Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 21

Marine Corps Boot Camp - 1988 Style (Part 3)

MCRD San Diego, February 1988, continued…

The whole ride back to Camp Pendleton was a pain-wrought haze of emotion and uncertainty. My entire plan is FUBAR’d…Everything I had worked for was now gone…I don’t even know where to go to college or how to pay for it…at least I still had her, waiting for me…

While I was at the podiatrist being told I was getting ejected from the Marine Corps, my platoon got to do Mount Motherfucker. That was the biggest piece of luck I would get during boot camp, as Mt. Motherfucker is the famously worst hump in Camp Pendleton, or in the Marine Corps, period. At least, before the Marine Corps got pussified again, or so I’ve heard. Mt. Motherfucker starts at just above sea-level and climbs to over 2,300 feet in little over a mile or so. It’s notoriously difficult to march over while carrying a 70-pound pack, rifle and combat gear, to the point of saying to yourself with each step, “Motherfucker!” With my feet already being hamburgers and all the joints in my legs screaming at me, my attempt at it would have been bad for everyone, and physically dangerous for me as a result (medically and possibly violently).

I was returned to the platoon in late afternoon after their Motherfucking hump – they were still in the field. I was assigned to light duty. I was going to be there until the orders were processed for me to start being transitioned out of military service. The drill instructors were obviously pissed off about it and they wanted me out ASAP, but they could no longer thrash me. That was the last night I would spend in the field. The next morning, Private Barnes had developed a hacking cough and very high fever. He was shaking and in cold sweats by the time the Navy corpsmen saw him. The poor guy had a fever of 103.4, full blown pneumonia, and he was ordered back to the barracks on sick watch until he could be transported to see a doctor. Since I was on light duty and getting cycled out, I was assigned to pneumonia watch to make sure he didn’t keel over dead with no one around to nudge him for certainty. The two of us were trucked back to an empty barracks. I spent a couple hours later watching him coughing up blood and phlegm while in a cold shower to try to bring his temp down. He collapsed – well, squatted down, immobile – with his temperature peaked at 105 before they ambulanced his sorry ass to a hospital. I’m glad I was there instead of someone who didn’t give a shit because I paid attention to him and made sure they got him to an ER. (I have no idea what happened to him).

We had another medical emergency in our platoon just the week before during field training. After sleeping in the open on a hillside, one private complained of an insect bite the next morning. The drill instructor called him a blankety-blanking blank-hole and thrashed him for being a pussy. Two mornings after that, the same private showed up to sick call again with a swollen black arm. Then a fucking helicopter landed and medevac’d his ass to the hospital.

“Turns out he was bit by a brown recluse spider,” Sgt. Galpin laughed as he explained the commotion. “That lucky fucking asshole,” Sgt. Galpin started to laugh, genuinely. “They’ll probably cut his fucking shitty little arm off.” Now he started to belly laugh. “That lucky fuck is gonna get out of here with a lifetime of goddamn disability pay.” Galpin was both enjoying the recruit’s misery AND admiring his “luck” for getting “money for nothing.” Thoughts approaching “empathy” were completely non-existent. The man was psychotic, and he reveled in it. He was in his perfect job.

I couldn’t be transported back to the MCRD until after my Senior Drill Instructor could process the paperwork. And it was a weekend that he was off. That meant another couple of miserable days at the barracks on light duty with angry drill instructors who saw me now as just a problem, a nuisance they couldn’t treat like everybody else because I was on light duty. It got interesting again, for no particular reason beyond plain old meanness.

Sgt. Little was on duty the night before I got shipped back to the MCRD, and in an exceptionally foul mood. He got after my squad for whatever reason and thrashed them. Since he couldn’t thrash me, he got up in my face with all the harsh insults and assholishness he could muster. He started slamming the brim of his Smokey hat into the bridge of my nose, repeatedly, as hard as he could without knocking off his own hat. He didn’t want me to leave his platoon because of a medical condition – hell, no – he felt the need to get some skin out of me. Maybe an attempted assault charge and some brig time after thumping me in “self-defense,” I’m not certain. What I experienced was completely senseless, a petulant act of rage. As Sgt. Little further blew up on me, he ordered me to “Choke yourself! I said, choke yourself, motherfucker!! Get to it!”

To which I replied, “SIR, NO, SIR!”

“What the fuck did you say, you maggoted pile of donkey shit!?” Sgt. Little screamed at me with the brim of his hat still against my nose bridge. “I told you to fucking choke yourself! Now, FUCKING CHOKE YOURSELF!!”

“SIR, NO, SIR!” I screamed right back in his face that was an inch from my own. “The Private believes that any order to deliberately harm himself is an illegal order, Sir! And the Private will not obey an illegal order, Sir!”