Surviving Boot Camp

Military.com has an interesting series on surviving boot camp. This brings back memories of meeting a Drill Instructor (or in my case a Company Commander):

This takes place after the Reception Process (when all your paperwork and medical tests are completed). A bus or “cattle truck” will pick you up. You will be packed in a crowded vehicle, and you may or may not have Drill Sergeants on board. If there are Drill Sergeants they will either introduce themselves, tell you to be quiet or ask you to sing the star spangled banner as loud as you can. Drill Sergeants look intimidating, but do understand, they cannot physically hit you.

Tip: Try your best not to show off or stand out at this point. There is always one person on that ride who tries to show he/she is different, and it doesn’t bring the right results.

Good advice. I remember quite a few recruits who made the experience tougher on themselves by acting like idiots the first day. The CC's remembered that for weeks. More:

After the exercises you will bring your luggage up to your bunk and meet the members of your platoon. You are all strangers now, but rest assured, you will know a little more -- maybe even more than you care to know -- about each and every member of that platoon when basic training is over.

I remember damn near everyone I went through Great Lakes with. Some were fresh off the farms of Iowa and some were off the mean streets of the Bronx. It didn't matter at that point, we were in the shit that is the first weeks of military boot camp and had to get along to get through it.

The most vivid memory was our CC's telling us that there was a coup in the Soviet Union. We had no TV, no radio, essentially no contact with the outside world with the exception of what the CC's told us. They looked tense during that period as no one had a clue who was in charge. It was doubly intense for us recruits who were getting very filtered info.