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.
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