From What Exit’s link: But keep in mind, it is impossible to literally “ace” the ASVAB, so your goal should be to simply do your best.
How is it impossible to get a perfect score? I seem to recall that when I took the test back in the early 70’s, I managed to ace at least a couple of sections. It’s not that hard a test.
If I recall, your actual score is a %ile. So 99 is the highest you can score (I did, bragbragbrag).
Then there is the GT score, which is basically the number of ‘points’ you scored. You can ace sections of the test.
OK, makes sense.
Boot camp is meant to be really stressful, because some people there have never been through real stress before. There are 19-yr.-olds who have literally never lost a nights sleep. When I was in basic, there was a woman who, after our first night with about two hours sleep, had a seizure. She claimed to never have had one before, and I believe her-- she certainly didn’t have a diagnosis of epilepsy, or she couldn’t have enlisted. They sent her for an EEG, and I guess it was normal, because she was back, but she said they told her that if she had a second seizure, it didn’t matter what her EEG was, they were going to out-process her.
After that, this one woman, who was doing everything, and I mean everything (she had tried to fake a heart attack while on sick call) to get out tried to fake a seizure, but did it so badly that she didn’t even get sent to sick call. When you fall over from a seizure, you don’t put your arm out to catch yourself.
At the time I enlisted, the army standard was 30%. Most of the questions were 4-answer multiple choice. Guessing should get you 25%. But I know one guy who got a 21%. Wow. Took it again, and still couldn’t get 30%.
Pyle was ‘special’. Obviously mentally handicapped, he had neither the intellect not the temperament to be a soldier.
He was already buckling under Hartman’s abuse, but was broken by the sock party. More specifically, by Joker participating. Pyle likely saw Joker as the one guy who cared about him through the ordeal before the beating. It was a betrayal, and Joker knew it and felt horrible about it.
Afterward, he was gone. He started to follow along as a soldier but was unhinged. He started talking to his weapon and had that empty gaze into the abyss.
I AM…in a world…of shit.
Hartman didn’t want to turn Pyle into a soldier. He wanted to turn him into a MARINE!
Kubrick’s whole point was the dehumanizing nature of Marine Corps training. There is no special considerations for someone like Lawrence who was a bit slow, possibly on the autism spectrum (which wouldn’t have been a thing in the late 60s). At least not beyond the escalating levels of discipline someone would experience until they straightened up and flew right.
So I think from Hartman’s perspective, it worked. The yelling, hitting, degradation, collective punishment and finally Code Red blanket party turned Pyle into a “born again hard” competent Marine…right up until the point where he snapped.
One question though. How would one “wash out” of the Marines?
Well they don’t make it easy.
In boot camp, there was only 1 recruit in my platoon that actually got washed out. He basically sat down on the floor one day and refused to do anything. Got yelled at, threatened, to no avail. They had MPs come and take him away. No idea what happened to him.
In boot camp, if you fail a phase such as the range, you get ‘dropped’ back to a training company that is in training phase behind you. We had a pair of twin brothers dropped to us because they both failed to qualify on the range. When we went, they failed again. I believe that they were intentionally failing to try to get out. With all of the instruction, it’s damn near impossible to UNQ twice in a row. Not sure what happened with them.
In boot camp if you are injured and unable to train, you don’t get to leave unless it’s a really serious injury. Instead, you get sent to MRP, the Medical Rehabilitation Platoon, where from what I understand you go to your physical therapy and appointments and get assigned to working parties. Some guys spend, literally, months there. Once you’re fixed up, you drop to a training company at the phase you were removed from you original one.
If your body composition or physical fitness are questionable, you are sent to PCP, Physical Conditioning Platoon. At PCP you basically PT all day long until you pass the physical fitness test, and likewise are put back at a training company.
At SOI, we had at least 2 dudes who got out because they were ‘suicidal’. I don’t know if they were or not, but basically you CAN fake it until you make it with that one. They got out before SOI was over. I spent several days sitting in the rec room watching them.
Once you get to the fleet it’s possible to get out for injuries if that’s the direction you’re leaning. I can think of at least 3 in my company that I think probably milked recoverable injuries to a discharge. Heck, I had an ankle injury once and the Navy doctor straight up asked me if I wanted to be discharged.
Then there was one guy who got discharged for being suicidal. I actually believe that was the case with him. At one point he was standing in his window on the 4th floor off the barracks…sooooo. He was a troubled dude. Guy didn’t look in shape at all, but one day he got a perfect score on the run portion of the PFT, 3 miles in 18:00. I asked someone wtf, and they said he just went out and ran all night, every night. I still remember him waving from the back of a USO van on his way off base for the last time.
And then of course, you can wash out by doing something to get dishonorably discharged, like dealing drugs. Which happened to a few guys in the 2nd platoon of my company. Several ended up in Leavenworth. Thereon, that platoon was known as “dimebag deuce”.
ETA: also had one guy in our company get discharged because he intentionally kept gaining weight.
There is also the story, that I am pretty sure is an urban legend, of two guys at SOI who wanted out. So they decided to go the 1st Sgt. and say that there were gay. 1st Sgt. said “Ok, we’ll get you out of here, but you gotta suck his dick first.”
As an aside, that is so different from my own military experience that it’s almost comical. Let’s just say that we kept a bucket of loose rounds by our tents just in case anyone needed to top off his magazines. You train like you fight, you know?
There was one exception to this, it was while we were training up for a stint as a rapid reaction force in Okinawa. Usually at live fire exes or ranges, if you’re not on the firing line you’re unloaded and cleared. During this training even on down time we had mags in, rounds chambered and safed. So closest I ever got to training like you fight. That was also the funnest shooting I ever did.
Also also, I believe that Alessan after your training you would be subject to the real possibility of actual engagement.
Sue, but can’t you say that about any soldier in any army? Why train at all, except for the possibility of actual engagement?
Perhaps because their command thinks the probability that Joe, combined with a weapon and readily available ammunition, will do something lethally stupid, is far higher than the probability that Joe will need a loaded weapon in the near future to defend himself or his comrades? And, with a zero defect management philosophy still dominant in the US armed forces, such lethal stupidity will also kill the superiors’ careers?
Just a guess. But see, two young Marines standing guard in Iraq, who did need loaded weapons to defend themselves and their comrades. Cost them their lives, too: USMC Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter Most, if not all, USMC bases aren’t as dangerous as Ramadi. EDIT: 12 years ago, yesterday. Time flies.
God, what a waste.
A waste indeed. Well done Marines, RIP.
I have a paperback copy here on the shelf, and after I write this post I’m going directly to eBay!
The Hartman character is definitely more sadistic in the book. Also more hands-on during training. At one point, IIRC, he gets bayonetted by one of the recruits, clocks the guy and applies a tourniquette to himself. Hasford also went into some interesting detail about the day-to-day life of a Marine in Vietnam. One scene had him and a buddy disguising themselves at Army specialists so they could eat in their mess, the Marine chow being very low quality.
I have always imagined Pyle in the movie as a dumb kid who enlisted either because he stupidly thought it would be fun, or perhaps he was forced to by a judge after egging a teacher’s house rather than going to jail. Dumb, but not mentally impaired. A big child who had somehow never been punched in the nose, maybe because nobody ever took him seriously enough to be offended. His life was all carefree nonsense until he ran into Hartman.
I always assumed he was conscripted.
I always thought Pyle was obviously taitched in the head.
The Marine chow is actually worse than the Army’s? Enough so that marines would fake being soldiers to get Army food? Wow, that’s bad.
My uncle who was in the Army (Vietnam era, but stationed in Germany) said that he always loved getting sent on errands to the Air Force side of the base, because the chow was so much better there.
I don’t believe that draftees during that period would be sent to the Marine Corps. They were all Army. Could be mistaken but I’m pretty sure.
It’s been a long while since I saw the movie but the one thing that seemed odd to me was that, after Pyle murdered Hartman and committed suicide, Joker (and presumably the others) were still sent overseas. Surely there would have been an investigation? Media firestorm?
I read somewhere in WWII of army draftees screaming in terror, “They are sending us to the marines!”