My Favorite USMC Boot Camp Stories
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Imagine that I am the drill instructor in this photo ordering you to follow these instructions…
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Cameron W., like Theo, is the offspring of a soccer player I coached decades ago. I like her dad more than her mom now, too, even though he supports the NY Jets. Buy Cameron’s goodies here. She has a promo video on that page, too!
Galiana R. is the daughter of my buddy, a fellow USMC veteran. Buy Galiana’s goodies here. You can also watch her promo video! Also of note, Galiana was recently elected a Senior Patrol Leader and has begun working on her Eagle Project.
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Platoon 2067 won every event during the summer of 1988 at MCRD San Diego. Inspections, drill, PT, the rifle range. All of them. Collectively, we were the honor platoon. But, individually, we were a bunch of hilarious shitbirds who somehow all possessed a bloodthirsty and ruthless spirit to work as a unified body to defeat the other five platoons in 2nd Battalion’s Echo Company.
Our drill instructors even admitted to some of the parents that this was the best platoon they had ever graduated.
There is something funny about Marines: as recruits, they check off the days remaining in boot camp and think only of plans for the future. As veterans many years removed from serving, all they do is reminisce about the stories from the very boot camp from which they all longed to escape!
Here are a few of my best…
Recruits are allowed a few hours on Sunday mornings for free time during USMC boot camp which, usually, amounts to not a lot more than organizing foot lockers and preparing for the week of arduous training ahead. One great benefit for me, however, was that I could purchase the San Diego County edition of The Los Angeles Times at morning chow and spend this short respite reading it from front-to-back.
So starved for information was I that even the real estate and society pages were of interest. Also, my crossword puzzle addiction began with my first attempts to complete the one at the back of the magazine insert.
I do not think that the View section of the newspaper still exists, but in those days it contained all the goings-on for the upper crust elites in Los Angeles with resplendent photos of galas and fancy events. And, suffice it to say that I was more than confused one Sunday morning when I saw a photo from one of these soirees featuring Wayne Gretzky and his wife, Janet Jones, with a caption including the words “…new Los Angeles residents.”
This made no sense. The Edmonton Oilers had just won their fourth NHL title in five years and Wayne Gretzky was the greatest player on the planet. I had to find out what the hell was going on.
“Sir, recruit Cuddy requests permission to enter the duty hut to speak with Drill Instructor Sergeant Herrera, Sir!”
I screamed those words after slamming my open palm three times against the bulkhead outside the small office for drill instructors that existed in each squad bay at MCRD San Diego. That was the customary ritual for announcing one’s presence: three loud knocks and a request that always began and ended with an empathic “Sir!”
“Get in here, pig!” was Herrera’s response. (I call him Herrera now only because, despite the promise of all drill instructors that we would be ignored if we ever encountered them out in the fleet, we worked together for almost two years when I was stationed at Edson Range.)
Standing at attention, I blurted out this fateful question:
“Sir, this recruit wants to know what Wayne Gretzky is doing in Los Angeles, Sir.”
Herrera hesitated for a moment and shook his head. His words echo through my soul to this day.
“He got traded to the Kings, dummy. Get the fuck out of here.”
And that was that. I did a sharp about-face, walked back to my rack, sat on the floor with my back against my foot locker, and started to write a letter.
Interestingly enough, that was not the only amazing sports phenomenon of my summer at boot camp. On the night I entered MCRD and stood on the famed yellow footsteps after rushing off of the bus, Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds. And, on the day I graduated, Tom Browning of the Cincinnati Reds threw a perfect game in a 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But nothing, nothing, can ever compare to the news from Sergeant Herrera that the 99 was a member of the Kings!
Sergeant Herrera played a pivotal role in our platoon’s ascent of “Mount Motherfucker” at Camp Pendleton. This infamous rite of passage in boot camp is actually not that difficult of a hike were one to have had ample rest in advance, and not felt the constant pressure of drill instructors to “tighten up” our columns, and a lot more.
But this ascent is challenging for many and their resulting theatrics of agony and exhaustion do not go unnoticed.
Platoons in formation are arranged with the tallest recruits at the front descending to the shortest in the back. Inevitably, each platoon will soon know the demarkation point for the “big end” and the “small end” that results in a bit of a competitive game as the weeks roll along during boot camp. Guys with longer legs had longer strides and, no matter how much drill occurs on MCRD’s parade deck, marching out in the field will lead to a much-despised accordion effect.
Mount Motherfucker illuminates this to the ‘nth degree as the aforementioned shitbirds drop back. Still, most of us were highly motivated. We were trained to be there for our fellow recruits, so taking on some of their weight in the form of gear and rifles to relieve them was just part of the process. We were proud to do it as much as we were doing it to impress ourselves and others.
At some point during the hike, I ended up with two M16-A2 rifles in addition to my own. The guy next to me, a recruit named Lopez, also had a total of three. We slung two over our packs and carried our own at port arms. The added weight sucked, but it would have been worse if one of our platoon members dropped out of the assault. The entire platoon would have paid for it.
Herrera appeared next to me, suddenly, like a ninja in the heat, dust, and sweat.
“Why do you have three rifles, Cuddy?”
I said nothing. For the first time in my life, perhaps, I knew better.
What I did instead was to take my right hand and give Herrera the thumb motion, like a hithchiker, directing him to the unmistakable calamity behind me. And it was the first time in the entire evolution of USMC boot camp that Sergeant Herrera would ever lose his bearing in front of me.
He rolled his eyes in disgust and grimaced to connect with me. Herrera was human after all!
Our platoon made it to the top, the rifles were redistributed, and we went on our merry way. The efforts by a few of us pack mules were never mentioned again.
Our platoon had a recruit named Williams who had the blackest skin I had ever seen in my life. He was skinny and slight, with bulging eyes, and a remarkable accent: Williams was from Jamaica and his every word sounded like Laurence Olivier! A beauty, that one.
In our squad bay formations, he stood directly across from me and his sense of humor made it almost impossible to keep a straight face during evening inspections. One look at me, one little grin, and I would lose my shit. I really loved that kid. An absolute legend and treasure.
There are two stories about Williams.
On the night prior to an inspection, one of our drill instructors—Sergeant Deatrich—was using black spray paint to tidy up the black sling guides we used to adjust the slings that held our rifles. Each recruit would hold out his sling guide away from his body as Deatrich moved down the rows spraying a burst onto the metal.
I looked across at Williams and noticed he was chuckling. This time, however, I had no idea why so it was easy to keep from losing my bearing and drawing attention to myself. His eyes started watering and his skin looked, amazingly, red. Sergeant Deatrich soon took notice.
“Williams! Williams! What is so damn funny, recruit?”
Deatrich had placed himself about two inches from the face of Williams. The entire squad bay watched and listened intently.
“Well?” demanded Deatrich. “Well?”
“Sir, the drill instructor is getting paint on his trousers, Sir.”
Deatrich looked down to discover that one side of his green trousers was completely covered in black paint. Everyone lost it. Everyone. We were all standing at attention but our torsos were at 45-degree angles. Howling. There was nothing Deatrich could do at this point: it’s rare that a Marine Corps drill instructor ever gets embarrassed.
Williams made eye contact with me and spit flew out of my mouth. I was dying. Deatrich retreated to the duty hut and we did not see him until the next morning.
But the best Williams story also involves Herrera.
We were at Camp Pendleton doing the night infiltration course: crawling through narrow, muddy channels while navigating obstacles and avoiding the trip wires that could detect our locations by launching white phosphorus bursts into the dark sky above.
I was directly behind Williams. So close, in fact, that the top of my helmet often bumped into the bottom of his boots. A few of us became bunched up at a corner on the course and waited as those ahead moved forward to alleviate the crowding. You have to understand that we were all as low to the ground as possible to avoid detection, so our faces were basically pressed up against the mud.
There was some movement next to me: a body was trying to pass, but I did not think much of it. If this guy wanted to be a sardine, fine. Not a sound was heard. It was silent. Silent, that is, until a whisper from that passing “recruit” now situated next to Williams.
“That Sergeant Herrera sure is an asshole, isn’t he Williams?”
In his beautiful Jamaican voice, Williams responded.
“He sure is, mon.”
With that, instantaneously, the whisk of a flare was heard. I pressed myself even closer to the ground. One could sense that all recruits in the area had frozen in place as the signal burst and lit up the sky above us.
Williams was face-to-face with Sergeant Herrera!
“Oh, I’m an asshole, huh?”
Williams went silent and, again, I was dying to keep from laughing.
It was the greatest moment in boot camp, made more so by the fact that—on the following day at a company formation—Williams was directed to stand in front of six platoons (probably 300+ recruits) at attention and tell the story.
We all needed a moment of levity to release some of the pressures and stresses and this was it. Absolutely brilliant.
I do not know what happened to that kid, but I hope to cross his path again before I die.