Forty-one years ago at about 2300, I arrived at Parris Island. The bus pulled up at the main gate and a Drill Instructor got on. Ignored all of us and chatted with the bus driver. Then he turned and in a gravelly, venomous voice only heard on the Depot welcomed us to the Island with, "You are now on Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris island, South Carolina! You are now subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You will sit straight up, lock your scuzzy eyeballs to the front and shut the f--k up!" We did just exactly that except for the kid that sobbed softly somewhere.
The bus pulled up to a white two-story wooden "temporary" World War II barracks on a street with odd overhead steam pipes. The DI turned to us and ordered us to get all our stuff in our hands and walk off the bus. Once our feet hit the pavement, that was the last walking I did on PI.
Receiving Barracks had around 100 painted yellow footprints on the pavement perfectly spaced and aligned to form a group of know-nothings into a platoon-shaped mass. The DI yelled, "Who's got the orders?" "I do, sir!" was my response ending my first military mission. What followed was a three-minute tirade at maximum volume delivered with the brim of a perfectly brushed Stetson service hat (yes it IS a hat, read the tag!) bouncing off the bridge of my nose correcting my use of the personal pronoun "I" and helping me to avoid future use of the word "you". This lesson was proven to be invaluable within ten minutes when while in line for a haircut, I learned that the carefully practiced position of attention I'd learned in ROTC at the Academy of Richmond County was horribly defective is several particulars. DI's, I learned, love to mix questions in rapid-fire with instructions. Each interrogatory required a precise formulaic reply. One such exchange endlessly repeated was, "Are you eyeballing me, maggot!" The only approved tribal answer was "Sir, No Sir!". What followed was a litany of how good it was that I did not like looking at other men as that would have made me a homosexual and unworthy of recruit training. Or that the sergeant already had detected my latent tendencies and was vastly disappointed that I did not find him particularly attractive. Recruits never had the right answer.
The rest of the night and morning was a blur of paperwork and stowing our civvies. The one humorous moment was that I was third in line for my first haircut. The barber, a civilian not thrilled with being a barber at midnight, selected a black guy with an huge Afro from back in the line and while the line was slowly building up, started chiseling on the 'Fro from front-to-back while the DI looked on with a knowing smile. Piece-by-piece the barber, a thin black man, peeled the Afro off that fellow in one perfectly formed wig-like chunk. Then he handed the thing to the recruit who was ordered to stand there like a cigar-store Indian holding his pride in front of him while the rest of us were peeled in less than thirty seconds each. The purpose of taking his time while peeling the 'Fro was just to get the line charged up enough so that the barber's hythm was right.
Later, when they put us unto our racks (beds) for what amounted to 2-hours of sleep, I laughed silently at the spectacle as I did for the next 23 years in my beloved Corps.
The bus pulled up to a white two-story wooden "temporary" World War II barracks on a street with odd overhead steam pipes. The DI turned to us and ordered us to get all our stuff in our hands and walk off the bus. Once our feet hit the pavement, that was the last walking I did on PI.
Receiving Barracks had around 100 painted yellow footprints on the pavement perfectly spaced and aligned to form a group of know-nothings into a platoon-shaped mass. The DI yelled, "Who's got the orders?" "I do, sir!" was my response ending my first military mission. What followed was a three-minute tirade at maximum volume delivered with the brim of a perfectly brushed Stetson service hat (yes it IS a hat, read the tag!) bouncing off the bridge of my nose correcting my use of the personal pronoun "I" and helping me to avoid future use of the word "you". This lesson was proven to be invaluable within ten minutes when while in line for a haircut, I learned that the carefully practiced position of attention I'd learned in ROTC at the Academy of Richmond County was horribly defective is several particulars. DI's, I learned, love to mix questions in rapid-fire with instructions. Each interrogatory required a precise formulaic reply. One such exchange endlessly repeated was, "Are you eyeballing me, maggot!" The only approved tribal answer was "Sir, No Sir!". What followed was a litany of how good it was that I did not like looking at other men as that would have made me a homosexual and unworthy of recruit training. Or that the sergeant already had detected my latent tendencies and was vastly disappointed that I did not find him particularly attractive. Recruits never had the right answer.
The rest of the night and morning was a blur of paperwork and stowing our civvies. The one humorous moment was that I was third in line for my first haircut. The barber, a civilian not thrilled with being a barber at midnight, selected a black guy with an huge Afro from back in the line and while the line was slowly building up, started chiseling on the 'Fro from front-to-back while the DI looked on with a knowing smile. Piece-by-piece the barber, a thin black man, peeled the Afro off that fellow in one perfectly formed wig-like chunk. Then he handed the thing to the recruit who was ordered to stand there like a cigar-store Indian holding his pride in front of him while the rest of us were peeled in less than thirty seconds each. The purpose of taking his time while peeling the 'Fro was just to get the line charged up enough so that the barber's hythm was right.
Later, when they put us unto our racks (beds) for what amounted to 2-hours of sleep, I laughed silently at the spectacle as I did for the next 23 years in my beloved Corps.
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