June 12, 1997 - Meet Your Tormentors, I mean, Drill Instructors

 970612 - Before I forget to write this down: Senior Drill Instructor SSgt. B____; DIs Sgt. H__, Sgt. M______, Sgt. V__________. Platoon 1068, Company C, Battalion 1. Now, today we did PT. It consisted of a 1.5-mile run, a circuit course run + pull-ups (3) + sit-ups (40). The circuit course consists of 12 different exercises: 1, dips; 2, leg lifts; 3, inverted crunches; 4 + 5, 2 different types of push-up; 6, pull-ups; 7, twists; 8, military press; 9, stepping; 10, back extensions; 11, curls; 12, something else... This afternoon we did drill and went to a class on History I and Interior Guard II. I'll now write what I think of the DIs and SDI. The SDI SSgt. B____ is a very nice guy; if you're disciplined. He seems to really care about his recruits. DI Sgt. H__ is also nice. He was on the silent drill team so, naturally, he instructs everyone on drill. He only gets angry when people don't try on drill. DI Sgt. V__________ is nice as well. He sometimes gives instruction on History and things of that sort. DI Sgt. M______ is another story altogether. He puts on this tough "DI" front and is sometimes a real Jerk! I realize it's good for us to be disciplined, but it's not necessary for one person to have to go to the pit 3-4 times a day. Anyway, he's in charge of us tonight and he thought it would be a neat trick to make us empty our foot lockers into our seabags and then rearrange them in our spare time! I have to go now, but I'm sore, tired, but still having a good time. Got first letter from home today; found out that the reason they've not come is that Mom is in Maine and Dad is in Canada. Gotta go. 64 days left.

In my years in the Marine Corps, as fellow Marines and I would share boot camp stories, it became clear to me that all platoons have Drill Instructors who fill specific roles.

First, there's the Senior Drill Instructor. Essentially, he's the "good cop" in the platoon. He will discipline you, and at times terrify you. He'll even single you out if needed and punish you, but when he does, you always know why. And more importantly, you know that he is ultimately responsible for your well-being, so you know (even though you may at times not believe) that he will do what he can to make you succeed. Senior Drill Instructor SSgt. B____ was an excellent example of this. I never questioned whether or not he had the best interests of the platoon in mind. He demonstrated time and again that he genuinely cared about our success. Sometimes, this meant telling the Drill Instructors to let us move out of our seabags and back into our footlockers; sometimes, it meant taking the entire platoon to the pit because, if we couldn't learn to march as one unit, we could sure as hell learn to sweat as one unit. A few weeks before the end of boot camp, I found out that this was our SDI's first platoon, and that, prior to this cycle, he had been the "heavy" (see below). In fact, he had been such a notorious heavy that no one thought he could possibly transition to being a Senior Drill Instructor. I remember being furious at the other DIs and SDIs (not to mention the officers, gunnery sergeants, first sergeants, etc.) for selling him short. I had come to revere (and, yes, fear) this man as the pinnacle of what it means to be a Marine. That anyone else would think he shouldn't be in this role was beyond me.

Our platoon had 3 Drill Instructors, as did all of the platoons in our Company. I think this is standard, but I'm not certain. Anyway, of our 3, the first, in completely arbitrary order, was DI Sgt. H__. As stated in the journal entry, he was responsible for drill. If you haven't ever seen the Silent Drill Team of the Marine Corps, stop reading this and click here (skip to 0:51 to see the drill team). Better yet, go to the sunset parade at the Marine Barracks in Washington DC and watch it in person. It's pretty incredible. It's also, however, a pretty small unit. And I'm pretty sure that every Marine I've met had a DI who claimed to have been on the Silent Drill Team. All of this is to say that, while I think DI Sgt. H__ was a great DI and definitely knew a lot about drill, I am a bit skeptical as to whether or not he was actually on the Silent Drill Team. Regardless, that was his assigned domain. Because of that, while he would certainly jump in and train us in other areas as needed, he focused mostly on drill.

The next DI was Sgt. V__________. His assigned area was "knowledge." He was the main DI focused on getting our platoon to pass Mid-Cycle and Final Testing. These were the two academic tests that we took at boot camp. To pass, we had to achieve a score of 80% or higher. Like Sgt. H__ and drill, Sgt. V__________ was primarily focused on knowledge, though he was happy to punish us for any other misstep as well.

The best thing about Sgt. V__________ though, is his name. It's actually a little ironic that I have chosen not to type anyone's actual name on this blog, because DI Sgt. V__________ would be thrilled about that. If you couldn't tell from the relative length of his name, it wasn't exactly easy to pronounce. There were some double Ls that were pronounced like Ys and other complicated things in there (well, complicated for terrified recruits, that is). In order to do away with the constant butchering of his name, DI Sgt. V__________ told the platoon only to refer to him as "The Drill Instructor." Well, as you might imagine, this was not the elegant solution he had imagined. This is an interaction that happened regularly:

Other DI (not DI Sgt. V__________): Who told you do do it this way, recruit?!?
Recruit: The Drill Instructor, sir.
Other DI: I'm the Drill Instructor. I didn't tell you anything about this.
Recruit: No, sir. THE Drill Instructor.
Other DI: I'm THE Drill Instructor who's talking to you right now, and I didn't tell you to do this!!
Recruit: No, sir. Drill Instructor Sgt. Vill.....
DI Sgt. V__________: (storms out of DI hut) I KNOW I TOLD YOU NOT TO TRY TO SAY MY NAME!!! GET ON MY QUARTERDECK RIGHT NOW RECRUIT!!!

For the record, of course the other DIs knew about DI Sgt. V__________'s policy, and of course they used it to create scenes like the one depicted above. Most of being a DI, it seemed, was about finding ways to entertain yourself at the expense of the recruits (which is part of the reason that I always dreamed of being a DI).

And last, but absolutely not least, we come to the final role in the S/DI lineup. In fact, sometimes this person is referred to only as "the fourth hat," in reference to the campaign cover that is so symbolic of Drill Instructors. I prefer to refer to them as "The Heavy." The Heavy is not responsible for drill, though he can help with that. The Heavy is not responsible for knowledge, though he'll pitch in there too if needed. The Heavy is primarily responsible for one thing: being an ass hole (I can use that word here because, unlike my journal, I know my DIs aren't reading this). It was his job to find any and no reason to "kill" you in the pit or on the quarterdeck. I distinctly remember a time that we were practicing drill and Sgt. M______ walked up alongside me, grabbed my hand, looked at it, and the looked at me (all while I'm marching, mind you) and said, "Oh, good to go, Bailey...you'll pay." As soon as we got back to the squad bay, I spent a good five minutes staring at my hand. My nails are trimmed and clean...my fingers were curled as they should have been while marching...pay for WHAT?!? But it didn't matter that I didn't know the reason. Sure enough, later that day, I went to the pit because DI Sgt. M______ had decided I owed him. More likely, he had determined that I could use some more PT, or some more chaos, or both, so he decided to screw with me.

It was pretty much The Heavy's sole job to be the most hated DI in the platoon; to be the ultimate "Bad Cop." In this task, Sgt. M______ excelled.