Drill Instructors work hard to instill discipline in their recruits. Even when every recruit in the platoon strives for perfection it takes only one to ruin a perfectly good dinner. This boot camp story from SSgt RN shows what happens when an individual in the platoon goes against the rules.
Warning: This post contains profanity and may conjure disturbing images. Also note these stories may be embellished and I will neither confirm nor deny the validity of the content. Read on…
U.S. Marine recruits eat at the First Recruit Training Battalion mess hall. (photo by Sgt. Esdras Ruano)
We were at the other barracks for rifle range week at Parris Island. We’re at evening chow with our sadistic heavy. His name was SSgt Alloces but we’ll just call him Satan’s Evil Deviant Twin Of Merciless Hatred and Shameless Perversion for short.
We were all starving, of course. And we were all seated at our little tables of four. Left hand glued to our knee. Chest pressed against the table. Fork in one hand. Feet together at a 45° angle. Eating so fast we can’t taste anything. Everything goes in the center – meat, potatoes, bread, cake, salad, fuck it it’s calories and we need them. Right hand scooping at a rapid fire rate and hopefully you were smart and selected scoop-able food like chili mac. Oh you got fried chicken? Well dumb ass, eat it with a fork. Oh you got an apple? Well dumb ass, eat it with a fork. One cup of white milk, or half chocolate half white (never full chocolate, fatbody!) and only one pastry if you could successfully do five or more pull-ups. No ice cream though. No ice cream ever. The holy-of-holies ice cream machine was reserved for the Drill Instructor Sir and not for the recruits.
But today Satan is not interested in ice cream. No, today the heavy is walking slowly around the tables, sneering at everyone with just the purest form of utter contempt a human being can have. You can FEEL his presence as he gets near you. Like the bad static before a storm. Every time he speaks everyone panics and pees a little because it’s never good. Ever.
ANY deviation from the required position of eating and it was an instant “You’re DONE, Thing!!” and you were, indeed, done. Stop eating, stand the fuck up immediately, walk over to the trash can, and dump the entire contents of your tray’s sustenance along with all that evening’s hopes and dreams into the trash, atop the other unfortunate recruits’ failed promise of nourishment.
Tonight’s trash can was getting full.
But I was perfect. My hands were perfect. My feet were perfect. My posture was perfect. Tonight I was in the zone. And here he came. Slinking like an eel. I swear the room gets darker and drops ten degrees when he approaches.
Drill Instructor Sgt. Fran Rosabal encouraging a recruit.(Photo by Cpl. Caitlin Brink)
He’s right. Fucking. Behind me. Breathing.
Waiting.
Watching.
Hoping…
But no. I am PERFECT. Not today fucker. Move along, nothing to see.
Ice Cream Floating in Milk
“PLOP!”
Everyone at my table froze because there was a very odd and unusual sounding plop. That was bad. Anything unusual was very, very bad. And I heard Satan rasp, “Just what in theee holy fuck was that?!”
Silence.
He sucked in a breath to unleash another string of profanities and then – stopped. Almost like he stopped breathing. We stopped too. Because we all saw it looming from the cup of the recruit in front of me.
It was ice cream. It was a huge fucking glob of fucking ice cream he had hidden underneath his milk. It had come loose from its flimsy moorings and burst to the top like the goddamn Red October right in front of Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Satan! Oh my fuck! What are you DOING?!!!
The heavy screamed so loud his voice cracked. The words were unintelligible and I could see every single vein on his face like a road map of Texas. We couldn’t make out words but it was very clear through his gyrations and emphatic arm waving that we were all, all in fact finished eating if you please. Now. Right the fuck now. Those nearest to him were treated to wearing some of our precious evening chow. And we all lined up dejectedly in formation. All except him…Recruit Ice Cream. “No, Recruit Ice Cream you sit there and eat it. All of it. While they watch from outside.”
Needless to say I have no idea how this kid wasn’t murdered. But that night in the shower it was explained to him that his behavior as an individual was not conforming to the norm, was detrimental to the platoon and therefore unacceptable. That, and an ass beating. He never did it again. Obviously.