in civil­ian life, the shear­ing that evening took only a mat­ter of about thir­ty sec­onds as the razors were obvi­ous­ly set at their low­est set­ting and the bar­bers, who prob­a­bly sheared sheep in their every­day lives, moved the razors from one side of our heads, front to back, across the top and to the oppo­site side, leav­ing each of us as close to being ‘skin­heads’ as pos­si­ble with­out the use of a straight razor.

The entire bus­load of indi­vid­u­als was com­plet­ed in well less than half an hour, with two or three bar­bers work­ing their magic.

A good deal of the first days is a blur and the fol­low­ing descrip­tion of events may not occur exact­ly as they hap­pened, but they were there at some point.

Since we had arrived at night, we were tak­en to tem­po­rary bar­racks for the rest of the night.  I can’t recall when I had eat­en before arriv­ing, but we were not offered any­thing that night before being told to bed down.  With every­thing hap­pen­ing so quick­ly I doubt that any of us thought or cared much about eat­ing.  I know that I was asleep quickly.

The next morn­ing we were roust­ed very ear­ly by the shouts of Drill Instructors demand­ing that we ‘hit the deck’ and come to attention.

I stood, in my under­wear — from this point on to be referred to as “skivvies” — at the foot of the bed — from this point on to be referred to as a “rack” — at rigid attention.

Bad idea.

The next thing I remem­ber is awak­en­ing on the floor, halfway under my assigned rack, with a drill instruc­tor look­ing down on me and inquir­ing about my health.  With a bit of help I worked myself into an erect posi­tion, prob­a­bly only halfway at atten­tion with the whis­pered admo­ni­tion in my ear, “Don’t lock your knees!”  I nev­er did again.

We were shuf­fled off to morn­ing chow – take all you want, eat all you take – for a repast that would become famil­iar in the fol­low­ing months.  I don’t recall if we were offered chipped beef on toast (shit-on-a-shin­gle) that morn­ing or not, but it would be a sta­ple on many morn­ings to come.  And that meal would be the begin­ning of a dai­ly intake that would add fif­teen pounds to my frame in the next thir­teen weeks.

I had arrived at the island a six-foot-two-inch lad weigh­ing a slim 155 pounds.

Then it was off to receive our cloth­ing.  This would not be uni­forms in the strict sense of the word since our for­mal uni­forms of trop­i­cals and greens would not come until near the end of boot camp because so many of us would under­go dra­mat­ic phys­i­cal change in the next weeks.  Instead, we were giv­en skivvies (mil­i­tary-issued under­wear which con­sist­ed of white tee shirts and white box­er shorts which had fab­ric ties on each side to adjust the waist length to our chang­ing physiques.   We also received ‘util­i­ties’, the out­er work clothes which would car­ry us through every aspect of our train­ing, along with boots, ankle-height shoes called “boon­dock­ers,” olive-drab socks, and billed caps which could be fold­ed and placed in one’s back pock­et when not actu­al­ly being worn.

With the pos­si­ble excep­tion of our footwear and caps, here­after to be referred to as ‘cov­ers’, every­thing seemed to come in two sizes, too small and too large.  And so we were also pro­vid­ed with sewing kits to make the nec­es­sary adjust­ments.  Imagine a room full of guys, most of whom had nev­er wield­ed a nee­dle and thread, try­ing to make minute adjust­ments in the length of their trousers!

We also received, along with our work cloth­ing, numer­ous oth­er items to car­ry us through boot train­ing includ­ing shav­ing gear which con­sist­ed of a dou­ble-edged safe­ty razor and a cup with soap for lath­er, bar soap, wash cloths, tow­els, a three-gal­lon buck­et with scrub brush.  The buck­et would serve mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es such as aid­ing in wash­ing our cloth­ing and scrub­bing the bar­racks floors.

The wash racks shown here are con­struct­ed of con­crete.  They have a cold water line run­ning down the mid­dle with spig­ots on both sides.  On spec­i­fied wash days we would wash all soiled skivvies and util­i­ties and hang them to dry on clothes lines behind the bar­racks.  One of our num­ber was assigned to watch over the items to deter any shenani­gans from oth­er pla­toons.  The South Carolina sun dried every­thing in quick time.

We also were giv­en what is gen­er­al­ly known as a duf­fle bag.  In the Marine Corps and Navy, this is a “sea bag” and is used to car­ry EVERYTHING we own from one duty sta­tion to the next.

And, with all our gear in hand, we were marched – still not quite an accu­rate descrip­tion of our unco­or­di­nat­ed shuf­fling – to the bar­racks that would be ours until time to move to the rifle range in a few weeks.