June 24, 1997 - Getting Out Early

970624 - Last night I had firewatch in RAD 1. It's the place people who are going home go before going home. It was easy. This morning we had PT. It was 2 laps of the circuit course and then a 2 mile run. Hard, but once I was done, I felt great. After that we learned about another Medal of Honor winner and took a practice [for a] test we have on training day 20. Then we ate chow. I think that before chow we did some drill. After chow, we had a class on First Aid IV and History V. Then chow. After chow we were in a parade for the new regimental commander. Then we came back home, showered, ironed our inspection cammies and went to bed. I'm tired but not real sore. I'm doing fine. 66 days left.
No matter how difficult boot camp got for me, I never wanted to quit. There were times that I hated being there. There were times that I hated my Drill Instructors. There were times that, as they got in my face and screamed at me, I had a constant loop of the chorus from Korn's song "Good God" running through my head (Click here to hear it. Warning: very explicit language. If you do follow the link, listen at least up to 2:28 to really experience it as it was playing in my head). But no matter how discouraged I got, I was never so down that I considered quitting.

This is not the case for everyone. Many recruits had moments where they had had enough. They had been pushed to the breaking point and then pushed a little further. So they decided to quit. The thing is, it's not exactly that easy. Usually, the Drill Instructors were pretty tuned in to those recruits who were starting to lose all drive, and they would, in their own way, encourage the recruits to push on. Sometimes this took the form of the Senior Drill Instructor pulling the recruit aside and having an actual conversation with him. Sometimes one of the Drill Instructors would even have a one-on-one conversation. Then other times, the DI would see that the recruit needed to just be pushed yet a little more until he got so pissed off at the DI that the recruit would start sounding off extra loudly, doing his push-ups in the pit more violently, as a final act of defiance. But then, later, the recruit would realize he had made it through, and he was still alive.

But there are still some recruits who find ways to quit. I really don't know how they managed it, but a few found ways, without illness or injury, to get out. They always seemed to think they would be able to get off the island immediately. They were sorely mistaken. The Marines always do things with a sense of urgency; always, that is, with the exception of processing unsuccessful recruits back home from boot camp. A few days before we graduated boot camp, I remember seeing a recruit who had been in our platoon until training day one. He had been there for three months, waiting to go home. He would have gotten home sooner if he had just gone through the actual training.

Unfortunately, it was also possible to have to go home due to a career-ending injury. I was fortunate to avoid any real injury in boot camp, let alone one that would have caused me to be unable to stay in the military. Others were not so fortunate.

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