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  The next three guys climbed the rope. Now, most farm boys from down south or out west could do this like a circus monkey, but six of us couldn’t make it to the top. The DIs went nuts and wrote down our names. Then they called the Navy for an ambulance, and that was the last time we saw the Private with the broken leg. We were now down to 89 recruits.

  We marched back to our barracks, the DI sat down on his table in the center of the room by the rear wall, and said, “Port side and starboard, line up and form a gauntlet.” One at a time, all the non-rope-climbers had to run down the center of the squad bay while both sides punched and beat the shit out of them. Luckily, I was the tallest and the DIs decided to save me for last.

  I knew I was going to get hit and beat up, but I figured if I acted like a Viking berserk warrior I might impress the DIs and intimidate my platoon from really hurting me. What the heck, I had nothing to lose, and I figured maybe I could take some of the men with me. I jumped up and down like a crazy Apache and put my head low with my elbows pointed out. I scared some of the men, and as they hit me, I hit them back twice as hard. I got one guy in the nose, which started bleeding immediately. I kicked, punched, beat and screamed my way up the gauntlet almost to the DI, who sat there enjoying the whole bloody spectacle. As I turned my head to punch out a skinny Spanish kid, I saw a huge fist come straight at my mouth, too late to avoid. I dropped to the squad bay floor like a bad habit. I got up and the DIs were amazed that I had made it that far. They yelled out to me, “Don’t screw up on the rope again!” I got the respect of my platoon for being a hard-charging crazy.

  I felt sorry for the Marine who broke his leg, but in combat you have to push aside the dead and keep moving forward to accomplish your mission. It was a tough lesson for all of us to accept. Every time I climbed that rope I thought of him, and even with bleeding hands I continued to climb to the top and succeed.

  THE PISS ANTS

  Every morning the DI came in at 5:00 AM, turned on the lights, and hit all the trashcans to wake you up. Then you made your bunk, got your washcloth, towel and toilet bag, and yelled out either “Port side make a head call!” or “Starboard side make a head call!” Whichever side yelled the loudest got to march into the head and shit, shower and shave. There were 25 urinals, 25 toilets and 25 sinks with mirrors. You had to figure what you wanted to do first. Five minutes later you heard, “Clear the head!” Usually one last slow guy would come running out and the DI would throw a punch or two at him. The Marines have a saying, “Shit or get off the pot!”

  On this particular day no one got beat up for coming out slow and we were ready for our five-mile morning run, which I quite liked early in the day. As we all ran out of the barracks, what to our amazement did we see? Two Spanish Marines pissing on our grass. The DIs also saw this total disrespect for our beautiful, well-tended barracks front lawn. They went nuts. “Do you two Spics think you’re still in the ghetto? How would you like me to piss on your front lawn, pukes?” The DIs pushed the two guys to the ground and rubbed their faces in the piss on the lawn. Then we were all ordered to rub their faces in the piss—all 87 remaining men. Their faces looked like fresh possum road kill after all of us were done pushing them in the dirt.

  We all learned a valuable lesson: “Don’t piss on your own front lawn! This barracks is your home for 12 weeks. Take care of it like it was your own!”

  THE PACK OF CIGARETTES

  The squad bay of Platoon 387 was filled with double-decker beds. You hung your rifle and field-marching pack on the rear of your bed. Your footlocker went under it. Everything was perfectly in line when you shined your boots or wrote a letter home. You sat on your footlocker, which had a combination lock on it. If you closed your lock but didn’t spin the dial, it would open. One of the DIs’ favorite sports was to find a footlocker that wasn’t fully locked. You would return from the head to find all your belongings poured all over the floor, with the DI yelling about not locking your footlocker properly and how there were thieves everywhere, even in the Marines.

  In the middle of the squad bay was a desk where the DI sat. It was like a throne. He sat there like a king before his court, or in this case, his recruits. One day the DI left a pack of cigarettes on his desk. No one dared to go near them. I figured the DI had all the cigarettes counted and this was a new game he had devised to screw somebody. I was correct in my thinking!

  Private Hines, the black Marine who stole my underwear, and a white guy named Private Badass, who thought he was bad for hanging out with the black guys, stole two cigarettes out of the DI’s pack. They smoked the cigarettes after lights-out and blew the smoke out the storm windows. We saw them do this, and both guys thought they were slick! At 5:00 AM, the DIs came into the squad bay and did their daily act, throwing trashcans, and yelling and screaming. The Senior DI counted his cigarettes and, low and behold, two were gone. The Senior DI then went nuts and wanted to know who dared to steal his cigarettes. He marched down by each recruit and personally asked if they had stolen them. When he reached me, I answered that cigarettes are bad for you and were the leading cause of cancer in the USA. I got hit in the stomach for these words of wisdom.

  Since no one admitted to the crime, we were all guilty, and thus we all had to do a hundred push-ups. Sweat poured off our bodies, and after a while our hands slipped on the wet floor. We all must have lost five pounds of fat during those endless push-ups. If you collapsed and gave up, the DI either kicked you in the ribs or stood on your dead body. The overweight guys were first to go and got beat up for not doing the push-ups. The whole platoon was near exhausted by the time Private Hines and Private Badass confessed.

  Thank God! The guilty men were escorted to the front of the squad bay by their squad leaders. The rest of us were allowed to get off the floor and use our towels to dry off the sweat. We formed a school circle, with everyone sitting on the floor in a semicircle around the standing DI. The DI said that since Private Hines and Private Badass liked to smoke so much, he had purchased a carton of Lucky Strikes for them out of the goodness of his heart. He had the four squad leaders fill up their canteens with hot water. Both Privates were given ten packs of cigarettes each and two canteens of hot water. All the rest of us wondered what the DIs had in store for these two slick idiots.

  The senior DI said, “It’s real simple. There will be two commands, INHALE and DRINK, until all ten packs of cigarettes are smoked up.” Both wiseasses had a smirk on their faces and thought this would be easy. The DI had them hold five cigarettes at a time in one hand and the canteen in the other hand. We watched in utter amazement as they smoked and drank. By the time they reached the fourth pack of cigarettes they were turning green. The squad leader refilled their canteens with more hot water. Both guys started throwing up their guts. The DI kept yelling, “INHALE! DRINK! INHALE! DRINK!” On pack six, their puke no longer contained food, only white fluid. After a while they no longer threw up, only heaved and heaved. Their stomachs were on empty, and both men were near passing out. They looked like druggies going cold turkey to kick their habit.

  Finally the DI asked us if anyone else would care for a cigarette. The two scumbags lived, but they were sick for days and could hardly hold any food down. We all learned a lesson: “Don’t steal the DIs’ smokes!” Of course, if these heathen devils had been raised by God-fearing, Sisters of Saint Joseph nuns at Saint Callistus Grammar School like I was, they would have known better. Sometimes I looked upon the DIs as what the nuns would have become if they had run the high school. After nine years of being beat up by nuns, I could deal with the DIs. As a good Catholic, I was equipped to deal with violent behavior. But seriously, in all fairness, I have to say that I kept the solid values the nuns drilled into us. I didn’t lie, cheat or steal, and couldn’t believe other recruits had no moral values at all.

  THE WHITMAN INCIDENT

  At Parris Island you were allowed one hour of free time before you hit the rack. During this hour you shit, showered and shaved, cut your toe-nails, shined
your brass and boots and got your mail. If you received a letter with “Sealed with a Kiss” or with a lipstick imprint, you had to kiss the letter in front of the DI. I usually received a rolled-up copy of the Philadelphia Daily News. Sometimes the DI would throw it at me or hit me over the head with it; other mail he simply handed to me.

  If a recruit received a Dear John letter and got pissed off or had tears in his eyes, the DI made him stand up on his footlocker and read it out loud. This was very humbling to the individual Marine. Then the DI would say, “Your only family is the United States Marines. You are being trained to kill gooks and save the Free World. We are LBJ’s hired guns, so get Suzy Rotten Crotch out of your mother-fucking imagination. She is fucking your best friend at the local drive-in passion pit right now, even as we speak.”

  One day a Marine got a huge box of Whitman’s Sampler chocolates. The DI told him there’d better be a piece for every Marine in the squad bay, or he had to eat the entire box himself. Well, the recruit started handing out the candy, or “poggie bait,” as we called it in the Marines, to each recruit. He needed 86 pieces but he came up four short. The DI told him to go back and collect all the candy, and then he had the recruit sit on the floor by his desk and start eating the whole three-layer box.

  The recruit was handed a full canteen of cold water to wash it down. I have to say he did okay until the second layer. He slowly turned green and threw up, but the DI made him continue eating. He had a tough time when he hit the hard chocolates. He kept eating and drinking until he finally finished the whole box. He must have thrown up a dozen times. The recruit lived but he was sick as a dog for two or three days and had an odd-looking tone to his skin.

  The senior DI said, “Lesson to be learned: Marines share their food, ammo, and very lives with one another, even in a foxhole with a million gooks shooting at them. You share your last cracker with your fellow Marine in that foxhole. Don’t ever forget that we are a brotherhood today, tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives!”

  SWAMP THING

  About the first week we started learning how to march, better known as close-order drill. Usually all the different platoons in the 3rd Battalion, which consisted of around ten or so different recruit platoons, were present. Of course there were guys who didn’t know their left foot from their right. The DIs yelled, screamed and beat everyone who screwed up. Each DI had his own southern way of calling cadence. You had to listen up and get to know your DI’s style and voice, and not do the moves that the DI from your neighboring platoon was calling out. I can guarantee you that even today, if our Senior DI called out cadence, I would automatically do it.

  We were all marching around in this vast parade deck when one Marine went crazy and ran full speed into the swamp at the end of a field. The swamp had skull and crossbones signs every 50 yards or so warning “Quicksand!” Otherwise, it was a typical swamp full of tall grass and mushy mud, and a small stream leading out to a river with a pier. It looked like the causeway to Stone Harbor or Wildwood, New Jersey. This crazy Marine jumped right in and immediately started to sink into the mud. We all stopped and watched him sink deeper and deeper as he struggled to get out and swim.

  The DIs were perfectly dressed, and sure as hell didn’t want to ruin their clothes fishing him out. Pretty soon his head was almost under the quicksand. I figured he would die. This would have made Parris Island look bad, so a Senior DI finally jumped into an aluminum boat that was tied to the pier and quickly paddled over to fish him out. What a sight to behold—the crazy Marine was stuck like a suction cup in this shit. It took all the DI’s strength to pull his wasted, worn-out, muddy ass out of the quicksand and into the boat. The Marine didn’t say a word. He was covered with swamp flies and gnats, and sand fleas were biting his ears and face. The DI was covered with mud and getting bitten up too. He rowed the Marine back and they took him away to the crazy farm in a gray Navy ambulance.

  The DI yelled out to the rest of the platoon, “Any other asshole want to try to swim out of here, step up now!” There was complete silence. I said to my bunk buddy, “That mud really is quicksand and those signs are for real.” He said, “No shit, Dick Tracy.” We never saw that Marine again.

  PUGIL STICKS

  Pugil sticks are long batons padded like boxing gloves at both ends. You wear a football helmet and big gloves and the DIs match you up with another platoon to fight. It’s one platoon against another. The Navy Corpsmen had an ambulance parked nearby, and each Marine went out to fight, one by one, as the platoons sat on the grass opposite each other. You bowed down like a Jap and then the fight was on. The sticks were heavy, and a fight usually lasted two or three minutes, until one Marine knocked the other down.

  Our Senior DI wanted to see red blood, and I wasn’t going to let him down. When they outfitted me with the helmet, gloves and stick, I decided to once again show him I had Viking blood in my veins. Each of us went out, and as the other Marine bowed down, I hit him over the head and knocked him out. The other DI sent in a huge Marine who came at me full blast. I knelt down on one knee and stuck the pugil stick straight forward, right into his balls. He went down grabbing his family jewels and almost cried with pain. I next had to fight two Marines at the same time. I yelled out like a wild Indian and hit one on his helmet so hard it came flying off his head. The helmet facemask cut into his nose and there was blood all over his face. I then tried to finish off the other attacker. He wasn’t tired out, and it took a lot to bring him down. I smashed his ankles and down he went.

  I held up my stick in triumph like a gladiator in the Roman Coliseum. As I turned to leave the field, I saw a stick swinging through the air so fast I had no time to lower mine to meet it. I took a shot to my right chest that knocked me on the ground. The DIs blew the whistle and two Marines ran out to pick me up. I did well, and I got four men before I got wasted. The only problem was that the guy hit me so hard he cracked my rib cage. It hurt like hell and I had to sleep on my left side. The senior DI knew I was in pain, but ribs heal on their own, so I had to live with a sore right side for weeks. All in all, the pain was worth it. I was looked on with respect as a fearless warrior who’d made a lot of blood run that day.

  RIFLE RANGE

  It totally amazed me how the badass black guys were afraid of the recoil from an M-14 rifle. When we arrived at the rifle range, the DI asked if anyone had ever shot a rifle before. All the men from rural states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, and Kentucky said yes, but there were a lot of no’s. The DI at my new platoon was still calling me Buzzard, and thought I would make a fool out of myself. He threw me a magazine with ten rounds in it and told me to stand up and see if I could hit the target ten times. It was 100 yards away. The targets were huge—we were trained to hit them at 500 yards, and at 100 yards they looked ten feet tall.

  There was complete quiet. I asked for the number of clicks for 100 yards, and the Primary Marksman Instructor (PMI) adjusted my rifle for 100 yards. I looked at the flag in the wind and determined I needed two clicks left windage, which the PMI agreed was the proper setting. I then adjusted my sling as tight as I liked it. “Ready on the right! Ready on the left! Ready on the firing line!” I fired ten shots in all, and the white panel marked all dead center. Fifty points! The DI then officially changed my name from Buzzard to Dead-Eye Killer. In reality, the rifle range was a piece of cake because I had been shooting guns since I was nine years old. I had been Assistant Captain of the Monsignor Bonner Rifle Team in high school, and had fired thousands of rounds of ammo with rifles, pistols and shotguns.

  As a result of my performance, I got stuck teaching the black guys how to shoot. This took up a great deal of my time, but in the end they all qualified. If I hadn’t been stuck with this responsibility, I probably would have shot “Expert.” My pre-qualifying day score was 218, and I needed only two more to get Expert and become a Private First Class (PFC) out of boot camp. On qualifying day I shot a lousy 209 and got a Marksman badge. This pissed me off, but the DI was happ
y that I had taught the others so well. They all qualified, and some even outshot my lousy 209 and got their Sharpshooter badges. As the days went on, we all put our petty differences aside and became one happy family, Uncle Sam’s misguided children. After 13 weeks of endless work, I graduated with Platoon 387 and was off to infantry training at Camp Geiger.

  I felt happy and relieved I had lived through Parris Island. I wasn’t crazy, lazy or dead! I felt total respect for the Drill Instructors and wondered how they ever managed to do such a great job with some of the shithead losers they received in the beginning. The DIs made us into a fighting team that knew no fear, asked no questions, and looked only toward total victory over any enemy we encountered. We had a great graduation ceremony. I shook my DI’s hand and he wished me well! I was now one proud Marine. At 21 I was in the best shape of my life. I was happier than a hog in mud and on my way in a Greyhound bus.

  Camp Geiger was a sorry old beat-up World War II training camp in the middle of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. It was October and getting cold. You had to go outside the barracks to shit, shower and shave, and we all caught colds. Sick call in the Marines was a joke. “Here are two pills. Get out of here. Next!” By the time we graduated, we all just about had pneumonia.

  We learned a million ways to kill someone. We learned to shoot the M-60 machine gun, 3.5 rocket launchers, hand grenades—all the toys the Marines had. I had a great time blasting away, blowing up stuff, and wasting thousands of rounds of machine gun ammo. I got my first leave before being assigned to school at Camp Pendelton, and flew back to Philadelphia. I now weighed 200 pounds and was lean and mean. I beat up a guy who used to pick on me, just for fun. I threw him over a parked Caddie into the street and he broke his wrist. I rather enjoyed hurting the local bully who the whole neighborhood was afraid of. I was hot shit with my uniform and enjoyed every day of my leave. People couldn’t believe a skinny wiseass came back a bigger wiseass, and also with a louder mouth.