Here is the next Chapter of my Memoir/Novel, Lost and Found.
As I was editing this Chapter today, I noticed I was making a slew of typos. I hope I caught them all, but if you see any “goofs” — typos, misspellings, etc., be sure to let me know so I can fix them.
Thanks!
Be well — be in peace,
Ron Rink
=============================================================
The four of us walked into the main barracks and Jim said, “You already know where Joe’s bunk is, and Ralph and I are over here,” he said walking towards the bunks right across the middle aisle from Joe’s bunk. “Ralph’s on the bottom bunk here and I’m on the top. This top bunk right next to us is open. Why don’t you take that one?”
Even though there was a part of me that didn’t want to trust these guys, I didn’t want to do anything more to piss them off. “Sounds good to me,” I said. “I guess we better start looking for whatever a work uniform is.”
Within a few minutes after we managed to change our clothes the sailor who was in charge of us came into the barracks. He walked over to an empty trashcan, took a wooden baton he had in his hands and began to roll it around and around the inside of the trashcan making a terrific, terrible noise. When he stopped making his noise he called out, “Okay, sailors, do I have your attention?”
A few guys nodded their heads and couple of quiet voices said, “Yes.”
“I can’t hear you,” the leader called out. “Answer me so I know you’re here!”
He kept repeating himself until he got a rousing “YES SIR!” from the recruits.
Before we could go get some breakfast, we had to put all our clothes back into our sea bags and leave our sea-bags on top of our bunks. We learned the sailor in charge of us was a Chief Petty Officer and we were to always address him as “Sir”. We learned that we had the rank of Seaman Recruit, the lowest rank of a newly enlisted sailor.
Our military training began as we went to morning chow – (it wasn’t “breakfast” any longer). We couldn’t just walk out of the barracks haphazardly, we had to leave the building two-by-two. We couldn’t just walk over to the chow hall, we had to march over there, attempting to follow the cadence being called out by our leader in a loud voice. “Left, Right, Left, Right, Left,” over and over again. He would occasionally interrupt his cadence by yelling at one of us, “When I say ‘Left’, that means your left foot dummy!” or other comments yelled at us like, “You have to be the most uncoordinated bunch of swabbies I’ve ever seen! How in the hell are we supposed to win a war with sailors who don’t know their right foot from their left?”
Once again, I was beginning to realize how lucky I was to have spent those three months in the Reform School. Being there had taught me how to tolerate this sort of verbal abuse and I learned quickly to just do what I was told and keep my mouth shut. I also soon understood there was a reason for it and it was to turn us into “military” people – people who would be willing to fight in a war – people who would follow orders without argument or second thoughts – people who would kill if necessary.
I wasn’t perfect however. There were a few times where I got caught mouthing off to the Chief and ended up in the middle of the marching drill field, in pouring rain or snow — in Chicago winter weather – doing rifle drills at two o’clock in the morning for a couple of hours while a sailor would sit in a chair with an umbrella over his head counting out, “One, Two, Out, In, Up, Down,” as I pushed the rifle out from my chest to arm’s length in front of me and also from my chest up, again at arm’s length, straight over my head and back again. It didn’t take long for the burn to set in and the weight of the rifle to gain multiple pounds as the minutes wore on. I ended up doing this twice during boot camp before I finally learned to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself. I did often wonder if the poor sailor who was sitting there in a chair watching me was also being disciplined for something. However, on my first trip out for “rifle exercise” I learned I was not to speak, because if I spoke I got an extra five minutes of my “mouthing off” consequences.
One of the rituals of boot camp is the haircut. It was on either the second or third day when we were lined up outside the barracks and marched to another building where we were told to stand in a line to wait our turn with the barber.
I looked over my shoulder at Joe who was standing right behind me in the line and whispered, “Barber? I don’t want a haircut!” As a member of the State Fair Dukes I had my hair cut so it was rather long on the top and sides and cut straight across the back of my neck and I had it trained into a D.A., which is what we called combing it so the hair on the back of the head went from the right side toward the center, and from the left side toward the center. The ‘D.A.’ stood for ‘duck’s ass’ which is what the hair style was supposed to imitate.
Joe said, “Neither do I. I finally got it like I like it.”
Joe’s hair style had a big pompadour in the front. (For those who may not know what a pompadour was, it was a way for men to style their hair so the hair in front was combed into a high mound.) Many of the good-looking guys wore their hair with a pompadour. Joe claimed the girls liked it that way.
As we were waiting in line, Jim, who was in front of me said, “I don’t see any guys coming out again. They must have a back door or something.”
I laughed and said, “Maybe they don’t want us to see what they look like with their new haircuts.”
The guy who was in front of Jim turned around and said, “Don’t laugh. Look at that guy over there.” He pointed to a sailor just appearing around the side of the building who still hadn’t put his cap back on and his hair was cut to less than an inch long all over his head. It was a buzz cut!
Once we saw that, we were all starting to get nervous. There were many comments of bravado saying things like, “I won’t let them buzz cut me!” Or, “No way, I’ll just tell them not to cut mine so short!”
But we all knew deep in our souls we were going to get a buzz cut whether we liked it or not. And, we did. The first thing I noticed was my cap felt too big. The second thing I noticed was I had lost all desire to be without my cap – I never wanted to take it off again.
Another part of the early days in boot camp had to do with the medical and dental aspects.
The medical was an experience. It wasn’t so much about finding out if we were healthy. It was more about getting a series of inoculations for various diseases and making sure none of us had any sort of venereal disease. I had my first experience with the infamous “short-arm” inspection. (In order to keep this book with some modicum of decency, I will not write a detailed description of this inspection. If you’re really curious, you can always Google the term.)
=================================================================