Me, a sailor? Naw

It was bad enough growing up during my tender years, there were no tender years, and being saddled with the nickname of "Rat." It became a little more frustating early in my Navy career by picking up still another nickname - "Larry the dog."

But nothing could ever prepare me for those initial hours after taking the oath to defend and protect when I became a member of the United States Navy. I was in Baltimore and was about to board an airplane heading to Chicago and then to Great Lakes, that great Navy training center in the sky where all newbies are skinheads and a few other choice names that I won't go into here.

It was my first plane ride, don't it just figure, and there I was along with a bunch of other recruits and we were in this plane stacked up over a Chicago airport while a storm raged outside and we were in a holding pattern until we could land.

A pretty young lady was going around and making sure everyone was fine and she was about to offer me something to drink, but the green look on my face convinced her the last thing I needed was something to drink.

We finally landed. It was my first experience at being bumped all over the place and I hadn't even been to sea. We were met in the terminal by a rather gruff fella who was not at all happy about the fact we were late in arriving.

But we boarded the buses and were on our merry way to Great Lakes. It was late, very late when we arrived and we all made our way off the buses and stood at attention while having the riot act read to us for something we didn't do, never should have done or were about to do. All I remember is a car going past the entrance to the camp and a lone voice calling out - "You'll be sorry."

Finally I got to put my head on a pillow. Sleep, at last. But it seemed like only minutes before we were awakened by someone coming into our wing of the barrack and taking a coke bottle round and round the inside of a metal trash can. They almost had to peel me off the ceiling. Talk about a wake-up call, geesh.

Welcome to boot camp. For the upcoming nine weeks we would be grilled, drilled, tested, insulted and taught the only way to do things right was the Navy way. Now we were getting to some of the fun parts.

Of course everyone going through boot gets to have their experience with getting the mandatory shots, whether you needed them or not. And the corpsmen were eagerly waiting for us to feel the bite of the needle as it made its

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Humor: Sailor stories?
We want to hear your view. Write now!