Honor, Courage, Commitment

by Leahy, John F.

  Captain Tubbs Look, everyone has a boiling point. I’ve talked to RDCs who have pushed eleven divisions who say “send me back,” and those who were nervous wrecks after three. We need more people. But there are so many gapped billets at sea, it’s extremely difficult for us to get all the people we need. RTC is holding its own in the allocation of resources, but we are on the cusp of extremis. We’re desperately trying to get folks ordered in now to be ready for next year’s surge.

  There is amazing congruence between the view from the wardroom and the viewpoint of the recruit division commanders on the street.

  Chief Lucas Well, if boot camp is too soft, I wish someone would show me where. Is it physical training? We’re doing PT now six days a week, rather than the three or four days they did before. Is it battle stations? They never had anything like that before. Are we marching less? Letting recruits get away with murder, or what? Show me where it is. Personally, I think that’s a copout.

  Petty Officer Russell Well, I don’t know what happened back in the day. These guys that compare us to the old days, like, what did happen back then? Did they take them out behind the drill hall and beat the snot out of them? It’s like Chief Lucas says, “How do we make this place harder?” We’re doing PT six times a week; we march, like, twenty miles a week. What more should we do?

  Senior Chief Nelson In a sense, the people who are saying that are really accusing themselves. If there’s a chief or petty officer in the fleet that can’t handle today’s seamen or airmen, is that a problem with the sailors or with the supervisor?

  Command Master Chief McCalip The quality of the sailor in the fleet is determined by the first petty officer or chief petty officer they report to aboard ship, I’m convinced of it. Our mission here is to turn out physically fit, basically qualified sailors. Watch them at pass-in-review. I think we’re doing a pretty darn good job.

  Petty Officer Kent Well, to be honest with you, I used to have that opinion myself, especially when I was at SERE, which is a really tough environment. But I changed my mind when I got here. It’s easy to say that the kids today aren’t like we were, but it’s not true. It’s that “I walked two miles through the snow to school” story that you hear from your parents. And the way we run boot camp now is not the way it was two or three years ago, and I suspect it will be different two or three years from now. We’ve had three commanding officers since I’ve been here, and each one had his or her own style. Each time we change commands, we change our focus a little. But the changes weren’t all that great—boot camp is still boot camp—we just changed some of the hoops the recruits had to jump through. So, the guys that knock us—are they talking about the way things are today, or last year, or when?

  There has been much discussion about the best way to integrate male and female recruits to meet the requirements of Public Law 105, yet still provide the best training for all recruits.

  Chief Zeller I don’t think the way we are doing this is the best way, not at all. We absolutely forbid fraternizing, yet everything we do encourages it. We put them in the same spaces, for class or PT or drill or whatever, for eighteen hours a day. We have them take off their sweatshirts, and they do their PT in sweaty, white skivvy shirts—what nineteen-year-old wouldn’t get excited? We used to keep them apart except for class, but now they mingle, all day, every day. Then we expect that they won’t flirt. I’ll give you one real-life example that happens three times a day. Because of the thousands of recruits trying to get through the mess halls for every meal, we make them line up, heel-to-toe, at the galley portals. Heel-to-toe, male to female. I’ve had female recruits in here, crying—not that the male tried to do anything, don’t get me wrong—but because it’s so, well, degrading. It’s really not the best way to do this, at all.

  Petty Officer Kent I don’t see the reason for all the fuss over integration, to tell you the truth. I never saw much difference in output between integrated and nonintegrated divisions. Look, all these kids have been through integrated education since kindergarten. They’ve all worked with members of the opposite sex at their civilian jobs. So how is two months away from the opposite sex going to screw up their idea of how to work together? But, like Chief Zeller says, when you put them together, you are automatically setting up fraternization problems. You get note passing, you ignite everybody’s raging hormones, and you have people getting jealous of each other. It ruins morale, it really does.

  Petty Officer Russell I don’t know what’s the best way to do it, but I bet it isn’t this. I think this way causes us more problems than it solves. Integrating, deintegrating, having them into two separate houses: we don’t really spend as much time with them as I’d like. Right now, I’m in my own house, and I don’t know what my females are doing topside. Sure, there is an RDC there, but she’s working with her own people, just like I would be, and my people could be goofing off for all I know.

  Senior Chief Nelson I look at it like this. Having males and females in one division, but having two berthing spaces, is like having a home and your summer place. When you’re at home, you are always wondering what’s going on at your summer place—is the water turned off? Is the sump pump working? And when you’re at your summer place, you wonder if the neighbors are breaking into your house in town and walking away with everything. That’s what it’s like when you have your recruits spread into two compartments. I trust Zeller’s crew with my males down below, but I don’t really control what half my recruits are doing, part of the time.

  Senior Chief Tucker No doubt about it, I’d have them totally separate during boot camp. Sure, you’d make everyone adhere to the same standards—PT, training, classroom, whatever—but keep them separate for two months. Right now, you have guys looking at girls, with all that entails. What we need to do is to have it so that they look at everybody as their shipmate, someone that has a job to do, either here or in the fleet. As the LCPO, I wind up as the “judge” here a lot. Some poor guy is caught talking to a female out in the passageway or whatever, and it gets written up as fraternization, and we ASMO them back a couple weeks. It’s not necessary, and it screws things up.

  Senior Chief Atkinson I think they need to separate them. Let them meet up for training or drill or whatever. But the other way is too hard for everyone. The thing is, you need to be able to train recruits, and not worry about the male-female interaction. The bottom line is we need to get them basically trained and physically fit. After eighteen years, they know each other, right?

  Educational requirements for recruits have been lowered, to help alleviate manpower shortages. The Navy will accept up to 10 percent of its recruits lacking a high school diploma. There has been some controversy as to the wisdom of this solution.

  Petty Officer Kent Well, the percentage of non-high school grads that get here is not all that large. And when they get here, they get separated to ACE or whatever. When they get to the fleet, a lot get their GEDs and move up, and even go to college, some of them. I personally think they make better sailors, lots of times. They know that, hey, they started at a disadvantage, and the Navy took care of them, and they find a home in the Navy.

  Chief Zeller I don’t think it has a real impact here in boot camp. They wind up in an ACE division, where we teach a little bit more by example and less by reading. Believe it or not, non-high school graduates must have a higher minimum ASVQB test score [50, as opposed to 31 for high school graduates], so they aren’t necessarily dumb. The big problem is that they weren’t a success in high school, and so they develop a quitter attitude. And there still is a reluctance to separate nonperformers. I worry that sometimes we send people on who really should be bounced. But there are tools that we use that can turn someone around, and I think we try everything we can to get them straight before we either pass them onward or send them home.

  Petty Officer Russell These recruits have two problems that I can see. One is that they have trouble taking tests, and probably will have trouble making rate once they get to the fleet. You
have a lot of studying to do. For example, I’m studying for chief right now. We damage controlmen are a “go out and do it” rating, but there’s still lots to read and remember. And the other thing is the quitter attitude, as Chief Zeller said. Their attitude seems to be, “Hey, if I don’t like it, I’ll walk out the front gate.” Those RDCs at Ship Fifteen, where we have the special programs—they have the toughest motivating job of anybody on the base.

  Command Master Chief McCalip We’re on the right track, I think. We’ve finally figured out the right way to handle non-high school graduates. But what would really make a difference for them would be to strengthen the Delayed Entry Program [DEP]. When we get to the point where they can work a little while with the recruiters, they’d be better prepared when we get them, and we’ll be better off. There’s not a single recruit that walks through that gate planning to fail when they get here. So our job is to give them every opportunity we can to succeed. Some we identify immediately as having too many problems for us to handle, and those we send home. Others just need a little kick to move them in the right direction. Because, even if we set them back three or four times, and finally have to let them go, we’ve at least made them better citizens than they were when they got here.

  Chief Lucas Captain Gantt said it best. He said that in society today, there are not very many regimented programs that develop good solid values. So it’s not unusual to get kids who don’t match, or even understand, our Navy core values. We’ve had to develop programs like PASS for anger management, ACE for non-high school graduates, and training to give every recruit some coping skills. Lots of these kids didn’t have parents to motivate them, but they have to get it somewhere. And, as Master Chief points out, even if they are only in the Navy for four years, they will leave as better people.

  Senior Chief Tucker The Marines have the right idea. The real big difference is that the recruiter doesn’t get credit for his recruits until they finish boot camp. We don’t do that, but if we did, I bet we’d see a lot better caliber of recruits, real quick. The other thing is that the Marine recruiter is held accountable for the physical fitness of the recruits. When we get one who’s not physically fit, it screws up everything else; you spend all the time trying to get them ready to pass battle stations, and you downplay academics and seamanship training and all the other stuff. And if I think my folks need a run, I want to be able to run on the streets, and we can’t do that here. Because of our location, we have to PT indoors six months of the year. You have them running around in circles, and you can’t motivate and monitor, when they are strung out all around a quarter-mile track like a Slinky toy. Why they closed down San Diego I’ll never know; you could be outside every single day in the fresh air. Go to any military base anywhere in any country—watch any Army or Marine movie about boot camp, for that matter—and you see people running in groups, building esprit and motivation. We just can’t do that here because of our facilities, and that’s a great loss.

  One of the main reasons why senior petty officers resist orders to Recruit Training Command is the perceived impact on family life. Time pressures, weather, and difficulty with the local schools all combine to make the assignment less attractive than many would like.

  Chief Zeller There’s a lot of time pressure. We now have three RDCs in each division, which helps. But then again, they’ve changed the rules so that we have to be with the recruits a lot more than we used to. We’re with them from reveille to taps, 0400 to 2200 each day. And there are lots of times when there have to be at least two RDCs working with the division. Inspections, or some other events, require at least two and sometimes all three of us here at the same time. There are periods when you are here for eighteen or nineteen hours, for maybe ten days in a row. Sure, there are times when you can get down to the lounge for awhile, but problems usually follow you wherever you go. Now, when you drop the division off at the schoolhouse, you might get a little time to unwind. But you have paperwork to do; you might have to walk someone around if they have to go on emergency leave, or things like that. We try to schedule it so that we don’t kill ourselves, but on average we do about eleven or twelve hours a day, six days a week. That’s average. During the first days of a push there’s no down time whatsoever.

  Command Master Chief McCalip The time pressures are real. We are working very hard with the chief of naval personnel to get the right number of people here, as well as the right caliber. It’s a challenge to get people to Great Lakes, no doubt about it.

  Petty Officer Kent Both the weather and the time pressures are murderous. It’s a killer for families. You give much more time to this job than in any other one I’ve ever had. And many of the time requirements are stupid. We have to be with them every waking hour. That’s stupid—they develop no self-control whatsoever. When I first got here, we could at least let recruits go from the schoolhouse to the chow hall with the RPOC in charge. That’s, what? Two hundred yards? Now, they can’t free-steam as a division till their seventh week. By then, they are almost out of here. Otherwise, we are with them every single moment, except when they are actually in class. That’s really stupid.

  Senior Chief Nelson I’m a family man, but I tell my wife, “When I have a division, you have to treat it like I’m on a two-month deployment.” If you have recruits for nine weeks it’s about the same thing. Now, my wife has been with me for sixteen years, and she’s a strong woman. But my kids are getting to an age where I’d like to spend a little more time with them, because you don’t want them hanging around with the wrong crowd. But I knew what I was getting into before I got here.

  Command Master Chief McCalip It’s true. You can have more down time aboard a deployed ship than you do here. It takes a very special type of person to want to come here; you have to be truly committed to the future of the Navy to do this job. You know what you are facing here. But there are huge benefits to coming here. There’s proficiency pay, and the probability of early promotion to chief or to senior chief for the guys that are chiefs already. Last cycle, we had the highest CPO selection rate, about 40 percent, of any command in the Navy. We had about 35 percent for selection to master chief, and that’s unheard of anywhere else. And we are the largest source of command master chiefs or chief of the boat anywhere in the fleet. So there’s a payback, but this isn’t a nine-to-five job, by any means.

  Senior Chief Tucker All this is true. But the RDCs should really be better screened before they get here. And that’s the sending command’s responsibility. The command master chief needs to talk to the guy and his family, because this place is really hard on families. The screening process really has to be done on the ship, and maybe better than it is. I think we are getting mostly the right guys, but there are a percentage that probably would be happier, and doing a better job, somewhere else. And I’ll tell you another thing that really makes it hard on families. The school system in North Chicago is probably the worst at any duty station I’ve been at in fifteen years. When I was here the first time, I brought my kids. Now they are down in Missouri. That’s another reason why we can’t get good guys up here. There are no secrets in the Navy. You think that people in the fleet don’t know about the school system outside these gates?

  Comprehensive statistics, published in the Lake County News-Sun on 2 November 2000, showed North Chicago School District 137, which serves the Great Lakes Naval Base and surrounding communities, rated dead last among all school districts in the county. For example, Katzenmaier Junior High School, located just north of the base, showed 45 percent of all students below the state’s minimum acceptance levels for seventh-grade science, 50 percent below state minimums in seventh-grade math, 35 percent below standards in eighth-grade reading, and 77 percent below state minimum competency levels in eighth-grade math. By the tenth grade, things are even worse. At North Chicago High School, 48 percent were below standards in tenth-grade reading, and a whopping 80 percent in tenth-grade math.

  Chief Zeller North Chicago has a really poor reputation. And
it’s well deserved. That’s the main reason that I’m a geo-bachelor. When I was here at service school command, we thought it was so bad that we yanked our kids out of public school and sent them to private school at our own expense. That’s why we decided that I’d come up here single this time, and my wife and family would stay at home in Kansas City. Every minute I can get, and there aren’t many, I’m down 1-55 heading home.

  Senior Chief Atkinson He’s right. The schools here are terrible. You can’t afford to pay for a place in town, babysitters for after-school time, and still pay for private school. And I’m making E8 money. I have three kids: eight-year-old twins, and a six-year-old. I’m a single, custody parent. You don’t have the energy to look after your own kids. You know you can fix your kid’s problems, but you just don’t have the energy. I’d be up at 0300 to make reveille here on the base, and push recruits till, maybe, 1800 or so, and that’s only if I could get away and let my partners handle it. I’d go home to help my kids with their homework. There were days—and I’m not exaggerating—when all of us fell asleep at my kitchen table, me with my head down, and them on the floor. And then I’d get up at 0300 and do it again. It’s murder.

  Petty Officer Russell

  I have two kids in North Chicago schools, and I don’t think it’s as bad as other people suggest. I know one thing, you have gangs and drugs and all that stuff wherever you go, even in the most expensive schools. In a way, it’s better here. When they had those shootings out in Colorado, the first thing they did afterwards was put in metal detectors and security and stuff. Well, North Chicago has been dealing with that for years, so all that is already there and protecting the kids. My oldest daughter, in particular, is not a follower; in fact, she’ll go up and counsel these other kids about right and wrong. You just have to be sure your own kids are law-abiding. My daughters say, “Hey, mom, you ain’t our RDC, you’re our mom.” I have to turn it off when I go out the gate.