Stepping In It: Marine Boot Camp For 19-Cents-An-Hour

By Christopher Tipton

A young man embarks on an adventurous start to his adult life, experiencing the pain, sweat, and fear of Vietnam-era Marine Corps boot camp. No holds barred in the terrifying arrival at the recruit depot. The fright, confusion, and hazing of forming a new platoon. The pain and jam-packed days of training. The panic of nearly being dropped to a new platoon due to illness, meaning more time in hell. The joy of graduating with the title of "United States Marine." The Few, The Proud.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Tipton
• Release date: Apr 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476322377

Christopher Tipton

Chris served six-years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, one-year as a Marine Reservist, and 14-years in the Air National Guard, retiring with 21-years total service. He served in Vietnam and Desert Storm. As a civilian, Chris was a paramedic, a federal police officer, then a municipal police officer for a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. He is retired with 25-years of law enforcement experience. Chris now lives in Florida with his youngest daughter, son, and two short-haired Chihuahuas, while his oldest daughter serves in the U.S. Air Force. Chris holds an MBA and an MA.

Book preview

Stepping In It:

Marine Boot Camp for 19-Cents-An-Hour

Christopher H. Tipton

Cover art and glyphs by

Luna Rain/MRT

Copyright 2013 Christopher H. Tipton

Smashwords Edition

REVISED

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ISBN 9781476322377

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter One: Arrival

Chapter Two: Receiving

Chapter Three: Forming

Chapter Four: Phase I - It Begins

Chapter Five: Phase II - The Rifle Range

Chapter Six: Phase III - Finally

Epilogue

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge and thank my children who were highly supportive of me while writing this book. My oldest daughter contributed time as a beta reader.

Thanks to Luna Rain who created the cover art and the little Marine Corps emblem glyphs used in the text, and to my friend Rick Binns, who provided invaluable help in editing this work.

Thanks to my Mom and Dad who kept me on the straight and narrow.

Final thanks to my Drill Instructors who truly put me on my life's path.

Preface

This work is an autobiographical depiction. All events described are based on actual events, although most names, unit designators, dates, and some locations have been changed to protect both the guilty and the innocent. A few characters are blends of several persons; others are presented just as they were. Most events took place with my direct involvement, but I did not actually participate in every one. I either observed them or heard of them from reliable sources.

These events took place over 40-years ago and I am working mostly from memory, a few written references, and photos to refresh my present memory. The events are accurate representations of what took place. In addition, this is not a politically correct book. The language used was normal for the time and it is what it is.

Marine boot camp in 1971 was not a pleasant place to experience. The Vietnam War was winding down; boot camp itself had been recently extended from eight-weeks to ten, plus one for Receiving and Forming. The Marine Corps was all but out of Vietnam at the time, however, the roughness of wartime training remained. I believe that rough, even brutal, training was necessary at the time to deal with the quality of recruits. It also made a more resilient Marine in my opinion.

Unlike today, where the Corps is very selective in recruiting and still easily meets accession quotas, in 1971, high school dropouts and criminals facing either a successful tour in the Corps or a term in prison, were common. Some of these people required an extremely firm hand to control.

Additionally, the boot camp of today teaches some subjects differently and adds basic field training that I did not experience until after boot camp. Marksmanship training has seen a significant change; although the KD course is still fired, additional combat shooting has been included and is factored into the recruit’s final score for marksmanship badges.

The sub-title of this book, Marine Boot Camp on 19-Cents-an-Hour, represents our hourly pay scale, literally. On duty twenty-four hours a day, seven-days per week, my monthly pay of $143-a-month broke down to 19-cents-an-hour during boot camp.

My time in the Marine Corps was fundamental in shaping me to be the person I am now. Many Marine veterans say the same thing and it is true. The Corps has a powerful influence on those seeking a direction in life. At age eighteen, I had no clear direction except that I wanted to be a Marine and then I hoped to take life from there. I certainly got the direction I needed.

I have no regrets whatever for serving and would do it all over again in a second.

Chapter One: Arrival

You assholes have five fuckin’ seconds to get off this fuckin’ bus and get on them yellow footprints and I just wasted three of them!

The 44-passenger bus was stuffed full of recruits coming from Lindbergh Airport. I was sitting on the floor toward the back. As a recruit disappeared out of the front door, I heard a slapping sound. When I went out the door, the sound replicated itself as the result of a hard open hand slap up the side of my head. Somebody kept repeating in a very loud, gravelly voice, Hurry up, hurry up, faster, faster!

So began my voyage into adulthood. At 10:30pm, August 1, 1971, aged eighteen-years, three-months; I was standing at the position of attention on yellow footprints painted on the pavement outside Receiving Barracks, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California.

I wasn’t just standing; I was also shaking from fear like a cat pooping razor blades. Four or five of the craziest people I ever met were swarming all around the military formation into which the yellow footprints forced you. The sixty or seventy of us fellow travelers into misery were being introduced to the madness that is Marine boot camp.

While disoriented, I wasn’t feeling totally overwhelmed. I had grown up with a World War II Marine combat veteran for a father. I had determined to be exactly where I was, exactly at the time I was there. My father’s boot camp stories were scary, but it was obvious the drill instructors couldn’t eat you for real. However, I was beginning to wonder about that.

Several recruits were already off to the side, in a sand pit, doing multiple repetitions of bends-and-thrusts. Mostly long-hairs, they were being burned for looking like hippy communist spies sent especially to fuckup the drill instructor’s Marine Corps. The Receiving Barracks drill instructors were just getting a head start on the weeding out process. Lesson here: this is what bends and thrusts look like, watch them, learn them, and come to hate them. In addition, one felt lucky to have a fairly short head of hair on arrival.

After all of us had been instructed and properly positioned at attention with a great deal of screaming, yelling, pushing, and slapping, we were lectured on the four main articles of military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), to which we had pledged ourselves. Article 15, Non-judicial Punishment; Article 31, the UCMJ equivalent of the Fifth Amendment; Article 86, Unauthorized Absence; and Article 92, Disobedience of a Lawful Order or Regulation. There are many other articles, but these were the main four we needed to know right away so legally the Corps had us by the short hairs. It was part of the old, give your soul to Jesus because you just gave your ass to the Corps, lecture.

We had some more practice in screaming at the top of our lungs and continually disappointed the drill instructors with our lack of volume and enthusiasm. They started weaving in and out of the formation again picking at recruits who did not sound off satisfactorily. We were assholes, maggots, scumbags, scum, scuz, pukes; anything except human. They never shut up and they never got tired. I was reluctantly impressed.

We learned we were now Privates, drill instructors were always to be addressed as Sir or by their full title, rank, and last name. Drill Instructor Sergeant Smith, or Platoon Commander Staff Sergeant Jones, for example. We were no longer individuals, but each a small bit of the amphibious monster that is the Marine Corps.

As I stood there, shivering, I remembered a newspaper article I had read a few weeks earlier about how the Marine Corps had reduced stress during the receiving phase so recruits could get better scores on the their aptitude tests. I thought then, that was cool, we would get a couple of relatively easy days to get used to the place before things got rough.

The photo in the article of the smiling drill instructor and smiling recruit is what really suckered me in. It didn’t take long on the yellow footprints to realize that photo was a posed stock shot. Nevertheless, I was still glad I was going through the reduced stress reception. Imagine how bad it was before, I thought. Nothing really had changed. It had not gotten bad yet.

The next evolution was to learn how to sign our payroll signature, which was simply your entire name, middle name and all, fully written out. For some reason this was deemed a difficult subject as it was repeated a number of times. After this instruction, we were called up alphabetically, one at a time to sign a roster, which acknowledged our presence at the Depot, and receipted for the items we were soon to receive. Starting with a haircut.

After signing and a few did have difficulty with the payroll signature concept, we were shoved into line for the recruit special haircut. As it turned out, this would be the only time we would be barbered to the skull all over our head. Later weekly haircuts would only involve cutting the sides and back; we would graduate in eleven weeks with something resembling a high and tight style haircut.

Once made bald, everyone looked drastically different. Black and white recruits all looked the same, except for skin color. This was one of the reasons for the short hair. We all looked equally ridiculous. The other reason was hygiene. It only took seconds to wash your head instead of minutes to shampoo, rinse, brush, and comb or pick. The timesavings would come in handy later.

After haircuts, we went to a bank of phones and allowed to make a collect call to some loved one to report our safe arrival. They only permitted about ten seconds of Hi. I’m here before the DIs hung up the phone for you. No whining for rescue allowed. If you didn’t get through, it was, Tough shit. Write a letter first chance you get.

Next stop was a big room with tables divided into bins by wooden partitions. We stood at attention in front of the one that matched the number on the roster we signed. We were now a number. There was a GI black pen in the bin, which we used it to write our bin number on our arm. Now things really turned up a notch.

The black leather belted DI (a platoon commander), ordered us to empty our pockets, remove all jewelry and watches. We were told what constituted contraband and that all contraband had to be surrendered. Weapons were a biggie and the few recruits who brought knives had some ugly personal playtime with a drill instructor. Of course, drugs were a no-no, as was pornography, and a number of other petty items. We were allowed to keep our wallets—after being rifled through first for porno pictures—and watches, married recruits could keep their wedding rings. Any other jewelry would be shipped home with our civilian clothing. We could also keep rosaries and small bibles or similar religious items.

We dumped our excess baggage into a cardboard box under our bin and went to the supply room where we were unceremoniously and rudely fitted with a utility cover (hat), had a very long trouser belt and buckle thrown at us, along with a seabag, and two

Reviews for Stepping In It

[Marita Lackey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s a super great book quite funny too.