“I think I just heard a freaking mouse squeak,” Sewicki yelled, cupping his right hand to his ear. “What did you maggots say?”
They repeated the article, stronger this time, and more in unison.
“Again!”
Half an hour later, the three UCMJ articles still ringing in their ears, they were brought to attention and run back into the night, this time to another building nearby. There, a trio of bored-looking civilians buzzed flat palm depilators over their scalps, leaving them completely bald as the discarded hair piled up on the floor to ankle depth. John had just begun to recognize some of the other members of the recruit platoon by sight … and now all were transformed into curiously subhuman-looking creatures with glazed eyes and hairless scalps gleaming in the overhead fluorescents.
As he stood at attention waiting for his turn with the barber, he decided that he could accept most of what was happening philosophically, though his run-in with Sewicki earlier still rankled. The stories he’d heard about boot camp were proving to be fairly accurate. The name-calling and constant, shouted verbal harassment didn’t bother him. He’d heard that in the old days, a couple of centuries back, drill instructors had actually been forbidden to hit their men, to use racial or personal slurs, even to swear in front of them or call them names.
That had been an ideologically charged era, a scrap of ancient history when the Corps had been forced by circumstance and a fast-changing American culture to adopt a politically correct attitude requiring that recruits be handled with gentleness, understanding, and respect.
“Damn you, maggot! Get those eyeballs off of me now if you want to keep them!”
Those days were long gone now. The purpose of boot camp had always been to reduce all incoming recruits to a common level, break them of their civilian habits and attitudes, and rebuild them as Marines. The breaking had begun the moment they’d stumbled off the bus, and it was proceeding apace, with no sign of letup.
It took all of twenty seconds for John’s longish brown hair to join the furry blanket on the floor. After that they ran to yet another building, this time to pass through a web of laser light while computers measured his body, then to receive a seabag and pass down a line of tables where still more bored civilians dropped item after item of clothing and gear into the bags as the recruits held them open and sergeants bellowed for them to move it up, move it up. The gear they were issued included everything from “Mk. 101 cleaning kit, M-2120, laser rifle, for care of” to “shoes, shower” to “cream, facial depilatory.” Uniform items included multiple sets of underwear, shorts, T-shirts, socks, shoes, work caps, and the ubiquitous utilities known as BDUs—battle dress uniforms—all but the underwear and shoes in the same shade of basic olive drab.
The sun was just coming up over the broad, silver-limned reach of the Atlantic Ocean when at last they were run into their barracks, exhausted, dazed, and drenched with sweat. Their course took them past a transients’ barracks, where young men leaned out of open windows with hoots, wolf whistles, catcalls, and cheerful cries of, “Man, you maggots are in a world of shit!”
Home for the next several days was a receiving barracks, a long, narrow room with ancient wooden floors, lined with beds stacked two high, each bunk separated from the next in line by a gray double locker.
Here, the recruits were again assembled on the floor, where they were given a long and detailed lesson in the strange and alien new language they were now required to use. It was not a floor, but a deck; not a ceiling, but an overhead; not a door, but a hatch; not stairs, but a ladder, not a bed, but a rack. You didn’t wear pants, you wore trousers; you didn’t wear a hat, but a cover. Upstairs was topside; downstairs was below deck. This area where they were assembled was the squad bay. The area just outside the drill instructor’s office at the far end of the room was the quarterdeck. A room was a compartment. The bathroom was the head. Left was port, right was starboard.
It seemed as though the Marines had a different name for everything, and the Goddess help anyone who forgot or slipped into his old patterns of civilian speech.
The drilling continued for another hour, followed by a session where they were assigned racks and gently instructed in how to lay out, fold, and stow the clothing and gear they’d been issued. Next, they were ordered to strip, and with shower clogs on their feet, a towel in the left hand and soap in the right, were marched to the head. “Let’s go, ladies, anytime you’re ready! Close it up! Close it up! Nuts to butts! Make the guy in front of you smile!”
Showering was done, literally, by the numbers, with Sergeant Heller looking on from behind a glass window in the bulkhead above the shower pit and barking orders over a needlemike. “First! Place your towels on the overhead bars. Next! Take your positions on the footprints painted on the deck! Reach up with your right hands! Grasp the shower chain and pull down, while standing in the stream!” Shrieks, groans, and giggles accompanied the icy torrent. “Belay that racket in there! No one told you to talk! One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Release the shower chain! Now! Lather up the soap and wash your head and face! Reach up with your right arm and grasp the shower chain. Pull down and rinse off. One! Two! Three! Release the chain! …”
It was a bizarre experience for John. The shower facility was downright primitive, with cold water dumped on their heads when they yanked on the pull chain. No temperature selector. Bar soap, for Goddess’s sake, instead of a disinfect mixture or dirt solvent or skin cleanser added to the water stream. No sonic wash or infrared bake. No pulsing spray or steam mist, and definitely no civilized ten-minute soak in the hot tub to finish off the ritual. And having someone barking out at them what to wash, when to wash it, and how long to rinse it …
“Next! Lather up your right arm … that’s your right arm, maggot … yes, you! Twelve from the end! Grasp the pull chain. Pull to rinse … One! Two! Three! Release the chain! …”
They were being treated, he realized, like children … no, worse, like incompetents, like brain-damaged incompetents too slow to understand the simplest command. He could understand the need for this kind of guidance, intellectually, at least, but the process itself was humiliating in the extreme.
“Now lather your crotch. Do not be embarrassed. No one is looking. No one would want to look, believe me! Lather thoroughly! Now, reach up and grasp the pull chain. Pull to rinse … One! Two! Three! Release the chain! …”
After showering and drying off, they marched nuts to butts back to the squad bay, where they stood in line, arms stretched out at shoulder level, while Sewicki, Heller, and a Navy corpsman walked down the line, inspecting each shivering recruit for wounds, cuts, abrasions, bruises, or signs of ringworm or other fungal infections. Only then were they allowed to don for the first time the uniform of their new service … olive drab BDU trousers, T-shirts, and utility covers. The only technical aspect to their garb was in the heavy black boondockers, smartshoes that sighed and hissed as they adjusted themselves to the size and shape of each recruit’s feet. There were no sensors in their BDUs, no fitting mechanism, no heaters or coolers, not even a link to a smartgarb channel for weather advice.
John thought about that pile of discarded electronics in the disposal bin. He’d always thought of the Marines as high-tech, with their armored suits and APCs, flier units and M-2120 lasers, combat implants and e-boosters. What they were wearing now was about as back-to-basics as it was possible to get.
Another hour passed as men who’d somehow missed getting vital items of clothing or gear or who’d ended up with extras were sorted out and discrepancies corrected. Civilian clothing was carefully sealed in plastic bags, labeled for storage, and collected. It would be returned when they completed boot camp … or when they washed out and gave up the new uniform.
Only then were they herded once more into ranks, then marched across the parade field outside—no, that was a grinder—to the mess hall. John thought at first that he would be too tired to eat,