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I got off on the wrong foot with my Tac officer at Air Force ROTC 30 day summer camp at Edwards AFB in the summer of 1967, after my junior year in college. He rode me constantly for the first 25 days of camp, at which point I no longer gave a crap. I had to walk a half hour tour on the parade ground on Saturdays for every demerit he gave me during the week, and on the third Saturday I must have broken the camp record with 23 demerits and nonstop 11-1/2 hours of walking the grounds.
A vivid memory is the latrine, which had no doors on the toilet stalls. The cadets would routinely wake up 20 minutes before we had to get up to put a final spit shine on their shoes. The only light in the barracks was in the latrine so they would crowd the latrine, sitting on all the available floorspace, shining their shoes. I recall one guy who was sitting right between my legs while I was taking a dump, merrily shining his shoes and chatting with me.
I remember just a few of the activities. Running a mile in less than 7 minutes. Jumping off a diving board into a pool, and having a parachute drop on top of you, so you could pull the parachute over your head and out of the way. Walking through a dark shed with tear gas and having to put on your mask and feel your way out. Sitting in a spinning chair to see how many G-forces you could take without passing out.
During one demonstration I volunteered to enter the nuclear warhead storage site wearing a padded suit and allowing two small Dobermans to attack and try to disembowel me. One of them bit right through the inch of padding and left a hole in my butt cheek. The dog handler patched me up and showed me a caged black German Shepherd who was scheduled to be destroyed. He told me to put my hand near the cage and the dog licked it. He had to be destroyed because they couldn't train him to be a killer, and having gone through killer training they couldn't let him off the base because of the potential liability if he hurt someone.
On graduation day, a half hour before the graduation ceremony, my Tac officer presented me with an ultimatum. I had requested assignment upon commission to any of three jobs, Weather, Computers, or Intelligence. The major informed me they needed pilots, so if I signed a commitment to extend my tour to six years instead of four and go to flight school upon college graduation, I would pass summer camp. If I didn't sign the papers on his desk, I would be washed out. He told me "flight school will knock the cockiness out of you". I had no desire to be a combat pilot so I refused to sign. As the blue angels flew over the field and the cadets threw their hats in the air, I was just feeling "Oh SH**
After the ceremony and getting our stuff, my only friend at camp offered to give me a ride to the Greyhound station in San Francisco. When we got to SF the summer of love was in full swing and we did a slow drive through Haight Ashbury. A totally different world than the Air Force base for sure.
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
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Methinks the OP is trolling us. I don't for a minute believe that part about Ziuatanejo...
But I do remember my arrival at Sand Hill on Ft. Benning. We ran the guantlet of screaming DI's getting off the bus, got our duffels and eventually went to our barraks which were large 3 or 4 story buildings with covered training areas underneath. They were brand new and ultra modern, in 1980. Probably are dumps now. The unlucky folks got sent to stay in old WWII Quonset Huts at Harmony Church (I think that was the name).
So we got our bedding and went to our new barraks. Everyone was standing around waiting for the DI to tell us what to do, so I made my bed. My dad had taught me to make a tight military bed with hospital corners long before.
So everyone was standing around, and I was standing around, with MY bed MADE! Our DI came in, saw what I'd done. He stood there looking at my perfect bed, his face turning several shades of purple.
"WHO MADE THIS @#$%&! BUNK?" He yelled! I nearly wet my pants. Been in the army 6 hrs and I was already in big trouble!
I owned up to the crime.
"DO YOU SEE WHAT HE DID?" He asked the others. "It's called iniciative."
Pointing at me he said, "You are now Squad Leader. Get this rabble organized and teach them how to make a bunk!"
I had the greatest time in basic. It was about as close to "Stripes" as it could get in real life. Our DI got married in the middle of our cycle and went on leave for 3 weeks leaving us with a "drill corporal" in charge.
Methinks the OP is trolling us. I don't for a minute believe that part about Ziuatanejo...
Unless I'm mistaken the OP gave us two totally different stories about how and why he joined the Navy. In the first (Post #1) he was tricked into signing up by the recruiter, and put on a bus 30 minutes later. In the second (Post #23) he agreed to join for someone else for a Rolex and weekly payments of $20 a week, and used that person's SS number to enlist.
I don't have a lot of boot camp memories except that it began the first week of June 1968 at the old Amarillo Air Base.
Thinking back though, I do remember Bennett my assigned roommate in basic from IL (maybe Chicago?). He and I were assigned in one of the two-bunk rooms in the old WWII barracks they put us in. Now I had grown up up in a small town in deep east central Texas where I had never even attended school with a black person and probably had not even had a short discussion with one. Suddenly the AF placed me in a tiny barracks room with the largest and the blackest fellow they could have found on this planet. Bennett no doubt recognized my social naivety but we still hit it off very well. Bennett was the first to teach me how to be cynical about the world and people and it has served me well.
A Sgt. Clough was my Training Instructor in basic (T.I.). The only thing I can say about him was that he would have made a great place kicker for the NFL. Every morning before dawn Clough could kick that heavy metal trash can from one end of the hall to the other end and make it bounce off every door.
I tried to stay hidden throughout most basic because it was the ones who were first and last who got picked on the most. However, Clough discovered me during the last few weeks at Amarillo. I seemed to always be placed at the rear end of a marching formation so it was always difficult for me to hear the marching instructions given from the front. Whenever the command "halt" was given, I seemed always to be on the wrong foot. Clough noticed this once as we marched by him, and as we came to a halt, I heard a "crunch", "crunch", "crunch" as the Sgt. slowly walked up behind me in the gravel. The next thing I knew I was on my knees as he whacked me on the back of the head with his clipboard. It was odd but after that I had no problems halting on the correct foot.
So much water under that old bridge but thanks for making me remember.
Never quite got the relevance of pugil sticks in modern day warfare. Do they still do that kind of thing in the current recruit training programs.
I am pretty sure the US Marines still do. It reminds me of Senator James Webb's novel set in the Naval Academy where a main character in a side story loosely based on the Senator losing his last boxing match to a character loosely based on Lt Colonel Oliver North explains that the academies kept boxing because many of the young gentleman had never been in a fight before potentially heading to lead troops in combat.
When I was in junior high we still got some wrestling back in my day and I had some judo matches but only one actual fight before joining the Army. I am betting that that Midshipman-Marine -SECNAV would vote to continue some sort of controlled fighting even with what we now know about concussions.
1. We used to pull guard duty and I was once posted at the ASP gate (along with another girl). I was supposed to be the static guard,but there was little bit of an issue.
It must have been around 2300 when the "incident" happened. I was stretching out my legs to shake them out and I looked down and there it was - a snake. Please bear in mind that I am from Hawaii and we just don't have snakes.
I screamed and I swear that the snake also screamed then we both turned around and quickly got away from each other.
2. Most of the female plt had problems with push-ups. We were yelled at over and over to make certain that our chests touched the ground. We were pretty sick of that mantra and one morning the other plts just stared at us when we came down for PT formation.
Every single female "stuffed their bras with tons of toilet paper & socks, so overnight we all looked as if we had a boob job.
We had no problem touching our chests to the ground as we got dropped over and over. It was totally worth it!
3. I had a birthday while in AIT. A Drill Sgt. told me owed him 10 to the wind. I said "Yes Drill Sgt! Is the Drill Sgt aware that Private Antonio (not real name) is also having a birthday?"
Private Antonio was swearing while he did his 10 to thewind, but I couldn't stop laughing and so was the Drill Sgt was also laughing and he said that "Hey - I like your style".
We need some new stories in this thread. Whatcha got?
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