Series: Marine training

It was a balmy ear­ly-September evening when we await­ed the train at the South Broadway sta­tion in Lexington for the first leg of our trip to the renown – infa­mous, in the minds of some – Parris Island for the begin­ning of our Marine Corps training.

While this was the start of what I expect­ed to be a great adven­ture for me, it wasn’t until many years lat­er that I learned that my moth­er cried all the way home after tear­less­ly wav­ing me off that evening. She and my sis­ter had dri­ven me to Lexington and Don Adams, J.T. Votaw, and I were anx­ious­ly antic­i­pat­ing our depar­ture, prob­a­bly each of us with dif­fer­ent thoughts about what was in store for us.  We had all enlist­ed into the 61^st Rifle Company of the United States Marine Corps Reserve and had been await­ing this time for our basic train­ing to begin.

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. 

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.

The bar­racks for Platoon 195, First Battalion, Recruit Training Regiment was a two-storey wood-framed and wood-clad, H‑shaped build­ing locat­ed adja­cent to a vast bitu­mi­nous-paved parade field with which we would become inti­mate­ly familiar.

The cen­ter por­tion of the “H” housed the offices for the train­ing staff and, on the back side, the toi­lets, here­after to be referred to as “the head.”  Each leg of the “H” housed the pla­toon sleep­ing spaces which we came to call the “squad bay” despite the fact that it was hous­ing a pla­toon. There was one pla­toon on each floor and four pla­toons per build­ing. 195 was housed on the sec­ond floor.  Each pla­toon con­sist­ed of approx­i­mate­ly 80 indi­vid­u­als and the racks were posi­tioned along each side of the bay, dou­ble-stacked, with an aisle about three feet wide between each dou­ble rack, with the cen­ter sec­tion of the squad bay about 10 feet clear run­ning from the front to the back of the building.

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.

Women Marines are also trained at Parris Island.  They were suf­fi­cient­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the males under­go­ing train­ing that we nev­er, to my rec­ol­lec­tion, saw any of them except per­haps at Sunday reli­gious ser­vices.  I don’t remem­ber being in a posi­tion to even talk with a woman Marine recruit until our last full day on the Island when we were allowed on-base lib­er­ty and we found our­selves in the “slop chute,” basi­cal­ly what some would call the can­teen, where we could get some­thing to eat that didn’t smack of mess hall food, can­dy (pogey bait, of which we were allowed none dur­ing train­ing) and soft drinks.

After morn­ing chow, we were usu­al­ly marched back to the bar­racks to change into PT uni­forms.  These were issued to us at the same time as our oth­er ini­tial issue and con­sist­ed of a yel­low, short-sleeved tee shirt with red pip­ing at the neck and sleeves, and red gym shorts with yel­low pip­ing down each side.  We also had can­vas sneak­ers which were only worn dur­ing PT periods.

I should note here that the offi­cial col­ors of the Marine Corps are scar­let and gold, but yel­low and red were as close as could be accom­plished with clothing.

PT took place in a large grassy field and con­sist­ed of side-strad­dle hops (jump­ing jacks), pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, squat thrusts and some team-ori­ent­ed exer­cis­es (tug-of-war, 440-yard runs).

It’s quite strange how each day, filled with vir­tu­al­ly the same rou­tine — ear­ly ris­ing, clean­ing bar­racks, break­fast, PT, class­es, march­ing — could still pro­vide new and unex­pect­ed occur­rences that all work in con­cert to make the days a blur.

Close-order drill was a part of every day that we were on the Island.  Column right, march.  By the right flank, march.  To the rear, march.  Right shoul­der, arms.  Left shoul­der, arms.

When “pla­toon, halt!” was called, it was actu­al­ly pos­si­ble (after sev­er­al weeks of accu­mu­lat­ing skills) to see the entire pla­toon come to a stop and lean slight­ly for­ward to a full-upright posi­tion as a sin­gle unit, like three rows of domi­nos com­ing to attention.

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!

After weeks of con­stant drilling, con­stant clean­ing, con­stant class­es, con­stant PT, and con­stant harass­ment from our D.I.s, it was time for the rifle range.

There was prob­a­bly not a sin­gle mem­ber of our pla­toon who had not looked for­ward to our time at the rifle range.  After all, we had been tot­ing our M‑1s around con­stant­ly dur­ing all of our time there, learn­ing how to dis­man­tle it, clean it, nour­ish it.  Now it was time to find out what this tout­ed weapon was capa­ble of.

We would be at the rifle range for three weeks, a large seg­ment of our train­ing — and an exam­ple of the impor­tance that the Marine Corps places on marksmanship.

After com­ple­tion of train­ing at the rifle range, we marched back to the First Battalion area and to new bar­racks. They were iden­ti­cal to the ones we had left three weeks ear­li­er, but bor­dered the same drill field, and we were ser­viced from the same mess hall.

We were exposed to one last vis­it to the “bar­ber” and shorn once again.

We also were tak­en for pho­tographs.  These were required for the Platoon 195 year­book.  We were required to pur­chase this book and I expect that vir­tu­al­ly all of us from that time have remained glad that we did so, to pro­vide refresh­ers of our time there.

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!” 

Our train­ing at Geiger was divid­ed into two phas­es (some­thing I nev­er under­stood), with ITR being the first and AIT (Advanced Infantry Training) com­ing after. I can’t remem­ber exact­ly when the tran­si­tion took place, although it was prob­a­bly after our return from Christmas break.

We had arrived at Geiger before Thanksgiving and were fet­ed there with Thanksgiving fare, a day off train­ing and all the typ­i­cal Thanksgiving goodies.

We were also issued “long johns” and field jack­ets since our remain­ing train­ing would be tak­ing place dur­ing win­ter and North Carolina is more tem­per­ate than South Carolina.

The tran­si­tion from ITR to AIT is fog­gy to me now but I think it must have hap­pened after we had returned from Christmas leave, which amount­ed to about ten days.  I’m not sure why I didn’t head home with Don and J.T. but I found myself alone on the train car­ry­ing me back to Kentucky for the hol­i­day.  The train made one stop, in Ashland, where I had a short lay­over before the final leg to Winchester.

As we con­tin­ued train­ing five days a week, week­ends free with pass­es and leisure times spent at the slop chute or off base at the USO, more spe­cial­ized train­ing took place.  We were exposed to map read­ing uti­liz­ing the com­pass, even at night.  Escape and eva­sion.  Ambush.

One of the last weapons we expe­ri­enced was the flame throw­er, a very nasty weapon, both for the recip­i­ent of its out­put and poten­tial­ly for the oper­a­tor as well.  Those oper­at­ing flame throw­ers in com­bat are known to have very short lives because an ene­my will always try to keep them from get­ting close enough to use it.