Prayers

In boot camp I slept on the top rack. I shared the two bed rack with a recruit named Jason Cook. He spoke in his sleep a lot and often woke me up. He seemed to be pretty traumatized, at least in his sleep, from the stresses of boot camp. It seemed as if he was reliving the previous days torture every night while he slept. This was to the chagrin of the recruits trying to sleep around him because he was so loud with the, "Aye, Aye sir[s]" and the "Yes [and] No Sir[s]"that he often woke those closest to him up while seeming to sleep soundly.

Sometimes we threw stuff at him or the fire watch would shake him to get him to shut up. If it hadn't been so funny to listen to him and some of the dramatic things he said we might have killed him. He was as funny awake though as he was asleep and it was fun to be stationed with him the entire 4 years I was enlisted.

I had no where to say my prayers privately so I said them every night as I lay in my rack. Often times I would fall asleep saying them but at least I said them. Being in very humble circumstances helped me get closer to God. Church every Sunday was a 3 hour life saver and breath of fresh air. We did have group prayer every night which I led. Anyone wanting to could join a religious circle and share scriptures, say prayers and talk about God. We got about 15 minutes for that every evening before the lights were out and we were required to be in our racks. I enjoyed sharing my LDS faith with recruits not of my faith and I enjoyed learning about other's faiths.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsB0-x5Ke-M

One night I had a recruit come to me with a sore throat as sore as they come. He was a solid recruit and very dedicated and was not looking for excuses to get out of anything. He feared bringing it up to the drill instructors because he did not want to look like a softy. I didn't blame him. One could often make their lives much harder by claiming an injury or a sickness so most of us just sucked it up. He was desperate though. He could not speak, swallow, or talk and was almost to tears because his throat hurt so badly.

It was an opportunity to give a priesthood blessing to a nonmember and thanks to my father I knew what to do. I gave him a blessing and then had the inspiration to tell him to drink as much water as he possible could. He drank a lot that night and the next morning his sore throat was gone. The blessing had worked and he was extremely grateful for my faith.

It has been an amazing blessing in my life to have prayer. Thank you Heavenly Father for making a way for me to be able to communicate with you on a personal basis.

Talking in Third person

When you get to boot camp you are thrown into an environment with dudes who come from all walks of life. We are brown, black, white, gang members, farm boys, city slickers, and anything else you can imagine. After about 2 or 3 weeks you start to forget where the other guys come from, or what they look like and start caring more about building a team and thriving in chaos. We stop caring about ourselves so much and start lifting each other up.

(This picture was taken during the battle for Fallujiah in Iraq. These two Marines ran out to save a comrade who had been shot. One of the Marines who ran to grab him was killed in the process as you can see him laying face down the the left in the last picture on the screen.)

There is always going to be the 10% that slip through the cracks and could care less about the team, but for the most part becoming a Marine requires selflessness. I am not claiming that I am perfect at being selfless nor was I perfect being such in the Marine Corps. I definitely had my moments of looking out for number 1 and I am sure most Marines can relate, but we were a band of brothers and brothers take care of each other.

One tactic they use in boot camp to assist us in breaking the selfishness mentality is to talk in third person. For 12 weeks we are not allowed to talk in first person. The only acceptation is when recruits talk to each other during our limited "free time" in the evening in the squad bay.

I don't know how it was for other recruits but even after 12 weeks of talking like this I still had trouble being perfect at it. It was often a tongue twisting experience and when you are engaging with a drill instructor, a civilian, or a commissioned officer where you are nervous anyway and you screw up the third person language you usually suffer some stiff consequences. You at least get made fun of a little. I appreciated being able to talk normal again when that time came.

A few phrases might include:

"This recruit requests permission to speak with drill instructor Sergeant Jones sir."

"This recruit requests permission to use the head sir."

"Recruit Gent requests permission to run back to the squad bay to grab his pack sir."

Sometimes they were a lot more complicated than this but this gives you an idea.

(This video is pretty chaotic but hilarious at least to those who have been there. The novice won't really understand what's going on.) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkxkNcHajyw

I guess after boot camp I became bilingual. I always wanted to speak another language.

Fat Body

There is are minimum criteria for being allowed to ship out for USMC boot camp. You have to be under a certain weight, although not necessarily in shape, and you have to be able to do 2 pull ups, 44 crunches, and run 1.5 miles in under 13:30 minutes. Even some really skinny guys have trouble doing this.

Skinny guy getting screamed at for running slow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNBgKjLWVcw

If you pass these minimum requirements you get to ship out. If you are still overweight you get two red marks across your white PT shirt and are called a "fat body" your entire stay at the recruit depot even if you drop tons of weight as almost all who are "fat bodies" do. It's hard not to when they make you sweat relentlessly and feed you only skinless chicken and a scoop of rice for every meal. I had buddies lose 30 and 40 pounds in a 13 week period. That's an amazing diet program if you ask me.

I entered above par and not a fat body but by the end I had gained 20 pounds of fat. I was really into the weight room before I entered boot camp and so the PT was actually a step down for me. Plus my father and step-mother were vegetarians so I entered boot camp extremely ripped. I was 6' and 180 pounds. I came out 6'2" and 200 pounds and off balance because of the new weight. Rapid fat gain is much harder to get used to than rapid muscle gain. I've experienced both.

In the chow hall I would grab 6 to 10 pieces of bread with packets of syrup and eat them together as quick as I could along with the other food I was given to curb my hunger. I did not know at the time the danger of sugar and bread combinations. I just ate as much as I could.

I was also told by my now ex-brother-in-law that the military puts saltpeter in the food at boot camp. The claim is that it creates erectile disfunction in men. I am not sure if this was true but for 13 weeks it worked for me.

After boot camp, and I was allowed to lift weights again, I would gain 15 to 20 more pounds but transformed almost the entire 40 into muscle. In 1 year I went from 6' and 180 pounds to 6'2" and 220 pounds. My Physical fitness tests were better than when I was 180 pounds because I was so much stronger. Every physical fitness test I ever took in eight years in the Marine Corps was a first class PFT.

My highest was a 293 out of 300 and my lowest was a 245 out of 300. Most of the time I was in the range of 275 to 285. I could almost always do 20 pull ups and my strategy was that if you could do 20 pull ups you could walk the three mile run and still get a first class PFT. I always ran but the point is that if you could do pull ups you had it made. It always worked for me.

Believe it or not this is me near the end of my senior year and me with my future wife Ami at her graduation 3 years later. They were the closest pics I could find to each other of the difference in my physical change. I achieved these results in probably 1 to 2 years of going to boot camp.

Motivating team effort:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMP_--8mSJg

Pee Pee In My Big Boy Pants

The DI’s loved to play games with us to cause stress and chaos as I mentioned before. I learned to enjoy and love them. They were very entertaining at times. After we lost initial drill, as a result of my poor leadership, we were IT’ed in the sand and then brought inside where the DI’s instructed us to take the lock off of our foot lockers, grab our valuable possession bags which contained things like mail stamps, my scriptures, and an address book, and dump the rest in the middle of the squad bay. When 88 recruits dump their footlockers in one pile it gets pretty big. All our belongings were meshed together in the middle of the squad bay. 

After dumping our “trash” into one pile we put our footlockers back in front of our racks and stood at attention. Keep in mind that it took about 20 seconds for all 88 of us to empty the footlockers while being harassed by the DI demons. After all the recruits were back at their footlockers and at the position of attention the DI's instructed us that we had 20 seconds to grab what we could and put it into our footlockers, lock them, and be back at attention. 

When they said, “move” we all rushed to the pile and started grabbing anything and everything we could not knowing who’s belongings we were grabbing. I think I ended up with several shirts but no socks or underwear. We had stamped everything with our names so later we were able to trade among ourselves until we at least had some of everything. I did not get everything back that was mine and later on in the cycle I saw a recruit wearing my sweat shirt. He would not give it back to me. I am assuming that it was the only one he had. They had issued us 2 so I still had one.  It took a few days to trade back the items we had collected. 

Another game they liked to play and to punish us with was drinking water. They made us drink a full canteen of water, which was 32oz, every night before we hit the rack. This ensured that peeing twice a night for me was a guarantee. I never realized how important water really was until boot camp. One day I had a very sore throat that made swallowing torture. I decided to drink twice as much water as they made us drink and within a day my sore throat was gone. Since then I almost never get sore throats and if I do it is because of something sugary I ate, but chugging water takes care of the problem within 24 hours every time. For some reason my mother tried to teach me growing up that drinking coke would help but I believe that’s a bunch of crap. Water solves the problem for me. 

Anyway, on one particular night we were being punished for something I don’t remember and so as punishment, I believe it was Sergeant Jones, made us drink our first full canteen. After turning the canteen upside down over our heads to ensure all 88 were empty he made us run to the head and fill both our canteens. We came back and stood at attention in front of our racks. He then commanded us to drink canteen #2 after which we turned them upside down over our heads. Immediately he made us drink #3. It took some a lot longer to finish than others and I managed to only get a few drips on my head after turning it upside down. 

When all were finished, I could tell by looking at the other recruits that some of them were feeling pretty bloated. I guess we all were but some of us had much smaller stomachs than others. Sergeant Jones then barked the order to once again go fill up our canteens. It appeared that he was going to make us drink at least 5. As we were wobbling to the head with the 3 quarts of water storage in our guts two recruits barfed up 3 quarts of water plus dinner in the middle of the squad bay. It was enough to change the course of the night and prevent us from drinking anymore. 

I was not excited at the prospect of having to pee half a dozen times that night because I grew up believing that if you did not get at least eight hours of sleep at night it was unhealthy. I still needed to be broken of my addiction to sleep. In the Marine Corps they teach you that sleep is a crutch of which I believe whole heartedly now. It is anyway, when you can’t function. Sleep deprivation is more psychological than anything else. I believe the body needs sleep to repair and recover, but not at the expense of others or your sanity. One can learn to overcome the sleep myth. 

I am not sure if it was the night I drank 3 canteens or a different night but I ended up peeing my rack as I slept. I was extremely tired and well hydrated and did not wake up one night. I am grateful it woke me up in the middle of the night. It gave me a chance to cover it with a pair of cammies, change my underwear and shirt, get a little sleep, and cover it up in the morning. I just made my rack in the morning as usual and told nobody. I did not want a nickname handed to me like “pee wee” or “Pee brain” or maybe “recruit pisser.” The next night it was all dry and we got to wash our sheets every Thursday which was only a couple days away.