August 5, 1997 - Mount Suribachi

970805 - Yesterday was a very bad day. In the morning I worked in the target factory making targets and in the afternoon I shot. Right after shooting we came back tot he squad bay. I had done OK on the range. Not too bad for my first day. Apparently, though, no one else had because we were all crushed upon return to the squad bay. Then, later that night, I was quarterdecked for about 30 minutes and given 2 hours of firewatch. Needless to say, I was a bit discouraged. This morning, I worked in the factory and this afternoon I shot again. I did much better than last time (Mon=161, Today=229). Again though, the rest of the platoon (or about 1/2) did poorly, so when we came back to the squad bay there were racks, footlockers, Alice packs, and shoes and boots everywhere. Then while fixing the house, I was quarterdecked. It didn't really bother me today, though. Right now my spirits are pretty high. 24 days left...
The rifle range can be a stressful area. Many of the recruits are shooting for the first time in their lives, and even the experienced shooters are learning new positions, techniques, and practices. Because of the stress that's already present (along with the fact that the recruits are occasionally holding a loaded rifle), the DIs left the recruits alone, walking along the firing line and taking note of what one recruit or another was doing, but typically not saying anything.

Well, all of that pent up rage has to go somewhere and in our case, it was released as soon as we got to the squad bay. The previous day, it had been unleashed on all of us. Today, however, they took out their aggression on the entire room. There were whole racks completely overturned, boots and shoes were scattered all over the entire squad bay, and the footlockers and packs were all haphazardly piled up in the center of the squad bay, making a 6-foot-high mountain of rubble that they named Mount Suribachi, after the mountain atop which the famous photo of Marines was taken (and later immortalized as the Iwo Jima memorial; the island is named Iwo Jima). The process of putting everything back in order was made all the more difficult as recruits would regularly be pulled from that task, seemingly at random, and put onto the quarterdeck. It was not the best way to spend an afternoon.

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