Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire boot camp stories - waxing nostalgic

They still used them in basic training in '72.

There is always one in every platoon. When I was in Basic Training in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, 1959, there was a coonazz from out of the swamps of south Louisiana, who was a total screwup.

One day we were running the course (can't remember what it was called) where you crawled under barbed wire for a distance with the water cooled Browning .30 Machine Guns shooting over your head. This guy was crawling along as were a bunch of other guys in various lanes. (If I recall there were four machine guns firing.)

He had told some other soldiers previously that they were not using live ammo, shooting over us as we crawled along, hugging the ground.

He crawled about half way through the course, the machine guns chattering away, when he turned over and said to a guy in the next lane, "Hell, that ain't live ammo. I'll prove it."

He tossed his steel helmet up in the air. CLANG CLANG CLANG!! That helmet went scooting along with three .30 bullet holes in it. Of course, there was an immediate "Cease Fire!," and the sergeants went running out to the screwup, dragging him off the course. He spent the next two weeks pulling KP and about anything else the sergeants could come up with.

His pay was also docked for the price of his helmet. He never again questioned anything about "live ammo" courses.

L.W.

I had two beers while still in 2nd recruit training Bn. at Parris Island S.C. on Sunday Nov. 2nd, 1969. Honest to God... Here's how it happened: We graduated Mon. Nov. 3rd and the day before if you had family coming down to see your graduation they could sign you out for a couple hours on Sun. afternoon for some on base liberty. Buddy of mine was stationed up at Camp LeJuene N.C. and had his own car and that Sunday he came down to see me and had no trouble getting on base because he was an active duty Marine and got me signed out by telling them he was my step-brother. We drove around a little on the island and he had a cooler in the back seat with beer. I couldn't resist... had two of 'em... Don't even recall what kind of beer it was but it seemed like beer had never tasted so good. But it was terrifying to have to go back to our barracks. Thank God the D.I. on duty that afternoon didn't smell anything on me or else I would have been dead meat for sure.

Good thing some teacher taught you how to read in school.

That is a bit of a story all by itself. I was taught an experimental reading system that turned out to be a complete failure. I think it only lasted two years but the damage was done. I have been told none of my classmates can read. I have taken three collage placement tests and all three times the tester look at my background and told me I could neither read of spell. They have been shocked when they gave me a reading comprehension test. I can read and I love to read. Spelling is another story.

Spelling is another story



So we've noticed

My boot camp stint happened 46 yrs ago this month.....either the 5th or the 8th of Aug 1968. I had a few occurances at NTC San Diego but the one that really stuck out was qualification day at Camp Elliott. Three or four companies were loaded in to cattle cars for the trip. My company got split up and the bus i was on overheated and just plodded along.
When we finally arrived at the hangar the Marine Range Officers were not happy campers. And there were not enough M1 Garands set out. I knew about the Garand and the "thumb" but had never touched one. So we finally were sitting cross-legged on the floor with our
weapon and two stripper clips (i think). We were instructed not to
touch anything until screamed at.
I knew the Garand was chambered in 30/06 but the cartridges in the
clips were way to short. I had an '06 and a 243 back home. Stupidly a
finger grew a mind of its own and moved a clip so i could better look
at the ammo. Hell then erupted around and over me.....along with a
severely polished shoe crunching my right hand (and the brain-dead
trigger finger).
After a bunch of pushups and ear damage the Marine demanded why
i had touched the ammo. I squeaked something back about the
ammo looked wrong. WRONG ANSWER from a squirrel.
As my luck had it the same RO was my hovering RO at the range.
After not crunching my thumb loading the first clip i wrapped myself
into the sling,positioned my body as best as i could remember the
proper prone position and tried to still my heart.....impossible. The
RO then knelt next to me and decently asked if i knew something about shooting.
I proceeded to miss my target with every shot.....and i was stunned. Of course,derision then rained upon me loudly from my buddy RO. Loading the second clip i was determined.....no marks on my target. With three or four rounds left i lowered my front sight and was rewarded with a cloud of dust at the top of the berm. My last rounds went into the black.
After the cease fire and leaving my Garand on the concrete and stepping back,my RO picked it up,yelled "line hot" and loaded it. He missed my target on the first shot....he asked where i ended up holding and i replied bottom of the frame. All black-offhand-til the "ting".
He turned and said,"you probably would have qualified if the Navy armorers hadn't [bleep] up."
"And you are correct on the ammunition."
It was many years later that i figured out i had shot a modified Garand Mod 0 or Mod1......in 7.62x51.

I have tried to keep it a secrete.

Last day of basic Training, my granparents drove up from Florida for the ceremony.
Grandpa was a WWII Veteran so he knew the deal.....after graduation they allowed us a couple hours of "Family" time in our company area. My grandparents had a picnic lunch packed for us, and Grandpa had a thermos filled with cold "Koolaid" that tasted remarkably like Budweiser!

But it leaked out.

A heck of a lot more than once.

Your French is pretty good, Scott!

Ah, Basic Training during April, May and June 1966 at Fort Jackson.

First thing I remember was hearing Sgt Stowers say, "In the next eight weeks I'm going to get to know 20 percent of you really well!!! That's the bottom ten percent and the top ten percent. The rest of you just do what you are told and I won't even know your name!!" You can bet this cowboy made dang sure he was in the middle 80 percent ALL the time.

I also agree that I was in the best physical condition of my life at the time and actually enjoyed PT. Being 21 years old I was a little more mature than some and seemingly could cope with many situations better than some others could.

I also came to really like the M-14 as a weapon. Mine was very accurate and wish I could own it today. One of the last things I can remember about basic was crawling the Infiltration Course twice in one night. It was raining and one of my platoon sergeants came along and said they were short a few people in the last wave and did anyone want to crawl it again? I took a chance at volunteering as I knew he was a pretty straight shooter and I was just getting wetter standing around. True to his word there were no strings attached and when the wave finished we all gathered up in formation and marched back to our company barracks. The barracks was quite a sight with everyone stripped to their shorts while cleaning their rifle. It was a fighting end to the week of Bivouac in the field.

I recently revisited Fort Jackson and was amazed at all the changes. I couldn't find the area where our barracks were and the only thing I did recognize was Headquarters. Of course it has been a little time since I was there.

98 ft sill I think we were in our 6th week of basic training. Bam their they were sticking out like sore thumbs day 1 privates just shipped over from reception holy [bleep] these kids were so [bleep] rattled I still remember it like yesterday one of them just threw up all over his food. You could spot them a mile out due to their brand new bdu's.

I remember it from the other end. Going through processing, getting our brand new uniforms and just learning how to march in formation, we'd pass guys in their 7th or 8th week of Basic and look in awe at the "seasoned vets".

We had a guy like that. Jacked his meat while sound asleep. They discharged him (no pun) sleep jacking is like sleep walking I guess.

While in basic, during swim quals/week they have the SWIC/EOD/SEAL guys come in and give the big recruitment speech. It's the ONLY time you could ever get out of your enlistment contract and change rates to a feeder rate for those duties but you had to decide then.

I decided I wanted to do it. Passed the PT test/swim etc. Then it was noticed that I was blue/green and red/orange color deficient. No go.

"But Chief, underwater, colors go away, red being the first in as little as 10 feet"

"Seaman Recruit Teal - how do you know that?"

"I scuba dive"

No good. later I'm in language school and they're doing the big air crew linguist recruitment thing. Sounds cool - sign me up.

"Teal - you're color blind you can't go"

"Chief, why not? What does that have to do with my language skills?"

"Teal - you're an observer on that acft too. If there are other acft in the air, you have to recognize navigation lights to monitor what they're doing/where they're going"

I sat down and thought about it.

"Chief - if the plane's getting bigger, it's chasing us, if it's getting smaller it's going away and if it stays the same size, it's just there. Even at night I'd be able to tell by the distance between the lights. Doesn't matter a damn what color they are."

You could tell he had never thought of this before and you could tell that pissed him off.

"Teal - sit down, shut up and color. You're not going air crew!"

"aye aye chief"

Busted by genetics.