by Barry Fixler
Sooner or later, the temptation of that nice, cool water from the drill instructors’ water fountain became too much for some poor recruits. About two o’clock one morning, a recruit on fire watch looked around and decided, “I’m the only one that’s awake. Who would know?”
As soon as he went over and touched the spring button to trigger the water, an alarm went off like a school bell. RRRRRRRR!!!! RRRRRR!!!! It wouldn’t stop.
The recruit shook the fountain trying to shut it off, but it was all rigged so that only a drill instructor could shut it off.
The drill instructor stormed out of his quarters and went berserk.
“What the fuck?! You stupid fuck! You’re gonna get us all killed!”
We didn’t realize it then, but everything they taught us as recruits would translate to a lifesaving discipline in the jungle of Vietnam.
And the Marine Corps does not tolerate fat people. No fat bodies allowed.
Someone who was a little overweight but could do all the push-ups and the running could hang in there. But a fat body who couldn’t do fifty push-ups and ten pull-ups was pulled from the platoon, put back two weeks or a month and made to exercise until they got in shape. Then they were reassigned to another platoon, but could never outlive the fat body stigma.
We had a few fat bodies. They were a little overweight, but they hung in there and could handle the minimum physical training requirements.
During chow time, whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner, we marched in to the mess hall with a drill instructor, totally silent, so silent that we could hear people eating.
We would get on the food line with our metal food trays held straight in front of us; the next guy moved, and the next guy moved, very machine-like. Recruits in the serving line slopped out the food from the other side: meat in one compartment on the tray, potatoes in another, vegetables, and then dessert. We had to eat everything on our trays; no leftovers allowed.
After I was in recruit training a few weeks and knew the routine, I saw that dessert was lemon meringue pie. I hate lemon meringue pie.
I saw the slop line recruit scooping up the lemon meringue pie and getting ready to flip it on my tray. I went “Mmmmm,” not saying anything, but I caught his eyes and he held onto the pie and shooed me off. I skated, got off the line with no lemon meringue pie!
But my luck, I sat next to a fat body. Fat body had a big lemon meringue pie.
We had to eat fast. Fast, fast, fast! The drill instructor paced up and down while we shoveled food—shoveling, shoveling, shoveling.
But the drill instructor saw that fat body next to me with a big lemon meringue pie, and he went off on him.
“What the fuck?! You’re a fat body! What are you, fucking nuts?! You’re not eating that!”
He snatched up the fat body’s lemon meringue pie with his bare hands. I didn’t have one, and he saw that, so the drill instructor slapped the fat body’s pie on my plate: more for the skinny runt. I had to eat it and not say a word.
The drill instructor would have gone ballistic if I’d said something. I would have been done, finished. I’d probably have had to go to “motivation platoon.” That’s never good.
Of all the luck! Out of the 300 recruits eating at the same time, at the most there were five fat bodies, and I sat next to a fat body who had lemon meringue pie.
The Corps not only controlled what food went in us, it controlled when it came out.
On the second day of boot camp they introduced us to “the head,” which was nine sinks, nine showers and nine toilets. The toilets had no privacy partitions.
I grew up accustomed to having my own private bathroom and my own shower. Before boot camp, I probably never went to the bathroom without closing the door. In school, if I had to take an emergency crap in the bathroom, I could do it in private because even the school toilets had privacy stalls.
At Parris Island, there were just those nine toilet bowls lined up like soldiers. Drill instructors lined us up, ten recruits standing at attention in a line in front of each toilet.
“Ready, hoo-aghhh!”
That was the command to mount the toilet. Nine recruits would step forward, one from each line, mount their respective toilets, and attempt to defecate.
The drill instructors gave each recruit exactly one minute to complete the task.
We had to shit looking straight at the other Marines looking at us trying to shit. In reality, they weren’t looking at us; they were staring straight ahead into space, still at attention. When it got down to ten seconds for us finish, the drill instructors started counting down.
“Ladies! You have nine seconds to squeeze off those turds! Cut that turd short and move it out!”
And we had to be finished. It wasn’t like I could raise my hand and ask the drill instructor for another minute, please.
I thought, “How the hell can I crap with ninety guys watching me?”
During the day if we had to shit, we had the choice of crapping in our pants or holding it.
There was usually a head call in the morning, a head call after lunch and one after supper. And if we had to take an emergency head visit, we had to request permission from our drill instructors. If we stuttered, they started badgering us and we’d get all confused.
One time a guy sneaked into the head and secretly crapped, but didn’t want to make the flushing noise, so when the drill instructor saw the turd in the toilet, he summoned all of us recruits together and asked who did it.
The guilty recruit raised his hand and said, “Sir, that’s Private Smith’s turd.”
The drill instructor went off.
“You used my fucking head without permission! You’re going to get us all killed! Now I want you to fucking eat that turd!”
“Yes, sir!” the recruit said.
He didn’t look very enthusiastic, but he bent down and began fishing for the turd with his bare hands. The drill instructor stopped him before he could get a good grip on it.
“Get the fuck out of here!” the instructor yelled.
I stood at attention thinking, “Holy crap! The Marines even take shitting seriously!”
9
It’s a Bitch on
the Thumbs
We all went to war in Vietnam with M16 combat rifles, but we trained in boot camp with M14s. The M14 became part of us; we lived and breathed the M14 and felt it in our thumbs long after we had left it behind.
We knew everything about the M14. It has a wood stock and weighs eleven pounds. We would put the M14s down on our footlockers and close our eyes, or they’d blindfold us, and we had about two minutes to take them apart and then reassemble them. All of us could do it, every one of us.
Obstacle course, distance runs…everything we did, we did carrying those rifles. If we happened to drop our M14s and a drill instructor saw us, we were going to end up sleeping with the rifle right next us under the covers, our new girlfriend for the next week.
Dropping our rifles was unthinkable, and if an M14 had a little bit of rust, even a tiny bit of rust, that meant brig time and possibly having your graduation delayed. It never happened to anyone in my platoon, but that was the threat they held over us.
The point was: Become one with the rifle and one as a group of men.
During marching exercises on Parris Island, we trained with eighty to ninety men divided into three columns, and the drill instructor was always on our asses.
“Left, right, left, right, march!”
“Right oblique, left oblique, column to the left, column to the right!”
Back, forth, up, down, swing rifle to the left, swing rifle to the right, swing it up, pull it up, parade this, up, down, this.… We had to memorize all the commands.
Everything had to be in unison. Ninety guys had to do everything exactly at the same time without losing tempo. If one guy got out of step, say made a left shoulder turn instead of a right shoulder turn, the drill instructor went ballistic.
“What the fuck?! You out of
your fucking mind, private?! Don’t you know your left from your right?! You fucked up! You’re gonna get us all killed in Vietnam!”
The drill instructors would get in our faces. They would go completely ballistic, and we had to be punished. And if one guy screwed up and had to be punished, that meant everyone screwed up and had to be punished, all ninety of us. That’s the thing: They made us a team, every man accountable.
I would tell myself, “I don’t want to be the guy to fuck up and make everyone take the pain,” but someone usually did, and the drill instructor would lay it on us.
“You fucked up! You fucking turd! You fucking maggot! You fucksticks! You’re all gonna die in Vietnam!”
We lived in a relatively nice barracks, but to the drill instructor, it was a “barn.” We were “ladies” who lived in a barn, and screwing up on the parade deck would send the drill instructors out of their minds.
Marching required real concentration. Getting ninety guys to do anything completely in sync is tough, and sure as shit, somebody somewhere was bound to screw up, and the drill instructors would order everyone to a halt.
We had to stand at attention holding our M14s, and we had to hold them completely level. The rifles had to be absolutely parallel to the ground.
On order, we had to pull back the bolt on the rifle, and on another order, we had to release it, and there was the problem. To hold the rifle correctly, we had to place our thumbs in the path of the bolt, and when we released the bolt, it slammed into our thumbs. We had to remain at attention and not say a word, even though our brains screamed, “Aghhhhhhhhhhh,” and our thumbs throbbed.
The drill instructor would order us to march again, and then someone else would screw up.
“You pieces of shit! You fucked up! Are you out of your fucking minds?! You’re gonna get us all killed!”
Back to attention. Bolts slammed into our thumbs again. Thumb throbbed—bbbbb-boom, bbbbb-boom, bbbbb-boom. Both thumbs got it, depending on what we were doing at the time that someone made another mistake.
We returned to the barracks with swollen thumbs, and a corpsman came in with a paper clip and held it over a flame until it was red-hot. We couldn’t ask any questions, couldn’t say a word. We had no idea what he was doing.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
The corpsman told me to hold out a thumb, which was black and swollen. He jammed that hot paper clip into the nail and blood just spurted.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I thought, but I couldn’t say that.
At least I knew what to expect for the other thumb, and blood spewed. All of the other guys saw that happen to me and knew what was up. At least the pressure would be relieved.
Mike Ali, a buddy from boot camp and one of my best friends, lost a leg and an eye in Vietnam. About nine months into his tour of Vietnam, North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers overran his position and dropped a grenade on him. He lost a leg, and his eye is gouged out. He has little pieces of shrapnel floating around in his body and probably had more than 2,000 stitches sewn into him.
My thumbs are great now; they recovered from boot camp and don’t have a mark on them. Mike’s thumbs never recovered. They’ve been ugly since boot camp, and when we get together now, we laugh about it.
“Thumbs, man, fucking thumbs!”
When people meet Mike, they say, “Yeah, Barry was right, your thumbs are fucked up.”
10
Marines at Last
Boot camp Graduation Day is a big day, a very, very big day. It’s the day that families come for a parade for the 250 or so guys about to become Marines. When the drill instructors say, “Fall out, Marines,” you are Marines. You have graduated boot camp, and then you walk leisurely for the first time in about nine weeks; you walk leisurely and kiss your parents, hug your parents, and can actually talk.
My mother has a big mouth, and my thumbs looked so fucked up, just ugly, ugly, ugly. So I remember cupping my hand so that my mother never saw my thumbs. We all kept our mangled thumbs hidden from our parents. The last thing I wanted to hear was my mother yelling, “What happened to your fingernails?!”
I was afraid that I wouldn’t graduate from boot camp. I was nervous that my mother would say something wrong or that I wouldn’t walk right or I wouldn’t salute an officer. I kept looking for officers to salute. We all did. The janitor of the base probably drove in and had ten guys saluting him.
The drill instructors never let down their guard. They never said, “Good job, Private Barry Fixler. I’m proud of you.”
What they did was—and it was the best thing—acknowledge us as we were boarding the bus to leave.
As we stood in line outside the bus, they told us, “Board the bus, Marines! Good luck!”
That was it, but they called us Marines.
“Oh my God!” I thought. “We are Marines!”
* * *
I learned early on about the respect that some people have for the Marines, even if I didn’t take full advantage when it was given to me.
After boot camp we were sent to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for combat training. After combat training, which lasted about six weeks, they gave us ten days off. They called it “leave.” I went home on leave in the summer of 1967.
My father gathered about a dozen friends to take me out for dinner at the Playboy Club in Manhattan. His friends were all businessmen, all executive types in conservative suits and ties. They were fun guys, though, all gamblers at heart.
It was effectively my going-away dinner, and they sat us around a beautiful oval table in a special room at the Playboy Club. They drank scotch, and we all ordered steak. If you wanted to live the good life in those days, you couldn’t get better than a nice, thick steak.
I savored the smell of the cooked steaks when the Playboy Bunny girls brought them out. Those cuts of beef looked awesome, each about two inches thick, and the girls placed one in front of everyone but me. I thought that was a little odd, but not a big deal. No one else started carving into his steak. They were waiting for me to get mine.
I admired their steaks—they looked and smelled delicious—and we waited and waited. Finally, two Bunnies brought out my steak, and it was twice the size of the others, about four inches thick!
“Holy shit!” I told myself. “Look at that steak! Oh my God!”
All of the guys cracked up laughing, toasting each other and, of course, toasting me. They clapped when I cut into the steak and we all had a great time laughing and talking. We didn’t think about how bittersweet the night was for my father.
On one hand, he was enjoying the camaraderie with his friends and his son, but on the other, he knew he wouldn’t see me for a year and a half, and maybe never again alive. I was, after all, going to war.
I don’t remember what the guys had for dessert, but they intended for my after-meal treat to be a Playboy Bunny! They came and took me by my elbow and told me I could go into another room with one of the girls for some special attention.
I couldn’t. “No, no, no,” I protested.
“Pick any one; they’re yours,” one of the guys told me. They were cracking up laughing and loving every second of it. They really made me feel special, but I was too shy. I just couldn’t do that sort of thing in front of my father and all of his friends. Had it been my buddies there, I would have been a goner! Forget about me for the next hour!
My father and his friends sensed it, how awkward I felt, and they just let it die there and the girls walked away. No one was offended. I wound up having strawberry shortcake for dessert instead, and we had coffee and tea and some more drinks. I had never had a four-inch steak in my life or been treated so royally. That was good enough for me.
The last stateside stop before Vietnam was California, and the reason why I’m not full of tattoos is because I ran around looking for girls.
Recruit training at Parris Island and combat training at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina took about six months. They made us disciplined Marines and then
taught us how to fight. Then we went to Camp Pendleton in California for another four to six weeks of combat training.
We were with mostly the same 150 guys in our company at Camp Pendleton who we had been with in boot camp, and I got real comfortable. It was like high school. Not all of the guys were friends, but we all knew each other and could recognize the familiar faces.
What was nice about Camp Pendleton was, for the first time, we had weekends off. We had a little liberty. We trained Monday through Friday, and if everything worked out and we had the weekend off, we went to Oceanside. It was the first town south of the base, about forty miles north of San Diego.
So a bunch of the Marines would say, “Saturday morning let’s go to Oceanside and get tattoos! USMC! Hoo-raa!”
I remember thinking, “Yeah, yeah, OK.”
And the whole platoon got up and took a bus into Oceanside to get tattoos: USMC, the bulldog, this, that.
Oceanside, of course, is in Southern California and it was crawling with pretty women wearing nothing but bikinis and light summer dresses.
I was on the line to get a tattoo just like all of the other Marines, and we were about twenty, forty deep. And I was standing there thinking, “What am I, a moron? These pretty girls are all over the place, and I’m on line to get a tattoo with these knuckleheads?” So I left the line and went looking for girls.
But guys are proud of those tattoos. We were Marines and we were entitled. You can’t get a Marine tattoo prior to boot camp. If you come into boot camp and you have “USMC” tattooed on you, brother, you’re in trouble. They’re going to put you through hell.
But when you make it, once you are a Marine, you want to show it off. We didn’t have any idea what we were about to be thrown into.
We were about to find out why the drill instructors were so passionate about discipline. “You maggots are gonna all die in Vietnam!” was no idle threat.
INTO THE FIRE
11