MOVE, HERD!
Sergeant Hoffman did not deign to address us as a platoon, or a company, or with any other accepted military term. We were a herd, in our varying civilian attire. College boys. Know-nothings. Bootcamp babies with no earthly value to man or beast. Bewildered, intimidated, secretly amused, we were herded down a street that in no way resembled the shady lanes of our hometowns or the storied campuses from which we had so recently departed.
In our disarray, we were silently awed by the sight of other formations underway on that hot July morning. Some were under the watchful eye of other sergeants, marginally less disdainful, markedly more martial. They seemed to be in step, and their uniforms were uniformly spotless. Other groups were being marched by members of their own kind! They strode along confidently, and in their casualness they displayed more competence than we believed we would ever achieve.
We were taking our first steps (literally) toward becoming what the Navy, through its Marine Corps drill sergeants, wished us to become. A single-minded, squared-away, gig-line centered, ramrod straight cadet. Ready in all respects for sea duty. Finely-honed to be trusted with the most complex and expensive machinery our mid-twentieth-century Navy could produce. Trained to fly against the military might of the Soviet Union, braving all "though moonlit cloud or sunlit sky"! That was what motivated us to endure this demeaning and exhausting trial, and to hide our underlying amusement at the simplistic world into which we had been thrown. Being yelled at and instructed in the most basic way by men whose educational level was on a par with the janitors who swept the halls of our universities was so bizarre as to be comical; but only in the privacy of our conversations, far from the listening ears of sergeants.
Not that we didn't jump when they barked! Humiliation, physical pain, and exhaustion are stimulants to produce a strong sense of attention to duty. The threat of being singled out, made an example of, "sweated down to a puddle of piss" were ample incentive for complying with whatever unlikely or outlandish command came forth from the distended mouth of Sergeant Hoffman.
Later, though, when we had endured his tongue-lashings and sweated his rightful puddle of piss on the grinder or the obstacle course; later, when we would be yelled at by guys with golden wings on their shirts who knew how to fly while we did not; later, our incentive would shift somewhat. The immediate shame of being the direct object of Sergeant Hoffman's insults would metamorphose into the deeper, longer lasting fear of failing to get a set of those wings for yourself. No dread of bounced landings or missed approaches or "bad headwork" downs, not to even mention the fear of dying in a fiery crash, could hold a candle to the ultimate fear of going back home to announce that you just couldn't hack the program. That would be the ultimate shame, the penultimate failure, not to be contemplated. No amount of pain or numbers of sleepless nights or hours of numbing class work were enough to make us consider such a fate.
When have we faced such a daunting challenge in our lives since those days?
Sergeant Hoffman did not deign to address us as a platoon, or a company, or with any other accepted military term. We were a herd, in our varying civilian attire. College boys. Know-nothings. Bootcamp babies with no earthly value to man or beast. Bewildered, intimidated, secretly amused, we were herded down a street that in no way resembled the shady lanes of our hometowns or the storied campuses from which we had so recently departed.
In our disarray, we were silently awed by the sight of other formations underway on that hot July morning. Some were under the watchful eye of other sergeants, marginally less disdainful, markedly more martial. They seemed to be in step, and their uniforms were uniformly spotless. Other groups were being marched by members of their own kind! They strode along confidently, and in their casualness they displayed more competence than we believed we would ever achieve.
We were taking our first steps (literally) toward becoming what the Navy, through its Marine Corps drill sergeants, wished us to become. A single-minded, squared-away, gig-line centered, ramrod straight cadet. Ready in all respects for sea duty. Finely-honed to be trusted with the most complex and expensive machinery our mid-twentieth-century Navy could produce. Trained to fly against the military might of the Soviet Union, braving all "though moonlit cloud or sunlit sky"! That was what motivated us to endure this demeaning and exhausting trial, and to hide our underlying amusement at the simplistic world into which we had been thrown. Being yelled at and instructed in the most basic way by men whose educational level was on a par with the janitors who swept the halls of our universities was so bizarre as to be comical; but only in the privacy of our conversations, far from the listening ears of sergeants.
Not that we didn't jump when they barked! Humiliation, physical pain, and exhaustion are stimulants to produce a strong sense of attention to duty. The threat of being singled out, made an example of, "sweated down to a puddle of piss" were ample incentive for complying with whatever unlikely or outlandish command came forth from the distended mouth of Sergeant Hoffman.
Later, though, when we had endured his tongue-lashings and sweated his rightful puddle of piss on the grinder or the obstacle course; later, when we would be yelled at by guys with golden wings on their shirts who knew how to fly while we did not; later, our incentive would shift somewhat. The immediate shame of being the direct object of Sergeant Hoffman's insults would metamorphose into the deeper, longer lasting fear of failing to get a set of those wings for yourself. No dread of bounced landings or missed approaches or "bad headwork" downs, not to even mention the fear of dying in a fiery crash, could hold a candle to the ultimate fear of going back home to announce that you just couldn't hack the program. That would be the ultimate shame, the penultimate failure, not to be contemplated. No amount of pain or numbers of sleepless nights or hours of numbing class work were enough to make us consider such a fate.
When have we faced such a daunting challenge in our lives since those days?
