On the bus ride from the San Diego airport to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, there was a lot of nervous chatter.
🪖 Brothers In Arms • Field Notes from Those Who Served
One topic kept coming up.
At least we weren’t going to Parris Island.
We’d all heard the horror stories. Recruits drowning during training. Drill Instructors supposedly being prosecuted for murder. I never knew how much of it was true and how much was rumor, but to a bus full of eighteen-year-old recruits, it sounded terrifying.
Of course, there was another story floating around.
If you trained at Parris Island, you looked down your nose at anyone who trained in San Diego. We were called “Hollywood Marines,” as if our boot camp was somehow easier just because it was located in sunny San Diego.
The explanation I always heard was that recruits who enlisted west of the Mississippi River went to San Diego, while those east of the river went to Parris Island. Whether that was official policy or just another Marine Corps legend, I can’t say.
What I can say is this:
The moment I stepped onto those famous yellow footprints, Hollywood was the last thing that came to mind.
Welcome to the Marine Corps
It was late.
Around ten o’clock at night.
As the bus rolled toward the receiving area, I had this naïve idea that we’d be welcomed into the Marine Corps.
Maybe somebody would thank us for volunteering.
Maybe we’d get a sandwich.
Maybe they’d tell us where we’d be sleeping.
After all, it had been a long day.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The bus had barely stopped moving before two Drill Instructors exploded through the doors.
“GET OFF MY MARINE CORPS BUS!”
Their voices hit us like artillery.
“Move, you pukes!”
“You maggots!”
“You worms!”
Every other word seemed to be a profanity.
Within seconds we were stumbling off the bus, trying to figure out what was happening.
They herded us onto the yellow footprints and ordered us into something resembling the position of attention—heels together, toes out at forty-five degrees, eyes straight ahead.
None of us had any idea what we were doing.
That didn’t stop the Drill Instructors from letting us know just how disappointed they were.
We were shoved.
Grabbed.
Slapped.
Yelled at.
One grabbed me by the ears and practically lifted me off the ground.
Another punched me in the stomach to hurry me along.
When we were ordered into a Quonset hut, we apparently weren’t moving fast enough.
A boot in the backside corrected that.
At least, that’s what the Drill Instructors called it.
To me, it felt more like organized chaos.
It went on for what seemed like hours.
Finally, we were assigned racks and ordered to sleep.
Even that wasn’t simple.
We were instructed to lie in what they called the “position of attention.”
As I lay there staring into the darkness, one thought kept running through my head.
Four years of this?
What the hell have I done?
Eventually, exhaustion took over.
The last thing I remember hearing before I fell asleep wasn’t silence.
It was the sound of grown men quietly crying.
Some whispered.
Some sobbed openly.
More than one called out for his mother.
That was my first night in the United States Marine Corps.
The real training hadn’t even started yet.
“Four years of this? What the hell have I done?”
The First Morning
For those of us who actually managed to get any sleep that first night, it didn’t last long.
At exactly four o’clock in the morning, the lights exploded on.
At almost the same instant came a sound I’ll never forget.
A metal trash can being kicked down the concrete aisle between the racks.
CRASH! BANG! CRASH!
It felt like the building had exploded.
Drill Instructors were already screaming before most of us had our eyes open.
“GET OUT OF THOSE RACKS!”
“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”
Talk about total disorientation.
It was still pitch dark outside, and we were given exactly five minutes to complete what the Marines called the Three S’s.
Shit. Shower. Shave.
My first experience in a Marine Corps “head” the bathroom.
Shitters lined up against the wall at attention, no stalls, no privacy. I was a Catholic boy raised to consider the bathroom sacred, sitting next to a guy grunting and farting was not my idea of privacy. I decided to wait until I couldn’t hold it any more.
Five minutes.
For fifty or sixty recruits.
Then it was outside onto the company street.
Still half asleep, we stumbled into formation and were force-marched to the chow hall.
The one thing I remember most wasn’t the food.
It was the sign hanging near the entrance.
Take all you want… but eat all you take.
As if we had a choice.
Someone shoved a compartmented stainless steel tray into my hands, and we sidestepped through the serving line while bored messmen slapped eggs, potatoes, toast, and whatever else was on the menu into the different sections.
The food wasn’t bad. Maybe I was just so hungry at that time I didn’t really care how it tasted.
There was plenty of it.
The problem wasn’t quality.
It was time.
The Drill Instructors seemed determined to get us out of there almost as quickly as we’d come in.
Just as you started enjoying breakfast, the yelling started again.
“GET UP!”
“GET OUT!”
That became the rhythm of Marine Corps life.
Everything happened at full speed.
Becoming a Recruit
The rest of that first day disappeared in a blur.
We inventoried our civilian belongings.
Received our first sets of Marine Corps utilities.
Learned that the Marine Corps owned everything we wore from that point forward.
Then came the haircut.
There wasn’t much ceremony about it.
You sat down.
A barber ran electric clippers straight up the middle of your head.
Within seconds, whatever hairstyle you had walked in with was lying on the floor.
Looking around the room afterward, it was almost impossible to tell one recruit from another.
That, of course, was exactly the point.
Individuality was disappearing.
The transformation had begun.
Meet the Drill Instructors
If you’ve never been through Marine Corps boot camp, it’s easy to imagine that every Drill Instructor is the same.
They’re not.
Like anyone else, each had his own personality, strengths, weaknesses, and way of molding recruits into Marines. Looking back nearly sixty years later, I can still picture all three of ours as if it were yesterday.
Gunnery Sergeant Trejo
The senior Drill Instructor—the “boss”—was Gunnery Sergeant Trejo, a Marine of Mexican and Korean heritage. He was a man with an absolutely terrible disposition, although I later learned he suffered from constant migraine headaches. Whether that explained his mood or not, none of us were about to ask.
His favorite term of endearment for the platoon was:
“You goddam assholes!”
If you’ve seen Full Metal Jacket and think Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was intimidating, let me assure you—Gunny Trejo would have made Hartman look like Casper Milquetoast.
I’m only half joking.
Staff Sergeant Adams
Then there was Staff Sergeant Adams.
He had already completed two combat tours in Vietnam and was a Recon Marine. Unlike Gunny Trejo, whose intimidation came from sheer force of personality, Adams carried something else with him.
The war.
Every so often he’d come into the barracks late at night after drinking. We’d be ordered out of our racks, the windows covered with blankets so no light escaped outside, and we’d sit in a circle around him while he perched on a footlocker.
Then he’d begin telling stories about Vietnam.
Most of them ended the same way.
“You boys are all going to die over there.”
At eighteen years old, I didn’t know what to make of it. Looking back now, I wonder how much of what we saw was a Marine trying to cope with things he had brought home from the war.
Today we’d probably call it PTSD.
Back then, nobody called it anything.
Corporal Warren
Our third Drill Instructor was Corporal Warren, an E-4 who tried very hard to convince us he was every bit as fearsome as the other two.
We secretly nicknamed him “The Weasel.”
He yelled.
He strutted.
He puffed himself up.
But compared to Gunny Trejo and Staff Sergeant Adams, none of us ever took him very seriously.
Every platoon needs someone to imitate.
Which brings me to my unofficial job in Platoon 2085.
The Rich Little of Platoon 2085
Somewhere along the way I discovered I had a talent that had absolutely no military value.
I could imitate people.
Before long I had earned an unofficial title around Platoon 2085.
I was the “Rich Little” of the platoon.
My specialty was Gunnery Sergeant Trejo.
I could imitate his voice so well that some of the guys swore it sounded more like Gunny than Gunny himself.
Naturally, I couldn’t resist using my newfound talent.
My best buddy in boot camp was another recruit named Richard. Whenever he was bent over polishing brass, cleaning his rifle, or writing a letter home, I’d quietly sneak up behind him and, in my best imitation of Gunny Trejo, bark at the top of my lungs,
“YOU GODDAM ASSHOLE!”
Poor Richard would leap to his feet so fast you’d think he’d been launched by a catapult.
Then he’d realize it was me.
“You wait, Schaefer,” he’d growl, sounding exactly like Ralph Kramden from The Honeymooners.
“One of these days… POW!… Right to the moon!“
We laughed until our sides hurt.
Looking back, I think moments like that helped keep us sane.
Boot camp wasn’t all misery. Every platoon develops its own personalities, its own inside jokes, and the friendships that make the hard days a little easier.
Richard and I would stay close throughout boot camp.
After graduation we were assigned to different places, and I figured I’d probably never see him again.
I was wrong.
The next time we met would be in Vietnam.
Years later, he stood beside me as the best man at my wedding.
Funny how life works out.
Rifle Issue
There are certain days in boot camp that every Marine remembers.
For me, one of them was the day we were issued our rifles.
I was proud and excited to receive my very own M-14. It wasn’t just another piece of equipment—it was about to become an extension of my body. Over the next several weeks we’d learn to disassemble and reassemble it blindfolded, clean every single part until it shined, and know it as well as we knew our own hands.
When they were first issued, the rifles were packed in heavy cosmoline, a thick preservative grease that seemed to get into every nook and cranny. We boiled the metal parts to remove it, then scrubbed and oiled everything until the rifle gleamed.
Later, these same rifles would travel with us to Edson Range at Camp Pendleton, about ninety minutes north of San Diego, where we’d qualify for marksmanship at 200, 300, and 500 meters.
But on issue day, none of that mattered.
At the armory, the rifles weren’t handed to us with ceremony.
They were thrown.
As you can see in the accompanying photograph, the armorer literally tossed each rifle to its new owner.
Woe be unto the recruit who dropped his.
That first day with our rifles was also when we learned one of the more colorful pieces of Marine Corps wisdom. While grabbing our crotches, we proudly chanted:
“This is my rifle. This is my gun.
This is for fighting. This is for fun!”
Juvenile?
Absolutely.
Memorable?
Nearly sixty years later, I still remember every word.
Retrospective
Looking back now, I can’t help but laugh at one bit of Marine Corps logic.
For thirteen weeks we trained exclusively with the M-14. We learned every part of that rifle, could disassemble and reassemble it blindfolded, cleaned it until it gleamed, and qualified for marksmanship with it at Edson Range.
Then I arrived in Vietnam.
The first thing they did was hand me an M-16.
I’d never seen one before.
I’d never fired one.
I’d never even been shown how it worked.
Welcome to Vietnam.
The Shot Every Marine Remembers
If there was one day guaranteed to make every recruit nervous, it was inoculation day.
The Marine Corps apparently intended to protect us against every disease known to mankind.
Some of them, I think, hadn’t even been invented yet.
We were marched through what can only be described as a gauntlet of Navy corpsmen. They stood shoulder to shoulder, each with several loaded syringes tucked between their fingers, and as we shuffled past they injected us one after another.
There was no time to stop.
No time to complain.
Just keep moving.
I honestly can’t remember how many shots I got that day.
It had to be at least a dozen.
Then came the one every Marine remembers.
The GG shot—gamma globulin.
Right in the backside.
I swear, the needle had to be a foot long.
It hurt like hell.
As soon as the injections were over, we weren’t sent back to the barracks to recover.
Of course not.
We were marched straight to the drill field.
Within minutes recruits were dropping like flies.
Some passed out.
Some staggered around looking like they’d been hit by a truck.
I felt terrible myself but somehow managed to stay on my feet.
Looking back nearly sixty years later, I can’t remember every vaccination we received.
But I guarantee you this…
Every Marine who went through boot camp remembers the GG shot.
The Grinder
AKA the Parade Deck
On the second day we were introduced to the Grinder.
It wasn’t a machine.
It was the massive parade deck where generations of Marines had learned to march, drill, and move as one.
It was there we discovered that the Marine Corps had its own language.
There was no “left.”
There was no “right.”
There was your military left and your military right.
Get them mixed up, and a Drill Instructor would quickly educate you.
Usually at high volume.
Often at very close range.
It seemed ridiculous at the time.
Later, I came to understand there was a reason behind every little detail.
The Marine Corps wasn’t just teaching us how to march.
It was teaching us to react instantly, without hesitation, because someday those same instincts might keep us alive.
That second day was the first command we appreciated, we actually got a short break to write Mommy a letter saying we arrived safely and were being well treated. Yeah. And then a cry from the DI, “the smoking lamp is lit” where a tin fire bucket of cigarettes was passed along for the smokers, no brand selection, just grab one and light up. It was heaven.
The Great Boot Camp Escape
About halfway through our thirteen weeks of boot camp, things suddenly slowed down.
It wasn’t exactly a vacation, but it was about as close as Marine recruits ever got to one.
The platoon was split up into working parties.
Some poor souls drew mess duty, spending their days peeling potatoes, scrubbing pots, washing trays, and doing whatever unpleasant jobs the mess hall could dream up.
Others were assigned to maintenance details, policing the area, sweeping, mopping, painting, and cleaning anything that stood still long enough.
Then there was me.
I had developed a mild skin rash that kept me out of the mess hall, so another recruit named Richard and I were sent to sick bay instead.
The best part?
Nobody was watching us.
For the first time since stepping onto the yellow footprints, we were completely unsupervised.
It didn’t take us long to hatch what, at the time, seemed like the greatest plan in Marine Corps history.
We bloused our utility trousers, unbuttoned our collars just enough to look halfway normal, and quietly walked over to the bowling alley.
Trying our best to look like we belonged there, we ordered hamburgers, drank a couple of beers, and loaded up on every piece of “pogey bait” we could afford.
To two hungry recruits who had spent weeks living by someone else’s schedule, it felt like we’d stumbled into paradise.
Stuffed to the gills, we wandered back to the barracks, climbed into our racks, and slept for a few glorious hours.
No Drill Instructors.
No screaming.
No running.
No one telling us what to do.
Looking back, it was probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.
If we’d been caught, we could have been dropped into another training platoon, recycled weeks behind our classmates, or possibly faced even more serious consequences.
Instead…
We got away with it.
Scott-free.
Richard and I laughed about our “great escape” for years afterward.
It remains one of my favorite memories from boot camp—not because we drank beer or skipped duty, but because, for just a few hours, we were eighteen-year-old kids again instead of Marine recruits.
Sometimes those small moments of normal life are the ones you remember the longest.
The Bird Shooter
As graduation approached, I thought I’d managed to do something almost impossible.
I’d stayed invisible.
I wasn’t the fastest recruit.
I wasn’t the slowest.
I hadn’t gotten into trouble.
I simply kept my head down and did what I was told.
Then one afternoon I heard the words every recruit dreaded.
“Private Schaefer… report to the Duty Hut!”
My stomach dropped.
What in the world had I done?
Following procedure, I marched to the door, pounded on it as we’d been taught, and shouted,
“SIR! PRIVATE SCHAEFER REQUESTS PERMISSION TO ENTER THE DUTY HUT, SIR!”
From inside came the reply.
“Enter, puke.”
The moment I stepped through the doorway, I was hit with a punch square in the solar plexus.
Before I knew what was happening, someone had grabbed me by the ears and yanked me to attention in front of Gunnery Sergeant Trejo.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed another recruit crumpled in the corner.
He looked like he’d already had a very bad day.
Then I found out why I was there.
A few days earlier we’d taken our official platoon photograph.
Apparently this genius had decided it would be funny to flip the bird at the camera.
Someone noticed it.
The photograph had been enlarged.
The guilty recruit had been identified.
Unfortunately for me, when the Drill Instructors demanded to know why he’d done it, he blamed me.
According to him, I had dared him.
I was stunned.
I denied it as forcefully as I could.
Thankfully, the Drill Instructors believed me.
After a few more colorful comments about my ancestry and intelligence, they ordered me out of the Duty Hut.
As for the bird shooter…
We never saw him again.
Whether he was dropped from training, transferred to another platoon, or something else entirely, I never found out.
He simply disappeared.
It was another lesson in Marine Corps boot camp.
Sometimes the fastest way to attract attention…
…was to do something stupid.
Orders and MOS Assignment
As boot camp entered its final weeks, there was one day every recruit had been waiting for.
The day we would learn our future.
The Drill Instructors gathered us inside the barracks and had us sit on the floor. One by one they began calling out names, Military Occupational Specialties (MOS), and our orders.
For many of the guys, it wasn’t much of a surprise.
Supply.
Motor Transport.
Administration.
Some became cooks and bakers.
Most, however, received the MOS 0311—Marine rifleman—or one of the specialties that supported infantry units, such as machine gunner, radio operator, or mortarman.
Back then, I had a less flattering name for us.
Cannon fodder.
But before I tell you what happened when they called my name, I have to back up a little.
Before I left home for boot camp, my father—a World War II Navy veteran—gave me very little advice. He didn’t want to fill my head with expectations about military life.
There was one thing, however, that he repeated more than once.
“Never volunteer.”
Like most fathers, he probably had his reasons.
Then one afternoon during boot camp, a Drill Instructor from another platoon walked into our barracks and asked a simple question.
“Are there any aspiring writers here?”
For a moment I remembered Dad’s advice.
Then I ignored it.
Back in high school I had been the editor of the school newspaper. Writing was one thing I actually enjoyed, so I raised my hand.
I was the only recruit who volunteered.
The Drill Instructor led me to a classroom where another Marine handed me a sheet of paper filled with random facts and told me to turn them into a newspaper story.
It couldn’t have been easier.
A few minutes later I handed it back and returned to my platoon.
No one ever mentioned it again.
At least, not until MOS assignments.
When my name was finally called, the Drill Instructor looked at me suspiciously and growled,
“Private Schaefer… whose ass did you kiss?”
Then he read my orders.
MOS 4312 — Combat Correspondent.
I was stunned.
Like everyone else in that room, I’d assumed I would eventually be carrying a rifle through the jungles of Vietnam.
Instead, I had been selected to attend the Defense Information School—DINFOS—at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana.
An Army base.
The military’s journalism and broadcasting school.
Inside, I was thrilled.
Outside…
I did my best to look disappointed.
The last thing I wanted was for the rest of the platoon to think I’d somehow pulled strings or received special treatment.
The truth was, I had simply taken a writing test.
From that day until graduation, though, things changed.
Some of the recruits began keeping their distance.
Nobody said anything directly.
But I noticed conversations stop when I walked up.
A few guys looked at me differently.
Whether it was jealousy, suspicion, or simply the belief that I’d received an easier path than they had, I don’t know.
At the time, I didn’t care.
All I could think about was how one decision to raise my hand had completely changed the direction of my military career.
Or so I thought.
Graduation
Then, at long last, the day arrived.
After thirteen weeks of training, inspections, rifle drills, forced marches, and what seemed like a never-ending stream of verbal abuse, we were no longer “maggots,” “worms,” or “pukes.”
We were about to become United States Marines.
To this day, graduating from Marine Corps boot camp remains one of the proudest moments of my life and one of my greatest accomplishments.
On that November day in 1968, I earned the title of United States Marine and became part of a brotherhood that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I could finally say, with pride:
Semper Fidelis.
Always Faithful.
Nobody could ever take that title away from us.
After the graduation ceremony, we were dismissed and allowed to mingle with family and friends who had traveled to witness the occasion.
My family wasn’t able to make the trip to San Diego.
Richard’s family, however, immediately adopted me as one of their own. They celebrated with me, congratulated me, and made sure I didn’t spend my graduation day alone. It was a kindness I’ve never forgotten.
As we marched through the archway one final time, you can see me in the accompanying photograph on the far right.
Did I look proud?
You bet I did.
I had earned the title.
I was finally a United States Marine.
Next stop: Camp Pendleton and Infantry Training Regiment (ITR).
Every Marine remembers boot camp a little differently, but none of us ever forgets it. This article reflects my personal memories of recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in 1968 and the experiences that shaped me before Vietnam.
Continue the Journey
- Why I Became a Marine — The decision that led an eighteen-year-old kid from Missouri to walk into a Marine Corps recruiting office.
- Fort Benjamin Harrison DINFOS — Earning the unexpected MOS of Combat Correspondent and the assignment that changed my military career.
- Boot Camp Didn’t Prepare Me for Vietnam — The hard lessons of boot camp met the very different realities of Vietnam.
- Rank Over Right: The Marine Corps’ Quiet Purge — A simple drill command that taught one of the Corps’ most enduring lessons.