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  But the mind of a recruit tells him that he should have been able to meet the drill instructor’s expectations. We had believed success 8

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  was possible, and we had failed, yet again. Thus the punishment that followed was just and deserved. Lesson one. We were inadequate. We were worthless. We were the myriad of condescending insults that Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley sent washing over us like floodwaters that drowned our very being.

  “Fine. We just want to piss off the senior drill instructor by abus-ing his gear. Oh, we are gonna play, girls. The games have just begun.”

  I felt tears begin to well up. My muscles ached and my head was spinning. I knew that some of the smaller recruits were ready to pass out from heat exhaustion. The temperature on Parris Island in June was routinely in the high nineties, and the unbearable humidity left us sweat soaked from morning until night.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley pressed on. “Get ’em up. Now!”

  Mustering enough momentum from the help of a lifted knee, my footlocker loomed overhead once again.

  He sounded the next order. “Quarterdeck!”

  Confused recruits stood, gasping for air, hoping someone knew what to do. It was the first time we had heard that command.

  “Goddammit!” yelled Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley. “Run to the quarterdeck!”

  He pushed recruit Lambert into recruit Lyons, and like dominos sixty recruits learned that falling and crawling toward an objective was preferred over standing and wondering. A chain reaction of scurrying bodies headed for the front end of the squad bay just outside the drill instructors’ office—the quarterdeck. I was close to it and among the first recruits to enter the lobbylike area. Relief at such a short move was soon replaced with the realization that sixty recruits and their wall lockers could not fit into the space. Nonetheless, the last recruits to charge were not going to be caught disobeying an order, so they rammed full force into the herd of camouflage. Wooden boxes crunched against flesh and bones, manufacturing bruises by the gross. I was smashed against the far wall and squeezed until I lost my breath. Over the sounds of agony and pain we heard the next command:

  “Rear hatch!” called Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley.

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  The pressure released as the accordion effect reversed itself and the outer recruits headed for an equally small area on the opposite end of the squad bay. Before the last of us were able to avenge ourselves with our own violent assault on the group, he called out,

  “Quarterdeck!”

  Back and forth we ran, then hobbled, and ultimately limped. We had been reduced to a human slinky spring with which Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley could amuse himself.

  Finally back on-line we were given a reprieve while the inquisition continued.

  “Do we feel tough?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” gasped sixty winded recruits.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley stopped at the middle of the platoon and left-faced smartly. “What’s your name, tough guy?” he asked.

  “Sir, the recruit’s name is Simons, sir!”

  “What question am I going to ask you, boy?”

  “Sir, the drill instructor is going to ask why this recruit joined his Corps, sir!” Simons answered.

  “So you’ve been thinking of an answer, right?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  I was praying he would give the right answer, if there was such a thing as a right answer. I know each of the others was saying that silent prayer, too, in the uneasy silence that follows such questions.

  “Well! Don’t keep it to yourself, there, Simons. Let us all in on the secret.”

  Not so sure about himself anymore, he hesitated before answering. “Sir, the recruit joined for discipline, sir.”

  I looked across at Bell’s face, flushed with emotion, one side still swelling from the earlier collision with the rack. His lip was the size of a golf ball, and his eye was already purple. Bell, like most of us, was fighting back tears. It was the kind of rolling emotion that starts in the pit of your stomach and crawls its way upward into your throat. Each time it creeps up you swallow hard to suppress it for a few moments, only to have it come back again even harder, forming a lump in the back of your throat.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley turned to look at his partner, Drill 10

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  Instructor Sgt. Wagner, just entering from one of the hallways emptying into the quarterdeck.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner was as tall as Drill Instructor Sgt.

  Talley, but much skinnier, and looked less threatening. His blond hair was long enough to part on the side, and his glasses made him look more like an accountant than a drill instructor.

  “It seems as if Simons joined for discipline, Drill Instructor,”

  sneered Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley.

  Simons, realizing that his response was about to result in more punishment for the platoon attempted to recant. “Sir . . . Recruit Simons—”

  But he was immediately stifled by the charge of Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley.

  “Shut your suck-hole, you nasty thing. Did I tell you to run your suck?”

  Again, Simons attempted repairs, but the damage had been done, and his attempts only worsened the storm headed our way. “Sir, the recruit thought—”

  This time his words were cut short by the thick fingers of Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley’s right hand as he snatched Simons from the safety of his place on-line. He was gasping for air as the material of his collar closed in tightly around his throat. His feet were kicking and thrashing. The sheer strength of Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley left us in awe. He was able to handle a 150-pound man like a rag doll.

  Moreover, he carried out his barbaric acts without remorse or sorrow, or any of the traits we attribute to humans.

  “He’s right about one thing, Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner . . . he is an undisciplined fuck!”

  We were left standing at the position of attention, straining to hear Simons’s fate as he was pushed out of the rear hatch. The metal stairs rang loudly as Simons’s body was dragged unwillingly down three flights to some unknown fate. As we listened in horror, Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner noticed a recruit swaying from the dizziness that came from locking one’s knees for long periods of time. Knowing it wouldn’t be long before we had a body fall out unconscious, he ordered us into the head to fill our canteens.

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  On his command, “Ready . . . face!” fifty-nine bodies pivoted toward the head while sounding off the ditty, “Cock and drive!”

  These ditties were the verbal cues that helped new recruits move in unison while facing and marching. The next command followed—

  “Ready . . . move!”—and the recruits on the right side of the squad bay stepped off quickly to file in front of the sinks. We waited at attention with our canteens clenched in our left hands, braced against our forearms, bent at the elbow ninety degrees, and held parallel to the deck. We moved like robots.

  On the command “Ready . . . fill ’em,” we hurried to turn on the faucet and jam our canteens in to get them filled. God help the poor son of a bitch who failed to get his canteen filled. Filling canteens and drinking lukewarm water were high-priority rituals for recruits at Parris Island. It was considered a sin to get sick from dehydration.

  We learned that heat casualties, as they were called, were the lowest form of scum on the island. They embarrassed the platoon with public failure. Worse yet, the senior drill instructor, or “senior,” as he was more commonly called, would catch hell from the company commander, and probably be investigated for negligence. Not a day went by that Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner didn’t threaten us for even thinking about embarrassing the senior by falling out with heat stroke.

  So we filled our canteens and waited to hear “You’re done!” After capping our canteens we faced and moved back on-line, but, as expected, not quickly
enough for Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner.

  “So we want to take our sweet-ass time getting on-line . . . fine.

  We can play.” He opened the rear hatch and called out, “Got room for fifty-nine more bodies? We’ve got ourselves some lollygagging slackers!”

  “Send ’em!” invited Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley.

  Once we were told to get out, we charged the rear hatch. Fifty-nine racing frantic lunatics clawed and scratched to get through a thirty-six-inch hatch, afraid to be accused of not putting forth a maximum effort.

  While sprinting for the hatch, and observing the futility of such an exercise, I flashed back to my first days of school. I thought of 12

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  how my kindergarten teacher had worked all year to teach us to exit and enter doorways in an organized, safe, and linear fashion. In a single afternoon one Marine drill instructor had managed to undo twelve years of learning, and unleash the beast within all of us. Dar-win would have been delighted to witness the fittest survive, and the weakest suffer, in the doorways of our squad bay that day. I was elated to fight my way out of last place, and stepped onto the bodies of those who fell before me.

  Once bottom-side, we staged our canteens on the deck and fell out into the pit, a twelve-foot-by-twenty-four-foot rectangular sandpit bordered with railroad ties. We joined Recruit Simons and fell into formation. The next ten minutes would be the most painful and miserable of my life to that point. Every time Drill Instructor Sgt.

  Talley called out a new exercise, we performed it. Not just performed it, but executed it with a life-and-death passion.

  The drill instructors called this type of forced calisthenics “digging.” Although our introduction to digging took place in the sand pit, we soon discovered that recruits could be dug anywhere—the most common site being on the quarterdeck of the squad bay. Digging was a brief and embarrassing ordeal at best, but a long and excruciatingly painful one at worst. Our first time being dug in the pit happened to fall in the latter.

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley’s voice faded in and out of my consciousness.

  “Go ahead and slow down, you lazy maggots! The slower you go, the longer you’ll stay! We quit when I get tired, and you’re not making me tired, ladies!”

  When he grew bored with the insults, he switched exercises.

  “Mountain climbers!”

  As we threw ourselves facedown, the heel of a boot caught me in the nose. I screamed out in pain, only to have my mouth filled with spraying sand. I could feel the warm blood mixing with the abrasive crystals covering my lips and chin. It didn’t matter.

  What mattered was getting the job done and meeting the drill instructor’s expectations of performance. Faster. Harder. Higher. More.

  Sand had entered every orifice of my body. I felt it scratch under the S P A R E P A R T S

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  lids of my eyes, cake inside my ear canals, and clog my nose, robbing me of the air I needed to continue. Scoops of it entered my trousers from behind, each time we transitioned from our backs to our bellies or our backs to our feet. It was grinding away under my arms and at the tender flesh between my legs. It was like being in a carwash where sand was being blasted into my body instead of water. Side-straddle hops, push-ups, sit-ups, bends-and-thrusts, mountain climbers, knee bends, and leg raises.

  The transitions continued.

  “On your belly!”

  “On your back!”

  Belly . . . back . . . belly . . . back.

  After calling out a series of seat and feet commands, Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley gave up using words and just moved his index finger up . . . then down. It amazed me that that one man could hold such amazing power. Simply flexing one joint of his finger resulted in sixty grown men flopping, flipping, sweating, and bleeding, all with the common goal of making the torture end.

  As an education major I had studied instructional methods, but nothing I had been taught resembled the methods of Marine drill instructors. In this school, teachers didn’t muddle through lessons with “disruptive behaviors” and “noncompliant attitudes.” There was no “developmental appropriateness” to lesson planning and no endless search for “motivational activities and strategies.” Drill instructors relied exclusively on traditional direct instruction. They focused on one objective at a time, gave instructions, and provided practice until everyone demonstrated mastery. The reward for learning was an absence of punishment. The consequence for failure was pain and suffering.

  As I continued whaling away in the sandpit, I tried desperately to figure out a good answer in case I was asked why I had joined. A plethora of inane reasons flashed through my mind like a slide show in slow motion. I remembered specific posters and pamphlets, ad-vertisements on the television and radio, and the recruiter who had visited my high school. I didn’t have a good answer. My thoughts began to take a cynical turn.

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  It wouldn’t be long before we would trade the numbness of the culture shock of joining the Marines for rage and resentment. We had been fooled by the military marketing masterminds. Honor.

  Courage. Commitment. The uniform. These clichés have stood the test of time and have led even the brightest of scholars to stand on the yellow footprints. I had already learned that the truth of Parris Island was not as glamorous as my fast-talking recruiter had portrayed. Nor was it the adventure that the posters claimed. If the truth were printed, and naive young men were not blinded by promised pageantry, I thought few would volunteer. The truth hurt.

  The next command, “Leg raises!” offered a glimmer of hope.

  “Keep those legs off the deck for one minute and we go home—but if one of you nasties drops his boots, the clock restarts.”

  At that moment home seemed a million miles away. By the end of this day it would be a challenge to remember it at all. Then Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner started humming the tune of the Olympic games. I think this was supposed to piss us off, but it actually took my mind off of life in the pit. I was only beginning to learn how to use my mind to get through the misery and pain. It would become a necessary skill for survival in the days, weeks, and months to come.

  “On your feet!” directed Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley.

  He walked around the platoon to assess the damage, silhouetted against the orange glow of the setting sun. We were weary and emo-tionally spent. Most of us were in pain, and all were now saturated with the legendary Parris Island sand. We crudely turned and walked out of the pit, characteristic of raw recruits who have not yet mastered the precision of marching drill movements. The privilege of drilling was reserved for recruits farther along in their training, and even then they marched only when the drill instructor was pleased with their performance. Since neither case applied with us, we moved out with the finesse of a herd of cattle. We stopped when each recruit stood over his respective canteen. It seemed like such a long time since we had put them down.

  “Prepare to drink!” was the next order.

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  Our bodies tingled as synapses fired in our brains, alerting even the most dense recruit to anticipate the coming command.

  “Redaaayyyy, drink!”

  Sixty recruits simultaneously bent over, unscrewed their canteen caps, and began to guzzle. We remembered the punishment of a past lesson. No one removed the canteen from his lips until the next command was given, even if the canteen was empty.

  “Redaaayyy, two!”

  Sixty hands dropped as we screwed the caps on and returned the canteens to their resting positions atop our left forearms.

  “Get upstairs!”

  This time the fight to reach the top was complicated by the fatigue from our battle with the pit. Endurance was the criterion for success and a totally different group of recruits lay bewildered at the foot of the stairs, brandishing tattoolike bruises from the soles of their comrades’ boots.

  The safety of being
back on-line was reassuring, because it signaled a transition of some sort. Hopefully the games would cease, and we would discover the answer the drill instructors harbored.

  Even though the drill instructors arrived thirty seconds behind the last recruit, we didn’t dare speak to each other. Noise discipline was a must for recruits, and only the bravest, or most stupid, ever dared to squeeze in a spoken word without permission. Instead we used gestures to communicate, but even those were limited to the recruit directly across the squad bay. Recruit Bell made eye contact with me and nodded his head toward the rear hatch to signal the entrance of the drill instructors. Our eyes snapped to the front. Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner repeated the sequence of commands that led us into the head to fill our canteens. Once back on-line we received our next lesson in gamesmanship.

  The silence ended far too soon.

  “You’ve got one minute to sound off the correct reason for enlisting in my beloved Corps, recruits!”

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley stalked us with his hands on his hips, his elbows antagonistically brushing the chests of the recruits as he 16

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  moved, and heels deliberately driving into the tile floor. It was like a violent game of roulette and none of us knew who would be the next recipient of the tyrant’s wrath.

  “Ten . . . nine . . . seven . . . three . . . one,” he counted. This was the typical counting sequence of an impatient drill instructor, overanxious to move on to the consequence for failing the clock.

  Then Drill Instructor Sgt. Wagner joined in the fun and games.

  He often took a more sarcastic approach than did Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, ladies, but it appears our time is up,” he said. Using his most exaggerated television-game-show-announcer voice, he followed with “Drill Instructor, tell them what they’ve won!”

  Drill Instructor Sgt. Talley interrupted the satire.

  “Prepare to drink. . . . Drink!”

  Up went the elbows and down went the water. Throats contorted and abdomens bloated as unnatural volumes of water were forced down against gravity’s best wishes. We had consumed two quarts of water in less than five minutes, and the smaller recruits were struggling to keep it down. We were now ordered to file into the head a third time to fill our canteens with the bitter lukewarm water.