Marines. But one kid did wear his hair curled and hanging down, like he was proud of it. The barber asked him, “Do you want to keep these curls?”
“Yes, sir, I sure do.”
“Okay,” the barber said. With his clippers he sheared up one side of that kid’s head and down the other. Then he handed the kid his locks. “Here, keep these.”
After haircuts, we went to the supply room, pails in hand, to draw our clothes—socks, shoes, underwear, dungarees. The recruits who had already been through the line were yelling at us, “You’ll be sorry.” The guys behind the counter handing out the clothes were giving us a hard time, too. You had to wear what they gave you. You didn’t go back and exchange it. There were only two sizes in the Marine Corps: too big and too damned big.
They did ask what size shoe you wore, so your shoes always fit good for marching. They were high-tops, maybe ankle length. The smooth side of the leather was on the inside, the rough side out. And every cotton-picking day you had to shine those shoes so the DI could see his face in them. By the end of boot camp, you had them gleaming like a new car. The brown polish came in a little tin they issued along with the clothes, shaving gear, toothpaste and toothbrush, and a bar of soap. It all went into the pail. We had to buy a copy of the little red book, the
They told us to strip out of our street clothes, put them in a cardboard box, and write our home address on the outside of the box. That was the last we’d see of our street clothes. Then, with pails in hand, Marine uniforms over our left arms, shoes strung around our necks by their laces, they marched us buck naked back to the barracks. Here they gave us padlocks for our lockers. We drew two sheets, two Marine blankets and a pillowcase each. And we got our dog tags. There was a pair of them on the string, one hanging from the other. They were still brass in those days. Later they went to aluminum. Each was stamped with our name and military identification number. Mine was 496798. We were told the dog tags must remain around our necks at all times. They didn’t tell us then that if we died in combat, one of the dog tags would be sent to an office in Washington as a record of our death. The other would stay with our body and eventually hang from the cross over our grave.
We signed all sorts of papers, took some tests, got our shots.
We learned that Marines had their own name for everything. The floors were the deck. The walls were bulkheads, the ceiling was the overhead, stairs were ladders. The bathroom was the head, and was to be kept spotless at all times. We were not to leave the barracks unless we had permission. We were taught how to make up the bunks and how to stow our gear in the lockers. You had to get down on your hands and knees to open them because the key was on the same string as your dog tags, and we were forbidden to take that string off. There was a place for everything and everything had to be in its place.
Two corporals took charge of sixty of us. They were our DIs, and they were to be obeyed. When one of them entered the squad room, whoever saw him first yelled “Attention!” and we all snapped to.
Our rifles were issued a few days later. The M1903 Springfield weighed eight pounds and eleven ounces. We did physical drill every day, and we’d stand holding that heavy rifle at arm’s length, shoulder high—and hold it and hold it. When they got through with us, our arms were so tired that the rifle felt like it weighed eighty pounds.
We drilled with them, but we didn’t fire them yet.
One of the few times I got in trouble was over my rifle. During rifle inspection, you hold the weapon up and the DI grabs it and inspects it. I guess.
I hung on to mine a little too tight. At least that’s what he thought.
“Oh, you love that rifle, do you?” he said.
I said, “Yes, sir!”
Our DIs were corporals, but it was always “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!”
“Okay, you can sleep with it tonight,” he said. “You put that right in your bunk when you go to bed and you take it out when you get up in the morning. You sleep with that rifle tonight if you like it so well.”
“Yes, sir!”
Sure enough, sometime during the night—I don’t know exactly what time it was—he came around to check if that rifle was in the bunk with me. And it was there, right beside me.
We “dry fired” the rifle for days, practicing the same sequence over and over—align the sight, adjust for wind and distance, breath control, gentle trigger squeeze, follow-through—before we got to shoot live ammunition. On the range some of the guys couldn’t get their arm positioned where the instructor wanted it. When you’re shooting they want that arm squarely under that rifle, straight up and down. Some guys were just not flexible. They couldn’t bring their arm over that far. They had a helluva time. So the DI would take their arm and yank it—
There were three rankings, from Marksman to Sharpshooter up to Expert: I shot Sharpshooter with the .45 pistol and Springfield.
They worked us day and night. They’d come into the barracks at eleven o’clock at night. You hadn’t been in bed maybe an hour, and they’d shout, “We’re moving out! We’re shipping overseas. Get it all together.” We had to get our seabag, our full transport pack, our shelter half, the whole nine yards. We’d hit the streets and they’d march us for an hour and a half. Then we’d come back and get a little sleep and maybe at three o’clock they’d get us up again. We did a lot of running in the sand, and if you weren’t in pretty good shape that was tough. Your foot was slipping back every time it hit the sand. It was like trying to run in one of those dreams where your feet move but you don’t get anywhere.
Our DIs were named Stallings and Simon. Stallings stood about five feet eleven and straight as an arrow. He was an athletic type, and you knew not to mess with him.
Simon was soft-spoken and wore dark glasses. I had a little trouble with him one time in the chow line. When you’re in the chow line you’re at ease. You can move around but you can’t talk.
Fighter planes were buzzing off the runway on North Island, sometimes two at a time and flying real low. I was standing there stargazing at those airplanes, and I said, half to myself, “My God, watch them go!”
Simon walked up to me and stuck his face right up in mine. “You are at ease. Do you understand that?”
Whenever he had something to say to you, Simon got right up in your face and looked you straight in the eye and spoke very softly. I doubt if the third man down the line heard what he said. But
I thought then, That’s a good tactic. You don’t need to yell and scream at somebody to get something done. Later on I was to make good use of that lesson.
We had school and if anybody dozed off during class, it was so many laps around the parade ground.
Whenever the sleeper would get back, the DI would say, “Are you tired?”
“No, sir!”
“Well, go again.”
He’d come back with his tongue hanging, absolutely give out. And the DI would say, “Are you tired now?”
“A little bit, sir!”
“Do you think you can stay awake, now?”
“Yes, sir!”
We had two sets of fatigues, and whenever we quit for the day we went to the laundry, where there were scrub benches, brushes and soap. We washed the clothes we had worn that day, and put on the fresh set.
One kid thought he could get away with something. He would just wet one set of clothes and hang them out to dry and wear the old set again. The DI caught him and made him strip down to his underwear. Then he lined up the whole platoon in formation out in the street. He took both sets of that guy’s clothes, soaked them, and laid them in the sand and marched us down and about-face and back over those clothes maybe ten times. Then he made the kid go wash them.
Another morning, a guy didn’t shave. Or maybe he shaved, but it wasn’t a close shave. His jaw bristled. The DI got up in his face. “Oh, you forgot to shave this morning.”
He said, “No, sir. I shaved but my face was sore and I didn’t do too good a job.”
“I don’t think you did, either,” the DI said. “Come down and see me this afternoon whenever we get through.”
That afternoon he went in and the DI was sitting there whittling on a piece of wood with a razor blade. He
