Gunnery Sergeant Barker marched us back to our platoon area, correcting us as we attempted to carry out his orders.

Once we reached our platoon area, we turned, faced Gunnery Sergeant Barker, and came to full attention. Burly Staff Sergeant McGary immediately singled me out along with 9 other recruits. He marched me and my detail down to the head – a rectangular wooden building about 30 feet long and about 15 feet wide. Inside there were toilets on one side and trough-urinals on the other. No stalls or privacy of any kind. To help you grasp the full context of what I was about to be assigned, our platoon had 65 recruits. Our platoon was part of a series of a total of 4 platoons – each with 65 recruits per platoon. That is a total of 260 recruits. Each platoon used this single head 3 or 4 times every day. Times a total of 4 platoons. I think you begin to grasp the scale of the problem. 

Staff Sergeant McGary assigned me (as leader of the head detail) and the 9 recruits in my detail to clean the head to a Marine Corps and a Drill Instructor standard of excellence. 

I sincerely doubt you have yet a realistic image. As soon as Drill Instructor McGary left, I inspected the head. The raw concrete floor was filthy with dirt, mud and wet toilet paper. But the real unimaginable shocker were the toilets themselves. Three of the toilets had human shit piled a foot to as much as 2 feet above the seat of the toilet. It was hard not to vomit with sheer appalling disgust and repulsion at the mere sight and smell of these stacks of shit. There was even some shit in one of the trough urinals.

Not knowing how soon Drill Instructor McGary would return, we could not wallow in our nausea. We had to attack the problem immediately.

Now, I made a fundamental mistake. I had always been taught to lead by example. That meant, to me, that as leader of the head detail, I should set the standard and work the hardest. I was about to learn a brutal lesson about human nature. 

I explained what we needed to do and got to work. As I periodically glanced around to check our progress, I was depressed and disappointed at our pace. 

When Drill Instructor McGary returned, the head was in a mediocre state of cleanness. McGary’s lack of satisfaction was not subtle. As we stood at attention, Drill Instructor McGary focused every ounce of his fury and mass of muscle strictly on me. With his face mere inches from my face, his hot breath and flicks of spittle assaulted my face and ears.

“What the fuck do you call this abortion? This is piss-poor. This is un-fucking-acceptable. Do you hear me?”

“Sir, yes sir.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Sir, yes sir” I strained to shout as loud as I could.

“You call yourself a Marine leader?”

“Sir, no sir.”

Then as the other 9 members of my head-detail looked on, Drill Instructor McGary PT’d me till I was sucking wind, soaked with sweat, and could hardly stand. Then he marched us back to our platoon area. 

With a stark economy of words, Staff Sergeant McGary had made several points graphically clear. First, there was only one acceptable standard: excellence. Secondly, as leader of the detail, it was my job, my responsibility to deliver excellence. If the end result was not excellent, it was my fault and my fault alone. Therefore, it was me who gets punished – not the members of my detail. It was also crystal clear if I did not produce excellence asap, my tenure as head-detail leader was going to be very brief. Patience was not a virtue that Drill Instructor McGary seemed to have in abundance. 

We joined the other recruits in our assigned huts. We squared away our racks and foot lockers, and cleaned our huts until met the demanding, regimented standards of the Marine Corps. We stood at rigid attention until the Drill Instructors completed their inspection. What we did was not good enough, so we suffered through push-ups and burpees until we were panting and dripping with sweat. All 3 Drill Instructors watched us like hawks for any recruits who slacking off or trying to fake the exercise. These recruits were punished even harder.

Then we were marched to the mess hall for noon chow. 

We lined up in 2 parallel lines at rigid attention, and inched our way toward the entrance to the mess hall. When we reached the stacks, we grabbed our stainless-steel tray, hugged it to our chest, and side-stepped to the chow line. Once in line, we side-stepped down the line as chow line as the mess recruits slopped a disconcerting amount of food on each of our trays. 

Then we stood at attention at our assigned table awaiting the first command. 

“Seats!”

We took our seats as fast as possible and came to rigid attention.

“Eat!”

We began to eat immediately. But I was catching on. I discarded all convention. I began to eat with just my hands and a soup spoon. 

I was about 90% done when the command came.

“Get out. Get out. Get out of my fucking mess hall!”

I cleaned the rest of my tray on the way to the exit hatch. 

I got through the hatch without a comment. It was a minor triumph and my spirit soared. I am catching on, I thought, as I fell into my position in the platoon formation and assumed the posture of full attention.

Gunnery Sergeant Barker marched us to the Parade Deck – a huge asphalt drill field a half a mile long and a quarter mile wide. In the distance, you could see other platoons marching with various degrees of expertise. We didn’t even have our rifles yet.

Then we began our first serious session of formal close order drill – hence the name Drill Instructor. 

Gunnery Sergeant Barker began a slow, gentle, almost fatherly extended period of precise instruction and gentle correction for several hours. With his expert guidance, by the end of the session we displayed faint signs of actually marching together as a regimented formation.

Please Note: we have a very SPECIAL offer. This offer only applies to Natural Vanilla. For a very short time, only as long as inventory lasts, if you buy 2 CASES of Natural Vanilla, you will automatically get 2 FREE CASES of Natural Vanilla. Act now! This special offer is about to expire. And will then be gone forever.

As always, I wish you and your family the very best of health.

Joe