Chapter 4

It was nice waking up without noxious odors wafting around. After getting up and ready, we went out to the PT field to get some work in. After a few minutes, DI Pugh struck.

I had supposedly made some sort of a mistake in the exercise we were doing and was taken to the side and run through the wringer. It was still going on as PT finished and I had to run to catch up with the platoon. We changed and then headed to the mess hall.

As we were standing outside waiting, SDI Brooks came up and grabbed Berg and then they walked away. The platoon went to the Parade Deck and spent a couple of hours going through what we were going to have to do for Initial Drill.

Afterwards, we went back to the barracks and started to go through a mock uniform inspection which was going to be in BDUs. We had a spare hanging in the Whiskey Locker, which we had to get ready. They walked through what was needed to do and I had an idea how to make the inspection cover perfect.

We were told to form up outside to head to the mess hall. We weren’t’ fast enough, so we headed back into the barracks and had to run up and down the ladder well for about ten minutes. We finally marched over to the Mess Hall and were the fourth platoon in line to get in.

DI Faamate called a School Circle, and we gathered around. He informed us we were going to get an introduction class in pugil sticks in the afternoon. It took about an hour or so to get through chow.

When we were all formed up, we marched over to the hand-to-hand pit. There were the pugil sticks which looked like huge Q-tips, football helmets with neck rolls and groin protectors piled up. Again, DI Faamate called for a School Circle.

“We’re going to run five groups of two of at a time until everyone has run through the basics. After everybody has gone through twice, we’re going to have some bouts.”

I was with the second group that went through. It was a fairly basic concept, treat the pugil stick as if it was your rifle with a bayonet. SDI Brooks and DI Faamate were coaching the recruits while DIs Oyono and Pugh were running herd and getting everyone suited up. After everyone got their second run through, SDI Brooks called for a School Circle.

“I’m slightly impressed with most of you recruits as you all seemed to grasp the concepts, weíve showed you. We’re going to have ten bouts today a day for the next two weeks. At the end, we’ll have two days of pugil sticks bouts. The first day half of you will have your bouts, and the second day the other half. Then the winners will compete to see who moves forward to compete in the Company Thunderdome competition. It goes without saying that Platoon 1075 will be winning. If we don’t, there will be consequences. So, let’s get going.”

The first three bouts pretty much went the same way. Once in the Combat Circle, whoever took the initiative and struck first seemed to come out on top, but I saw they were all seemingly using the pugil stick as a club. Taking the observations to heart, I opted to go a different route.

My name was called, so I entered the circle and then the other recruit stepped into the circle. I had dealt with him a few times before. Lucien Rollins wasn’t a person that I’d could see being friends with after previous interactions. Besides having a grossly overinflated sense of self-worth (everyone was below him), he was always complaining that he couldn’t get out of the Imperial Courts Projects in Watts, California because the man was keeping him down.

A favorite rant of his was that there were no black recruits getting PFC (Private First Class) till after boot camp. That was due to the man keeping them down. I explained the only reason I was getting it was due to having JROTC. I got the answer I expected. It was a trick by the man to keep blacks down.

As I was snapping the chin strap to the helmet, I could hear Rollins running his mouth.

“Oh shit. I’m going to beat me a lanky honky. You gonna be my bitch after this.”

DI Oyono stepped into the circle, looked at me then looked at Rollins.

“I don’t want to hear any of this racial bullshit. Every one of you little bastards are green piles of shit. Let’s get this started.”

With that Rollins started running at me. He was a decent sized guy at about 6ft and about 200lbs. He came blindly rushing forward, swing at me like the pugil stick was an axe. Waiting until the stick was about a foot or so from me, I met his pugil stick with mine cocked at an angle. This caused Rollins to slide off to my left side. As soon as I could, I brought the butt end of the pugil stick to the back of his head. That blow put him off balance and he went down to one knee. I continued to rain blows down on his head. The whistle was blown, and I had to add a little insult to injury.

“So, who’s the bitch now?”

As I walked off to the side, DI Oyono stopped me and told me to stay suited up while they completed the rest of the bouts. While watching them, I figured that I’d need to keep an eye on the bouts so I could strategize any future bout. Not prejudging my opponent was going to be key. Having a basic plan was good but needed to be flexible.

My name was called again. Picking up a pugil stick, I entered the circle. This time it was a recruit named Lee Nicholson. I hadn’t had really any long interactions with him. He looked like he was a weight room junkie, 5’9” or so and about 220lbs. It was muscles upon muscles although I guessed it was mostly all show and no go. Best guess was he was going to bull rush me, though not in the same way Rollins did.

“Ready, go.”

The whistle blew, and the rush I expected came, though he was cautious. I knew what I wanted to do though I hoped I had the strength to match him. We met pugil stick to pugil stick in the center and were locked together for a minute or two. I was waiting for an opening as it was apparent that I needed to end this quickly since Nicholson had a slight strength advantage. It was his lower center of gravity the concerned me the most.

I was about another minute or so until I got my opening as Nicholson started moving to the right. Driving my pugil stick against his, I drove him more to the right. As soon as he was moving backwards, I kicked his feet out from under him and struck with the imaginary bayonet end of the stick, first into his diaphragm and then underneath the face mask of the helmet. I stood up and started taking my helmet off and moved towards the outside of the ring.

Before I could get the helmet fully off, DI Pugh was in my face screaming at me.

“Recruit, what the fuck are you doing you big fucking idiot? This bout is not over.”

“This recruit begs to differ. The pugil stick is representative of a recruit’s rifle. As such, the leading edge would be the bayonet attached to the rifle. The first blow struck would have been to the diaphragm which would have incapacitated the opponent. The second blow would have entered under the chin and pierced the brain. Thus, a dead opponent.”

DI Pugh began bumping into me screaming that I was insolent, and he was going to take care of me. SDI Brooks voice came ringing out calling DI Pugh over. I just kept stepping in it. I just didn’t know why I couldn’t just keep my mouth shut when it came to DI Pugh.

After removing our suits, we marched back to the barracks for another class. Using an empty barracks, it was a class on reporting into a new command. The empty Duty Hut was a stand in for the office. It was a fairly easy process, just remember to pick a point on the wall behind the desk and focus on that. Everybody had to go through the process. Afterwards, we went to chow and then spent a while practicing drill.

I spent free time to begin the process of getting my uniform ready for inspection on Wednesday and decided to start with my spare cover.

Going into the Whiskey Locker I grabbed all the supplies I would need. A spray can of starch, a handful of both bands, and an 8-point cover metal shaper. It didn’t’ take long to get it done. As soon as the shaper went in, I got it expanded in and tight. I hosed down the whole cover with the spray starch until the cover was soaked, then put the starch can into the bill, rolled it up and wrapped boot bands around it. It then went into the Whiskey Locker on a shelf to dry.

I held classes for Becker and a couple of recruits on boot shining.

For the second day in a row there was no smell. As I was getting my shaving done, I realized that I hadn’t seen Berg all day yesterday. He was getting his rack made as I came back out to the squad bay. As we were heading out, SDI Brooks again took Berg in a different direction from the rest of the platoon.

There wasn’t anything special going on during the day. It was a mix of PT, drill and review sessions for the exam in two weeks. When the day was done and we came in for free time, SDI Brooks had the podium set up. Berg was just chilling in the squad bay. Mail call School Circle was called. I got a letter from Bob and Grandfather. After the rest of the mail got handed out things got interesting.

SDI Brooks picked up and placed four decent sized boxes on top of the podium. Somebody was going to be in a world of hurt. That’s when I heard my name called, my stomach dropped, and I could only think that I was fucking screwed. I made my way to the podium.

“Well Recruit Badzinski, it seems you have four sizeable packages; several people must think highly of you. There’s one here from Specialist Badzinski, I’m guessing that’s your brother. The others are from Sergeant Fitzgerald, Specialist Adams and Corporal Burock. They all came in from Fort Drum. You wouldn’t happen to know what’s in these boxes?”

“This recruit has no clue as to what’s in those boxes. This recruit did not ask for anything to be sent to me either directly or indirectly. Though at this point I don’t believe that matters in the least.”

He opened the box from Stosh. It was crammed full of candy, beef jerky and soda. Just when I was thinking that it couldn’t get any worse, he opened the second box.

“Well, well. A bottle of Jack Daniels and a 12 pack of Budweiser. The Army must love you.”

Opening the last two boxes, it got weirder and dug the hole even deeper. There were porn videos and magazines. What got me sweating was the last box which had a blow-up doll and sex toys. I did happen to see a grin on his face during the whole thing.

“So, Recruit Badzinski, what do you think we should do with all this stuff?”

I knew no matter what I chose to do, it wasn’t going to be a good outcome. I could only try and soften the blow.

“Well, it should all be donated to the Drill Instructor Relief Fund. It’s the only option that makes sense.”

SDI Brooks let out a chuckle; it was the first time I’d heard that out of a DI. He caught himself and went steely faced again. Collecting everything back into the boxes, he looked out at me.

“Mail call is done. Recruit Badzinski, just know that even though you made as right of a choice you could have made. Your ass is still mine.”

Getting ready for lights out, I hoped tomorrow wouldn’t be as bad as I thought it would be.

Again, it was a morning free of the stench wafting into my rack. As I came out of the rain room Berg was folding up his linens. Something was up and I was now curious, so I went over to the racks.

“So how are things going Berg?”

“They’re going well.”

“Care to elaborate seeing as you’re stripping your linens.”

“I’m being sent over to the Separation Platoon. I’ve been talking to the Rabbi and Platoon Commander the past two days. They agreed the Marine Corps wasn’t an ideal place for me. They called it “Failure to adapt”.”

“That’s good, though remember you should see about getting some help when you get home.”

“Badzinski, I wanted to thank you. I would still be suffering in silence if it wasn’t you. I’m going to see if my Rabbi at home can give me some recommendations.”

“Good to hear. I’ve got to go. Hope all goes well for you.”

“Good luck to you as well.”

I moved on to make sure my uniform was ready for the inspection. I had spent some time after lights out ironing it last night and hung it up on my rack. Pulling out my jungle boots, I had wrapped them up in socks last night to protect them. I pulled off the boot bands of my cover and let it relax. We formed outside and went to chow.

When we got back to the Squad Bay, it was a hive of activity as everyone was getting dressed and ready to go. Once we were set, everyone got Online. DI Faamate began the inspection on the other side of the squad bay. DIs Oyono and Pugh were going by and pre-checking everyone with one on each side of the squad bay. My luck was holding up as DI Pugh was taking care of my side of the squad bay. When he got to me there was a huge grin on his face.

“I know your uniform is jacked up. You and I are going to spend a good bit of time slaying you for the next few days.”

He was pissed that the only thing he could find was a few “Irish Pennants”, which are loose threads. This would probably make my time getting IT’d even worse. He kept on me for a few minutes, then moved on. It took a while for the DI Faamate to get around to me.

As he began going over my uniform, DI Faamate was asking me questions.

“Recruit Badzinski, what is your first general order?”

“This recruitís first general order is to take charge of this post and all government property in view.”

He continued looking over my uniform, making a comment to take care of the “Irish Pennants”. Before moving on he asked me one more question.

“Recruit what is the third step before performing CPR?”

“The third step before performing CPR is to open the airway. While the person is lying down, tilt the head back so the chin is slightly lifted.”

With that, he turned and moved to the next rack. We all stood in line till the inspection was over and then we headed outside to form up for the march over to the Parade Deck. There were DIs from the 2nd Recruit Training Battalion waiting on us. They would be scoring us so that it would be impartial. We went through the whole list of drill without the rifle.

It was about a half hour of column left, reverse march and so on. Heading back to the squad bay, we began changing out of our inspection uniforms. I took care of the “Irish Pennants” when I hung it up. Becker was watching me as I put my boots back into the socks. He was about to do the same, but I stopped him. His boots looked like they’d been shined with a Hershey’s bar.

“Becker don’t do that yet. I’ll show you during free time how to fix them though you’re going to have to strip them first.”

“OK.”

All the DIs were in the Duty Hut which was odd and worried me a bit. I knew they were up to no good, and that didn’t bode well for us. Once everyone got changed, we headed out to the Mess Hall. Lunch was the usual barely edible fare. Marching back to the Squad Bay, we were practicing drill again. Coming to a halt outside of the barracks, we were told to get inside.

Upon entering the Squad Bay, I had to stop and look around in awe and dismay. It looked like a tornado had hit the Squad Bay. The racks were overturned and strewn everywhere. Mattresses, sheets and blankets were everywhere. The thing that jumped out at me was that all our clothes and uniform items were emptied out of our footlockers. There were about eight or nine big piles of stuff. I caught a glimpse of SDI Brooks coming out of the Duty Hut.

“You fucking bastards are fucking worthless. Despite all we’ve taught you, and all of the practice that you had. You shitheads came in third, third out of four platoons. I just can’t believe how horrible you fucking useless fucks did.”

With that, he threw a bunch of black leather scraps onto the floor. Turned out that it was his SDI belt, though we’d find that out later. The rant wasn’t over though.

“At this point, I’m thoroughly ashamed to be the Senior Drill Instructor of Platoon 1075. I can’t even be here right now.”

He looked at the other DIs and then back out at us.

“I’m leaving you in your DI’s capable hands. Hopefully they can show you idiots the error of your ways, getting this platoon back on track.”

He turned and walked out of the Squad Bay. DI Faamate stepped forward and gave us another shot to the gut.

“You recruits learned about the Island-Hopping campaign of WWII in your classes. Now you have your own to deal with. You’ve got 15 minutes to get this Squad Bay squared away.”

He turned and went into the duty hut, followed by the other DIs. The DIs being pissed at us was just business as usual. Though SDI Brooks being pissed at us was something new, which had me and the platoon shook, as he had never really even raised his voice to us. It took me a heartbeat to snap out of the daze I was in.

“HEY Y’ALL, SNAP OUT OF IT!” I heard myself shout.

Everyone turned and looked at me like I was crazy. Weíre expected to get this done, more specifically, right fucking now.

“Look, we need to get all this cleaned up. We don’t have the time to sort everything out or weíd be here forever. We need 10 guys resetting the racks back in place, and ten guys following behind them making all the racks right. The rest need to move the footlockers and separate the mounds of gear. We can find all our stuff during free time.”

Everyone just stood there.

“GET MOVING!!”

At this point I wasn’t asking but grouping people together to get things moving along. I’d help out all of the groups. It was like herding cats as it required me moving from group to group keeping things moving forward. It was at this point that our diminutive Platoon Guide decided to grow a pair of balls. He came walking over to me like the cock of the roost.

“Who the hell put you in charge? I’m the Guide of this platoon. You need to back off.”

“Really? Youíre going to start this bullshit right now. Unless you have a better idea, shut the hell up and get back to doing something. We need to get this stuff taken care, so we don’t get in any hotter water. You want to have a conversation about this, we can do it later.”

I returned to the group making racks. Not my favorite thing, but it had to get done. I did notice that our fearless leader had disappeared only to return when we were finished with everything. A moment later the DIs came out of the Duty Hut. DI Pugh had the look of a maniacal serial killer about to go on a killing spree plastered on his face. I knew he’d come straight for me.