The Hollywood Marines
I remember I reported to boot camp on April 4, 1994. In the Marines that would be 940404. After a couple days in processing, I joined Kilo “K” Company. It was an interesting transition.
We had three phases to boot camp back then. The first phase was all about getting in shape and getting your muscles ready for the firing range. A lot of sitting cross legged, so much your feet would fall asleep. We learned everything. Like how to wash clothes, clean the barracks, and polish boots. The stress level was always high. To make things worse, we had to do fire watch at random times almost every night. There was no sleeping in, no rest time. It was go go go all day long.
During second phase (month 2) we moved up north, to Camp Pendleton. That is where we went to the field, did tons of humps (Marine jargon for hikes with packs). Not just packs though, everywhere we went we had helmets and cavlar vests. We spent time in the field sleeping in our little tents. And then there was the shooting. We constantly were shooting at the range to try to get qualified.
When we got back to down to San Diego, it was finally the last phase. Here we did the obstacle course and really honed our drilling skills. We did a lot of test too. Then we graduated.