Welcome to Parris Island − 17 July, 1995
All I know was that at the time I was thinking that this was a really bad idea, and that I had to get the hell out of this as fast as I could. Though the easier faster way seemed to be to do what they said when they said and how they said to until they told me to do something else.
I'm gonna Die I think.
We were taken from Greensburg PA to the federal building in downtown Pittsburgh. That part was easy enough. They asked me again if I had done any drugs, raped any women, made any real mistakes that may catch up with me. I of course said no.
Got on the plane. There were a bunch of us there. All rowdy, looking for a fight before we were even trained to scrub a latrine.. I wasn't one of the loud ones. All I could think about was that thing called "The Pit." It was like Stephen King said a couple times. You could hear the capital letters in the name.
We arrived at Savanna airport, and they took us to a separate little waiting lounge where the Marine there said that we should get some sleep because we weren't going to get any for a while. Great, I'm an insomniac. I remember the food was this sand bread sub with a slimy tongue of meat that slobbered itself all over the yellow goo that called itself cheese, but was really plastic snot.
Then the Bus. You can hear the capital letters in that one too...
It was raining (I'm not making this up, and it's not for dramatic effect. I think the Marines import storms to grow that impending sense of doom...) I mean really raining. We couldn't see out of the windows. It was black outside. Just black, that was it. Then there would be a flash (I can still see them) and the thunderheads looked like boulders that were rolling along side the Bus, you could see the light behind them, but they were so dense that none of it actually shone through them like a normal storm.
I never saw the entrance, never saw the gate, never saw anything till we rolled up on Recieving. This thing walked on the bus, I thought it was a man at first when he said "On behalf of the President of the United States, The Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Commanding General Brigadier General J.D. Humble welcome to Parris Island. NOW GET OFF MY BUS!" That was the transformation. He went from a human being to this OgreMONSTER that was going to eat the last one on the bus just for kicks. I have never seen a tour bus clear out fast enough, and unfortunately no recruits were eaten.
We started the paperwork that night, and 2 days later it ended. We finally got to sleep that day. Yes, that day, and it was indescribable how it felt to sleep in a squad bay with 80 other 18 year old men that were going to eventually whittle down to 40. That was only the beginning.
I'm gonna Die I think.
We were taken from Greensburg PA to the federal building in downtown Pittsburgh. That part was easy enough. They asked me again if I had done any drugs, raped any women, made any real mistakes that may catch up with me. I of course said no.
Got on the plane. There were a bunch of us there. All rowdy, looking for a fight before we were even trained to scrub a latrine.. I wasn't one of the loud ones. All I could think about was that thing called "The Pit." It was like Stephen King said a couple times. You could hear the capital letters in the name.
We arrived at Savanna airport, and they took us to a separate little waiting lounge where the Marine there said that we should get some sleep because we weren't going to get any for a while. Great, I'm an insomniac. I remember the food was this sand bread sub with a slimy tongue of meat that slobbered itself all over the yellow goo that called itself cheese, but was really plastic snot.
Then the Bus. You can hear the capital letters in that one too...
It was raining (I'm not making this up, and it's not for dramatic effect. I think the Marines import storms to grow that impending sense of doom...) I mean really raining. We couldn't see out of the windows. It was black outside. Just black, that was it. Then there would be a flash (I can still see them) and the thunderheads looked like boulders that were rolling along side the Bus, you could see the light behind them, but they were so dense that none of it actually shone through them like a normal storm.
I never saw the entrance, never saw the gate, never saw anything till we rolled up on Recieving. This thing walked on the bus, I thought it was a man at first when he said "On behalf of the President of the United States, The Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Commanding General Brigadier General J.D. Humble welcome to Parris Island. NOW GET OFF MY BUS!" That was the transformation. He went from a human being to this OgreMONSTER that was going to eat the last one on the bus just for kicks. I have never seen a tour bus clear out fast enough, and unfortunately no recruits were eaten.
We started the paperwork that night, and 2 days later it ended. We finally got to sleep that day. Yes, that day, and it was indescribable how it felt to sleep in a squad bay with 80 other 18 year old men that were going to eventually whittle down to 40. That was only the beginning.
Comments:
TakeTheCann0lis (January 29, 2007. 07:26pm)
When I arrived in Great Lakes for Navy boot camp, I learned really fast that there was no such thing as the number "oh" only zeroes.