Off To Boot Camp

When I left for boot camp, there were 4 or 5 other guys going to San Diego. We boarded the train, and the recruiter gave me the paperwork for the 5 guys from Victoria.  I was not in charge, but was tasked to make sure all the paperwork got to San Diego.  The trip was uneventful. It was a nice train ride of 3 days, I think.

When you signed up for any branch of the service, you had to use First Name, middle initial, and Last Name. So, I signed up as Santa M. Claus. They were so strict about format, that if a guy’s name was Bill Jones and he didn’t have a middle name, they filled out paperwork for him as Bill NMN Jones (NMN for No Middle Name). So that is the point in my life that I officially began using Santa M. Claus.

When we arrived at the train station in S.D., we were met by someone with a bus to take us to the base.  When we got to the base, we got off the bus and lined up, sort of?  The Drill Instructor, to be known as DI from here on, started going down the list of new recruits. He went all the way through alphabetically to Z, and then said “Is there anyone whose name I did not call? Step forward.” I took a step out of line, and he said,

“You must be the clown that signed up as Santa Claus. Your ass is mine, son.”

He turned out to be pretty nice, but he put on a gruff act to scare the crap out of us.  All the recruits were grouped into companies. Probably about 20 to 25 men.  Each company was given a number and had a company flag that you were supposed to be proud of.  I think my company number was 1420.

Some of the recruits had trouble with authority.  This usually meant, talking back to the DI, not making your bunk properly, or just not being “squared away.”  These unlucky individuals were sent to a special company called 40/50. 

40/50 recruits had to wear white caps with a black stripe around the upper edge to denote their status. This was to warn other recruits to toe the line.

(The caps for everyone wore were called Dixie Cups. Individual ice cream used to come frozen in small cups that had the same shape as our hats. The cup had a peel off lid and came with a wooden spoon to eat the ice cream.)

The DIs for 40/50 company were always armed and the recruits in those companies always double-timed wherever they went.  The rest of the normal companies did not have to double-time unless we were late for some training.

During the first half of boot camp, 8 weeks, we were quarantined. That meant no outside contact with anyone physically, and only phone calls home when they were earned. 

About 4 weeks into our training my DI came to me and said I needed to go to some building and see someone. I honestly thought I was being sent to 40/50 for some infraction. 

It turned out to be the Public Relations office for the base.  Someone on the PR staff found out that Santa Claus was a recruit and wanted to write an article for the Navy Times.  They had me dress up in some other sailor’s dress blues, put on a fake beard and take pictures for the article.  The problem with this was the fake beard. It shed all over this sailor’s dress blue uniform and it probably took 3 trips to the dry cleaners to get it cleaned up.

This trip to PR was another reason for my DI to have it out for me. I had to be super “Squared Away” after that disruption, I toed the line for the rest of Boot Camp.