The Tarnished Shooter

by Charles James

  They started calling us and our mothers every name in the book and some terms I’d never heard before. One drill instructor looked me up and down then crouched to within three inches of my face and barked out with a southern drawl, “Did you know the best part of you ran down the crack of your mama’s ass.” “Sir, No, Sir!” “You piece of shit you better hope to fuck’n God I’m not assigned as your drill instructor.” “Sir, Yes, Sir!” Those guys were bad news, but they didn’t produce the kind of intense fear I felt when my old man decided to belittle or punish me. Maybe I was used to that kind of treatment. Our discipline had started, every head was shaved bald and we were told to get out of our disgusting civilian clothes. Then we were given military fatigues and boots by what seemed to be pissed off Marine PFCs and Lance Corporals. There was no turning back now. Everyone seemed so damned angry. We learned later—the only good Marine is a pissed off Marine

  We couldn’t eat or sleep until a mountain of paperwork was completed—an all-night ordeal. When daylight finally arrived we were exhausted as we ate morning chow. Despite the myth of lousy military food I actually thought every meal was more than edible, sometimes very delicious. We did some more paperwork and then got mega doses of penicillin via a hollow harpoon in the butt cheeks. Dental and physical examinations operated like an assembly line. We were the property of MCRD for the next thirteen weeks, seven to ten days of processing and twelve weeks of training.

  Before a recruit can even be called a Marine he must first undergo twelve weeks of intensive psychological and physical endurance training, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. People always ask me, "Do you have to be tough to make it through Marine Corps boot camp?" I don't know if you have to be tough, but you do have to have some motivation to want to succeed.

  At seventeen, I was one of the youngest in the platoon. Some of the older recruits with big egos wanted to think they could take charge of me, only to get reamed out by drill instructors for trying to muscle in on their territory. Everywhere one goes someone is always trying to be the fucking boss. The drill instructors were the mother, the father, and the boss of every recruit until it was time for them to graduate. They were the ones who were going to transform us into one of America’s most elite killers.

  The first three drill instructors assigned to our platoon, met us and then beat the shit out of all of us as we stood at attention knocking three fourth of the platoon to the ground. It was their intention to put the fear of them into us from the get-go. Someone higher on the chain of command got wind of the abuse they inflicted on us and all three of them were reprimanded and I believe transferred to another platoon. The day we met our three replacement drill instructors, we didn’t know what hit us again. As the new drill instructors inspected the rank and file of the platoon they assaulted and knocked just about every one of us to the ground too. A whole bunch of commotion complete with yelling and screaming about what a bunch of worthless sacks of shit we were. It all took place under the relenting heat of a southern California sun. We got the same cruel treatment. It didn’t seem to matter, drill instructors were drill instructors, and in the early 1970s they could do to us whatever they felt needed to be done. We were basically at their mercy.

  There were three drill instructors and sometimes four assigned to a platoon. Any one, two, or three of those guys could be in your face at any time. At no time were we allowed to look a drill instructor or a superior in the eye. We were ordered to affix our gaze upon the Marine Corps emblem on their campaign cover—the Smokey the bear hat that is a symbol for drill instructors in most branches of the military. There is something about a Marine Corps drill instructor that makes him the poster child of the ultimate warrior. Those guys always looked like they meant business. If we were caught making eye contact, the drill instructors accused us of “eye fucking” them and then the recruit would get smacked down to the ground and made to do pushups or some other form of physical persecution. They loved to gang-up on us and scream in our ears.

  The ninety day training cycle was brutal with physical and emotional abuse. The training was divided into three phases. Each phase lasted about four weeks and required a certain amount of physical fitness training. During physical fitness training (PFT) it was mandatory to be able to run three miles in thirty minutes, do fifty sit-ups in less than two minutes, and do at least three overhanded pull-ups on the chin up bar. You would be surprised at the number of healthy looking young men who couldn’t even do one pull-up. Everywhere we went we were followed by Navy corpsman just in case someone passed out from exhaustion, or heat, or was injured.

  For first phase we were not allowed to have the top button on our fatigues open. We were also not allowed to have our trousers bloused over our combat boots. Those little things would be big things in the life of a recruit during boot camp. They were considered a privilege and could be taken away anytime. We were also required to carry a toothbrush when we went to chow, and if we were caught not having one, there would be hell to pay in the pit.

  During first phase we were basically military stupid because we were learning to march and get physically fit. If there was a fat boy in the crowd he got shipped to what was called “the pig farm.” At the pig farm the fat recruit was placed on a restricted diet and his physical training was more extensive.

  Second phase consisted of rifle range qualifying, hand-to-hand combat, and Marine Corps history. No matter what phase we were in, we went thru the obstacle and confidence course every other day. We learned how to kill effectively with rifle bayonets, booby traps, explosives, and knife fighting techniques. We learned how to survive in the most brutal conditions.

  Third phase got into infantry training and water survival. We crawled thru mud under barbed wire and got shot at with live ammunition at the same time being blasted with real explosives. The only things missing were the sights, smells and sounds of death. For that, we were told to use our imagination. Water survival was the worst for me because of my anxiety towards deep water. One requirement for completion of water survival meant we had to get into full dress utilities including combat boots. We would stand at the edge of the Olympic sized training pool with a metal mock M-16 rifle and be ordered to jump into water over our head and to not, under any circumstances, drop our rifle. The rifle had a sling attached. The object was to swim the length of the pool twice while doing the breast stroke or sidestroke, pulling your rifle with the sling of the rifle on your forehead if doing the breast stroke. We were told, “If you drop your rifle you had better dive for it.” If you couldn’t retrieve your rifle or make it across and then back again the length of the pool you flunked out. I wasn’t totally afraid of the water so I managed to pass the water survival course. I did the sidestroke the length of the swimming pool and back again toting my rifle with my other hand. But it was tough regardless of the stroke one used. The lesson being, that there would be no one there to pull you out once you disembarked water borne troop carriers into a combat situation.

  During gas chamber and gas mask training we had to step into the gas chamber, line up and stand at the position of attention, sing the Marine Corps Hymn while breathing the CS gas (tear gas) and put our gas mask on, then clear the gas from the gas mask and finally breathe filtered air. The gas burned our eyes and throat and the chamber was dark, scary, and claustrophobic because of size and sight limitations. I think the reason for singing the Marine Corps Hymn was to keep us from panicking.

  ****

  A few weeks into second phase I was called into the platoon commander’s office. He was a Vietnam veteran standing a couple of inches shorter than I was, but was solid and built like a bulldog. His Mexican heritage came through in his speech and attitude towards white boys like me. I couldn’t figure out why the platoon commander, a staff sergeant drill instructor, wanted to see me. Everything seemed to be going along smoothly. I banged on his quarters hatch (door) Bang! Bang! Bang! Then I asked permission to enter. “Sir, Private Barker requests permission to enter, Sir!” “Get in h
ere turd!” He commanded. As soon as I entered the office, he grabbed me by the throat and slammed me into the wall holding his left forearm against my throat and his right arm cocked back in the strike ready position. Then he started in on me with a piercing look in his eye about how he knew the martial arts and could take me out in a heartbeat—kill me with one strike to the throat. I didn’t know what I had done wrong or what he expected me to do. Maybe I should have smacked him one, but then I would have ended up on the floor or in the brig. Hell. I don’t know, maybe he thought I had some kind of a chip on my shoulder. The whole incident was confusing. To this day, I don’t know why I was called into his office.

  He managed to break open a mole on my throat and I started to bleed steadily. He said if I told anyone what had happened he would say I was injured during hand-to-hand combat training. Yea, the hand-to-hand combat training was in his office and he assaulted me for no reason, but there was nothing I could do about it. He and I both knew it. As far as I knew, I was the only one to experience personal lessons in hand to hand combat from any of our drill instructors.

  In my mind his message was clear. He was in charge and there was nothing I could do about anything. That same drill instructor ordered me to do six hundred bends and thrusts for some petty little thing which I don’t recall anymore. The only thing I recall him saying while I was doing the bends and thrusts was, “You better work asshole!” I also remember when I was finished I was all used up. I darned near passed out from the heat and exhaustion. I had produced a puddle of sweat beneath me two feet in diameter.

  When a drill instructor ordered us to do some form of physical punishment they told us how many repetitions. If they said “forever” or didn’t tell us how many push-ups or bends and thrusts to do, we did them until they told us to stop. Sometimes they just walked away, and then came back maybe fifteen minutes later and if we had stopped before they told us to stop, they piled on more repetitions. They liked to say to me, “Private Barker, push-ups ‘forever.’ Get your slimy dick in the dirt”—which meant there was no stopping. By the time I had finished second phase, I’d gotten my rifle butt rammed into my balls and had been assaulted by angry drill instructors pretty much on an every-other-day basis.

  Some of the shit those drill instructors did to us would range from barbarous to outright comical. Near the end of third phase, we all thought like them and everything they did to us, no matter how cruel, was laughable. One drill instructor showed us his photo album from Vietnam which included the VC he had killed. The dead bodies were laying in a row with their ears cut off and there he was standing beside them, smiling with an M-14 rifle in his hand. He couldn’t have been any older than twenty-three. The platoon showed no emotion or empathy towards the dead Viet Cong in that photo. It was amazing how cold and unfeeling we had become.

  If one of the recruits in our platoon was getting a new asshole installed by a drill instructor, we couldn't keep from laughing. Of course they didn’t like the laughing and punished us for it, but we just couldn’t hold it in. I am not saying that boot camp was a laughable or an easy experience; I’m saying we just got used to the abuse. Laughing was a way to deal with and relieve some of the tension. When we first arrived we looked and acted like scared little babies with our shaved white heads. But after seven or eight weeks we were well tanned and already looked like young hardened Marines.

  Like me, many of the guys were in trouble with the law before arriving and for some it was their last chance to do something worthwhile with their lives. Civilians hated the military during the Vietnam era and we weren't treated with the proper amount of respect we should have gotten, but we were still proud of our accomplishments and proud to be in the U.S. Marine Corps. The first few days we all wondered why we wanted to do this shit, we were treated like children having to get permission to speak or do anything—we even had to ask to take a piss. There was always some recruit pissing his fatigues because there wasn’t enough time in a training day to make head calls. If a recruit got caught pissing on himself, it was the ultimate humiliation. One drill instructor noticed some wetness running down a recruit’s trousers and demanded to know why he was pissing his pants. The recruit told the drill instructor he couldn’t hold it any longer. The drill instructor was furious. He ordered three or four other recruits who had to piss, but managed to control the urge—to relieve themselves on the recruit who had pissed on himself. Then we were ordered to un-blouse our trousers because we were an embarrassment to the Corps.

  One night just before lights-out I was standing on top of my footlocker being inspected by a drill instructor and he found some dirt on the back of my ear. Or so he claimed. He ordered three other recruits to take me into the shower and scrub me down with a scrubbing brush we used for doing our laundry. That sort of dehumanizing treatment was all part of the training to make sure we were taken to the very lowest level. Once we were used to being nothing and stripped of individualism, then we could be programed as a team according to Marine Corps standards. But first we had to eat a lot of shit and learn to like it.

  Chapter 16

  The pit was a drill instructors entertainment and a recruit’s nightmare. It was nothing but a small twenty foot by twenty foot patch of mud on the training grounds. If the pit wasn’t muddy enough we were ordered to bring along the bucket we were issued and to fill the bucket with water. Once at the pit, we poured the water on the dry dirt to make the whole area nice and muddy. The pit was too small to fit the entire platoon of about seventy-five of us in it at one time. We ended up kicking each other in the mouth while doing bends and thrusts and other exercises in all that mud. If the platoon didn’t work as a team, we ended up in the pit. If we didn’t march right, we ended up in the pit. If the duty drill instructor was having a bad day, or had a hangover, we ended up in the pit. Later, it would be discovered if a certain recruit was at fault for getting the platoon into the pit and then there would be paybacks once we returned to the barracks. Just like in the movies, blanket parties were a reality. Blanket parties were where a fuck-up in the platoon was first blindfolded against his will, and then endured a beating from other recruits while he was held down in his rack at night.

  The drill instructors zeroed in on the weaker recruits and the ones they just didn’t like. Of course they would never admit that. Human nature doesn’t change; it just adjusts to accommodate an appropriate scenario. If a recruit was disliked by a drill instructor, the powerless recruit’s dick ended up in the dirt for even the slightest fuck up. One recruit had pimples all over his face and the senior drill instructor thought he looked disgusting, so he ordered me to hold one end of a clothespin and another recruit to hold another clothespin. Together we were supposed to pop the zits on that recruit’s face using the clothespins to get the job done. It was humiliating and disgusting for all three of us, but we had to do what we were told or face motivation platoon.

  Motivation platoon was a correctional custody platoon in which the unfortunate players were required to carry a full bucket of sand in each hand, everywhere they went. They had to crawl through the most disgusting slime and mud holes while they were receiving an attitude adjustment. They were beaten for the smallest infraction of the rules. We used to see those guys in motivation platoon all slimy from head to toe looking totally exhausted. They looked like prisoners of war, all grey, gaunt, and empty eyed. We were scared to death of getting sent to a motivation platoon.

  If that weren’t bad enough, we were threatened with correctional custody in the brig where it was required to break rocks all day. We marched or double-timed past the brig almost daily as a reminder of where we would end up if we fucked up. We actually saw detainees inside the barbed wire fence, breaking rocks out in the hot sun.

  Planes and jets flew overhead day and night because the base was surrounded by an airport. Before the lights went out we were ordered to lie at the position of attention in our racks and remain at attention until the drill instructor clicked off the lights and barked, “At eas
e ladies!” Before we fell fast asleep we could see and hear jets and planes landing every ten minutes. Being aware of those flights out was even more torturous than any correctional custody platoons could have been. We wanted to be on one of those planes flying out so bad we did what we had to so we could graduate on time and fly out. The days went by fast because we were always on the move doing something. The nights were even shorter. It seemed like I had always just laid my head down when the lights came on at 5:30 A.M. It was time to do it all over again.

  One recruit in my platoon managed to get ahold of a pack of cigarettes and got caught unauthorized smoking. That was a big mistake because he ended up with his issued metal bucket over his head and ordered to smoke the entire pack under that bucket while he stood at the position of attention. By about the third or fourth cigarette he had a greenish look to his face and he was sicker than a dog. I don't remember him ever smoking again after that.