There was a palpable sense of expectation, then, as the dripping recruits filed in out of the rain and took seats in Drill Hall 800 to hear their assignments. Since all divisions in a graduation group work together, they were joined by recruits from Divisions 003 through 006.
James Sison, 20, San Diego, California
It was cool talking to other divisions that were going on service week with us. We never had much chance before service week, except maybe in the line at the NEX or something. We found out that some divisions had it harder than we did—they’d get cycled almost every other day and stuff.
Sean Herring, 18, Chino Valley, Arizona
I had gotten separated from the guys that came up from Phoenix with me, but I ran into some of them there. They’re in 003 and 004, all males, and they say it’s harder than being in an integrated division. But how would they know, if they never did it?
Coordinators explained the various procedures that would apply during the period. Reveille would slide forward to 0330 to accommodate opening the galley for breakfast at 0430. Physical training, which normally followed reveille, would be moved to staggered times in the afternoon and early evening, so that more recruits could participate. Recruits were specifically reminded of the rules that guided their relationships with civilians with whom the recruits might come into contact. Recruits were prohibited from asking for or accepting money, gedunk, or rides in civilian vehicles. Violations, the coordinators warned, would result in the opportunity to experience Service Week again, and again, and again. “About four weeks’ worth would be about right,” one coordinator remarked, as the others laughed. The recruits laughed, too, but only to be polite.
General billets, the smallest group of assignments, were announced first. Eighteen recruits from Division 005 stood, relieved, as their names were called. Division 005 had a greater percentage of recruits assigned to general billets than the other divisions present. “Dan [Petty Officer Kent] hand-carried the lists over to the office,” Petty Officer Russell remarked later. “He’s been here longer than Moses—he knows everybody, and everybody likes him. That’s how things get done.”
Alcazar When they said I’d be the DMT’s yeoman, that was the scariest time in boot camp for me. Everybody said he was so mean, and that he’d ASMO you for anything wrong with your uniform. I was terrified. I didn’t want to even go over to his office, I was so scared.* When I first went in there, the yeoman and all were harassing me, asking me my general orders and stuff. I thought the commander was on leave or something, and here I was helping him, and I didn’t even know who he was. But one of the chiefs there told me to go help him at the copying machine. I thought he was just a normal commander—and when I first met him, he’s like a grandpa! He’s not a mean man—you have to be squared away, and keep your military bearing, but he’s really nice to his Service Weeks.
Steven Leonard, 19, Morenno Valley, California
Well, I pretty well got screwed. They sent me to the schoolhouse, Building 1127. And they were supposed to have, like, six Service Weeks over there in the schoolhouse, but I was the only one there. I got stuck cleaning all the heads and the classrooms, and then, when I got back to the ship, I had to stand watches.
Guiterrez I was working on the grounds crew. I was doing mechanical things, like changing the oil on the tractors. I would go around and empty trash containers and stuff. It was a pretty good job. We’d sneak off and sleep whenever we could.
Arcia They told me I’d go to Safety and Supply. I just answered phones and ran errands. The RDCs can be so humble when they want something! Like, they didn’t pick on you when they needed supplies for their compartment or something.
Twelve other members of the division—six for house crew and six for ship’s crew—would not leave Ship Eight during Service Week. The recruit masters-at-arms, Gildersleeve and Starks, would lead six-person teams in the male and female compartments, respectively. Their major focus would be on the deck. The previous occupants had been a ninety-four-recruit division, during summer surge, and wear and tear resulting from extra racks along the centerline of the room was obvious. “Sure, they had cleaned the decks,” commented DC1 Russell, “but see, they didn’t have a chance to really field-day it because they were so crowded. It was time for us to really get that deck squared away.”
Kayne McClellan, 18, Phoenix, Arizona
Me and Ward were on the house crew. Man, getting that place cleaned up was [a real problem]. There were, like, rust spots where the bunks had been down the middle. And all the window ledges, up above where the inspectors could get to them, were pretty dirty. We really had a lot to do.
Ward We worked house crew during the day, but we had the night off. We folded and stowed everyone’s gear, and we stripped and waxed the deck. We put, like, thirty coats of wax on there, till it really looked good. Some old sailor came by and told us that if we used a blanket under the buffer, it would take the swirls out of the wax job. We did, and it really started to look good.
McClellan For the first time since we got here, we were allowed to have the radio on, and that was really cool—except we used to get into these hassles about what we were going to listen to.
Ward No hassle when Petty Officer Kent was here. It was country music, or the radio went off.
Starks Well, 006 took care of our deck in the female compartment, but I was taking care of all the yeoman stuff—the medical yeoman, dental yeoman, and the regular yeoman’s stuff. And I had to keep up the house crew too, washing and folding everyone’s gear when they were at the galley. But I felt that my job was important, and that made me feel good. There were things that I had to do, like pick up records and set up dental appointments, that made me feel good. And picking up my yeoman’s bag and just going out on the street by myself, that was great. It felt really good to go out there and be responsible, and to feel free, and not marching in the middle of eighty other people, you know?
Alcazar I’m like Starks. I was the DMT yeoman, and being away from the office, going from one building to another with messages, and the schedules, and so on. When people saw the DMT bag—well, that was like my magic carpet to cross the quarterdecks and all. And when I’d see an officer in a car, I’d salute, and they’d salute back, and it was really cool.
Starks The worst day was when I got stuck with three watches on one day. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep like some people did, but I tried to sleep in the head. Then I went and sat at the table with the other girls, and didn’t brother division’s senior chief walk up behind me when I’m dozing there. He got me good! I was so afraid! He’s like, “Recruit, come in my office!” He made me feel like the worst person in the world—that if I went out there to the fleet and fell asleep I could kill someone. He started talking about my sister—he knows her from before, and what a good sailor she is—and I felt like the worst person in the world, you know?
The majority of the division, however, were introduced to Galley 928, the Navy’s largest dining facility. MMCM(SW)* David Wisch, master chief for food services, explains: “There are two galleys here at RTC. Last year we served 10.3 million full meals on this base. Of that number, we served about 6 million at this building alone. We have eight serving lines here at Galley 928, and six at the smaller galley (Building 1128) which serves the ships at the north end. Usually, we serve more here than those proportions would indicate. During the winter, or slow periods, we shift more recruits to this building to take advantage of economies of scale.”
Galley 928 is mammoth, covering a complete city block. Two hundred civilians prepare food under the supervision of nearly seventy Navy mess specialists. Four hundred Service Week recruits provide unskilled assistance. Nearly fifty masters-at-arms maintain order and discipline among the twelve thousand recruits who pass though the turnstiles for each meal.
Master Chief Wisch continued, “We can move a division of eighty recruits through the line in slightly less than nine minutes. That’s from the time the first recruit hits the first food statio
n till the last recruit sits down at a table and begins to eat. The MAAs are instructed to allow a reasonable time for the recruits to eat—not dawdle or converse, but not be rushed either—and we generally can get the division up and moving again about twelve minutes after the last recruit sits down. We’ve pretty much eliminated the old ‘Eat up and get out!’ commands, but we do have to keep it moving, or we’ll never get everyone fed in time.”
The task is, indeed, herculean. While the average hotel kitchen might have one floor-mounted mixing bowl, this galley has several, each positioned to serve a particular food preparation line. Service Weeks pop frozen chicken strips into one end of a 30-foot-long convection oven, and they pop off the conveyer at the other end, ready to eat. The minutes before the serving lines open are controlled chaos. “Because we rotate Service Weeks in and out of here constantly, we’ve broken down every job to the smallest task possible. It generally takes us less than thirty minutes to have a new Service Week recruit productive in our system. I doubt McDonald’s has it down that fast,” Chief Wisch remarked.
Edgar Lee, 25, Mazee, Mississippi
I was working nights. I worked in the bakery. It was great, actually. We got lots of free doughnuts out of that job.
Christopher Crist, 18, Westland, Michigan
Well, working at night was a pretty good deal. Working at night, I actually got more sleep than I would usually. I got, like, nine hours of sleep a night. We’d go in at 1630 and eat, and then sort of phantom-cleaned, just to look busy. We’d muster at 1800 and work till midnight, when we’d get a break. Then we worked till 0400 and ate, and got off at 0500.
Sixteen thousand meals means sixteen thousand sets of dirty dishes. GI cans full of soapy water, familiar to generations of veterans, are no more. Huge dish-washing machines, full of soapy, near-boiling water, kept pace with the meal service. Still, the familiar steel pads and scrub brushes are in evidence. And each is in the hands of a Service Week recruit.
Crist I was the night crew scullery captain. During the day they just do dishes all day, but at night you have to clean up the mess they leave. I had to clean up the Dragon—the big machine they use to clean the dishes. It uses, like, 190-degree water to clean all the dishes and pans and stuff.
Herring I was the captain of the deep sink. That’s where all the disciplinary cases go. But I was the captain, see, so I got to order them around and have them do all the gross jobs. They had to scrub the floor with Brillo pads.
Sison Sometimes they had to “man the torpedoes.” That’s when they take all the leftover food and put it in this big machine that mashes it all together. Sometimes we had to clean out the garbage disposals with gloves and buckets and stuff. Working around the deep sinks, well, they stank real bad. There were filthy each night, it was pretty bad.
Crist I used to work in a steakhouse, and I worked in a Wendy’s, too. I think the galley wasn’t as clean as the steakhouse where I used to work. When people got tired, they just pretended to clean.
Sison Well, I knew the galley was clean before we left every night, because I was the guy that got stuck cleaning it.
There’s an old Navy saying: “There are only two good ships in the Navy: the one you used to be on, and the one you’re going to next.” Griping is a sailor’s long-cherished right, and the recruits of Division 005 were no exception.
Sison Well, I worked days, and you got no sleep, ever. They woke you up at 0330, and you stayed till 1900, and you still had to stay awake till taps at 2200. So we got no more than five hours of sleep a night.
Crist I had as much trouble over here in the house as I did in the galley. See, nobody cares about the night crew, anyway. The house crew is there, cleaning and stripping the decks and stuff, and we’re trying to sleep.
Leonard Well, the galley guys were yelling at us, like they were the only ones working. We worked all day, too, and we stood night watches, and they didn’t. So I don’t see what they were complaining about, really.
McClellan What those guys didn’t realize is that this is a big house, and there were only, like, six of us working over here. So we were really hustling when we had to get stuff done during the day.
Arcia The worst part was missing my shipmates! Towards the middle of Service Week, it was, like, house crew and general billets against the galley crew, and that was sad, because we lost the shipmate thing. It was, like, “well, you get to sleep all the time, and we have to work all the time.”
Kristin Dizon, 20, Hayward, California
For me it was the hours. There was one day doing courtesy watches, and I didn’t get to eat breakfast or dinner, nothing. I was on watch all day, till I finally got supper.
Ward It was terrible. Until you snuck off and took a nap. [Laughter.]
*The director of military training, or DMT, is third in command, and is the base disciplinarian.
*Chief Wisch is a master chief mess management specialist (E9), with surface warfare qualifications.
9
The Warrior Weeks
Following Service Week, on Monday, 20 November, the division started its 6-1 day, marking the beginning of the home stretch toward their graduation and departure for the fleet.
Shawn Jackson, 18, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Time had really started to fly by. As soon as we got done Service Week, we only had three weeks left, and one of them really didn’t scare anybody, because it was after battle stations, you know? If we could make the next two weeks, we’d be okay.
Chief Zeller explains, “These are the warrior weeks. They learn small arms, damage control, and fire fighting, and prepare for the battle stations exercises at the end of week seven. It’s about the easiest time to be an RDC. They’ve finally figured out what we want, they are getting closer to their goal, yet they aren’t so salty that they think that they run the place. I always like having a division in weeks six and seven.”
The week’s activities began at the weapons simulator. For many years recruits at Great Lakes carried 1903 Springfield rifles, with firing pins removed, wherever they marched. For live firing exercises, the Navy substituted commercial .22-caliber rifles. Many of the recruits were embarrassed to return home with stories of firing the .22 in boot camp. The country boys had fired more powerful weapons when hunting with fathers and friends; the city boys, often enough, had access to firepower more deadly than anything they were likely to see in the Navy.
During the Vietnam War, the Navy chose the M16-A1 as its combat weapon. When the Springfields were retired, recruits marched, drilled, and fired using the M16, just as did recruits of the other services.
As time went on, two problems came to light. One was ecological: decades of use by millions of recruits had left the weapons range contaminated with lead dust and particles. The second problem was social: there were growing concerns that ready access to assault weapons and the stress of boot camp were not an ideal mix. A gunner’s mate, who asked not to be identified in this context, commented: “It’s easy, real easy, to restore the M16 to live fire. You wouldn’t even need the real parts, you could jury-rig it fairly easily. The guys in the armory knew that; everybody knew that. Everybody was hoping the Chuckies didn’t know that.”
By 1998 the command had determined that the problems of storage, maintenance, and security of fifteen thousand weapons exceeded any possible benefit from their use. The weapons were collected and shipped to the Navy weapons facility at Crane, Indiana, and recruits were spared the drudgery of marching and drilling with shoulder weapons.
This begged the issue of weapons training, however. Everyone agreed that recruits should be familiar with individual weapons, even if the likelihood of their use by sailors in the fleet was small. Laser-light simulators, mounted to simulate small arms, were chosen as the temporary expedient. Meanwhile, a new, state-of-the-art facility, optimized for the 12-gauge shotgun and 9-millimeter handgun used in the fleet would be built on the far western perimeter of the base. This facility was scheduled to open during Division 005’s ti
me at Great Lakes, but construction difficulties delayed completion. As a result, Division 005 was be among the last to use the simulator.
“I was hoping they’d get the new range up and running before I pushed my last division,” said Petty Officer Kent. “I’m an outdoors person, and I would have enjoyed teaching these recruits about firearms. It wasn’t destined to happen, however, so we spend our weapons time at the simulator.”
Hopkins Basically, it was dumb. Can’t think of another word for it. I’m from the country—I’ve been around guns since I was little. It was stupid, is what it was.
Daniel Callahan, 22, Fort Worth, Texas
Well, I lived in Texas before I joined the Navy. I’ve seen laser target pointers on 9-millimeter handguns, so I knew what they were trying to do. But it was like little kids playing laser tag or paint ball as far as I was concerned.
Honor, Courage, Commitment Page 12