June 29, 1997 - More About the Senior Drill Instructor

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 quarterdeck last night and again this morning. I'm feeling discouraged and extremely lonely. Even Chapel didn't lift my spirits much because I knew 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.

Yesterday, I told you about how we had to wrap our platoon guidon in boot bands. Well, it didn't take too long for that to be put to an end. Apparently, the next day some officer saw us marching with our guidon completely wrapped in boot bands and demanded that the Senior Drill Instructor remove them. And that's where the genius of the SDI really became apparent. Once the bands were removed, the guidon was free to blow in the wind as it was intended to do. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Have you ever traveled long distances and opened your suitcase only to find that your clothes had been held too tightly for too long and now had ridiculous creases in them? If so, then you might be able to imagine what our guidon looked like after the bands were removed. It was the most wrinkled, unrecognizable piece of fabric I have ever seen. And that's the genius of our SDI; he knew that he would eventually be told to remove the bands, but he also knew that, even after he had essentially been told to remove his punishment, the guidon would still reveal to all that we were a terrible platoon.

Here's something that I found out a few weeks later that made everything clearer: we were the first platoon that our SDI had as a Senior Drill Instructor. Prior to that, he had been a Drill Instructor. And not just a DI, he had been the heavy. And not just the heavy, he had been the most feared, maybe-sometimes-took-it-too-far heavy in the battalion. In fact, most of the other DIs and SDIs thought he would fail miserably as a Senior Drill Instructor.

Aside from the whole "boot band" incident, we really never saw our SDI acting like a typical Heavy. Well, most of us didn't. There was a time when two recruits decided to get into a fist fight. The SDI came storming out of the DI hut, grabbed the recruits, and took them outside. Several of us tried to see where he took them. We watched as they walked, very quickly, to the tree-line and disappeared. We didn't see the three of them for over an hour. When they came back, the SDI left immediately (it was long-past the time that he could have gone home since he wasn't on duty that night), and the recruits looked sweaty, exhausted, and extremely terrified and meek. No one was ever able to find out what had happened, but those recruits never fought each other or anyone else again.

When we eventually found out that everyone thought our SDI and his platoon would fail, it served as an incredible catalyst for our platoon. We worked harder than ever before, determined to show the battalion that our SDI was the best there was.

But, as I said, that revelation came weeks later. For now, we were the terrible platoon who had embarrassed him and his DIs (and undoubtedly confirmed what everyone else thought), so he made sure to punish us.

We made it through Sunday without any real incidents. In fact, despite the fact that the SDI was on duty, we didn't even let him find out that we were sharing a footlocker (we had been warned not to).

One more note for June 29 (but really for June 28): At the end of the day, as we were about to take our showers, the SDI stopped to talk to us:

SDI: I bet you're all wondering what happened in the Tyson-Holyfield fight, right?
Recruits: YES, SIR! (insert my own voice with much less volume as I had no idea what he was talking about)
SDI: Well, Tyson bit off a piece of Holyfield's ear, so he got disqualified. Let me tell you: that's a great technique, but it was used at the wrong time. If you're in a sanctioned fight, you follow the rules. But, if you ever find yourself in combat and you're able to bite something off of the enemy: do it. If your mouth is close to something, bite it off.