Pictures from boot camp

Pictures from my boot camp days.  These were scanned from our “yearbook” which was called the Rudder.  Click on the pictures, and the full-sized versions will pop up in another browser tab or window.

I was going to crop these pictures so you could only see me, but I thought showing the other people and the silly stuff we were doing might be interesting.  I am in every one of the pictures below.

You may note that there are both male and female recruits in the pictures.  The Navy experimented with integrated companies for a year or so, and I was in one of the last companies to be organized that way.  The genders slept in different areas and obviously did not share the bathrooms or showers at the same time, but we did pretty much everything else together.  I was asked by some of the company commanders towards the end of my training what I thought of the integrated company idea.  I thought it was good, especially for the guys, because a lot of them were 18-year-old macho dumbasses who had obviously never had to take women seriously before.  I worded it a bit more respectfully at the time, but the Navy still disagreed with me.  My understanding was that most of the company commanders didn’t like training integrated companies.  Being a company commander seriously sucked anyway, so if the Navy can make that job a little easier, I guess it should.

My official boot camp picture - I was the yeoman.

It’s funny looking at the pictures of my company commanders with only their first names (I removed their last names from the pictures).  I still remember the Chief’s last name, and even how to spell it, 16 years later.  I couldn’t have told you his first name if my life depended on it (I’m pretty sure I knew it then, though – I was the yeoman).  The yeoman is the person who does the most work in the recruit company – basically a secretary with some rank (at least in the recruit division).  I had to do a lot of paperwork and make a number of administrative decisions.  My rank was Recruit Petty Officer First Class.  None of this really meant diddly squat – it just mainly meant that I had to do a lot of work that the other recruits didn’t. My most stressful week was work week, when the entire company had to get farmed out to various areas of the base for grunt work, like washing dishes in the chow hall.  I was given a list of the slots that needed to be filled, and I was the one who had to make the decisions for who went where.  I had the dubious privilege of not assigning myself that grunt work, but that meant I had to stand a lot more night watches, because hardly anyone else could.  This was almost like a vacation week for our company commanders, though.  They basically just gave me their phone numbers, told me to call them if there were any problems, and they checked in on us several times during the week.  I didn’t think much of that responsibility at the time, but obviously that meant that they trusted me a lot, and they knew I’d keep an eye on things for them.  So it shouldn’t be surprising that on the day we all shipped out, Chief thanked me for all my help.  That meant a lot to me, because he obviously meant it.

Chief was an extremely cool guy – very funny, a classic old salty chief.  Here are some examples:

• He already had his top recruit staff picked out when all the recruits arrived at boot camp (they had our profiles from the recruiters).  He explained that he chose guys for the recruit chief petty officer and recruit master-at-arms (the two highest recruit ranks in the company) and a female for yeoman because that just caused a lot less trouble in the company (yeah, that rankled me a bit, but I realized later he was probably right).
• He had tattoos of mushrooms on his forearms, and when I asked why he had them, he proudly explained that they predated the mandatory drug testing (’shrooms).
• He just about reduced me to tears the one time I made the mistake of washing his coffee mug – because of course, several layers of dehydrated coffee stains on the mug added a certain unparalleled flavor to the coffee he was drinking.
• I was slated to go to CTI school before I got to boot camp, and CTIs are nicknamed “spooks”.  So he would often call me “spook”, usually in a derogatory manner (there’s rivalry between all the various ratings in the Navy, and CTIs are particularly disliked), and occasionally made me drop just for being a spook.

He cut me slack where he could, though, and I even felt comfortable enough with him to tease him once in while (although I usually got dropped for it when I did).

Which one is me?? Hint: parade rest!

I did a lot of this at boot camp! Hint for finding me - I'm short.

I think the Rudder editors liked putting in pictures where recruits had their eyes closed during pistol training. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Ah, yes, firearms training.  I always laugh when people asume I had a lot of it at boot camp.  We spent at most a few hours at the firing range, all in one afternoon.  I don’t think we were even required to shoot well in order to pass.  I certainly didn’t pick up a firearm for military purposes afterwards.

Also, please note the humongous glasses on some of the people above.  No, they weren’t safety glasses for the firing range, and they did not have extremely poor eyesight.  Those were the standard boot camp glasses, I guess the cheapest durable frames available.  They were called “BC glasses” – nope, BC does not stand for boot camp.  It stands for “birth control” because the glasses are so ugly, it was assumed that no one would be interested in being intimate with someone wearing them.

Proof in the boot camp paper The Navigator that I was named Honor Recruit of my division. I was chosen by my company commander as the best recruit in my company (out of about 80 recruits).

This was the one honor that actually meant something.  If the honor recruit’s rank was E-1 or E-2, then getting honor recruit would get them bumped up a paygrade, but no higher than E-3.  However, I was already an E-3 when I went to boot camp thanks to all my college credits, so this didn’t do me a lot of good.  It was nice getting it though – almost all honor recruits are the recruit chief petty officers, not the yeomans!

The admiral profiled in the article above (Supreme allied commander Atlantic) made some sort of speech at our graduation.  All I remember from it was one story he told.  He had complained to a subordinate that he was having a bad day.  The subordinate replied something like this:  “If the word ’supreme’ is part of your job title, you just can’t have that bad of day.”

Many thanks to my husband, Aaron, for scanning these pictures in for me and helping me get them set up the way I wanted them in the blog!

4 Comments

• 

  By rem, May 3, 2009 @ 8:51 pm

  I have a copy of that year book it is my dads

• 

  By Karen, September 22, 2009 @ 8:08 am

  Good morning Angel,

  How may I get a copy of my (or any) Rudder? There are a lot of veterans asking me that question?

  By the way, love your blog…the pix are the best.

  Thanks for your time.

  Sincerely,

  Karen.

• 

  By Karen, September 22, 2009 @ 8:10 am

  Oh, one more thing Angel. You may find some old friends if you visit, http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1052622014472&f=1&e=-12#/group.php?gid=28479872126

  Say hello when you get there…Good luck and thanks again.

• 

  By Angel, September 22, 2009 @ 2:10 pm

  Karen,

  I don’t know how to get copies of the Rudder. I’d suggest searching the internet using your company number, year of graduation, and Rudder. You might find someone who has a copy they are willing to sell.

  Angel

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