Scare stories to keep recruits in line. MP’s arrest and charge who they’re told to; they have no idea why a certain person is arrested at a certain time. Their comments are almost certainly empty boasting contrived to explain why in fact nobody makes much effort to recover entry-level AWOLs. Nobody really likes to admit that the Army sometimes just lets people disappear because it’s better to cut their losses on a proven useless recruit, but those are the economic facts. Or at least in 1989, in boot camp, those were the facts.
Obviously the situation changes as a soldier accumulates expensive training, experience, responsibility, and in a theater of combat. Those are quite different from entry-level separations.
I assume though, actually committing (or appearing to commit) homosexual acts while in uniform, a member of the military, or on base, especially in the 40’s 50’s and into the 60’s was a crime punishable under military justice? After all, in some states it was still a crime for anyone anywhere…
On the first day (hours in, when there was light coming through the barracks windows whie we were sorting our gear) our comany commander yelled for everyone to get on the line at attention, then yelled “now say that again so everyhone can hear it!”
"Please sir, I don’t think the Navy is where I should be" in exactly the same voice you’d expect Oliver Twist to ask for more gruel.
Then the company commander PT’d the living shit our of all of us, Oliver Twist was escorted away, and we were told that he’d be months processing in a transient company while we were long gone to our duty stations. Rumor had it that the guys in these barracks could only pick up trach & cigarette butts or sit and read their Bluejacket Manuals all day, were allowed no liberty, and only ate horrible, horrible recruit chow hall meals.
I never knew anyone who specifically wanted out post-boot-camp. The closest I saw was at an army post where I went to school. There I knew a woman who had been raped at knifepoint by another solder, and, as was customary back in the bad old days, treated like she was the trouble-maker as her case ground through the system.
After they cut the rapist loose for lack of enough evidence, she was pretty much emotionally destroyed, but still had to let the system work its way letting her go. She was treated kindly enough at the cadre level: ride along with the MP’s to help with any kids in domestic disturbance calls; given routine office jobs; and, pre-DADT, they looked the other way at her open bisexuality.
Like a lot of big organizations, the system will grind people to dust, but the actual humans will cut each other some slack.
Slightly off topic, but interesting nevertheless. I attended a luncheon today at MCRD. The guest speaker, a colonel from the base IG staff, was asked what percentage of recruits who enter boot camp do not make it through boot camp. It’s 7% of males and 9% of females.
The only thing worse than being set back (at least in the late 60s) was being sent to what was called “4160 Company”. 4160 was for hard cases who thought they could buck the system, but weren’t doing anything to merit a court martial or Captain’s mast. 4160 was designed to break your spirit completely through meaningless and brutal workdays. On one day you might be required to dig a large hole and haul the dirt away two buckets at a time (at a run), hanging off each end of your rifle, which you carried arms extended over your head. The next day you would carry all the dirt back (at a run) and fill the hole. You know: meaningful work. This could go on for weeks until it was certain that your attitude had been fully adjusted. You would then be put into another company to try again.
Some people were just unsuited and were administratively discharged for “needs of the Navy”. As noted above, we had one guy who just lost it and who subsequently just went away. This was after an incident in the chow hall during what was called “service week”. During this period (two weeks in our case), you get up at about 0400, go the galley, set up the food line, serve food to the recruits, then clean the place up. You do this three times a day and finally get back to bed, exhausted, around midnight.
In the second week, this guy went a little nuts in the chow line (lack of sleep and stress, I guess), and started throwing pats of butter at the recruits coming through the line, shouting “Take it! Take it! You have to take the butter!” A few nights later, he just went over the edge, waking everybody up by screaming and generally carrying on. Gone.
Hypno-Toad
We never swarmed, and almost never were found on board a ship. I went 23 years and never set foot on an LGB.
These are current (ergo, all volunteer) Marine Corps stats. “Did not make it” is defined as that for one reason or another it was determined they weren’t Marine Corps material. Considering how selective MC recruiting is these days, it’s not illogical to assume the vast majority of issues relate to physical limitations/injury.
I think my grandfathers were rejected for WWII for exactly those reasons, one with a repaired hernia and one with flat feet. Both grandmas sent them off to be seen “later”, like when the war ended, and they came right back. Anyone know at what point they were drafting guys with 2 kids, like my paternal grandfather?
So I guess you could try to get a hernia, like in Bill Cosby’s standup bit.
I called my brother who left the army 5 years ago as a captain. He says that if you just generally suck and underperform in basic or specialty school, you’re declared as “unfit for military service” and just let go like it never happened. He supposes then you don’t check the military service box on your job applications and act like you weren’t there. He also said that what’s more likely is that you are graduated and then continue to suck as you continue to serve (an officer’s lament).
Hahahahaha! I lucked out: I’d had two years of ROTC in college and they were eyeballing me to be Recruit Chief Petty Officer. But I had also listed that I played drums (which was largely a lie), so, figuring I’d be going to the Drum & Stumble Corps, they chose another poor bastard who had one year of ROTC to be the RCPO. I ended up staying with my company, and he ended up catching pure hell.
Heh. I was warned prior to entering boot camp by a friend who’d been through it; “They’ll ask the first day if you play a musical instrument… whatever you do, don’t tell them you do, they’ll put you in a special company and make you dress up and march all the time”. I did in fact play a couple of band instruments, but remembered what he’d told me, and didn’t say a word when the question was asked. As it happened, the musician’s company caught lots of breaks and had relatively easy duty all the way through. I wound up in a regular company as - get this - head P.O. No, not chief P.O., but the guy in charge of keeping the heads clean:( . Never saw my “friend” again, but if I had I’d have strangled him.
Before WW II my father-in-law, who couldn’t get a job because everyone assumed he was going to be drafted soon, got a physical. The doctor on examining his eyes which were bad but not all that bad, wrote on his record that he was not to be drafted for any reason. This was like December 2, 1941. He figures that if he went one week later his eyes would have suddenly improved enough for him to be drafted.
That’s some funny shit. Drum & Stumble had it pretty easy. Yeah, they had to look sharp, but they got out of a lot of the chicken shit stuff the rest of us had to do. Oddly enough, I ran into our RCPO some ten years later. He was a Corpsman and got a tour with our Seabee battalion. He said that stint in boot as RCPO was the worst assignment he ever had. Our three months in Guatemala together more than made up for it, though.
