"Ol' School Navy Boot Camp"

I couldn’t tell you my motives exactly to why I joined the Navy out of High School. I have several assertions as to why, though I’m sure it’s a combination of several reasons. For one my High School Sweetheart, Nancy, was marrying a guy who had just joined the Nuke Program .. I guess I had something to prove! Two, I had always been enamored with the idea of the sailor with a girl at every port and all those movies of carousing, boozing and philandering the world over. Who wouldn’t love an incessant party? That’s what I was all about in those days! But ultimately I just knew I was destined to join the military no matter what.

When I first decided to join the Navy I was in the Delayed Entry Program for about 11 months. My recruiter was a Schlep Rock Boatswains Mate who only contacted me on two separate occasions. It’s a wonder I was able to stay afloat. Just prior to leaving for boot camp I had recently indulged myself into another serious relationship that was prematurely dabbling with the idea of marriage. What the hell was I thinking? Anyway, not to get off track, there is nothing more erotically exciting than trying to quietly have sex with your girlfriend under the blankets with parents in the room. This would explain my night at the MEPS hotel prior to leaving to Boot Camp .. WOW, that was fun!!

..Moving right along…

I remember thinking during my first days in Navy Boot Camp at Great Lakes that I made an awful & dreadful mistake. How could have I possibly be looking forward to this shit? That punk ass Navy recruiter with his car salesman contentions that somehow enlisted my gullible ass in the Navy convinced me my post-adolescent amateur ideas would somehow be matured by the wisdom of a drill instructing ol’ salt who couldn’t speak a single phrase without a four letter word of ill repute. This I affirm was used with no shame at the dinner table and various other settings with a perplexed eye on my first leave home.

A hot and muggy season off the coast of Lake Michigan is enough to make most men lament in distress. “Don’t lock your knees when standing at attention!” I learned this lesson well as so many recruits fell to the asphalt “grinder” that was covered with bird shit and spit! Always drilling with my M-1 “piece” we had the worst f@#%king Company in RTC. For those of you not familiar with the Navy, those who get held back in boot camp are ASMO’D. I still don’t have a clue what the hell that stands for but you didn’t want to spend another two or three weeks at RTC getting yelled at and treated like your less than dog shit. When I graduated boot camp about two thirds of my company was made of retread, ASMO’D from other companies. That was about the jest of it all. In comparison, I think today’s boot camp does a pretty good job of breaking a recruit down and rebuilding them, but I was still pretty clueless when it was all said and done no thanks to my recruiter who’s best advice was to sit in the back and keep your mouth shut as to not draw any attention. That’s no way to train a future leader for damn sure.

In the beginning I learned quickly what it means to hurry up and wait with rows of young men standing in line checked by medical corpsman we called “Pecker Checkers” before being shipped off to stand in the next line. There’s nothing like standing around in your underwear going from station to station smelling like mothballs and oblivious to what the hell you were doing. First you checked in from the airport at 0100 hours only to catch enough sleep to confuse your senses and leave you in a state of bewilderment. From there it was a blur of try this on try that on, shave, shit, & shower and learn how to fold your crap into a shelf the size of a high school gym locker. The dungaree pants were the ugliest set of bellbottoms with a chambray shirt that had your last name stenciled across the right breast pocket to fittingly make you look like you were in prison.

Next was the infamous chow hall where we were marched and lined up to eat the best food the military has to offer. I refused to eat much as I had been warned of the fabled 'Salt Peeter.' I thought to myself...

“If that crap is laced into anything it’s the Chipped beef in white gravy!”

...which was a favorite entrée. I later learned this was not the case, but who could blame my ass for being so naïve.

When my P-days (“P” for processing) were over we learned to march and exercise in an unrelenting fashion carrying a WWII type M-1 rifle everywhere we went. This absolutely sucked. My arms probably grew an extra inch around from eight long weeks of this abuse and for that I can say I was thankful. There was plenty of screaming, cursing and intimidation for all to go around on how to relearn everything you’ve ever been taught growing up from making your rack to how to tie your shoes. I was slowly brainwashed through intense pain! Did I say intense? Intensive Training was the phrase used to dish out punishment we received to squeeze out our Attention Deficit Disorder that we all seemed to show up to boot camp with!

I specifically remember an instance when I pissed off my Company-Commander (CC) as they were called back then for giggling under my breath for what I don’t even remember...

"What’s so fucking funny numb nuts?”

For my lack of obedience the whole company had to recite while at attention...

“My name is Richard Cranium but you can call me Dick Head Sir!!”

Then slide under each of fifty racks and pop back at attention and recite it again until we had rotated all the way around the room. This was so adoringly given the name submarine races!! We did this many times for lacking attention to detail when it came to 'Irish Pennants' or the classic 'Inspected by #69' found in the pockets of our Pcoats. I thought Navy Boot Camp was going to be easy, but this was my wake up call.

Another endearing memory was the 'Dear John Board.' Stationed right outside the CC’s office was a bulletin board where we could all put a picture of Suzie Rotten Crotch and Dear John Letters!! Oh my, was this fun!! There was nothing modest about the 'Dear John Board' if you catch my drift! The problem being, we were only allowed to look at the board five minutes before 'Taps Lights Out.' If we were caught 'skylarking' at the board then for good measure we were taught another lesson at team work and forced to do submarine races again! The main difference in this case was that while we were so charmingly embracing our moment of atonement, our CC would explain to us the meaning of Love!

"Love, recruits, is a feeling that starts out in the back of your brain, travels down your spinal cord, and out through the head of your dick. Love is five to six inches deep. There is nothing as overrated as a piece of ass and there is nothing as underrated as a good shit."

…If you haven’t figured it out by now consequences were always a plenty.

The endearing names of bonehead and numb nuts will forever live in our minds. I quickly learned what it meant to keep my dick skinners to myself and how to deliver at least a thousand four letter words and dirty little phrases. Unfortunately today’s Navy does not have room for this kind of discipline. Too PC” for a Sailor like me!!


“Lord forgive me fore I am a Sailor!” A-men!!!