Before the sun had even risen, I had gathered my things and said my goodbyes to my parents. It was a short walk from my house to Ron's house. His parents were up as well - his stepfather would be giving us a ride downtown. His mom made us pancakes. The nourishment was welcome, but my nerves kept me from eating more than a couple. Like two condemned men heading to our sentencing hearing, Ron and I left his house behind and climbed into his stepfather's car. It was a short ride.
The recruiting station was downtown on Market Street near the Civic Center Plaza. It was a little hole in the wall place, no bigger than the ethnic video rental place next door. Several recruiters were crammed inside the place trying to remain professional while they conned unsuspecting people into joining the military. I don't blame them for their job. Nobody knows whether they'll like the military until they join. A recruiter, in this case, is more like a waiter - trying to entice us to have the Chef's Special. He wants us to be happy with our choice, but he's not going to lose any sleep over it if we don't. We were the first to arrive at the recruiting station and we had to wait in a bad neighborhood for our recruiter to arrive.
Our recruiter seemed annoyed at having to take us over to Oakland to be processed. I was a little confused at this attitude, but then I realized that as far as he was concerned, his job was done. He'd got us to sign on the dotted line. It was up to us what we did from here on out. If we hadn't shown that morning, nobody would have come looking for us. By showing up, I had reaffirmed my decision to join. As soon as our recruiter arrived, he poured himself a cup of coffee and then walked us over to the government lot and signed out a government sedan. As dawn broke over the city, we joined the traffic crossing the Bay Bridge for the first leg of our journey.
A month before we had gone across the bay to the Oakland Processing Center for a physical. The doctor had scrutinized us, poked us, prodded us, made us cough, and then gave us a lecture on our health with express warnings that a failure to stay healthy would make us ineligible for military service.
As we arrived in Oakland, off 12th Street, we walked into the same building and proceeded into the giant medical queue. First came the paperwork. You can't do anything in the military without paperwork. We sat and gave our name, address, social security number (last four digits), etc... again and again and again as the bored and tired secretaries typed our information over and over again on different forms. The line was a lot longer than you would imagine. There had to be close to 200 young people there being processed through on that day. They were from all races, all backgrounds, all walks of life - male and female. There was no talking. It was like a giant hospital waiting room. After the paperwork came the same battery of tests that the doctors had performed before, but suddenly I could see behind the facade. They did the tests, noted the results, and moved us on as if on a conveyor belt. Had I suddenly sprouted a second head, they would have written it on the form and sent me on to the next station. The medical warnings I had received had merely been another test of my resolve. I had passed yet again.
I somehow managed to stay close to Ron, but at some point we were separated and he had gone on ahead of me. After the medical exam, then, we waited to have our paperwork processed and then, all too quickly, we were called into a small theater shaped room. There was a pulpit at the front and an American flag behind it. An official petty officer stood as witness. The doors of the room were closed and the officer in charge welcomed us and then told us to repeat after him. In the space of five minutes, I had been sworn into the military and had vowed to protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America.
This was only the halfway point of my day. After the ceremony, we continued the processing. I found Ron in the next waiting room. We talked tersely - the fatigue and stress of the day making us look like deer caught in the headlights. Finally, I was called over to the personnel woman who had me sign a gazillion forms and then she handed me plane tickets and a stack of paperwork that I was to carry with me to my recruit training center in San Diego, CA. She told me that I was all done now and that I only had to wait to get a ride to the airport.
Ron and I were processed together, but we didn't say much as we waited for the van. The ride to the Oakland Airport was short and quiet and we boarded a nearly empty flight from Oakland to San Diego. We sat in the back with two other recruits and, as it turned out, a sailor who had just returned from sea duty. He had been aboard the U.S.S. Stark - the ship that had been hit with the French Exocet missile in the Persian Gulf by an Iraqi missile boat by mistake. He had described in glowing detail the battle to save the ship. It was both fascinating and nerve wracking - like someone giving you a first hand account of the shipwreck they had just escaped while standing in line for your Hawaiian cruise.
It was night by the time we arrived in San Diego. We exited the aircraft into the terminal and found our way through its emptiness towards the place where we were to board the bus to boot camp. There was nobody there and the place looked deserted. But we were already in military mode and we just stood there and waited. Soon other flights arrived and other people joined us. Nobody spoke. Ron and I remained tightlipped. A bus arrived and we filed aboard. There was no fanfare, no screaming drill sergeant. We rode down a dizzying set of streets and highways until we entered Recruit Training Center - San Diego. We pulled up to a small squat one story square building with a large courtyard in front and the doors to the bus opened.
A sailor stepped on to the bus and told us to follow him. He was pleasant and we flowed out of the bus and crossed the courtyard to the building. We were told to enter the room, find a number and step on it, and to drop our paperwork on the ground in front of us. We did as we were told, feeling at last that this boot camp stuff wasn't so hard.
An officer appeared and welcomed us to RTC - San Diego. He had us repeat the oath again (we did) and then several sailors scrambled in front of us and collected our paperwork. While the officer explained the procedure to us for the rest of our evening, the sailors arranged the paperwork, copied the names onto some sort of roster, and then handed the roster to the officer.
He called us out in groups of ten. First, the piss test. Ron went with the first group. He disappeared out of the room and the room became quiet. Five minutes passed and another group of ten went. I was still in the room. In the fourth group of ten, I headed to the bathroom.
Wouldn't you know it? Performance anxiety. As I stood there, parched, tired, nervous, strung out - I just couldn't piss. I had nothing in me. They got tired of waiting for me and told me to come back later. I ran out with the others, suddenly realizing that I didn't remember where it was we were going.
I'm not sure I would have gone had I known what was coming next. We crossed the courtyard and entered the bowels of a much larger building. We went along wooden floors in a warehouse type area and ended up in a room with long communal wooden tables that looked like some sort of woodshop. We were the last group of ten to make it into this room (and this company as it turned out). Standing in front of the room was a short Puerto Rican sailor with a chip on his shoulder as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. In broken and thickly accented English he said something that amounted to, "This is where you get your stuff. As I call off each item, take it from the table and put it into the sea bag on the floor next to you."
Nobody had understood a word he said, but we quickly got the gist of it. The room was hot, stuffy, and we were all tired and jet lagged from a long day of it. That combined with the man's nearly indecipherable accent, and we looked like an assembly line of dunces.
"Psst... what did he say?"
"I think he said sewing kit."
Everyone who put the wrong object in the bag got yelled at and sent out of the room. I saw Ron get kicked out about halfway through the process. Somehow my entire table made it through, mostly as a result of guess work. After another hour, we had managed to fill our seabags, complete the necessary paperwork, and head out of the room.
We were escorted out of the room by a sailor and taken across the courtyard to a barracks building (temporary). We were told to grab a rack, and then shit, shower and shave before lights out in ten minutes. I was so nervous I cut my face shaving about fifteen times. Just as I was standing looking in the mirror at my bloody stump of a face, the officer informed me that I had to report back to the first building to take my piss test.
I ran back to the first building, reported for the test, and stopped the officer cold.
"What the hell happened to your face?"
"I cut it shaving." I was already thinking that boot camp was designed to make you look like a dumbass.
I finished the test and returned to the barracks. It was past lights out and I had to find my rack in the dark, climb over someone to the top bunk, and pull myself under the covers. By that point, I had been virtually awake for 36 straight hours. My head hit the pillow and I was out.
A second later, or so it seemed, someone threw a trashcan down the center aisle of the barracks and I heard screaming.
"REVILLE! REVILLE! GET OUT OF YOUR BEDS AND MUSTER ON THE QUAD! COME ON, PEOPLE! MOVE IT!"
I threw myself out of bed and dressed as quickly as possible, thinking, "Oh my God! I have totally made a mistake!" I shuffled out of the room with everyone else, and discovered to my horror that it was 3:30 in the morning. We walked out into the moonlit morning on the quad and lined up and stood. In the darkness, I could see Ron in front of me and I suddenly had a vision of strangling him with my bare hands for having one of the most stupid and totally insane ideas and for dragging me into it. I was in Boot Camp now and there was no turning back.
2 comments:
This sounds very much like the day I went into the Air Force. All I did was call up the recruiter asking for some information, and before I knew it, I was sitting in a barber chair at Lackland AFB in San Antonio getting my flowing tresses shaved off. I also learned, too late, that the people at the training centers had no idea who was going to show up. If I'd have gone home instead of to Lackland, nobody would have known any better. And I also got a snow job from the recruiter about what I'd be doing, and where I'd be going while in the military. They can be pretty dishonest.
I still can't decide if my time in the military was or wasn't worth it. I had the time of my life, and the worst time of my life. With all the military-related issues going on in America, it's nice to be able to see things from the perspective of one who's been there, but 4 years was probably more than I needed.
Will - if you had it to do again, would you have gone into the military?
Your question is complex as you well know. There are days when I absolutely hate the idea of the military. It felt like being an Indentured Servant with little control over my life. When people tell me they can't change something in their life or that they're stuck, I just think of the military and say to myself, "Now that's stuck!"
But then there were many good qualities of the military as well. I got to go places and do things. My job was really cool and extremely satisfying. I met many great people and earned a wider appreciation of the world and different view points. I have a much deeper and more conservative core than most of my contemporaries who did not serve - though certainly not all of them.
The true testament to all of this is that shortly after I got out they changed the requirements of military service and I was free to walk away from my Reserve time at any time. Instead, I served in the reserves for four years after the Navy. When I did finally walk away, I knew it was time.
The question is moot, of course, because we can't change time. And if we could go back, we'd probably see things in exactly the same way as we did then. So, not only did I join, but I'd probably join again for the same reasons. But I'd also probably leave again for the same reasons.
Completely detached, of course, from the entire story, there's no way in hell I'd go into the military again! But then, I'd probably never know what I'd missed.
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