Ramirez laughed “Neither of us would know about how hard it is to be a genius. We’re Marines. I agree with your plan. We’ve got one more to go. Wait until I tell my wife this one.”
The next day they met the Sargent Instructor. Gunnery Sargent Lawrence addressed them. “Gentleman, we are here to see if you have what it takes to lead Marines. If we don’t think you have it, you will fail. Now you’re all from NROTC units all over the country. This is just a six week course, so everything is going to be condensed. What that means is that some of the academic items have been taken care of at your units. All the rest will be part of the curriculum. This just means that you’ll have to do the same work in less time. Congratulations.”
That brought a nervous laugh from the assembled candidates. Then they were introduced to the sergeants that would be their primary instructors for the next six weeks. This wasn’t like the boot camp depicted in ‘Full Metal Jacket’. The barracks were nicer, and the sergeants didn’t yell quite as often.
Then it was PFT. This was test that included pushups, crunches, pullups and a three mile run. Mike was in good shape, so he was able to pass easily. He did the three mile run in just over 18 minutes and missed a perfect score on that by 1 point. With very good results on the other three tests he passed easily.
The first conditioning hike was a four mile one with an eighty pound pack. Mike had broken in his boots prior to showing up at OCS and had plenty of hiking experience. Plus wearing the weight vest had definitely helped. The big thing was the terrain. The hills were no fun. Mike thought, note to self, do hills in boots prior to going to the basic course.
Mike thought that the ‘confidence course’ as it was called, was misnamed. The course consisted of long runs over numerous obstacles, climbing ropes and other activities. Then getting a pack and having to crawl through mud, under barbed wire. Sometimes you had to take the pack off to get though and then put it back on. At other times you had to not only take the pack off but go under the muddy water. The final thing was to move through deeper water which sort of cleaned you off.
The ropes course, which they called the Tarzan course was a bit tougher. He found that it intimidated him a bit at first, but then he got into it and by the end was actually enjoying himself. A lot of activities were done in Boots and Utes. He and a lot of the other candidates found that running in boots was more difficult than normal running. Mike promised himself that he would start doing more of that when he got back to campus. The ankle weights helped but it was still different.
During the second week Mike got the job as Squad Leader. He took over from his buddy Phil Forde. Phil filled Mike in on the duties and let him know that he’d just lost another hour to two hours sleep a night. Mike chuckled. He made sure to talk to the other guys who had been squad leader and find out what they did that worked and didn’t work. For the three days as Squad Leader, he did the best that he could. At the end he turned it over to the next guy who took it and gave him as good a turnover as he could. Mike knew that this was the big leadership test. If he screwed it up badly, the next thing he would get a platoon leader slot or something higher where they could monitor him more closely. He waited and when he didn’t wind up with that job, he had a mental sigh of relief.
Land Navigation was an interesting exercise. He’d learned how to use the compass, shoot azimuths and use a contour map prior to even getting to OCS. He’d also learned to spot the key stars such as the big dipper, the north star and Orion’s belt. They got a tip from the navigation instructor at NROTC that if it was a clear night, shoot an azimuth on a star like the north star. When it came time to do the night land navigation, Mike did all the things that he’d been taught in land navigation and also shot an azimuth on the North Star. He started off. As he came to an obstacle that he had to avoid, he noted the direction he went and got a pretty good estimate of how far he’d gone. When he got pass the obstacle he’d head back to his line. It wasn’t hard for him to do the trig in his head. He also, checked the North Star every so often. He made each weigh point with his compass in its pouch and checked in with the instructor. He managed to finish the course in a little over thirty minutes, which was pretty good.
Four weeks in, Lieutenant Feely met with his sergeants to go over the candidates and how they were doing. When they got to Mike, he asked. “Ok how’s Mr. Mulvaney doing.”
Sergeant Gomez was the one who answered. “Doing, pretty well. Did the confidence course in 38 minutes. Good time. He wasn’t thrilled with the Tarzan course at first, but then did fine. Land Navigation, weapons no problem. Had a bit of an issue with tactical. Was over thinking it, trying to be perfect. Once I explained he just needed to make a good choice, not the perfect choice he got it. Did a good job as squad leader. Like all of them he made some mistakes. Nothing serious. I think he’s good to go.”
“Good to hear. How’s he doing with the other candidates. He’s already got his bachelors and next year when he finishes, he’ll have his PhD.”
Gomez and a couple of the other sergeants chuckled. “We’re the only people in the platoon who know that sir. He talks about hunting and fishing with Forde. They spend time helping each other. As far as the rest of the squad and platoon are concerned, he’s smart because he’s at MIT. They’ve got no idea about the PhD. He’s vague about it and nobody seems to care. They’re all too tired.”
“Alright now let’s get to his buddy Mr. Forde.” With that the meeting continued.
SULE II was the real test. It was about 18 hours of hell. Mike knew enough to prepare. He had extra socks and compression shorts. He also had bandages, moles skin, scissor to cut the mole skin and compression tape. Before even starting he rubbed his crotch, hips and feet down with body glide. Then he got medical to tape his ankles. All the preparation helped a lot, but he still suffered. His socks still got soaked. It didn’t matter whether you had extra socks, your boots were wet and therefore your feet were wet. By end he was just making his body go, doing the next thing. Not thinking just moving. Despite his best efforts his feet were blistered, he ached and was just thrilled that he made it.
The last PFT test after SULE was rough. His feet still hurt. He was sore. As he thought feeling like this, who wants to do all this PT stuff. But he knew that was the whole point of it, mental toughness. He didn’t do nearly as many crunches, pullups and pushups as he did on the first test. The run was an agony. The blisters hurt, despite that Mike pushed through it. The almost six minutes per mile were down to over seven minutes per mile. At the end of the run, he could see some blood on his socks. Medical cleaned them an put some more moleskin on them.
They finally made it. Six weeks of sweat, hard work and very little sleep. They learned that two candidates had washed out. Mike was a bit saddened by that. He knew that everyone had given their best. Graduation was a great celebration. His father and mother were both there. His father had broken out his dress whites. Mike had notified the instructors that his father a retired navy captain and his brother an active duty LCDR were going to be there. The LCDR was nice, but a navy captain was something they needed to know. His instructors noted his father’s Vietnam service medals and the little command at sea star he had from his time in the brown water navy. Everyone was proud of him and he was proud of himself.
After graduation, he said goodbye to the people in his squad, he knew that he would probably see them again at TBS the next summer. Then he threw his duffle bag in the trunk of his car and drove to the hotel where his family was staying. His father drove Mike and his brother to the restaurant. His mother was in the car with his sister-in-law and the grandchildren. At the restaurant the grandchildren sat on either side of his mother, which gave Mike, his brother and his father some time to talk. Mike was glad his father had driven to the restaurant, because after two glasses of wine, he was ready for bed.
When they got back to the hotel, he learned that he and his father would be going back to Montclair, in Mike’s car. His mother would be heading down to Virginia Beach to spend a couple o
f days with Jack, Rosa and the grandchildren. Jack asked him. “Do you know what a little kid needs to say to get what he wants?” Mike shook his head no. “Grandma.” That brought a laugh from his father.
Mike managed to get an extended checkout time of 1PM. He finally woke up at 11AM after a solid twelve hours of sleep. He knew that it would take him a couple of days to get back to normal. Mike and his father grabbed a quick lunch. The others had already left. Then they drove on up through DC towards home. As they were driving, they got to talk.
His father started off. “Mike, I’d like to talk with you about money, that’s something I know about. I know that you have no idea what if anything those patents will bring in. If they bring anything in, I’d suggest you view it as gravy and stash it away. You’ll make enough as an 0-1 to do OK. What I’d like to do is to give you $2,500 to open a Fidelity brokerage account. I trust them and Schwab, either one. Then you can have some money put in from your pay and everything from the patents. What do you think?”
“Sounds good to me dad, but what do I invest the money in? I know material science; I know nothing about stocks. I’m going to open a Navy Federal Credit Union savings account and a checking account as soon as I get my first pay. What about credit cards. I’ve got this USAA Mastercard you got me and this American Express card. Do I need anything else?
“As to what to invest in, there are some funds that I’ll give you some information on. They have very low fees and are relatively safe. For the credit cards, what you’ve got is good. We also need to address your vehicle. This is starting to get old. You should seriously consider getting something new that will last you through your time in the Corp and take you a couple of years into civilian life. Pick out what you want, get USAA buying service and they’d probably give you a loan.”
“Dad I’m not sure that I can afford a new car right now. My disposable income is what I get from the NROTC. I got a few thousand dollars from OCS, but I’m worried about the monthly payments until I graduate.”
“Tell you what, you look at what you want. As long as you don’t go wild, you get a four year loan and your mom and I will handle the payments until you get your first paycheck. After that it’s on you. This way you’ll have a free and clear car when you hit civilian life. You have any idea what you want?”
“Well a cool chick mobile would be nice. But to be practical, I was thinking of a truck with four-wheel drive and big cab. Probably Ford or Toyota.”
“That sounds reasonable. Wait until the new model year and then we can go do it.”
On the way home, they stopped off in Orange and went to Star Tavern for Pizza and beer. It had been one his father’s old hangouts when he was in high school and the family had made regular trips there. When they got back home, he headed upstairs to his old room and to bed.
Thesis.
When he got up on Sunday, he felt human again. Two long nights of sleep had restored his equilibrium. He spent some time with his dad. Sharon had had her baby while he was at OCS. He saw pictures of little Patricia. Mike made the appropriate noises and was happy for both Tony and Sharon. He made a mental note to send an appropriate card and gift as soon as he got back to Boston. Before going he retrieved his Glock and put it the gun safe in the car. At noon he got on the garden state and headed towards the Tappan Zee bridge on his way back to campus.
When he got back to his apartment on campus, Dave was there with Linda. Dave congratulated Mike on his haircut or as he put it ‘lack of hair cut’. Mike laughed and then got down to giving his roommate and Linda the lowdown on OCS. At the end Dave's only comment was "Unbelievable.”
True to his promise Dr. Peterson, took Mike to diner after the got back from OCS. They talked about OCS and Dr. Peterson filled him in on his time in the army. When Mike got back to his apartment, he realized how tough Marine OCS was. He was pleased that he managed to pass it and even do fairly well.
Just after the change in the model year, Mike called up USAA and discussed an auto loan. He got the parameters of what he could do and how long it would take to get approved. One day he was driving past a Toyota dealership and saw a sign for left over cars. He went in and saw that they had some leftover Tundra 4X4. He negotiated with them and got a good price on the car, especially since he wasn’t going to try and trade in the mustang. They wanted to use their bank but understood about USAA. He gave them a check for $500 and went back to set up the financing. One other thing he did was to go buy another gun safe for the truck.
Once he picked up the truck, he got the gun safe installed and put the Glock in it. He then put the mustang up for sale. It took a couple of weeks, but he got $1,200 for it from a junior at Harvard who needed a car until he graduated.
On the academic front things were moving along well. Mike spent his time either in the lab or writing his thesis. Writing his thesis was not as easy as he hoped. In fact, it was hard work. He had all his research data and his conclusions. The difficult part was putting it into a coherent whole and finding typos and grammatical errors. The university had software like MatLab that helped him get his illustrations correct, which was a big help. He was using a Mac; he tried a couple of software programs and finally settled on a fairly new one -Scrivener. He seemed to do the job and he was moving along.
His roommate Dave was doing well with his thesis. Both of them would review the other’s work and offer critiques and suggestions. This really helped, especially in finding ‘dumb’ errors like spelling mistakes. His thesis advisor was great as well.
Thanksgiving this year was just a quick trip to Montclair for dinner and then back to campus to work on his thesis. By the time Christmas was coming up he was ready to have it printed up. He went to the local print shop that had done a lot of the thesis for other students and had them prepare the right number of copies. When he got them, he turned them in. His advisor told him to be ready in late February or early March for his thesis defense.
Christmas came and went with Mike spending his time between his lab, getting ready for his defense and exams plus strenuous exercise for the basic course. Mike used his Mac to prepare a thirty minute presentation that summarized his thesis. He went over this with his advisor and worked on perfecting it. He realized that he was worried about every little nit in the presentation and that this might be overkill. Still he did.
His defense came on the first Tuesday in March. He started off with his presentation. He’d kept it to twenty minutes when he was preparing it, knowing that it would take longer when he did it before the committee. Mike then answered questions for the next hour plus from the committee. At the end he felt emotionally drained but satisfied that he did well. His advisor informed him that the committee was very pleased with his work and that he’d done well.
That was it. He was done with his PhD. Now all he had left was to finish his NROTC courses. He did that and concentrated on hard physical exercise for the basic course. Besides his NROTC classes the only other requirement he had was his lab work under Dr. Peterson. Dave was done shortly after him and was looking for a position. Mike was pretty sure that one of the labs around MIT would snap him up and he was right.
Graduation was a big celebration. His whole family came to the ceremony. He was thrilled to be Dr. Michael Mulvaney. His whole family including Ashley went out for a big celebratory dinner afterwards. It had been a long haul. Now Mike knew that for the next four years he was in the Marines. After that he would see.
In some ways commissioning was anti-climactic. In other ways it wasn’t. He got his ‘butter bars’ and made sure he had money in his pocket to pay for his first salute. He was a Marine officer.
The Basic Course
Mike arrived at Quantico for the basic school. He ran into a lot of the same people that he’d gone through the six-week OCS course with. There 275 students including Mike. The first night they got settled in and talked. Mike was nervous about this although he knew he’d prepared as well as he could. He could tell that a lot of his classmates were worried as
well. Nobody wanted to fail and how well you did, determined what assignment you got after the course. Mike wanted infantry and he hoped to do well enough to qualify. Everybody had seemed to learn their lessons from OCS
Phase 1 was slated to last seven weeks it would cover a lot of items including weapons qualification, land navigation and leadership. He really listened to the leadership lectures and tried to internalize them. This was the core of being an officer. When he got to the pistol and rifle ranges, he somewhat surprised his instructors. He’d been shooting the Glock regularly for five years, so he knew he was a good shot. On the pistol range, the gunny running it went through all the safety procedures and how to handle themselves on the range. Mike listened intently then his turn came. He put on the ear and eye protection and the checked the Berretta. He didn’t put in the magazine chamber a round until instructed to do so, then he looked up. The gunny came down the line checking everyone. Only when he was satisfied did he give the go ahead. Mike assumed the proper stance and sighted on the target, then squeezed off the round. At the end he had one of the top 10 bests scores, closely followed by Phil Forde, his old buddy from OCS.
The rifle range was next. He’d handled an M-16 before and was going to rely on his ability to shoot. Once again, he listened to the instructions and carefully followed them. The targets were a mix of popup targets at different ranges. When you hit one it went down. Once he commenced firing, he hit the targets out to 200 yards with no problem. He wasn’t quite as good at the longer ranges. He still knocked down the vast majority targets. This time he and Phil switched places; Phil barely beat Mike out. A couple of their classmates where going to have to take remedial small arms training.
Back in their quarters, Phil and Mike started to catch up on the last year. They were pleased to be in the same platoon again. One day early on, they ran into another student from Harvard. Mike introduced him and the other student asked. “So, you and the doctor are friends? He’s a good guy for someone who went to MIT.” They talked for a while and then left.
Through the Gate: The Chronicles of Cornu Book 1 Page 26