I don't have any photographs of my experience at Marine OCS in 1972, except the previous one of the whole platoon. I don't recall that anyone brought a camera, but some must have. I certainly did not. (I returned to OCS in January of 1973, when I visited the Robertsons, with whom I had become friends, though that friendship would not survive my visit. The following photographs that I am using in the next few posts were from that trip. Our barracks is the one I am standing in front of.)
Those of us candidates from the Los Angeles area flew on an American Airlines 707 red-eye to Dulles, stretching out in the several available rows while trying to sleep as best we could. We bundled into a single cab at the airport and headed to Quantico.
Those of us candidates from the Los Angeles area flew on an American Airlines 707 red-eye to Dulles, stretching out in the several available rows while trying to sleep as best we could. We bundled into a single cab at the airport and headed to Quantico.
I had become friends with Bruce Culp, who lived in Bell, CA, just north of South Gate when I was given his name by the recruiter's office since he was going to be in my OCS class. (Bruce and I would leave Marine OCS about the same time, but we would actually live in the same BOQ building in Minot, North Dakota, a few short years later. We both were in the Air Force, having gone to Air Force OTS at the same time and both getting missile assignments from there, although Bruce would not graduate from missile training but would become a security cop at Minot.)
The weather was cold and gloomy that early morning as our taxi, packed with five of us, made its way toward Quantico, the trees winter barren and bleak, the ground a full carpet of so many dead leaves. Living most of my life in Southern California had certainly not prepared me for such a lifeless landscape.
We were all nervous, the more so the closer we got. When the cab stopped at the main gate and we all got out to see where we were to report, we awakened a sergeant who was cranky and mean. Fortunately, we would later learn that he was not to be in our platoon or even our company. Frankly, he was jerk.
Using the directions we got, we continued on to an HQ building where several others were waiting around to be assigned to their respective platoons for training. I got singled out and asked to pick up broken glass from a shampoo bottle in the shower that the guy taking our names had dropped. I later found out that he was nobody, not even an enlisted Marine--and I could have told him to go pick up his own broken glass.
The rest of the day was a blur. I do recall that we met our platoon enlisted staff who marched us to our barracks. We were issued minimal gear, perhaps watch caps, if I recall. Late that night, we finally went to sleep, though for most of us, our sleep was fitful and intermittent. You see, our barracks were located right beside the tracks of Florida-bound express trains from the Northeast, often with car-carriers along their length. They rattled the old wooden barracks several times each night as if they intended to bring them down around our shaved heads (yes, I believe that we were shorn of our civilian haircuts that first day, regardless of how short we had kept them before arriving). Soon enough, we could sleep through anything; but not this first night.
I had finally fallen into a deep sleep just before we were trashed awake, literally. Others later told me that they had heard, and seen, Gunny (Gunnery Sergeant) Williams and Sgt. Blazer quietly sneak into our platoon bay, one grabbing an aluminum trash can, the other poised at the light switch.
On queue, the trash can was hurled; the light switch was flipped, flooding the bay with light and noise. And then they both started screaming at us to get up and stand at attention.
I was, unfortunately, sleeping in the top bunk. Still half asleep, I leapt off my bunk, grabbing the metal side of the bunk for support. However, it slid across the slick floor instead; and when I landed, my right leg hit the side of the lower metal bunk, opening a gash on the front of my leg that, I quickly learned, would not stop bleeding.
Mark Lombardo, with whom I had trained and run all those months before arriving, had told me: "Don't get yourself noticed, especially in the beginning." I tried to stand at attention without hopping on one leg in pain, blood oozing down in a stubborn trickle.
Sgt Williams passed by me with that withering look: eyes clenched, open but narrow, just daring anyone to mess up or make a sound. Most reluctantly, I spoke up: "Gunnery Sergeant?" "What do YOU want?" he bellowed, the witheriing look now focused entirely upon me. "Uh, I hit the front of my leg and it won't stop bleeding," I almost whimpered. He looked down at the obvious bloody trail and lowered his bark, "Oh, OK. Go to the head and stop the bleeding." He had almost sounded human and even concerned.
In the next few weeks, we noticed a change in the roles of these two sergeants. In the very beginning, Sgt. Blazer was the nice guy. Gunny Williams was the ogre. But then they began to shift personalities. We began to feel that we'd walk through fire for Gunny Williams. Sgt Blazer we could easily be persuaded to push into that same fire.
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