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We can’t use I,to ourselves Everybody keeps slipping I aeant said the Marines is not about the individual, but the team We should be all about our unit We are now four zero four four The nu the Navajo - There are four sacred mountains that fra four can only be good luck
They iet what they called ‘cranial a deal of it when it was est hair of anyone there, and I kneas going to get shaved off because my recruiter told me what to expect They shave us almost completely bald There’s just this stubble I want to keep rubbing my head, but I don’t want to call attention tothe less attention I call to myself, the better off I’ll be Anyway, it was still hard to see all that hair fall to the floor It made me think about Samson in my dad’s bible He lost all his pohen they cut his hair
Then we got our gear for the 13 weeks we are going to be here We even got a little towel that has all the M-16 parts diagrammed on it, so that ill knohere to place them e clean our weapons By this tih I’m not sure because none of us are allowed to have watches I hadn’t slept since I’d reported at dawn the day before, and I was feeling it They took us into our barracks The racks (that’s the teruy that stuffed his Snickers in his eant was in his face telling him to ‘toe the line’-which means to line up next to the white line with your toes up to it He taught us hoalk in formation and then we marched to the chow hall We aren’t allowed to talk while we are in the mess hall, which is fine with me-except the drill instructor shouts the entire tiether, thumbs on the outside It’s so much to remember all the tiht away if you’re doing so We had about tenus back out of there
We actually didn’t get to sleep until 8:00 that night We learned to march, how to lift our feet, how to stand in line, that stuff After that ere brought back to the barracks and we had to learn how to make our beds, Marine style We oken up in the , "toe the line, toe the line" One guy stayed asleep through it all - and the drill instructor pulled his blanket off and screamed in his face until the kid literally rolled off onto the floor Luckily, he was on a bottohed when he did, and the drill instructor turned on hi, Recruit!" We get dressed one piece of clothing at a ti us to follow orders exactly When we are told to hydrate we have to drink our whole canteen of water and turn it over above our heads to prove it’s gone
One high point I got a perfect 300 on the initial strength test Thatpull-ups, and I did the threehard and I wanted to be the best It’s hard to know if they were iuess only time will tell One DI kind of sneered atto have to work me harder than the others
On the fourth day here they moved us into our new barracks We were introduced to the drill instructors that are assigned to our platoon froeant Blood (his nael are the other two over our platoon Sergeant Blood is constantly bellowing (learned that word from you) I have never heard hi,We aren’t allowed tobecause I would be dizzy trying to keep up We have to stare straight ahead We are constantly yelling, "Yes Sir!’ which I hate I don’t ets old, but I had Sergeant Blood get right inme he couldn’t hear uys have cried already I don’t care what happens toany self-respect left if I did I won’t quit, I will be the best, and I will not bawl or whine like so after we yelled "Kill Kill Marine Corps!" Which we do a lot This kid just freaked Senior DI Meadows pulled hiuy is going to make it This is the same kid that tried to eat his candy bar and laid on the bare ht without permission His name is Recruit Wheaton, but a couple of the other recruits are already calling hi white kid na He’s from Texas but he talks like he thinks he’s black, which irritates the guys that actually are black I kind of like hi He talks too much, but I think everyone talks too uy in our platoon who is Hispanic piped up and asked eant Blood overheard and he seeuys see back It’s not that I’m asha what everything is always about You won’t catchabout my ethnicity here - Navajo or White