In 1960, Marine Corps Boot Camp was twelve weeks long.
Our living (?) quarters were WWII Quonset huts. Each one had two rows of metal bunk-type beds (“racks”), one row down each side. I would guess that each hut held maybe two dozen men? Everything we did and everywhere we went, we double-timed (fast trot). The DI’s were always right there, sharp-eyed and just waiting to pounce on an errant move or failure to do exactly what was ordered. And we had to begin everything we said with “Sir,” followed by our words, ending with another “sir!” Furthermore, we were required to speak of ourselves in the third person. “Private! What is your serial number?” “Sir, the private’s serial number is 1 9 1 0 9 0 0, Sir!”
One of my more humorous recollections is when one guy forgot and answered a question about himself and several other recruits with “Sir, we (blah-blah-blah), sir!” This DI stood right in front of the guy, literally nose to nose and screamed “WE?? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?!” But what made it so funny was the way this one DI spoke. He sounded almost like he was out of breath half the time, so his question came out almost like a wheeze. “Do you have a (final exhalation) mouse (pause) in your pocket?”
But you better for darn sure not laugh!
Punishment for screwing up - and it seemed like nobody could do anything right the first few weeks - was to “Drop and give me twenty” (pushups). These were performed with your body in a straight line from your toes to your head, only touching your nose to the ground each time you went down. And you had to count out loud as you did them. If you slipped up in any fashion, you had to start over again.
It was one thing after another all day long. We started out with several days’ worth of classes on Marine Corps history. This is not to say that we escaped the getting up at 0430 every morning, falling out into the platoon area in front of the DI’s Quonset hut, and going through an hour of PT (calisthenics) and then going for a 20 minute run. Needless to say there were quite a few guys who were not in any kind of shape to be doing this, myself included. And since I was one of the “Fat Boys”, so I was ordered to jog out in front of the platoon wherever we went. But even though I was huffing and puffing like an overworked steam engine and seeing stars before my eyes, I managed to stick with it. Guys who dropped out of the run were put through more PT once we returned to the barracks area, the idea being to bump up their endurance.
There were other classes as well. Learning the military rank structure, for instance. Keep in mind that the Marine Corps is a department part of the Navy (the men’s department, we like to say!), so we had to learn the Naval rank structure as well as the Marine Corps rank structure.
And classes on personal hygiene, military courtesy (recognizing and saluting officers), how to wash and fold our uniforms (we washed all our clothes by hand on concrete washracks, with bars of Fels Naptha soap, then hung them up with good old wooden clothespins (issued that first night).
Keeping our platoon area spotless was another thing. Every day at one point or another we would be called out and form up in echelons, then walk though our area picking up every single thing that didn’t belong. I learned another saying about that. It wasn’t quite literally true, but it was close. “If it moves, salute it. If it doesn’t move, pick it up. If you can’t pick it up, paint it white.”
One of the things about MCRD San Diego was that everywhere you looked, paths and everything were bordered with white-painted rocks. And at one point our platoon did (when we were working for Base Maintenance) was to take a bunch of rocks that a previous recruit platoon had gathered - on average about four to six inches in diameter - and paint them all white so that they could be used for decorating the planted areas in front of Quonset huts. Really.
Smoking. Remember that back in 1960, cigarettes and smoking was still pretty much socially acceptable. We were allowed two or three smoking breaks during the day. When this happened, the DI would call out “The smoking lamp is lit!” The smokers would take out their cigarette packs and light one up. But you’d better not even think of smoking a cigarette unless the DI gave you permission. One or two guys got caught sneaking a quick smoke in the head (bathroom), and they were made to chew up and swallow a couple of cigarettes. You can imagine just how sick they got. All it took was once or twice, and the whole platoon learned not to even think of sneaking a cigarette.
On the other hand, for those of us non-smokers, we could just stand there and relax for a few minutes. The break from the constant on-the-go stuff was nice.
The smokers were instructed very specifically on how to dispose of their butts. They were to be “field-stripped”, which meant tearing a strip down the length of the butt, crumbling the unsmoked tobacco out of the paper and scattering the tobacco bits out on the ground, followed by rolling the little piece of paper up into a tiny ball to be put in your pocket and then thrown in the butt can or garbage can at the next opportunity.
Speaking of pockets. We were to keep our pockets buttoned at all times. An unbuttoned pocket - shirt or trousers - was an invitation for the DI to come up, grasp the pocket flap and tear downward violently, ripping the flap and usually part of the pocket from the shirt. The recruit had to go around for the rest of the day with his torn pocket flapping in the breeze, but that night he had to sew it back on again (with a little sewing kit also issued that first night) and then present it to the DI for inspection. Again, it didn’t take too many episodes like that to get the keep-your-pockets-buttoned message.
Even though we were terrified of the DI’s (three to a recruit platoon), we respected them and we paid attention. After all, they were accomplished Marines and they knew what they were talking about. And we gradually improved.
We were also spending a lot of time learning close-order drill. That is to say, learning how to do ‘right face’, left face’, ‘about face’ and so on. Once that seemed to have soaked in, we began learning how to march in formation. The first few days of that was comical, with the usual collection of guys who just couldn’t seem to catch on, turning the wrong way, starting out on the wrong foot, and generally wreaking havoc. Soon enough we started getting it together, and we felt really good when the DI told us that we’d managed to get through a practice session without screwing up too Badly...
Three or four weeks into boot camp, the recruit platoons would take their turn either working a week in the Mess Hall, or working on cleanup tasks for Base Maintenance. My recruit platoon was designated for working for the Base Maintenance people (civilians). I lucked out the first couple of days when I made the mistake of speaking up (NEVER volunteer!) when we were asked if anyone had any lettering & painting skills. Consequently, my job for the first two days was painting identification markings on a couple of large, garden-cart type wagons. The man in charge wanted me to trace the letters and numbers through a stencil, and then hand-paint them in with a paintbrush. Who was I to tell him that there was a faster way (but not as ‘clean’) to do it.
Once we had that week’s work out of the way, we were finally issued our rifles. I’m speaking of the M1 Garand. We had to learn those weapons inside and out. take it apart and reassemble it. More stories that you may have heard - we were not judged competent until we could take them apart spreading the pieces on a blanket, have the DI pick up the blanket and shake it a bit, then reassemble it again with half of the blanket folded over the pieces so you had to do it by touch.
Of course you had to learn the name of every piece of nomenclature about the M1, and how it functioned. “Sir, the M1 rifle is a 30 caliber (30.06, actually), gas-operated, semi-automatic rifle with a magazine that hold a clip of eight rounds, sir!” What this means is that each time the rifle is fired, part of the expanding gasses are diverted down a small aperture to drive the piston of the operating rod back which unlocks the bolt, moves it backward while at the same time extracting then ejecting the spent casing, then move forward again picking up a new round from the clip and guiding it into the chamber, ready to fire again. The M1 can be fired, one shot at a time, as fast as you can pull the trigger.
Here’s another bit of info. There is a difference between a clip and a magazine. A clip is made from a single piece of metal that holds the rounds in place. A magazine is made up of more than one piece of metal, usually several pieces, to hold the rounds with an internal spring that keeps the rounds pushed up so that the bolt can pick up a fresh round. For instance, the .45 automatic pistol has a magazine. And that’s kind of a misnomer - the pistol isn’t really ‘automatic’; it’s semi-automatic like the M1 rifle, one shot per trigger-pull.
But there is an incredible emphasis on understanding the M1 rifle, in that it is about the only thing between you and the enemy. If you take care of it, it will take care of you. To that end, we had to disassemble our M1’s every day, clean them and re-assemble them, and then stand inspection. If the DI found so much as one speck of dirt, you had to do it all over again until it was judged acceptably clean.
Having become passably able to perform COD, we then began to learn the Manual of Arms. This amounts to learning how to bring the rifle up onto a shoulder, then bring it down and transfer it to the other shoulder, how to bring it to Port Arms, various forms of rifle salutes, and so on.
Another thing about the Marines. Everyone in the Marine Corps is first and foremost a rifleman. Cooks, office clerks, motor pool mechanics, everyone! It is a fact that when the chips are down, if you can’t use your weapon and hit your target, you’re useless in a battle. We were told that there were instances in WWII where personnel in other services who had a job other than that of an infantryman were needed to man the front line, where battles were lost and men died unnecessarily because some of them had only fired a rifle in their boot camp, but never again after that. Possibly true. But not only is every Marine expected to know how to shoot and hit the target, they are required to qualify once a year with the rifle. Again, everyone, officers, non-coms, and grunts alike.
I’ll tell you how well the training was pounded into me: I can, to this day, still remember the serial number of my first M1. 888217. After we graduated from boot camp, we turned in our rifles and were issued new ones once we reached our duty assignment. The serial number of that one was 3747117. No lie!
A last bit of lore about the Marine Corps and rifles. You do not ever, ever drop your rifle, or call it a “gun”. One guy in my recruit platoon dropped his one day, and the DI made him sleep with it, holding his arms around it, for a whole week. A recruit in a platoon next to ours made the mistake of calling his rifle a ‘gun’ and sure enough, he was ordered to run around each of the recruit platoon areas, one at a time, holding his rifle over his head with one hand and holding his crotch with the other, screaming “This is my rifle (holding it), this is my gun (holding his crotch). This is for shooting (rifle), and this (crotch) is for fun!” Seriously, this really happened! I saw it!
One learns to pay close attention and learn what you’re told, very attentively, let me tell you!
