The Aviation Officer Candidate School – designed for those who found wearing the uniform once a week for four years during ROTC too, you know: restrictive - is upping sticks for parts north, taking with it the hopes and dreams of countless Pensacola debutants:
The college graduates who are soon to complete training at the nation’s oldest naval air station will be the final class to graduate from the base’s officer candidate school, ending a military tradition that lasted about seven decades.
After graduation ceremonies on Friday, the school will close and consolidate with a training center in Newport, R.I.
“Hundreds of classes have suffered out there” on the exercise field and parade deck at Pensacola Naval Air Station, said Allen Hamby, a 21-year-old admiral’s son and University of Central Florida graduate who plans to be a supply officer. “And we are going to be the last class doing it.”
Back in the day, recent Naval Academy graduates often arrived in P-Cola for flight school jaded by four years of more or less constant cops-and-robbers style harassment. Many of them spent their first few months in the “cradle of naval aviation” assiduously trying to catch up on all those experiences they had missed at the Severn River Monastery, not having had the opportunity to go to Columbia Barnard. Along the way, many of them laid the foundations for a future case of liver cirrhosis.
Many NROTC graduates meanwhile arrived in Pensacola in a high state of alcoholic training and possessed an elevated degree of aptitude on the playing fields of Seville Quarter. They realized through hard-won experience that the race went not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong: Slow and steady often gets it done.
The AOCS kids by comparison had all the zealotry of recent converts, having drunk the cool-aid rather late in life. Their stoic displays of earnest professionalism required the dedicated application of the best combined efforts of the Academy and ROTC types. Moving them north, in closer proximity to the great white up will not prevent this marriage of convenience.
The struggle continues.
The article doesn’t say why they are leaving for Rhode Island… Why is it? NAS Pensacola is a big place. Why move them?
Cost savings, I reckon. We’ve gotten small enough in the last decade or so to consolidate without losing throughput.
They are consolidating all the officer accession sources up in Newport. Remember, AOCS was at NASP and OCS was in Newport… with the Clintonian draw down, they combined both as OCS at NASP.
Now OCS is back where it originally started. At least they are keeping the Drill Instructors; I’ll always remember my Gunny, and his love of the SUYA.
I can still remember many things about AOCS. Running on the beach in combat boots in August, poopy suits, Gunnery Sergeant Bodine, being “encouraged” by the DI’s stick on the O-Course, even being evacuated in the face of Hurricane Camille and watching Neil Armstrong land on the moon on the Batt III TV. It’s hard to believe, but my experience in AOCS was in 1969, almost 40 years ago.
One of the most humiliating experiences, at the time, seems funny now: RLP’s are frequent and nasty, room-locker-personnel inspections. During one such RLP, I was in my assigned room with my 3 room-mates, each of us assigned to our own task of preparation (if one person did the same thing for all four of us, folded skivvys and polished brass would be the same for all four… a good thing.
My job was the wall locker (closet for civilians). We had two and I made certain all buttons were buttoned, zippers zipped, and everything hanging straight and in the perfect center of their hangers. We had a DI who carried a cane and he would announce himself by banging it on the door frame of each room. We could, therefore, judge how far down the passage-way he was from our room = how much time we had to get “wired up”.
This particular day, he was at the far end… giving us ample time, or so we all thought. To our surprise and my sheer terror, our door slammed open as he banged his cane. The door swung open, trapping me in the wall locker! DI Armstrong commenced to swear and tear my room-mates apart verbally, demanding to know my whereabouts. After many loud outbursts and too much time for me, standing in the closet at attention, the DI opened the door.
Ready for the inevitable tirade and obligatory PT in the sandpit, I said, “going up, sergeant?”
And then it did begin…
What a story Mr Gunn!
“Back in the day, recent Naval Academy graduates often arrived in P-Cola for flight school jaded by four years of more or less constant cops-and-robbers style harassment. Many of them spent their first few months in the “cradle of naval aviation” assiduously trying to catch up on all those experiences they had missed at the Severn River Monastery, not having had the opportunity to go to Columbia Barnard. ”
So true, Lex. During my instructing stint at Whiting Field (’60-’62) my Academy students were usually the most hung-over, the least prepared. They were mostly still talented enough to get an up. Constrainment of so much tetsosterone for four years can lead to such heady excesses when it finally tastes a modicum of freedom.
Myself, being a graduate of Newport OCS, was such a model of deportment. Only had one brush with being washed out because of a drunken late night scuffle at Carpenter’s Side Door. The memory is still quite vivid even though it happened 52 years ago. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Now the Officer Candidates will remember marching in the freezing gloom of Newport with icicles hanging off their noses and fingers slowly going numb from frostbite. There’s always some miserable weather to engrave the joys of training on your memory.
You know, after four years of seeing mids in Whites out on liberty in Annapolis, it was weird to come down here and see the OCS mids out….in whites….on liberty. Who will we snicker at condescendingly in the bars once they’re gone?
~Ens Tim
I find this rathre odd since just a few years ago they said they wanted to consolidate OCS in P-Cola. Will they still get Marine DI’s to train them or has that gone too?
The Cradle of Naval Aviation just lost the “baby”.
Without AOCS Pensacola is prime brac material because of all that hurricane damage…All that remains there to me is my name on a couple plaques in the PI Bar. Small beer.
Sstupid ‘foons. More Shoe decision making. Ask me what I really think.
SSGT Penn! The candidate requests permission to speak! It is gone. Everythings watered down..irrelevant.
b2
Ahh. P-cola! Seville Quarter! Flora-Bama! Even though I did not attend OCS, I did attend NACCS and RSS. The NACCS barracks being right accross the street from the OCS barracks. We trained at the same pool, same o-course, ate at the same places (the galley food was great, it was more like a restaurant out in town, and I’ll never forget the lunch buffet at Duck’s.) Officers earned alot of respect from me those first few months out of boot. We got up early but, those poor bastards were up at who-know’s-when, running in formation and saluting squirrels and stuff. A newly minted female ensign “paid” me for her first salute on my last day before transfering to A school. I still have that silver dollar.
Inspection in the Wall Locker…
Discovered this gem of a story by “PeterGunn” in the comments at Neptunus Lex:…
Just from a “size” perspective this is puzzling. Newport, RI – while being a lovely and historic town – is a small one. RI in general is pretty tiny, especially compared to a place like Pensacola. Cost cutting may be the order of the day, but my god they’ll be packed in like sardines.
Kris,
True, Newport is small but the Naval station also takes up a good chunk of Middletown, RI. They’ve got a couple mothballed aircraft carriers too (CV 59 Forrestal and CV 60 Saratoga).
What a sad, sad day indeed. I showed up for AOCS with a full-on naval aviator mustache and longish hair, having squeezed 4 years of education into 5+ including summer classes at my civilian university. Graduated with a little over a 2.0 GPA. All very hazy now, and was even hazy back then.
Thought Navy was out of reach for a slacker such as me, until I showed up for work at NARF Norfolk, and stood looking at the ZERO DEFECTS sign. Then a sailor drove a forklift out from behind the sign into the wind, and a hundred cardboard boxes blew off at once and headed for the nearest active runway. I watched and thought, “There’s a place for me in this man’s Navy.” Flying planes looked like fun. Thanks to Reagan, standards were lowered enough to get in.
But not to stay in.
I’m sure the Gunny thought I was a goldfish too. But a week’s worth of visits to the Drill Instructor’s office after regular hours failed to dissuade me from my mission. No way in hell was I leaving until my hair grew back.
Twenty-five years later, and my hair has left for good. Guess I’m stuck in the Nav.
Taxi 1,
re- “No way in hell was I leaving until my hair grew back”
Beautiful. My sentiments of the 1970′s period at AOCS- exactly. Hard to be looking good at the disco with a high and tight. LOL.
Great callsign. How’d you get? No, that’s alright. LOL. Lex is that you being someone else? CanoeU Snob, you.
b2
Sad day in Black Rock.
Will they close ACRAC too?
Many good memories of AOCS in September 1967. The first morning in INDOC, reveille scared the s**t out of me, I think part of me is still on the overhead above my rack. From then on, hearing the scrathing of the needle on the record was enough to get me going.
Oh well, time does march on.
jdp
In my not so humble opninion… to anyone who has ever worn the uniform… whatever the shade of green or blue, the above comments bring back bitter-sweet memories of the trevails we all went through to get where we desired to go in the way back…and like all war stories the best ones are the wry funny ones… the ones you survived to tell about and to later expand upon at beer call at the Officrs Club or many moons later to anyone who was kind enough listen… Excellent thread you all…many thanks. Best
PS, B2, Agree … comment # 14 above is totally bogus… that peckerwood Lex is trying to have his way with us but it didn’t work…come clean Lex …confession is good for the soul .
It’s not me. I’m not entirely sure what this “Taxi 1″ thing is he’s talking about. Summat to do with going to the bow cats, perhaps?
Lex, Uber lame… try …”Summat (sp?) to do with going to the bow cats, perhaps?” What the f**k does that mean? …apparently into the Madeira again…very troubling indeed. Best
At long last, my degradation is complete: Spelling lessons from the Army!
The irony is that they already moved OCS from Newport to Pcola back in the mid-90s.
“At long last, my degradation is complete…”
Lacking only the spelling lesson to turn you tummy-side-down in the scuppers…
I gradumated from AOCS 20 years ago almost to the day. (YO STEVE! do you remember the date?)
I wasn’t too happy while there, but in retrospect, it actually was pretty fun. The drill instructors made me laugh a lot more than they made me grimace, but I did my fair share of grimacing.
My class was un-secured (basically in hack) almost our whole time down there, seems we had trouble passing inspections.
One of my best friends from my class was my roommate for one of our RLPs. As described above, an RLP or Room Locker and Personnel inspection, was basically an excuse for the DIs to grill us on “the gouge” we were supposed to know and inspect our stuff.
So anywy this guy Tip was being asked some rank questions “What is an E-8 in the Air Force called.”
“SIR, AN E-8 IN THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE IS A SENIOR MASTER SERGEANT”
The next question was being asked as about a 3 inch thread found hanging from his back pocket was being draped across his nose.
“What is an O-9 in the United States Marine Corps?”
Now Tip was (and still is) a smart guy. He was good in tough situations. He didn’t freeze up. He was cool under pressure. But he just couldn’t remember.
“SIR, AN O-9 IN THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS IS A…..IS A….MASTER GENERAL!”
Instantly, he had 4 DIs in his face and the rest of us were left alone for the rest of the RLP. I thank him for that every time I see him. He recently sent me an invite to his change of command, it was addressed to me, but instead of Commander, my rank was listed as “Master General.”
Nose
I am my own man, thank you very much. I was actually a moderately successful ball flyer, snagging a couple of top ten patches in my day. But my very last trap in the Nav…it was in a Tubby-2, on a big deck carrier, ball was starting to sag a wee bit crossing the rounddown, thought I’d smoothly drift into the 2 wire (paddles sees corrections much easier than slow deviations, I know since I are one) and I’ll be darned if it just didn’t keep right on going down and down and down. I’d been over steel for at least 3 seconds so I figured I’d take my 1 wire like a man. Felt the nose gear roll over it. Of course my LSO bubbas were waving me. There was joy in Mudville.
One more AOCS anecdote. We learned alot there, but not enough. I’m sitting outside on a bench at Whiting mere months later, next to a much more senior (by 3 months) Ensign. All of the sudden a Marine CAPT walks up. We’re sitting. He’s walking. I look at my new mentor, and he salutes the CAPT. While sitting down. I match lead’s configuration and give my first ever seated salute, smartly rendered.
What I learned over the next few minutes was not to sit down outside.
[...] Lex comments on Moving AOCS from Pensacola,FL to Newport, RI. Yeah, “your point?” you ask? Readers respond with some short and hilarious recollections about their time in AOCS. This one from PeterGunn (no relation to Peter rabbit…I think): PeterGunn // Sep 17, 2007 at 7:57 pm [...]
Ensign Tim… I can’t believe you would harass AOC’s that way. In my day, we heard many things, ie, “make mine a chocolate”, but from the townies, not my own guys!
Our DI’s had us so pumped up that we figured any number of locals up to 4 to 1 were good odds. The few times we got to the famous Pensacola beaches, we’d chase the Dogfish Sharks and try to catch them by their tails.
We were pumped and ready for almost anything! DI’s knew exactly how to tear you down and then build you back up; the way they wanted, of course.
My experience in AOCS was a perfect example of “those were the days” … or, it “hurts so good!”
Lex/Taxi 1, On the small chance you might give a s**t… I remain unconvinced… Best
Does this mean no more DI’s for OCS?
Those guys made 90 days seem like three plebe years at boat school. I bilged out of USNA ’72 and made class 20-73 at P-Cola. I thought AOCS was going to be a cake walk. Wrong. I learned a healthy respect for all things USMC, something that I believe all Navy officers need.
Hard to believe it’s ending. But the pipeline was down to a trickle of what it once was.
To Peter Gunn: I was in class 0468 (April 1968)and we heard that”going up story” then I guess it must have happened more than once. We also heard the “foreign student bail out” and he ain’t that F____’ed up honey when the student transmitted to the tower in error.
Steve,
Hello to another 04/68 candidate. I have no idea whether this will reach you, but saw your blog on this site. I have to admit that I’m as f____d up as three Hogan’s goats on the computer. Anyway, it was good to see a comment from a classmate. If you get this, I’d like to hear from you.
Ron
Ron
How I remember Aviation Officer Candidate School.
Christ!… it was impossibly hot in Pensacola that afternoon of June 3rd, 1968. I was late reporting to Aviation Schools Command at Pensacola Naval Air Station, from Texas, due to some problem with my commercial airlines flight (Yikes…UA on my first day in the Navy). I was one of the 70 spankin’ new members of AVROC Class 841 who commenced service to their country that day. The Vietnam conflict was escalating and the officer training classes were fairly large. The other 69 or so guys in my class were already out getting their heads shaved as I, all by my lonesome, tentatively approached the old white clapboard building (Bldg 699, I think) that housed the infamous AOCS INDOC BATTALLION. This WW-II era building, along with all the other buildings like it along the “grinder”, were demolished a couple years later and AOC/AVROC training, including Indoc, was moved eastward to the more modern brick buildings near the Navy Exchange, the Aviation Schools Command academic building and the Chapel.
Anyway, upon entering Bldg 699, I was immediately pounced upon by a small cadre of recently appointed AOC candidate officers who had nothing better to do than to demonstrate to me their military knowledge and try to impress me with their 15 weeks of military experience and newly acquired power and authority. Having just finished my third year in the Corps of Cadets and Texas A&M, I had no trouble with the unarmed close order drill commands “A-Tench Hut”, “Right Face”, “About Face”, etc., that they screamed at me. My intimate knowledge of formation and drill, derived from countless hours studying Army Field Manual 22-5 and participation on the drill team at school, made them even more furious…so they saved face by sending me away with one of the flunky Candidate Ensigns to escort me to the barber shop to meet up with the rest of my new classmates. I viewed hair from Beatle and Beach Boy style haircuts a foot deep on the deck as I waited my turn to be shorn…an evolution that took about 48 seconds per candidate. I recall that the barbers really seemed to be enjoying this part of their job.
The rest of that afternoon and early evening was a blur of yelling and screaming as the candidate officers tried to organize us into some semblance of a military formation. Later we returned to Bldg. 699/Indoc Battalion for room assignment, more screaming, the issue of two green poopy suits and a pair of half boots called “boondockers”; then more screaming and more yelling. And at this point I don’t think we had even met our Marine DI yet. My recollection is that we had no evening meal that day and at some point they finally allowed us to hit the sack for the night.
Five AM in the morning came early and loudly over the intercom: “Reveille, Reveille, Reveille! All Candidates hit the deck! The uniform of the day is tropical khaki long with highly polished low quarter blacks.” (except for Indoc battalion, of course). “The Command Duty Officer is LCDR Black; the Battalion Duty Officer is LT Jones. Reveille, Reveille, Reveille!” Within seconds we had to be standing at attention in our skivvies in front of our doors in the passageway. So quickly, in fact, that numerous cases of morning wood were proudly on display…much to the intense embarrassment of the affected candidates and much to the amusement of those of us not so encumbered. Dismissed back to our rooms we quickly made bunks, brushed, shaved and dressed. And then a few minutes later over the intercom: “Class 841 this is your five minute warning for the going down of the morning meal formation!” We rushed from our rooms out the back doors and formed up on the still dark grinder behind the Building 699.
At 0530 we became formally introduced to our class Marine Drill Instructor: Gunnery Sergeant Ricker. Ricker was the meanest, coolest, badest most perfect militarized human being on the planet. His United States Marine Corps khaki uniform was perfectly worn and adorned. The Marine overseas cap was razor straight. His trousers broke slightly at the bottom front and, straight at the back, precisely reached the top of the heels of his spit-mirror-polished low quarter blacks. Brass portions of his uniform accoutrements sparkled even in the minimal light provided by barracks floodlights. The man had six rows of colorful ribbons, most of which I did not recognize but looked like ones you might get for killing the enemy, and some dangly things common to Marines just beneath…attesting to his ability to make you dead at 100 yards with a single shot. Saying nothing for quite a while, he paced back and forth in front of our raggedy poopie formation, hands clasped behind his back, viewing us with a level of dislike, disdain, contempt, embarassment and disappointment I had never before witnessed.
Finally he boomed: “OK, Goddamit, when I say: ‘Class 841!’ you will answer ‘Sir, Class 841!’ Do you maggots think you can do that”? As we fidgeted and nodded sleepily at 0535, a few of us mumbled “yes sir.” His reaction was immediate, loud and horrific: “Jesus Fuckin’ Christ! You fuckin’ flower child, shit-birds better sound off like you got a pair, right fuckin’ now…or, I shit you not, I will stomp a mud hole in your ass and walk it dry”!! Welcome to Marine DI eloquence. Man, I truly respected the way DI’s could cuss. No one could swear with such artistic profanity like a Marine DI in 1968.
We ran and did calisthenics that morning for quite a while and about 0630, or so, we arrived at the candidate mess hall. There was a guy, a candidate, who stood at attention at the mess hall door with his hands extended in front of him with two thumbs up. We were lined up at rigid attention in two columns facing him and as each pair of us reached the mess hall door, he would sharply turn his thumbs in the direction we should enter…either through the right or left door. In the mess hall, the DI’s left us alone. This temporary relaxing of discipline must have been a custom born of some past candidate choking and dying a horrible death as a result of a DI badgering him while eating. Anyway, we were all famished and I remember chowing down on all sorts of great menu items: eggs, grits, bacon, buttered biscuits, sausage, OJ, coffee, milk, sticky buns and more. Oh how truly great that meal was…and we finally had a chance to meet some of the other guys in our class. That morning I distinctly remember meeting a classmate named Jack Breese; a California kinda surfer-looking guy but actually he was from Arizona. More on Jack later.
Eating heartily was a mistake…a huge one! We ran in formation from the mess hall back to the barracks but not along a direct route. Seventy college kids; a lot of us out of shape, geographically displaced, with full stomachs and confused brains struggled to keep up with the candidate officers leading us. Stragglers dropped behind; ran slow and walked or limped in trail…some stopped and bent over with hands on knees as they ralphed their cookies on the soon to be steaming grinder. For many, that morning sucked beyond belief.
What’s the main thing we candidates remember from the second day? “Heel to Toe”, Nutts to Butts, Rocket to Socket”, “Corn Hole Interval”, “You eyeballing me, maggot?” We stood in line the entire damn day for all the stuff we had to accomplish. Getting low quarter black shoes, receiving uniforms, getting issued M-1 drill rifles, physicals at NAMI (ahhh…air conditioning in the medical building felt so good) and other things I can’t remember. As we stood in line, to minimize the space our now worthless bodies occupied, our toes had to touch the heels of the guy in front of us; at attention and no eyeballing. Thumbs along the seams of our poopy suits, feet at a 45 degree angle. Outside air temp at 98 degrees and 95% humidty.
The Indoc building, our barracks, was not air conditioned. Four men to a room, two sets of bunk beds, two chests of drawers against the back wall, two sinks, one table in the middle of the room for studying, four chairs and one wall mounted fan that rotated back and forth, back and forth…in a valiant effort to help our sweat keep us back from the edge of heat stroke. Lots of water and salt pills. That first evening we had our first basic room inspection. Everyone failed miserably. The candidate officer inspecting me pulled my soap dish from it place in the medicine cabinet where it was properly located on the second shelf grounded to the starboard and rear bulkheads of the cabinet. As it was supposed to be, the soap dish itself was totally free of soap residue yet he discovered a lone pubic hair stuck to the top of the bar of soap in the dish. He appeared stunned; as if such lack of attention to detail assaulted his eyes, insulted his brain and disparaged the entire United States Navy. In a fit of rage he ordered me to go to each and every other room in the building, “pound the pine”, take one step inside and announce “I am Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate Hobgood, W. H., Class 841. I am gross. I leave cock hairs on my soap”. I did that in front of about 150 candidates in 35 different rooms. I was 20 years old. I was mortified.
Remember the “upper center classroom”? That’s where we had our meetings and learned about being poopies and all the rules and regulations that would govern our lives for the next two weeks of “Indoc.” The evening of Day Two we had out first meeting there. The 62 of us remaining (I think we lost 8 the first day) were told we could DOR (Drop on Request) if we didn’t like the environment in which we found ourselves and we could “go home to momma.“ Or so Drill Instructor Ricker said. The next morning, we were another six candidates short. And I think we lost another five or six during the next six weeks. By the way; DOR’s didn’t actually get to go home. There was a clause in the AVROC/AOC contract that if you did not finish the training for other than physical reasons, you stayed for a two year enlistment. I remember seeing some of the guys from our class that DOR’ed a few weeks later. They were still wearing poopie suits and working along the piers waiting for orders to enlisted boot camp.
Indoc isolation. No TV, no radio, no newspapers….nothing. I remember this mainly because two or three days after reporting, a candidate officer informed us Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated. This was the only news we received for the two weeks of Indoc.
Room, Locker and Personnel (RLP) Inspections became a main focus of our lives…both in Indoc and after we transferred to Battalion II (“Batt 2, Batt 2, Batt 2!!!!!!”) which was just down the grinder from Indoc and right across from the ACRAC Club (the O’Club for AOC’s). It seems like we were always preparing for the next RLP. My roommates were Mike Gorman, Rick Green and Steve Gilchrist, a football player from Louisiana (remember – we were assigned rooms alphabetically). I recall such tasks as polishing the inside of my brass belt buckle, shining both sides of the blade inside my safety razor and the disassembling the nozzle of my shaving can for cleaning…stuff we didn’t even do at A&M. Should we be found wearing uniforms that were discovered to have Irish Pennants (IPs – loose threads) or pressed-in lint, well… that got you a near-death experience. Skivvies had to be folded 4” by 4” exactly and grounded to the forward starboard bulkheads of the specific drawer they were assigned to be in. Other apparel (skivvy shirts and socks) also rated a particular folded size and precise location. Our closets contained khaki uniform items, shoes, PT gear and our beloved M-1 rifle…these had to be in exact locations for inspections with all hanging shirts buttons facing port. The M-1 rifle (our 7.62mm, semi-automatic, gas operated, air cooled, clip fed, shoulder weapon) had to be locked in the closet at all times. “Sir, my rifle serial number is 4456778, Sir.” Pogey bait (non-issued snacks/candy) was forbidden but we all found somewhere to hide it. God forbid that a DI found it. Should that happen, you would hear something like: “Squat-thrusts, 50 of them, ready, begin”…plus you lost your pogey bait.
Then the moment of judgment…room inspection by the DI: “Sir, Aviation Reserve Candidate Hobgood, W. H., Class 841, reports Room Locker and Personnel ready for inspection, Sir.” That is what I, when room captain, was required sound off when the DI pounded the pine immediately prior to commencing the room inspection. Curiously, there was no optional sound off if you were not ready for inspection. I remember that the atmosphere of those inspections hovered somewhere between fear and comedy. DI’s could be the meanest SOB’s on the face of the earth yet if you could take a step back and observe them (we couldn’t do that at the time), you would clearly see that they were laughing hysterically at us behind those intimidating eyes and gruff exteriors.
I recall one inspection with great clarity. It was so hot that June, our bunks were made with only two sheets; and to make getting ready in the morning easier, most of us slept on our bunks already made up (i.e. we slept on the top sheet). Like I mentioned before, I was 20 years old…and one night brought one of those special, exciting dreams…the results of which, once deposited, remained on my top sheet on the top port bunk and, in the heat, dried quite quickly…leaving a crisp yellow stain. Mike Gorman, my bunkmate, and the other two guys became aware of this problem but there was nothing I could do with an RLP coming soon that morning. Later, after the inspection commenced, Drill Instructor Ricker was nose to nose with me inspecting me and my uniform…paying particular attention to the mounting of my collar devices, the accuracy of my “gig line” and scrutinizing unshorn hairs in the vicinity of the interior of my nostrils….Ricker called them: “fucking nose hairs.” Mike Gorman was rigidly at attention to my left as was Steve Gilchrist, the football player, directly across the room from me. GSGT Ricker, still standing directly in front of me, suddenly stopped talking and moving. Something had caught his attention. This pause was pregnant and worrisome. He then reached across my left shoulder and I heard a scratching noise from behind me where he was reaching with his right hand. I heard him say in a soft voice but loud enough for my roommates to hear: “Hobgood………..,what the fuck is this?”
Well…I had a problem. I knew exactly what it was he was “scratching” but here was no way…no way at all I was going to admit knowledge of it and try to come up with words, appropriate to my new Navy life, to answer his question and thereby accurately confirm to him “what the fuck” it was he was scratching with his fingernails. However, being at rigid attention and not being allowed to move or “eyeball” what the DI was talking about, I figured that perhaps I could feign ignorance. As these thoughts developed in my mind, I noticed Steve Gilchrist across from me. He, likewise knowing exactly what was going on, was making herculean efforts not to laugh…his face was beet red. So I replied in my best and most innocent voice: “Sir, this candidate does not have any knowledge of what the drill instructor is referring to, Sir”. A moment of silence followed and looking straight ahead at my football player roommate I viewed that he continued to valiantly restrain his laughter. GSGT Ricker finally said in a loud, but cool and even voice, “Hobgood, why do you have a fuckin’ potato chip on your rack?” I don’t remember how I answered. I don’t remember how the RLP turned out. I don’t remember if we failed the inspection…all I remember is watching the dark, ever expanding, wet stain that suddenly appeared on the khaki crotch of the football player across from me as, in his heroic, but now failed efforts to keep from laughing, he pissed his pants.
Marching. We often went to the grinder with our rifles for drill. Sometimes out to the old ramp near the bay. I had marched with a rifle endlessly in the Corps at A&M and I knew that for a couple centuries the army of the United States had routinely marched to places with muskets and rifles in order to shoot the enemy. But I had no earthly idea why I was doing it in a Navy uniform. But there we were. And getting there was such fun because we first had to learn to follow verbal drill commands. Remember this?…OK…we are all in formation and DI Ricker is in front of us explaining how the commands work…and it sounds something like this as he says: “Listen up maggots! To the Rear, MARCH is a two count movement. The preparatory command is TO THE REAR, the command of execution is MARCH. The command of execution is given when the RIGHT, the RIGHT foot, hits the deck. Sounds like this: RAAARRRHHHHHH, HURRHH.” We candidates are all thinking: “What the hell did he just say?” That loud part didn’t sound anything like what he said just before. He goes on to explain another marching movement command “Right Flank”. He says, “The preparatory command is RIGHT FLANK, the command of execution is MARCH. The command of execution is given when the RIGHT foot, the RIGHT foot hits the deck; sounds like this: RAAARRRHHHHHH, HURRHH.” Now we are all just thinking the same thing: “What the fuck?” How are we going to know what to do when he says ‘RAAARRRHHHHHH, HURRHH.’?” It all sounds the same. I surreptitiously eyeballed over at Jack Breese…he was just shaking his head ever so slightly.
The Obstacle Course. Jack Breese was the only guy in the class to beat me in the obstacle course. My best time was 2min 42sec and his was 2min 37sec. Even when we didn’t run our best times, I couldn’t beat him. The obstacle course was torture. Not as bad as the “C” course…but still torture. Face it….running in soft sand sucks. So, SEALS do it all the time…big deal, it still sucks. Did then, still does now. The obstacles on the “O” course started out with a bunch of tires lying in the sand that you had to run through sticking your feet in the holes…that was pretty easy. That was followed by the 8ft bulkhead (that’s a wall for you Naval Academy and ROTC types) and then the 12ft bulkhead (with the assist rope) was next. Then down to the 145deg left turn where the low metal pipe crawl-under thing was…that’s where you always got a mouthful of sand. Thereafter a couple of 4’ bulkheads and a turn to the right toward the 16’ bulkhead that you had to climb up and over….and then, depending how big your balls were or how bad you wanted a good finishing time, after climbing the near side, you would jump from the top. Or if you were a wuss, you would climb down the back side some before jumping. Jack always jumped from the top…shit!!…so I did too. That was followed by more three foot bulkheads and the two narrow single log bridges over the trench and then a long sandy sprint to the overhead ladder. This is where you could make good time with a good jump-and-reach-then-swing technique…or fall on your ass and have to go back to the start of the ladder. Then we sprinted to the maze (a lotta guys threw up here) and then to the finish line. I feel like I may have missed a few obstacles, but you get the idea. Anybody in decent shape could complete it in acceptable time. But it was the “time” that mattered. And Jack always beat me! Jack and I hooked up again in the mid-eighties when he was MO and I was Ops at CTF-72 in Japan.
Awards. Candidates didn’t get ribbons or medals…no kidding. But guys who had been around a while did get yellow tape on their name tags to identify that they were candidate officers and close to graduation. For maggots, red, blue or white tape trim on your nametag identified the battalion to which you were assigned. Also we were awarded special tags the same size as (and worn above) our name tags to signify special achievement in Physical Training (PT), Military (drilling and stuff) and Academic (studying and good grades). If you got an award in one area, you got a blue tag to wear. If you got two awards, the tag was red and if you got all three, it was white and you would be remembered for all time as a “snowflake”. In any given class, the guy picked to be regimental Commander was usually a “snowflake.” I wasn’t a snowflake. I did get a red tag for PT and Military but, for AVROCs that wasn’t until the next summer.
Academics. “Up Book Bags, Up………” (to be continued)
BH,
How the heck do you remember so much detail? That was 41 years ago, wasn’t it?
Good read, though. TNX
ah the memories- Indoc and Batt. I. Will take them to the grave.