August 29, 1997 - Graduation!

970829 - Graduation!! I don't remember or care what happened 2-day. I'm going home and I never have to see this place as a recruit again!

Graduation day begins with a Company formation PT run. It's easily the most motivating run in all of boot camp. Well, it is if you're not stupid enough to volunteer to be a road-guide. My whole "volunteer for everything" mentality finally came back to bite me on the last day of boot camp. Instead of spending the morning on an incredibly motivating formation run through Parris Island, chanting all of the most motivating and possibly not-allowed cadences, I spent it sprinting from intersection to intersection and then jogging in place while the company ran by. It was a not-spectular end to my not-spectacular time in boot camp.

After that, my journal actually captures everything pretty well: it ended, I was glad for the end, I was too tired to reflect on anything.

I'm actually in a similar mind-set now, having just spent the last 13 weeks reflecting on my experience in boot camp, but I'll try to sum up my thoughts on the experience...

When I got back from boot camp, I went and saw my recruiter. He just sat back and said, "Man, you really made it...you made it through boot camp..."

I tried not to feel insulted.

It wasn't too difficult, though, because the only person more surprised than him was me. I never thought I could actually make it as a Marine. I fact, 20 years later, I still don't get how I slipped through.

When people ask me how I made it through boot camp, I say that I loved it, and I mean it. I had 13 weeks in which I didn't have to make a single decision. I didn't have to wonder what I would wear, what I would eat, when I would poop. All of my decisions were made for me. For some people, this sounds like a nightmare. For me, it was a summer of freedom. Freedom from myself; freedom from the expectations of others (meaning ideas of college, success, etc. I obviously had expectations, but they were immediate and not theoretical); freedom from choice.

My 6 years in the Marines were pretty unspectacular. I went to Supply School (for my M.O.S. of Supply Admin Clerk) the following year. I managed to graduate top of my class because, unlike the rest of my platoon, I spent 10 minutes studying the night before the final test. I was also named "Marine of the Quarter" in my unit because of that, though they never bothered to tell me that and I found out 3 years later when reading the plaque on the wall (that's right, they put my name on a freaking plaque and didn't bother to tell me).

Near the end of my contract, in 2003, the Iraq war was getting started. Because we were an entire company of Supply Marines, we were pretty unnecessary to the war cause. In light of that, our Commanding Officer volunteered us to be retrained in a new MOS: Mortuary Affairs. That's as great as it sounds. It was our job to retrieve and process for shipment home all human remains.

Because we had been given this new, and legitimately important job (I know that I'm often sarcastic in this blog, but I want to make it clear that I genuinely believe that this is an extremely important job), we were slated to ship out immediately. Unfortunately, because my Supply unit was bad at all the things, I had never gone to Marine Combat Training, a school I should have seen 5 years before. Therefore, I couldn't go with my unit. Instead, I waited in DC (where my Unit was stationed), until I could go to MCT. By the time I got through MCT, my unit was already in Iraq but I couldn't join them due to "logistical issues."

My grandfather fought in World War II as an enlisted Army soldier and then as an officer. My father fought in the Vietnam War as a combat engineer. Both of them are named Warren Bailey. Both went to war in their first year of marriage. Had I been able to actually go to war, as the rest of my unit did, I would have been the third Warren Bailey to go to war in their first year of marriage. Many have said that they are glad that legacy ended. I am not.

I spent 13 weeks in boot camp becoming a different person. That person was made to serve. I am still that person, but I feel as though I was robbed of my opportunity to serve my country. I know that some will say that I did serve just by being in the Marines. To those, I say, you're incorrect. You aren't actually serving if you're never actually able to do the thing for which you've trained. Some others will say that I am serving the country by being a productive citizen and raising a family. That's harder to disagree with, but I can still find a way. I need look no further than the other two Warren Baileys to see men who did far more than I in serving both in combat and raising families.

When I decided to take on this "twenty years later" project, I was just excited to re-read my journal. I hadn't read it since I wrote it and thought the experience would be fun. Instead, I'm afraid it's been a little bit of a let-down. I still treasure the memories I had there, but I often feel as though I have wasted the training, or perhaps the better way to put it is that the training was wasted on me.

Despite all of that, there are some lessons from boot camp that I treasure to this day:

• It's important to understand your environment. You can find a compliment anywhere.
• Submission to authority is essential; especially when you disagree (that's why it's called submission, and not agreement).
• You can do nearly anything so long as you believe that you can (which is why I was able to complete a marathon without training several years later; never mind the fact that I was beat by a guy with no legs and a guy who jumped rope the whole time; at least I finished).
• Human B.O. can make a person throw up.
• God can sustain you through literally anything.
• Sometimes words and insults are meaningless.
• You can do one more push up.
• Once you stop thinking you're better than someone, you can actually meet incredible people.

I would never take back going to boot camp. I would do it again in a heartbeat (though, preferably a younger person's heartbeat). I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I would surely recommend it for a wimpy, too-smart-but-not-confident-enough, youngest, unchallenged, unathletic-but-maybe-able-to-make-it guy like I was.