First Week in NAVY Boot Camp

by Garrick Stubblefield

So I joined up just one week after high school and headed to San Diego CA for boot camp.

As we left Detroit around 7pm on a Friday, it was only 4pm in San Diego. The flight was a nearly 6-hour trip, which meant that it was 2am Detroit time and 11pm San Diego time. This didn’t include the one-hour ride from the airport to the base.

So we arrived and were told to sleep well because it was going to be an early rise. Sure enough it was and we only got about 3 hours of sleep. We started to form our company, that was what they called it in the “NAVY”. After we got chow we went to our barracks and the company commander “C.C” rattled off the names that were in his company. I ended up in Company 179.

For the first order of business, the C.C would re-read his list of recruits and said to pop up, state your name again, and social security number. The C.C. said prior to doing this if you have any zeroes in your SSN and called them “O’s” you will automatically be doing exercises until you broke a sweat. And last order of business was he told us a little about himself and his assistant, C.C. would talk about himself. So this is the fun of Week 1.

The C.C. says, “boys and men it’s time to start growing up to be sailors because if you think you can cry back to mom you have a rude awakening.

BECAUSE:

• If you try escaping North, you just joined your brothers of the Marines;
• If you try escaping South, you just went to Mexico;
• If you went West, well, you better swim well because you’re in the Pacific Ocean;
• If you went East, you better run fast and hope to catch the next plane out!

All of these will put you AWOL and discharged from the service. SO IS THERE ANYBODY THAT WANTS TO LEAVE AND GO BACK HOME? ANYBODY?!”

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