Marine training: Morning routine

LaCoursiere drove a blue two-toned Oldsmobile and on the morn­ings when he had not been quar­tered with us overnight in the bar­racks; a look­out was post­ed to alert us when he had arrived.  Since he was the D.I. most like­ly to mete out pun­ish­ment for the most minor offens­es, we were always more attuned to things when he was around.  The D.I.s rotat­ed night duty, when one of them would be sleep­ing in their office. In the twelve weeks of basic train­ing, there was nev­er a sin­gle day when at least one of the D.I.s was not around.  On most days, all three were present through­out the day.

Sergeant Temple was the best of the three.  He was even tem­pered, stern but fair and he exud­ed an atti­tude of real­ly want­i­ng to get a recruit through training.

Tracy was the youngest of the three and it’s pos­si­ble that pla­toon 195 was his first assign­ment as a drill instruc­tor.  Being tru­ly junior, it seemed that he was learn­ing almost as much as we were.

Given a short peri­od to stash all our gear, LaCoursiere entered the squad bay to demon­strate the prop­er way to make a rack, hos­pi­tal tucks at the cor­ners, with the top sheet fold­ed back into the blan­ket and both mak­ing a twelve inch white strip near the top with the pil­low neat­ly laid at the head.

There is an old per­cep­tion that a quar­ter could be dropped on a prop­er­ly made rack and bounce.  This is an urban leg­end.  Mattresses were so well used that almost all of them sport­ed val­leys down the mid­dle and mak­ing the sheet and blan­ket over them result­ed in a taut­ly drawn blan­ket over a vacant space.  As such, a coin will not bounce, but the appear­ance of the well-made rack is the same nevertheless.

After the demon­stra­tion and a short peri­od dur­ing which we all were expect­ed to have fol­lowed direc­tions to the let­ter, LaCoursiere returned and began his inspec­tion of everyone’s endeavors.

Those whose racks were not accept­able would find their mat­tress, sheets and blan­kets lying on the bar­racks floor with the demand, “Do it again!” prob­a­bly fol­lowed by every­one doing pushups until he thought the les­son was suf­fi­cient­ly instilled.

“Do you call that a prop­er­ly made rack, Idiot?” was the ques­tion posed by LaCoursiere as he stood in front of a hap­less recruit.

“I thought it was made as you instruct­ed, sir!”

“Ewe!? Ewe!? Do I look like a f**king sheep to you, shithead?”

“Sir, no sir!”

“You may f**k sheep where you come from, mag­got, but not in my pla­toon!  You understand?”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Get down and give me fifty!” He moved on to the next rack.

There would be many days ahead when eighty guys would be doing pushups to atone for the trans­gres­sions of one indi­vid­ual but a les­son learned almost imme­di­ate­ly was that two guys work­ing togeth­er could have two racks made up a lot quick­er than each work­ing by him­self on his own.

I doubt we real­ized it at the time, but this was our first les­son in cama­raderie, a les­son that would go with us the rest of our time there . . . and beyond.

Each day began with the same rit­u­al.  Reveille at 0500 (that’s five a.m. to all you civil­ians) although we were not awak­ened by the sound of a bugle, but by the squad bay lights being turned on and the duty D.I. shout­ing “Everybody up!” at the top of his voice.  Even from the first day there was no tar­di­ness of indi­vid­u­als stand­ing at atten­tion at the foot of their racks await­ing orders to hit the heads to shave and then to com­mence sweep­ing and dust­ing all areas of the bar­racks before being mus­tered out­side to be marched to the mess hall for breakfast.

“You will shave every day from the tops of your ears to your col­lar!”  I hard­ly grew any facial hair at all but was always lined up each morn­ing shav­ing what lit­tle fuzz I had. Anyone caught lat­er who was assumed to have not shaved might be ordered to dry shave.

My rack was adja­cent to the doors lead­ing into the squad bay where the D.I. entered each morn­ing and in very short order I became so attuned to the rou­tine that I could hear him com­ing down the hall and be out of my rack before he had even entered.

The mess hall was a one-storey wood-clad build­ing rough­ly match­ing the appear­ance of the bar­racks.  Inside, it stretched to the right and left with tables and bench­es fill­ing the eat­ing area.  Entry to the build­ing was in the mid­dle of its long side, two sep­a­rate doors adja­cent to each other. 

The pla­toon was lined up two abreast, with each line enter­ing one door.  The right-hand line would walk across the depth of the hall to the mess line which extend­ed to each side, the meal selec­tions matched on either side.  We would pick up a stain­less steel tray with depressed sec­tions for the var­i­ous parts of the meal and move along the mess line, extend­ing the tray for­ward if we want­ed what was being offered, hold­ing it close if declin­ing. Once eight of us had moved along the serv­ing line and gone to a table, we stood at the table at atten­tion until all eight had arrived at which time one mem­ber would utter “Seats” and we would sit simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.  Open dis­cus­sions at the table were taboo although we often held soto-voice com­men­tary when the D.I. was not nearby.

Meals sel­dom took more than ten or fif­teen min­utes after which we would leave indi­vid­u­al­ly to exit the build­ing through a door at the end, scrap­ing uneat­en – of which there was sel­dom any – food into a large met­al garbage can near the exit.

Once out­side we formed into our stan­dard pla­toon for­ma­tion of three ranks, assum­ing the same posi­tion every time.  Shortly after the pla­toon began form­ing out­side, the D.I. would appear to keep us in order until the entire pla­toon had assem­bled.  On some occa­sions, lat­er on, the “smok­ing lamp was lit” for a few short min­utes for those who smoked.  I can’t recall where the cig­a­rettes came from, but it seemed that any­one who smoked had access to them.  Later, in advanced train­ing at our next base, when we were almost con­stant­ly in the field and meals con­sist­ed of C rations, cig­a­rettes were a part of the C ration pack­age, a small pack of five.  Non-smok­ers usu­al­ly gave their cig­a­rette ration to some­one who smoked.