Training days 1-13: two week recap

I’ve got two loads of clean laundry piled on my rack to fold and put away, Drill Card 1 to practice, a movement or two to memorize out of Book II, Individual Movements Without Arms, uniforms to prep, garbage to take out, my PT Pack to ready for the morning, and I’m wasting entirely too much time writing this post.

My priorities are hosed.

The Sunday night squad leader meeting kicks off at 1900 in my room. I’m going to need an updated roster listing the number of discrepancies per room by room number, as well as getting a solid count on who doesn’t yet have ditty bags or DI school PT shirts. I’ll review tomorrow’s PT schedule, refresh the duty squad’s memory on how things work in the morning, try to give my old barracks cover away since I bought a new one, and possibly throw it out there that I bought a printer that the Marines can use… for a price. Assuming everyone shows up on time, I’m hoping to grab some chow following with Sgt Lilly (he and I were in Iraq together on my last tour) at Barbabra Jean’s, where the sweet tea kicks ass, all the cooking is home style, and the waitresses are hot (even if most are pregnant).

Chow with Sgt Lilly is beginning to be my weekly decompression/bitch session. I look forward to it.

It’s been two training weeks since I checked in to DI school. Three calendar weeks. Graduation is two calendar months away. That’s not so bad, is it? Hell, I never thought three months of anything would be all that bad considering the variety of things I’ve been through the last 10+ years, but this last week of training damn near broke me. And I mean that.

It started last Friday. I was looking forward to an easy weekend, Saturday we were conducting swim qualification followed by a CPR class and Sunday off, when sixteen of seventy-eight Marines didn’t have their canteens in the right place (aligned with the front left leg of the chair, name facing the rear of the classroom) upon entering the classroom first thing in the morning. They were immediately assigned five hundred word essays on “following simple instructions”, required to write in all caps, with a space between each line and a number below each word over three letters. I, as the class commander, and the squad leaders got one thousand word essays because “we should have known better” (even though we were correct).

I typed my essay up prior to writing it and placed the word count before each paragraph so I could better gauge the length. It worked out well.
So, five hours down the drain there. On Monday morning I get my ass chewed because my essay “didn’t relate to recruit training”. And I know nothing was said about that, so I had to write another one. Another five hours down the drain, but the work was piling up. Practical exams, movement memorizations, drill, guideon and sword manual, the whole nine yards. I was averaging a couple hours of sleep each night, falling horribly behind, and the pressure was building.

Wednesday was my darkest day ever. I had slept from 2200-0000 then got up to study, type, write, memorize, practice all the shit that was coming down on my head for the week. By 0400, with PT looming only a couple hours away, the essay due, and our first big practical exam only two days away, something in my mind snapped.

My shoulders slumped, my face drooped, and my feet slapped along the catwalk. I was a shell of a man. Consciously, I pondered possible ways to injure myself during PT that morning. Could I fall off the arm stretcher and tweak my back? Back injuries were hard to prove. Yeah, I could do that. Could I “slip” on the dip bar and hopefully crack a few ribs? That would definitely work. I conducted my early morning routine, dotting I’s and crossing T’s, with these thoughts cycling through my mind like something as unimportant as a grocery list. I planned the after. Where would I go? What assignment would I consider? I kept wishing for home, dead silence, and nothing to do. Nowhere to be. No interaction. No responsibility.

In my very distant subconscious, like a man screaming a mile away, was the real Jayme, wondering what the hell was going on. He wondered why I was quitting. And make no mistake about it, I was quitting. I had quit, in my mind, and I didn’t give two flying shits about it either.

But the good voice wasn’t loud enough for me to listen. I was a walking, talking zombie and I knew it. Yet I couldn’t do anything about it. In some sort of weird, shadow mirror inverse parallel universe (it doesn’t make sense to me either, and that’s the point), I saw myself plodding along with absolutely no control over my body or mind. My here and now was busted. I was fried.

I didn’t get hurt during PT, primarily because if I got hurt then I’d really be hurt and that just sucks, but my demeanor remained unchanged. I returned to the barracks after PT, showered and changed into the uniform of the day, and marched my shell out the hatch and back to class. I was four movement memorizations behind, and every time I concentrated on the words on the paper they spiraled inward. I couldn’t focus. My legs were weak. My voice a whisper. And when some of the Marines began to ask me what was wrong, and I couldn’t answer, in fact I could barely lift my gaze from the deck, I made a decision to fail. I accepted the fact I’d fail the exam that Friday and retake it Monday. I accepted the fact I was behind, deliriously behind without enough hours in a day to possibly catch up, and I was, simply, going to fail the goddamn test and be done with it.

Lunch time, I ate soup in silence. No iTunes. No laptop. Just quiet, thinking about my impending failure and how damn tired I was. How every couple swallows were incomplete because I kept drifting off. It took awhile to pound the notion of failure into my head, but as soon as I did my mood improved. The good and bad voices switched, thankfully at last, and I could see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel: a full weekend off.

On Wednesday night, a weird thing happened. I memorized my last three movements in record time. Everything just kind of clicked. The letters formed words. The words formed paragraphs. Paragraphs formed entire movements. I slept four hours.

Thursday was outstanding. I was in the best mood I had been in all week. Is that what admittance to failure and a full (speaking relatively) night’s sleep gets me? Sign me up for some more! I had a bounce in my step, knowing I wasn’t going to kill myself cramming for the Friday exam. That night I glanced briefly at my book, tossed it aside after five minutes, and slept eight hours.

And Friday, I scored a 92.5%.

The weekend is winding down now. I slept thirteen hours Friday night (as straight as I could, getting up at 0445 to conduct duty changeover) and woke up feeling refreshed. I spent Saturday running errands like dry cleaning, grocery shopping, uniform alterations, uniform maintenance and upkeep, and staring at shiny things at Best Buy for awhile. I even watched Heartbreak Kid with Ben Stiller. It was quite the cut up, let me tell you, and worth every belly laugh from the obnoxious mariachi band to the rough prison sex (if you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t elaborate). I think watching movies are my happy place, especially since island hopping with my mountain bike hasn’t looked too appealing. Although in the next weekend or two I may go on a ride to knock off some cobwebs.

To those who care (meaning you’ve got a cake baked with a file in it… or better yet, an airplane ticket out of here) my address is as follows:

GySgt Kohler JW
DI School Class #1-08
Box 15500
Parris Island, SC 29905

Mail here is timely and reliable. Feel free to send explosives as well.

Like any other truly chronological journal of sorts, I find the real details of time are lost when I wait so long to write. Believe me, I had intended to post something last weekend until that confounded essay slapped me in the face. So, instead, I’ll try to write a little something every day. Something. Anything. I may not send it downrange right away though. In fact, I may post a series of small write ups at one shot. It’ll be up to you, loyal jaymekohler.com reader, to keep tabs on the DI Diaries to make sure you’re completely caught up.

It’s another week down at DI school, class 1-08, Parris Island, South Carolina folks, and it’s about time I fight back.