Non-Qualified Swimmer
What fresh hell was this? Hundreds of nude male bodies. Freckled, yellow, brown, black, pink. The long and short. Hayraker had always had a problem with exposing himself to public inspection. In school he had problems with showering after gym class. Luckily, the physical education teacher was not too circumspect about making sure everyone showered. Hayraker never went to the bathroom in school when he could avoid it. In public, he suffered from bashful kidney, unable to urinate when someone else was standing next to him. Why would they issue you a bathing suit if they wouldn''t let you use it?
And here he was with all these other nude characters surreptitiously checking each other out. Hayraker wondered what in the hell women saw in men. This was the ugliest situation he’d ever been in.
But another problem presented itself. How would Hayraker ever make it around that Olympic sized swimming pool and tread water for ten minutes when the largest body of water he had ever swum in was the crick behind the barn, which was all of three feet deep? When you started to drown, you could always just stand up. This pool was ten feet deep and they were going to make him jump from a ten foot tower, twenty feet to the bottom. Almost as high as the silo on the farm that Hayraker was so afraid to climb when he had to check to make sure the blower was evenly distributing the silage.
Bashful kidney, acrophobia---what next?
“If you can’t swim, step forward,” one of the swimming instructors said.
Special serviceman 3rd Class Jones had just uttered the fatal words. But Hayraker wasn’t sure if he should admit he couldn’t swim. Another weakness, indecision. Maybe he could make it all the way around that pool and tread water for ten minutes. How would he know unless he tried? Besides, if he stepped forward, everyone would laugh. No one else had admitted they couldn’t swim. If you joined the navy, you were supposed to be a man. Would the company commander, Mr. B.K. Russell, think less of him if he couldn’t swim? Damn right he would, the sadist.
“If you get in trouble, a pole will be reached out to you. Do not try to climb the pole. Repeat, do not attempt to climb the pole!” Jones said.
It was too late now. Some of the recruits were already jumping off the tower. Everyone seemed to be doing fine. Uh oh, a black boy had come up from the deeps waving his arms in the air hysterically. He was quickly hauled out, but not without some scornful from Special Serviceman 3rd class Jones: “What’s the matter, scumbag. Didn’t they teach you to swim in the cotton fields?”
Apparently Jones was not a nice man.
Occasionally Jones would push one of the recruits off the tower. Others must be reluctant to jump as well. Before he knew what hit him, it was Hayraker’s turn. You were supposed to cross your hands over your chest, and when you hit the bottom of the pool, bring them down forcefully, which would cause you to shoot toward the surface.
Hayraker couldn’t jump. He tried to tell Jones he was sick. He actually told him that he had had yellow jaundice when he was ten years old. Jones pushed him.
Down, down, down. It seemed like an eternity before he hit the water. And once he hit the water, it seemed like another eternity before he hit the bottom. And then he almost forgot to bring his hands down forcefully. Up, up, up. Would he never hit the surface? He was running out of air. Finally, Hayraker emerged only to realize that he now had to swim around that gigantic pool. How? He was already exhausted from fright.
“Looks like we’ve got another one. Another mama’s boy who’s never been in water higher than a fuckin’ bathtub. Fish him out!”
But Hayraker wouldn’t give up that easily. When he got acclimated, he went into his dog paddle and actually started moving forward. But there were these other recruits, regular Johnny Weissmuller’s, going by splashing water in his face. He was taking on water and he was running out of gas. The most he had ever swum in one spurt was ten feet on the farm, but remarkably, he made it about three-fourths of the way around the pool before he began to sink. He was literally swimming in place and eventually he had no choice but to go down. When he came up, a swimming instructor extended the dreaded pole. Completely discombobulated, Hayraker grabbed the pole and tried to climb it, and the swimming instructor let go.
Hayraker went down. This was reminiscent of the time at the swimming hole on the farm when he got caught under the raft and bumped his head twice before he finally reached the surface.
Hayraker came up again, the pole was proffered again, and Hayraker tried to climb again. The swimming instructor let it go again.
Finally, on his third trip down, Hayraker gathered himself, realizing that he had to stay cool when he reached the surface. The pole was proffered again, Hayraker hung on and he was pulled in like a waterlogged canoe.
Hayraker was now an NQS, Non-Qualified Swimmer. Bashful kidney, acrophobia, hydrophobia. What next?
Next was fear of the elementary backstroke or learning how to float. Hayraker would never learn freestyle. When the other recruits were washing their clothes, shining their shoes, and writing letters to their girlfriends, Hayraker was learning the motherfuckin’ elementary backstroke. He had to learn how to walk up in the water and move his hands in a circle. This would keep him in one place. If you wanted to move, you brought your hands up under your armpits and pushed them straight down to your hips. Easy, eh? It took Hayraker five or six trips to the motherfuckin’ (Hayraker found himself using that expression more and more lately) recreation building before he finally got it down well enough to backstroke around that gargantuan pool, taking on water all the way, and treading water for ten minutes.
When he finally thought he had it made, some other drowning nincompoop came splashing by and tried to drag him to the bottom, after he had been treading water for a good five minutes. Any port in a storm they say. Haymaker was able to fight him off with a rabbit punch or two and walk back up in the water.
Free at last. Great God Almighty, free at last. No way. Hayraker was so far behind and had accumulated so many demerits, 35 in all, that it didn’t look like he would graduate with the rest of Company 485.
For every five demerits, you had to “push the piece” for two hours. A piece was your rifle, which was weighted down with lead. It was plugged to eliminate any chance one of the recruits would find a bullet someplace and use it on Company Commander BK Russell. You got demerits for such foolishness as tying your shirt improperly on the clothesline. It had to be hung inside out and facing the direction of all the other shirts on the line. It also had to be tied with a square knot with something called a clothes stop (a little piece of string which looks something like a shoelace). The United State Canoe Club did not believe in clothespins. Hayraker got five demerits for improperly hanging one of his T-shirts. To this day, Hayraker could not tie a square knot.
Another triviality a recruit had to contend with was how to tie his “ditty bag” to his bunk (a ditty bag, for the uninitiated, was a small clothes bag). It was to be tied to the bunk in exactly the same position as all of the other bunks, with a square knot of course, and you were to put your dirty t-shirt, your dirty socks, and your dirty shorts in there after your shower in the morning. Heaven help you if there were more than one of each in your ditty bag. They were to be washed, by hand, every night.
All of your clothes had to be folded correctly. Your socks had to be rolled very tightly and drawn in upon themselves. This idea made sense because on board ship, you were in very tight quarters. Folding a raincoat was a real bitch however. It took Hayraker an hour before he got it tight enough. Thankfully, they were stored someplace other than your locker.
Each recruit also had a locker where everything had to be in its proper place. Your blue uniforms went on the shelf above your white uniforms. Once, the recruits were required to put their seabags (everything they owned) in their lockers in the dark. Chicken shit? It couldn’t have been because they didn’t want to wake the other company next door; that would have been too considerate. The CC and his lackeys never told Hayraker why they did anything.
While he was returning his seabag to his locker in the dark, Hayraker put his blues where his whites were supposed to go. Nobody noticed it, including Mr. B.K. Russell himself and his assistant Mr. Fisher.
One day, when Co. 485 was marching up and down the grinder learning right oblique, left oblique, about face etc., Mr. Russell came tromping down the sidewalk, screaming obscenities. His recruit helper, Recruit Petty Officer in Charge, had been directing our practice session.
“Sweet Rain of Christ!” he bellowed. “Who’s this jewel DA Hayraker? The DA must stand for Duck’s Ass. You just cost us 140 points on barracks inspection.”
BK must have ultimately realized that he had something to do with the switcheroo because Hayraker only had to push off half of the ten demerits punishment.
There were times when you didn’t get demerits, when your mistakes were reasonable. Like the time Hayraker was sent to replace the watch replacement (guard) because his sister company’s company commander was inspecting the watch replacements and was sending everybody back. He sent Hayraker back for a dirty t-shirt. Sweat was dirt and it was hard not to sweat when you knew everyone was getting hit. They also asked you questions about the general orders for the watch: never leave your post etc. You knew these like the back of your hand, but when the watch inspector has got his hands around your throat (one of these guys was nicknamed “The Choker”) it’s hard to remember your own name.
The speculation was that the other company commander was jealous because BK Russell was winning all the flags (awards for barrack inspection, drill inspection etc.) Russell’s company was eventually color company, the best company in training at that time of year. But BK Russell wasn’t about to let a junior petty officer punish his recruits.
Anyway, Hayraker was required to push off 30 demerits while he was in recruit training and the string started because he didn’t know how to swim.
Pushing the piece was hell warmed over. You did exercises with that weighted down rifle. Hayraker would never forget good old 7777, the serial number of his fake rifle. Ever since, the number seven has been an unlucky number for him.
The session lasted two hours and it was led by a marine drill instructor. Marines do not like sailors.
One of the “exercises” required the sailor to hold his rifle out directly in front of him parallel to the “deck.” You would hold it out there until it gradually inched toward the deck due to gravitational pull. It was then that some poor sucker was kicked in the butt or else selected as the one for that session who had to run around the drill hall (about two gymnasiums in length) holding his piece out in front of him.
Another exercise was the one handed push-up holding your piece out with the other hand. This one was impossible, but Hayraker made an approximation due to fright.
There was always a silver lining of sorts. After his discharge, hayraker would make money betting fellow barflies he could hold a jar of pigs’ knuckles out in front of him for fifteen minutes. No sweat. He’d done it with the rifle.
Hayraker was suspicious about some of the occurrences in boot camp. Some of these events seemed staged, like the poor “boot” who had to run around the drill hall holding his rifle out in front of him. Hayraker never had to do that and his rifle would eventually get extremely close to the deck just about every time.
Another suspicious incident was the supposed suicide. Every company seemed to have at least one recruit who would try to slit his wrists rather than spend another moment at USNTC in Great Lakes, Illinois. But Hayraker could not to this day remember who it was in Co. 485 and he remembered all of his classmates. Then there was the favoritism shown some of the recruits. The aforementioned Gary Long was Recruit Petty Officer in Charge of Co. 485. The favoritism was most obvious during Service Week when the other recruits were required to get up at two A.M. and peel potatoes and make breakfast for the rest of the battalion. Gary Long, since he was RPOC, served this duty as a messenger at Battalion Hqtrs. Maybe Gary would have had trouble making Outstanding Battalion Recruit if he had had to scour pots and pans. Hayraker’s suspicion was that Gary Long had to be regular navy on special duty.
Then there was Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was where they sent you if you didn’t take showers or keep your clothes clean. But if you didn’t keep your clothes clean or take showers, you were hit with demerits and if you got too many demerits, you were set back to 1-1 day (You had to start your training over from day one). Every recruit was afraid right up until he took the plane for his assigned duty station or school that he would be set back to 1-1 day. Nine weeks in Boot Camp was like nine years, believe it! A little Irish kid named Hogan was set back one week because he couldn’t pass his Seamanship test, but that was probably because BK Russell didn’t want Hogan lowering his scores for the “I” flag (Intelligence flag primarily based on the results from the seamanship test). Another set-back was a kid named Quattlebaum, a kid from Tennessee who would be considered the stereotypical hillbilly. His problem was that he couldn’t march. So BK stuck some other company commander with him. Then there was Hayraker’s first RPOC, selected because he had attended military school, who was set back because he got caught smoking. No, to Hayraker, Mickey Mouse, had to be another bald-faced lie meant to keep the good little recruits in line. As far as Hayraker knew, no one had ever been sent back to 1-1 day either. It was a week at the most just to get those undesirables out of BK’s company.
The shaving of the heads, the constant yelling, the silly demerits, were all part of the systematic demoralization, meant to destroy your individuality. Upon arriving at Glakes Naval Training Center, near North Chicago and Waukegan, Illinois, your head was shaved, you were required to send all of your civilian clothes home in a box and you were given a fart sack (a sheet much like the a giant ditty bag) in which you put all of your newly issued uniforms. Somewhere along the line, you were given a number by which officialdom referred to you from that moment on. Hayraker’s was 688-12-62. It is still emblazoned on his soul. You may someday forget your parents’ phone number, but you will never ever forget your service number. Also, early in your first week you are given a series of shots called the Flying Seven. One of them is administered while you are standing with one foot on a stool. The pecker checkers (a sadistic crew officially known as navy corpsmen) stick you in the rear, hoping to hit a muscle. Your main activity as a recruit is marching and you don’t march too well when you’re limping. Officially this shot is meant to prevent colds.
There was also a rumor which was bandied about which claimed that the cooks put salt peter in your food. Hayraker couldn’t remember having a wet dream all the way through training so it could have been true. However, most likely it was all the exercise and make work they made recruits do. Get up at 4:30, stand in line for thirty minutes for breakfast, go to seamanship classes, learn the sixteen count manual (similar to what high school drill teams do) march up and down the grinder, eat dinner, do the same thing in the afternoon and eat supper. Occasionally, the recruits would do something out of the ordinary like run the obstacle course, go through the smoke house (simulation of a ship fire) and try to live through the tear gas exercise, but mostly it was the same old thing day after day after day. After supper you washed your clothes, shined shoes and wrote letters if there was time. Occasionally, if BK Russell was in a good mood, he would light the smoking lamp and Hayraker would run and smoke at least two cigarettes in five minutes. He would do this no matter what he was doing. If he was in the middle of hand washing his clothes, he would go anyway. You needed some kind of creature comfort. Candy was not allowed. The first time Hayraker called his girl from Boot Camp he asked her to send him some candy, despite the fact that she was one of twelve children who hardly ever got any sweets.
How humiliating. There is a certain amount of machismo necessary in a male/female relationship, especially at 18, and Hayraker was asking for candy. He never did get any candy from her, in both interpretations of the word.
Hayraker was a greaser when he arrived at Boot Camp. He combed his hair much like Fabian (rock and roll heart throb of the early 60’s) and when they cut it off, one of the other recruits said, “Oh man, you had such nice hair.” Had to watch that kid in the shower.
BK said they cut it off to control diseases like lice and scabies but the recruits knew the real reason. Some recruits maintained their individuality despite losing their hair. Seaman recruit Briggs was one of them. One of Brigg’s extracurriculars (he probably passed HIS swim test) was boxing. The whole company went to a smoker one night to see Briggs fight. He was knocked out in the first round by this leopard-like black guy with the longest reach Hayraker had ever seen. Briggs was always optimistic even when confronting the horrors of Service Week. Co. 485 had a seabag inspection right in the middle of the week, and Hayraker cost the company so many points that he had to wash his entire seabag. If there really had been a Mickey Mouse, Hayraker should have been there by then.
Getting up at two AM and not getting off work until nine PM was exhausting enough without this chicken shit. Hayraker would break out. He would have his girl send him some sleeping pills for the watch and a hack saw for the fence.
The fence was the most disheartening thing about Boot Camp. As you were double-timing it from the barracks to chow hall, you could see the road on the other side of the fence with its three rungs of barbed wire. And on the road were the free citizens of the United State. Actual human beings. They could sleep eight hours a night, go to a movie, talk to a girl face to face. When was the last time Hayraker had seen a movie? Never. He had never lived. He had always been a non-entity in the US Navy, and he would never get out.
On the other side of the fence was The Sink, a bar Nelson, his partner in the bakery during Service Week, had told Hayraker about. The Sink had a jukebox, with pretty girls, junk food, the works. They’d probably catch him, but Hayraker had to get as far as The Sink. Nelson had made it all the way to Wyoming before they caught him. Nelson had gone AWOL and now he was being given another chance with Company 485. He was the nicest guy Hayraker had met. Once Nelson was off for some reason, and the recruits had custard pie for dessert that night. It was Hayraker’s job to cut the stuff. Anyway, it got all over the bake shop and it took Hayraker hours to clean up the mess. The Commissary Man in charge of the bake shop was getting pissed; he wanted to go home. Nelson came along just in time to tell Hayraker to quit, that it was good enough. Hayraker thought it had to be spotless.
Nelson told Hayraker about this girl named Cookie who worked at the Sink. Cookie was a rosy-cheeked flirt, but her husband worked in the Sink as well. He didn’t care though. At least, he acted like he didn’t. You could pinch cookie on the behind and you could suggest renting a motel room. Wally didn’t care. They played Telstar at the Sink, Hayrakers’ favorite song before he had enlisted. You couldn’t even listen to the radio in that hellhole of a barracks.
It was good to think about escape. It kept Hayraker sane. But he never asked for the pills for the guards; he never sent for the hacksaw. But he wishes he had. Hayraker saw himself as a coward with acrophobia and hydrophobia. Maybe that was why BK seemed to single him out. “Stand up for yourself! Swear at me! Tell me I’m a dried up old Gunner’s Mate First Class who’s never gonna make chief. Tell me I haven’t got any ethics and that I can’t judge character.” Gary Long didn’t qualify for honor man because he didn’t have any honor. Once he marched Co. 485 right up to the door of the barracks in below zero weather, went inside with his buddies, the first and second platoon leaders, and laughed at the recruits standing out in the cold freezing their behinds off. “And this was your idea of your honor man, BK?”
If only they’d stop cutting his hair. Every two weeks they’d cut it again. In this antiseptic place, you could develop scabies? BK promised the company that if they won Color Company they wouldn’t have to get their final haircut. He lied and they went home on Christmas looking like Curly of the Three Stooges.
Company 485 went home for Christmas vacation, but their training wasn’t over . They would have to return for two weeks after the Holidays. Some members of the company opted to finish their training with The Choker’s company, which had voted not to go home. However, when Hayraker returned those who had stayed were returned to the company, having been set back two weeks by the Choker. They were probably better off. Hayraker was so embarrassed by his shaved head that he couldn’t be himself around his girl. A male/female relationship needs a dash of machismo at age eighteen. After returning to Great Lakes for his final two weeks of training, Hayraker got a “Dear John” letter from the unfaithful wench.
Another technique the Navy used to break you was namecalling and swearing. Recruits were known as pukes, skinheads, scumbags, titheads etc.
Part of the official winter uniform when Hayraker was at Glakes was a black knit cap called a watch cap which was doubled over and evened out to fit right above the eyebrow. Hayraker thought it looked kind of cool. However, the first few days of camp a recruit wouldn’t know how to wear it, hence it stuck out on top like a tit, hence tithead.
All this name calling ultimately had a depressing effect and as a result maybe some of the suicides weren’t so fake.
The language used in boot camp by the other recruits was a traumatic experience at first for a young Catholic boy from Barnsville, Minnesota.
Those boys from Chicago and New York were especially adept at obscenity. Every other word was “fuck” or “fuckin’” and it made Hayraker want to go into a Sister Mary Teresa routine, “You are showing your very limited vocabulary by using such language. Only a very ignorant person would resort to such crudity.” Then again, maybe not.
That first day was remarkable in other respects. Hayraker lost his buddy, he met the Bluejackets, and he became constipated. His buddy was a kid named Brown he’d met at the YMCA in Minneapolis. Before being sworn in the next morning, Brown, Hayraker and two other future recruits (one of whom chickened out) stayed over night at the Y. Hayraker had never slept in the same room with anyone except his brothers and he was afraid of being mugged. He stayed up must of the night, not so much because of Brown and the other boys but because he wasn’t used to all the city noise, busses and cars going by on the street outside.
One of the the other YMCA guys turned out to be a real dummy. He left their orders on the train. After being sworn in, they took the Milwaukee Road to Milwaukee and another train to North Chicago. The porter offered to shine their shoes. Hayraker had never even seen a black man before except at a distance. They refused the porter’s offer because he would probably expect a tip. Besides, why would anyone want their shoes shined? They weren’t going to church.
They finally made it to Glakes and their first stop was a place called Camp Barry. This was where you were assigned a company, where you got your shots and got your first haircut. The boys from Minnesota had to wait until their orders were straightened out. Brown and Hayraker were assigned to the same company, but on the second day Brown got set back because he needed glasses.
Prior to this, Brown and Hayraker met these two guys from Minneapolis. They also became aware of an easier way to make it through boot camp. These two guys were waiting to be assigned to a special company. The Blue Jackets were a choir/band company who were used for public relations by recruit training command. They didn’t have to march, fight fire, or do any of the other monkeyshines Hayraker and the other boots had to contend with. But alas, Hayraker could neither sing nor play a musical instrument. It was easy duty, though. Hayraker stood watch in their compartment one night and the atmosphere was much looser, something like boy scout camp.
Hayraker had another semantics problem with one of these guys from the Bluejackets. The fellow thought the barracks “reeked.” Hayraker had never heard that word. He knew what it meant but everyone in Barnsville would have just said, “This place stinks.”
Semantics would become a bigger problem as time went by. The walls weren’t walls; they were “bulkheads.” The doors weren’t doors; they were “hatches.” And the floor wasn’t a floor; it was a “deck.” And of course, a rifle wasn’t a gun. A gun was one of those big babies you saw on board ship. Probably the biggest mistake you could make was to call a ship a boat. BK would murder you for that. A boat was that thing BK floated in his bathtub.
Hayraker was a simple lad when he first set foot in boot camp. But he was learning. He was learning how to swear; he was learning to treat women like objects; and he was learning to hate. He was definitely not learning how to swim, how to tie a square knot, or how to exercise. Twenty years later, Hayraker avoids water whenever possible, ties a slip knot on purpose, and lives by the Oscar Wilde dictum, “Whenever I feel like exercising, I sit down until the feeling goes away.”
One last thing about the dehumanizing aspect of those first few days at USNTC. There were no stalls in the bathroom. There were about twenty commodes just sitting there next to each other right out in the open. No privacy in other words. Needless to say, Hayraker developed constipation and eventually hemorrhoids.
Next up . . . The recruits are introduced to Gunner’s mate First Class BK Russell.
Continued
