Recruit survival guide

In light of the recent news that my nephews, Nathaniel and Jed, are shipping to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, SC on 2 September, I’ve decided to publish a definitive guide on surviving Marine Corps recruit training.

This guide serves as a cheat sheet of sorts, bulging with tips and tricks proven to impress, astound, and appease drill instructors depot-wide and rocket you to positions of leadership and privilege like no other. It targets those in the civilian sector ballsy enough to step on my yellow footprints. Lastly, this guide is by no means exhaustive. It contains enough of what you need to know to turn a thirteen week, sand-in-your-crack spit-in-your-face training cycle into hedonist bliss.

1. The words “I” and “we” and “they” are no longer in your vocabulary. It’s now “this recruit” and “these recruits” and “those recruits.” Third person speech and third person only. Everyone else will be referred to by full title and rank. For example, I am drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Kohler. Not “you.” “You” sounds like “ewe” and that’s a female sheep. You won’t make that mistake twice.
2. You will be at the position of attention whenever you speak to a drill instructor. The position of attention is the basic military position. This indicates that you are alert and ready for instructions. Bring your left heel against the right. Turn you feet out equally to form an angle of 45 degrees. Keep you heels on the same line and touching. Your legs will be straight but not stiff at the knees. Keep your hips and shoulders level and your chest lifted. Your arms will hang naturally, thumbs along the trouser seams, palms facing inward toward your legs, and fingers joined in their natural curl. Keep your head and body erect. Look straight ahead. Keep your mouth closed and your chin pulled in slightly. Stand still and do not talk.
3. And I do mean stand still. Don’t eyeball the area. Don’t wiggle your fingers. Don’t play with your uniform. Don’t scratch your face. Don’t brush the sand flea off you ear. Don’t move.
4. Your bed is now called a rack. The bathroom is now the head. The floor is now the deck. The wall is now the bulkhead. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are now morning chow, noon chow, and evening chow. Ask the drill instructor just once if “I can use the bathroom before dinner” and see what happens.
5. “Aye sir” “Yes sir” and “No sir” will be your only responses unless more is demanded.

What’s that? You didn’t say anything. Say aye sir!

6. When a drill instructor says something, you say something. And you will say it with volume and intensity. When in doubt, scream “aye sir!” as loud as you can.
7. Everything you say and do will be loud and intense. When you scream, there will be spit flying out of your mouth and veins bulging out of your neck. If you want to give the drill instructor a kiss, simply talk soft and sweet and he’ll hook you up.
8. You will render the proper greeting of the day whenever you’re near a drill instructor. A proper greeting is “Good morning- afternoon- evening- sir!” As a general rule of thumb, if you can see him, you should scream. I don’t care if he’s low crawling across the parade deck in his underwear. Just do it.

Stop damn moving around! Now scream aye sir!

9. Run everywhere you go. Move with a sense of purpose, like the mission you’re about to accomplish is the most important thing in your life. I don’t care if you’re restocking shit paper. That shit paper will get 100% of your attention and energy and will be the most squared away shit paper in the company.
10. Volunteer for everything. When the drill instructor says he needs recruits, your ass will be flying through the air screaming “This recruit sir!” at the top of your lungs.
    Volunteering will get you in good with the drill instructors, so when a real shitty job comes along they probably won’t pick you. But then again, they probably will, just because they know you can get the job done without screwing it up.

When I say something you say something! Open your disgusting mouth!

11. You will not offer excuses for anything. If you break your leg halfway through the obstacle course, don’t point at the wound and whine when the drill instructor calls you a pussy and screams at you to finish. Just spring to your feet, ignore the blinding pain and jagged edges of ruined flesh, and pray the Corpsman stops things before a bone fragment punctures your femoral artery and you bleed out like a Christmas dinner hog.

So we’ve got a volume problem, huh? We don’t wanna scream? Open your fat face!

12. Regardless of your position in formation, the squad bay, or on the PT field, you are being watched by the drill instructor. There is nothing you can get away with that hasn’t already been tried by thousands of recruits before you. If you’re on the opposite side of formation and decide to dig in your filthy face, you—

    I said stop g**damn moving! I just finished saying you’re always being watched and you wanna scratch? Well, you ain’t done! Keep scratching! Make it feel good!

    You’re going to be caught. You’re not sneaky, and the drill instructor will slay you at his earliest convenience if you try some dumb bullshit.

13. Accept the following as fact and recruit training will be that much easier:
    • Your girlfriend is cheating on you. Probably with your “best friend” who you told to “look after her” while you were gone.
    • No one actually cares you’re in boot camp. While you sweat, strain, train, and tremble through weeks of rigorous recruit hell, they’re shopping, going to movies, getting laid, and drinking beer whenever the hell they want. Because they can.
    • You will experience the entire spectrum of human emotion, often in as short a time as a two hour combat endurance course, for example. These emotions include, but are not limited to, debilitating hopelessness, mind numbing apathy, or the intense desire to end your own life while sand encrusted snot strings cling stubbornly to your cheeks as you scream for water, ice cold delicious water, and reach out desperately for the nearest drill instructor who is gulping greedily from his Camelbak drinking tube, to please please help me for the love of God I can’t drag him any further and he kicks stinging, gritty sand in your face because it’s the first time since training day one you’ve opened your dirty man-pleaser and screamed.
    • You will never be good enough to be in my beloved Corps. But that doesn’t mean stop trying, pig.
14. Don’t take anything personal. When the drill instructor calls you a weak, nasty piece of garbage who has no business in Marine Corps recruit training, shrug it off (emotionally, of course), strive to be better and carry on smartly. Take no offense when the drill instructor kindly enquires about your family, then promptly and with intense conviction states his tag team plans for your mother and sister, but only after he beats your dad’s ass and kicks your little brother in the nuts. But if you find the steely gaze of a drill instructor upon you, with his cold, calculating eyes, always watching, always judging, sizing you up for the next slaughter, take heed. You see, he truly, deeply, and completely hates you with every fiber of his being because you’ve taken him far, far away from the Marines he loves, the Marines he’s trained and fought alongside. You’ve replaced them, instead, with your eighteen years of attitude, immaturity, disrespect, lawlessness, jackassery, and undisciplined wa—

And you’re still f**king moving around, you disgusting, brainless bitch!