Day 5. About a quarter of the recruits in my Quonset Hut are awake and a few are even out of their racks and on their feet before the Drill Insructor arrives. Many of the recruits, myself included, have colds, are stuffed up, have sore throats from colds plus constant yelling at the top of our lungs, coughing as we started making our racks. The recruits at MCRD San Diego all come from west of the Mississippi River. Those recruits from east of the Mississippi went to MCRD Paris Island in South Carolina. With 65 recruits in my platoon from most of the states west of the Mississippi, we are exposed to a barrage of new germs.

I am starting to feel the grind. Between regular physical training plus the constant physical punishment for recruit screw-ups, we are probably averaging 8 hours of hard, demanding exercise every day. I wake up stiff and sore and it takes me a while to warm-up.  Of course the Drill Instructors have zero sympathy. This all part of the stress of getting young men ready for combat. Obviously I don’t know yet, but I can only imagine that real combat in a real war must be drastically more stressful than even Marine Corps bootcamp.

We went through what was quickly becoming our morning routine. Following morning chow, the head detail, we were told to change into our shorts, sweat shirts and shower shoes. We were then marched (as best we could in shower shoes) to a whole new area of the base. We ended up at the Marine Corps training pool for our swim test.

The Marine Corps is the primary amphibious force in the United States military. The Marines are literally the first to fight. Often literally assaulting a beach into enemy fire. Those movies that most of us have seen from the war in the Pacific are largely still true. Only when I was going through bootcamp, it was the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia that was just getting going. I didn’t even have a clear idea where South Vietnam was other than the fact that it was in Southeast Asia – where ever that was. I only intuitied that it was very hot, very humid and very lush and green with jungle.

Given our job descriptions, Marines spend a lot of time on ships and on helicopters in and around water. Knowing how to swim was a useful skill to have. Now our swimming skills were about to be tested and scored.

We filed into the building housing the huge swimming training pool.  We took our places in a very regimented platoon formation in bleachers facing the pool. Facing us was an obviously very fit Drill Instructor in shorts, t-shirt and shower shoes. After a brief introduction, the Drill Instructor explained step-by-step exactly what we were about to do and how we were going to do it. The main swim Drill Instructor certainly looked the part.

The first item on the agenda was to find out if you could swim at all. As we began to go through the tests, I was amazed how many recruits could not swim at all. The initial test was to swim the width of the pool which 25 yards wide. I would say roughly half my platoon of 65 recruits couldn’t make it even half way across without sinking like a stone after much thrashing around. After 6 years of competitive swimming in high school and junior college where we swam a mile to warm before practice really started, swimming the width of the pool was no problem. None of the other swim tests, including jumping feet first off a 10-foot high diving board into the 16-foot deep end and swimming the length of the 50 yard pool, were a problem for me.

Completing the swimming tests for all 65 recruits in my platoon took all morning until noon chow. From what I could tell only about 10% of the recruits including me qualified as Expert Swimmers. I did not realize till later in my Marine career what a profoundly positive difference being an expert swimmer would turn out to be.

We were marched across the base in our shower shoes, changed into our normal utilities and boots, and were marched to noon chow. Wolfing down our food with hands and soup spoon as usual, we devoured lunch. 

The first half of the afternoon was close order drill with our M14 rifles on the massive Grinder for a couple of hours. The second half, the Drill Instructors ran the platoon through O-course #1. Then evening chow, shower & shave, get dressed and report to the classroom with our buckets. We were given time to write letters.

Back to our respective huts, we prepared for lights out. And just like that another day was over. As I lay there, I reflected how jammed with activity every day was. I didn’t reflect long because I was soon out. Going non-stop 16 hours a day doing hard physical work under the scrutiny of demanding Drill Instructors makes for sound sleep.

Protein is the work horse of the body. Almost every major task done by your body is done by protein. The majority of your body is made out of protein. So it only makes sense that if you want strong muscles and bones, a robust immune system, and a strong heart to drive oxygen rich blood and nutrients though out your body, you want to feed your body the highest quality protein available. A good rule of thumb is one gram of complete animal protein per pound of body weight per day. Of course, hard training strength athletes can safely utilize as much as 2 or even 3 grams of animal protein per pound of body weight. If you want be the best, feed your body and your family’s body the best available protein. Two JDD shakes s day is the simplest, easiest way to insure that your body gets the highest quality building blocks it needs.

Remember: the body does not lie.
Joe

Start your day with a JDD protein shake