Went to pick up a copy on Amazon. A busted used paperback copy goes for $80 and can go up to $1,000. Damn. Guess we’ll never know.
Was Leonard/aka "Private Pyle" in Full Metal Jacket "special"? Or was there something else going on?
Well the ASVAB requirements for the Navy and Air Force were higher than Marines which was higher than Army, so maybe not wow but reality. You could score very low on the ASVAB and still qualify for the Army. I doubt Pyle was that extreme.
This was still true in the 80s and I’m pretty sure more so in the late 60s & early 70s.
People have different thresholds for stress, even when it doesn’t seem that the stress is all that bad. Navy boot camp was nowhere near as brutal as MC boot. Yet we had a man lose it. It happened during what was called ‘service week’, where your company spent a week or more serving food at the galley and cleaning the place after every meal. Doesn’t sound all that difficult, but you are sleep deprived for that entire time, getting perhaps five hours of sleep per night.
The man I’m talking about had been heard crying at night, and it was reported, but nothing was done. Then one day at the galley, he just freaked out. His job at meal times was to hand out pats of butter. Not exactly a challenging job, but given his mental state, he shouldn’t have been doing anything, really. At some point, someone refused the butter and the guy started screaming “TAKE THE FUCKING BUTTER! TAKE IT! TAKE IT!” and throwing handfuls of of butter pats at everyone. Sounds amusing, but he was having a total mental breakdown. That was the last time we saw him.
That’s the way the character impressed me - genial, uncoordinated and not very bright.
As for Audie Murphy, the fact that he dropped out of school early doesn’t seem to correlate with a lack of intelligence in his case.
I lack knowledge in this area, but it seems to me that higher intelligence might, if anything, correlate with an increased risk of breaking down under extreme physical and emotional stress.
Great. I had enlisted in the Army.:o
But before I did our phone was ringing off the hook from recruiters from all branches. So I assume I scored high enough on the exam.
One guy admitted to me that he was told right out “you’re just too dumb, son. You don’t have it between the ears”. IIRC that was from the Navy rep.
I read it a while back. IIRC, the movie was pretty faithful to the Basic training part of the novel - less so for the parts in Vietnam. Sgt Gerheim was if anything crueler to Leonard than Sgt. Hartman was - he has the entire training platoon piss in a toilet, then holds Leonard’s face in it until he passes out.
The whole novel used to be on Gustav Hasford’s website, but apparently it’s not there anymore. Try a library maybe?
For what it’s worth, Marines are not called soldiers, they are called Marines. There’s a difference and a Marine will very likely be very happy to tell you why.
As for Pyle, watch the very opening sequence where the recruits are getting their heads shaved for boot camp. Right off the bat he looks different than the others. I would guess some lower intelligence as well as mental issues, like others have said above. I would bet that during peace time, he wouldn’t even get that far into the USMC, but this was during a draft and the ranks needed to be filled.
I think in the case of Pyle there was a little bit more under the surface than was obvious, something that had been repressed in him that emerged as a result of the his treatment. Not so much higher intelligence, but more complexity underneath than it seemed.
It’s available online. Not legitimately, so no hotlink.
It’s not very long. The movie, IMHO, was mostly true to the book, albeit Kubrick improved upon it.
I have not been in the military. AIUI though, ammunition is watched like a hawk, with explicit counting of cartridges issued at the range, unfired cartridges and fired cases turned in, and the two sets of numbers had better match. In part, to prevent something like what Pyle did, and mostly to help instill that sense of accountability for other equipment that will be issued to and signed for by the recruits in their military career.
The platoon may have failed Pyle, but they did all come together to punish him. Even Joker. Perhaps that was intended by Hartmann and the people who were leading the training cadre?
EDIT: What if Pyle couldn’t have gotten any ammunition, but instead had his psychotic break in the head, flipped out, got it out of his system, then went back to his rack to sleep? Would he had been a decent Marine when he joined his unit, like Animal Mother? Or would he have been a liability?
When I took the ASVAB, there was a guy there trying to get in to the Army. IIRC it was his third attempt at getting a passing score. 1995.
Pretty much. In boot camp every time we left a range we’d get patted down and get a brief ‘amnesty period’ to turn in any rounds we might have squirreled away for whatever reason. There are also amnesty boxes scattered around, so if you ‘find’ one in a cargo pocket or something you can get rid of it.
Even in the fleet after live fire or range, squad leaders would come by and squish your pockets and look at your mags to double check.
What happened with Pyle couldn’t happen any more. If rifles aren’t being used for training, they’re cable-locked to racks bolted to the wall, never left unattended, and counted hourly all night long.
Heh, just remembered an incident that happened at SOI. At SOI, you don’t have DIs, you have squad instructors. For some reason, all of them hate their job and take it out on their Marines. In some ways, SOI was worse than boot camp. Anyway, we were on the bus getting ready to come back from a live fire week and one of the SIs stood up in front the bus and threw a live round down the aisle. Then he turned around and said “Shoot me, fuckers. None of you has the fucking balls to shoot me!” He also took a rifle from a Marine and asked if it was clear. Marine said yeah, so the Sgt. stuck the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
He was demoted to Cpl. shortly after that. Unfortunately for us, one of the remaining SIs was a really good buddy of his, so he abused the shit out of us for the rest of SOI.
I actually saw more guys lose it at SOI than boot camp.
It was certainly intended by Hartman. The sock party happened after he made Pyle eat a doughnut while everyone else did pushups. He specifically said that the rest had failed in helping Pyle and were being punished for it. His intention was clearly understood by the rest.
Perhaps Hartman was not unhappy that Pyle shaped up enough to pass the course but that was never his purpose. His purpose was to use Pyle to rally the others.
And, we know he never really shaped up unless shaping up means killing his DI and himself.
Were all those regulations for controlling the weapons and ammo in place during the Vietnam War? In other words, granted that it couldn’t happen today (or at least, it would be very unlikely), could it have happened then?
And what’s SOI?
I think that was his plan B, not plan A.
I think he means School of Infantry. And I was wondering about ammo control back in the 60s too. Doesn’t conform to stories I’ve heard, though not about boot camp in particular.
I have no idea…we have a retired Marine around here don’t we? Is it Bullitt? He could shed some light on the olden days closer to that era I’m guessing.
SOI is School of Infantry. It takes place right after boot camp. I want to say it’s 8 weeks long, but I don’t remember that detail any more.
ETA: Looked it up, Wikipedia says it’s 52 days. I’m pretty sure that’s actual training days, so ~10 weeks.
Just because the standards were lower, did mean everyone scored lower. The Navy hurdle in the 80s as we were expanding under Reagan, wasn’t really that high. I swear the Navy had reduced standards to around 30. I feel like the Army was only 27 or maybe even lower.
Here are today’s numbers:
Coast Guard: 45
Air Force: 36
Navy: 35
Marines: 31
Army: 31
I can’t find references for different times. Maybe someone else will have better luck.
It was the late 70’s. I have no recollection my score or what standards were. I do know every branch recruiter ringing our home phone off the hook afterwards.
Though I had enlisted prior to going in I had a medical issue arise. Though it eventually turned out to be treatable, at the time it was somewhat unheard of. After jumping through dozens of hoops and medical assessments they basically told me to have a nice life. I could have tried to re-enlist later on but didn’t. I ended up in recruit academy and became a Deputy Sheriff.
I’m not so sure ammo and weapons are as closely watched as some people think. Maybe they are when did these changes go into effect? I went to basic at Fort Jackson in 2008 and though you were patted down it’s not like it would be difficult to stash a live round somewhere in a boot, under your cover, wherever.
We slung our weapons from our beds, maybe things are different now and they were never locked down, if things have changed I’m not sure when it happened.
I was in Marine Corps boot camp in the late 60’s and the movie was pretty true to life except for the ammunition being stolen. We were watched way to closely to have been able to set any aside. Of course I was way too brainwashed and intimidated to have even thought of such a thing.
The SOI, I’m guessing, was called ITR or Infantry Training Regiment when I was in. ITR was immediately after boot camp. This was in San Diego and Camp Pendelton. I think Parris Island was run differently.
Sure, not everyone in the infantry services scored lower than everyone in the Air Force or Navy, but the requirements for the latter are still higher than for the former, so it is in fact quite possible for a person to be “too dumb for the Air Force” but still accepted in the Marines.