June 28, 1997 - Initial Drill

970629 - Friday was 100 degrees. That's all that happened Fri. Sat we lost initial drill. Our DIs have been extra cruel lately for it. I had to empty my foot locker into B_______'s (my new bunkmate). As did everyone else. Now there's one foot locker per bunk. I was on the quartereck last night and again this morning. I'm feeling discouraged and extremely lonely. Even Chapel didn't lift my spirits much because I know I had to come back here. I'm looking forward to when the DIs will let up a little (if that ever happens). 61 days left.

Close Order Drill (or just "Drill" as I refer to it in my journal) is the practice of marching in formation, performing various commands (turns, stops, marches in place) given by a commanding officer. If memory serves, Close Order Drill has three main functions: 1: to facilitate quick, orderly troop movement; 2: to build a sense of unity within the unit; and 3: to bolster the commanding officer's sense of command over the unit. When the unit performs Drill properly, all three of those are accomplished. It's a unique experience and quite a sight. Equally unique, however, is when the platoon fails to perform well at all. That's where the fine young men of platoon 1068 come in.

The platoon had been working on Drill since the first day we were put into our permanent platoons. Even before our first training day, we had been out on the parade deck learning how to form up, how to stand, how to march, how to turn, how to carry our rifles, you name it, we practiced it. And practiced it. And screwed it up, went to the pit, then practiced it some more. All of this training was for the purpose of preparing the platoon for Initial Drill, the first real competition between the platoons, and the first real assessment of the platoon and, by association, of the Drill Instructors. After all, if we were marching well, the Drill Instructors must have trained us well, and vice versa. Or, as Vidal Sassoon would put it (and what Marine doesn't quote Vidal Sassoon regularly?): "If we don't look good, you don't look good."

In the days leading up to Initial Drill, we prepped our "inspection cammies" (uniforms that we never wore, except for drill competitions or inspections), shined our boots and belts, and practiced drill. And practiced more drill. And still more drill.

All of the platoons were given the same list of commands to execute for initial drill. I think we had these a few days in advance of the competition so we could prepare. Unfortunately, the day before, it was determined that it would be too hot to have initial drill outside on the parade deck (Well, well. I guess the fact that it was 100 degrees wasn't the only thing that happened on Friday after all.). Therefore, we were given a completely different set of commands to learn and perform for the following day. So Friday afternoon, we moved all of our racks and foot lockers to one side of the squad bay and practiced marching. All. Day.

Finally, the time came for Initial Drill. I was in the first squad and toward the front of the platoon, so I was never really certain what was happening in the rest of the platoon while we were marching (they would be behind me whether we were marching or facing the Drill Instructor). I thought I had done OK, but found out quickly that the platoon as a whole had not.

The fun term used by the Drill Instructors is that we "boogered" it. It basically means that we performed the worst out of the whole series. That term sounds so fun, and really doesn't come close to capturing the rage the Senior Drill Instructor and Drill Instructors felt about our performance. Their punishments to us, however, made it crystal clear.

The first thing we did once we were back in the squad bay (and had locked our rifles back up to our racks), was to take off our blouses (our camouflage shirts). I thought this meant we were changing out of our nice uniforms so they would stay nice. Nope. We were given the command that usually came immediately before we got into our racks at night:

DI: Prepare to scrub the deck!
Recruits: look around confusedly. We aren't holding our scrub brushes; we're holding our nicely pressed, worn-once blouses.
DI: I SAID, PREPARE TO SCRUB THE DECK!
Recruits: Prepare to scrub the deck, Aye SIR!
DI: Ready, Move!
Recruits: Head to walls behind racks, stopping to grab scrub brushes.
DI: WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT GETTING YOUR BRUSHES?!? PUT THEM BACK!!
Recruits:  Put brushes back; head to wall holding blouses.
DI: Ready, Scrub!
Recruits: Sweep squad bay floor, using our nicely pressed, worn-once blouses as scrub brushes.

After that, we were instructed to stomp on our boots. You didn't mis-read that. We were not told to stomp our boots, but rather to stomp on them, destroying the polish work that we had spent hours and hours on.

The day progressed in pretty much that manner until after evening chow, when the Senior Drill Instructor, and DIs Sgt. H__ and SGT. V__________ left for the evening, and we were left with only DI Sgt. M______ in charge. Oh, did I mention that he had been the DI calling out the commands during our Initial Drill competition earlier that day? Did I mention the Vidal Sassoon quote? Yeah, he was a real charmer that night.

This evening was the night that I really got to see and appreciate just how great Sgt. M______ was at being the "heavy." He wasn't just mean or cruel for no reason; he had a real gift.

We had the fun of being told to move all of our belongings into one footlocker per two recruits. The thing is, those footlockers were tight with the items for one recruit, so we had to prioritize and jam whatever didn't fit into our seabags on the back of the racks. Then we had to pray like crazy that he wouldn't randomly tell us to get something out of our footlockers that was actually in our seabags. But, of course, that's exactly what he did. We were just finishing getting everything squared away when he commanded us to get on line (If I haven't mentioned this yet, there were two parallel black lines that ran the length of the squad bay in front of the footlockers with about a 8-10 foot space between them. This is where we stood when we were "on line."). Then he told us all to get out 6 pairs of white socks, and started counting. Now, we only wore white socks when we were doing PT and today was Saturday so we wouldn't have PT for at least two days. Naturally, I had put all of my white socks in my seabag, as had several other recruits. Very few of us got back by zero with 6 pairs of socks. Those who failed went to the quarterdeck. Once we were done, he found some other, arbitrary object for us to display. Those who couldn't do that went to the quarterdeck. And that was my night.

Oh, and one more thing. Remember how we had won the pugil sticks competition and got to carry the series guidon? Well, of course we had lost the series guidon, but our Senior Drill Instructor didn't think that was punishment enough. So he had each recruit give him a boot blousing band (In the Marines, instead of tucking our trousers into our boots, we wrap elastic or spring bands around our ankles and tuck the cuffs of our trousers into them.). He then took the guidon, rolled it up, and proceeded to wrap the blousing bands around it, one for each recruit. Because, as he put it, if we couldn't learn to march as one unit, we could at least learn to be a disgrace as one unit.