Grunt-like training for us office pogues!

After our graduation from boot camp, we were given ten days of leave to go home and show off our new uniforms. When our time was up we had to report in to Camp Geiger, Camp Lejeune for Marine Combat Training (MCT). Pretty much everybody that graduated from Parris Island on June 6 was there, males and females, unless they had recruiter's assistance. We ran as wild around the tiny base as they would let us for about a week until we all got formed up into four Fox Company platoons to begin our training. The platoons were mostly male with the females split up among the four platoons. After packing every pair of underwear we could locate and great debates over whether to smuggle cell phones in our seabags, we took off.

Our first stop was the ranges. While we were there we lived in a giant cave-like building whose name I've forgotten. All the males were on one side and all the females on the other with a wall separating us. Unfortunately, there was a space between the flimsy wall and the high, curved ceiling, so every night after lights out we spent a good forty-five minutes yelling at each other to shut up. Then we curled up with our rifles and went to sleep.

Before they let eager young Marines get their hands on machine guns and grenades, they force them to sit through hours of classes. These wouldn't have been so bad except that I spent more time struggling to stay awake than absorbing, among other things, the finer points of how to disassemble 240 machine guns. (But I learned real fast later on when we had girl versus boy races.)

After fighting over the best MREs and eating the ones we got stuck with, the fun began. There are three weapons events that stand out in my mind. One was the 240G machine gun. ( I think) It's crew-served so me and a buddy draped our arms and legs over each other while one fired and one fed it ammo. In order to fire off the suggested number of rounds at a time we utilized nifty phrases like "Run motherfucker run!!" For the less profanity prone Marine, you could hold the trigger down while screaming "Run fuzzy bunny run!!"

Our next exciting event was watching some lucky guy fire a shoulder-held rocket launcher, called an AT4, I think. At first the word was that one of us would get picked to fire it but I don't remember if that happened or if an instructor fired it. They crammed us all together nearby to watch and then decided we were too close and moved us farther away. He aimed for a dead tank on the range but the rocket hit the dirt in front of it. How disappointing! The shockwave and the noise was pretty awesome though. We only got to fire pretend computerized rockets.

Another day we learned that there are three safeties on a grenade and there is a specific way to throw it. I was having issues throwing because my flak jacket and gear-covered vest were getting in the way. I couldn't get my arm to move in the proper throwing motion and the practice grenades weren't going far enough. They were probably afraid I would blow people up so they let me take off the flak jacket and deuce gear when I went to throw the real grenade. I wish we were allowed to watch them explode but they make us duck down behind the wall and we only heard the boom and the sound of dirt flying. Sorry folks, no movie-like billowing flames.

Not long before we were there, someone didn't get his grenade over the wall and the instructor got shrapnel in his leg while tossing the Marine out of the throwing pit. At our graduation, that instructor received a medal for saving the other Marine's life.

No matter what tall people try to say, you can only walk so fast on humps before you must begin running. They say "Just walk faster! Don't run!" I'm sorry (not really) but there comes a point where short legs just can't cover enough ground by walking to keep up with the long legs. Therefore short legs must begin jogging to catch up. Then the people behind yell "Don't run! You'll get tired faster! You're making us run!" So the short people give the tall ones behind them dirty looks and keep running so they don't fall behind and get put disgracefully into the Humvee. All humps (long hikes with heavy packs on our backs) are a pain in the butt. We did three at MCT: 5, 10, and 15 kilometers. We got up before the crack of dawn in order to finish before it got too hot. After the humps were over we all collapsed in platoon formations onto the grass and let the corpsmen examine our feet. Then we hobbled around the rest of the day.

I think the first hump was from the ranges to Camp Devildog, our new home for remainder of our MCT training. Camp Devildog was a crappy little place with a PX that looks like it came out of a trailer park and rows and rows of falling-apart "hooches" for us to sleep in. My platoon had four hooches, one for the girls and three for the guys. Our front door was hanging on by a nail and eventually broke off completely. During the day we leaned the door against the front wall but at night we had to stuff it in the doorway and use the back door.

We endured many more classes at Camp Devildog inside a freezing cold room not far from Hooch City. A lot of classes were taught outside as well. They showed us how to operate field radios, dig fighting holes, navigate with a compass, use hand signals, and how to patrol. We also learned how to set up a claymore mine without blasting ourselves to bits.

One night after we learned patrolling techniques, my squad hid in the weeds on the side of the road and waited patiently for our victim squad to stroll on by. We waited and waited and then waited some more. Finally we gave up and headed over the open field across the road from where we had been hiding. Apparently the victim squad had the same idea as us because we ran into them on our way over and we finally got to pretend to shoot each other with our blanks.

Patrolling during the day was fun too, you can actually see the spiderwebs and bugs before they hit your face. After a long nap out in the woods, my squad headed off into the wilderness to have a look around. One unlucky soul had the privilege of hauling on her back our heavy radio with a long, thin antenna dangling all over the place. We roamed around the woods for a couple hours and then realized the radio antenna had jumped ship. I felt a little bad because I'd seen it on the ground awhile ago but I didn't realize what it was, but at least I knew the general area to look in. Fortunately we found it.

Our platoon spent one entire day hacking through roots and rocks to dig fighting holes in the forest. I got lucky and was assigned to be a lookout so I sat by a tree with a radio and pretended to look for enemies. Near my tree, there were Marines who hit water about two feet into the earth and ended up constructing shallow fighting trenches instead of holes. Later on I got chosen to help some whiny girls dig their hole, which wasn't so bad and helped me feel useful. Sometime during the day a tree decided it didn't want to stand up any more and it collapsed, helpfully not squashing any people on its way down.

That afternoon and evening, we shot blanks at our "attackers". They tried to sneak up on us twice but that's a little difficult when you have 80-some bored people staring into the trees, looking for attackers. The night fight was the best because people shot off flares and you could see the flash of the rifle blanks. Everybody was screaming and yelling, trying to fire off all their rounds and racing around frantically looking for more when they ran out. After that we tried to sleep. I should have slept under my tree but I stupidly wandered over to a fighting hole and got forced to sleep in it. Very uncomfortable. The girl standing guard above ground kept wiggling around and dumping dirt on my head.

Oh yeah, almost forgot Land Nav! After we had our class on how to read compasses and plot routes and locations on maps, they paired us up and out we went. First we were given little plastic maps and a list of points to plot. Then we had to figure out, using our trusty compasses, how to get to each point. Once we located the numbered boxes, we wrote the number down to "prove" we had been there. This is all easier said than done. The points next to roads were easy, the ones deep in the woods on top of hills and down in valleys were not. Me and my partner (forgot who) spent a lot of time wandering in circles at the top of one leafy hill, bumping into other groups also wandering in circles. Later on we went on a long trek down the hill, through the woods, around a large swamp, and out onto another road where an instructor told us our next point was.

Then we did it all at night. On our night map, we had a couple of the same points as our day map so we just filled in the box numbers. I think we actually located one in the dark and the rest we got by comparing maps with other teams. It was fun running around in the woods at night but we were glad to return to our dilapidated hooches.

On our final day of training, we marched 15 kilometers back to Camp Geiger with our packs on our backs. By now, we knew Camp Devildog well enough that it was obvious we made at least one giant circle whose purpose was to make the hump the required 15 kilometers. Just as we thought we were getting somewhere we were back almost to where we started! Boy, were we glad when that hump was over...