MILNET: John Carl Roat's CLASS-29
An Extract, Courtesy of the Author
To quote Rush Limbaugh, "War is about killing people and breaking things." I have done it, war is not a lot of fun, and intellectually there is little to defend the practice. Notice, I did not say "nothing," I said "little," and it is a damn BIG little.
It is this simple, if they are willing to kill people and break things, and you are not, they win. One ugly fact about human nature is: If someone will not fight for what is theirs, they lose it. This book is about some of the men who choose to be ready to fight. Next to my wife and children, I am more proud of becoming a member of this group of men, then anything else I've done in my life.
Around fourth grade I saw a movie, it was "The Frogmen" with Richard Widmark. When I walked out of that theater, my life's ambition was firmly fixed in every cell of my body. You could have offered me GOD'S job, the presidency, anything, I would have turned it down. I was going to be a United States Navy Frogman.
This book is about the test to become a Frogman, the men I took it with, and the men who gave it to us. We were tested by the BEST, and I thank them. Our instructors had all taken the test, they knew the pain, and what all the craziness was about. In a way this test was just about finding those who would not take the easy way out. When your back is to the wall, it is easy to fight. The only real question is, what do you do, when there is an easy way out?
Remember, these are the people that stand ready to do the bad business of war. Before you label them as sadistic, antiquated, warmongers, think about what you have to lose. Now ask yourself this simple question, "When someone wants to break my things and kill me, who do I want watching my back?"
Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base was home to U.D.T.-21, U.D.T.-22 and the east coast U.D.T. Replacement Training Unit. I was nineteen and standing at the threshold of my life's ambition, being a United States Navy Frogman. I knew the only dangers to me not making it through training were injury or being thrown out. Quitting was not an option, I had never allowed myself to think if things got too bad that I would quit. The only options I considered were, completing training, my body would get broken, or they would throw me out.
Everything I have written is how I see it now, after years of hindsight. In those days, I didn't think many things out, I just did. When training started I didn't think at all, I saw, I reacted, and now believe those that made it through the six months did the same. They wanted men out the backside of this training that DID NOT QUIT, but that wasn't enough. You had to be willing to give any little energy you had managed to hoard to your classmates. Those two things came from your core, under stress you didn't have time to think them out. They were there, or they were not. Our instructors' whole purpose was to keep that stress applied, day after day, week after week, month after month.
My hope is to describe training accurately. The rest of my life, I have judged myself and others by the standard of those months, and the strength of the men involved. Know that I cherish every second of training, it is with me for life. Each man that suffered the six months of U.D.T. R.T-29 are part of my heart and I love them.
I'm going to take the instructor's two and a half page synopsis of our class and use it as a header for what I have to say about each phase of training.
In truth, it was physical preconditioning, their objective was to put your body in the condition of PAIN. I had thought I knew a lot about training, most classes started with thirty or less. How the hell did this class get so big? Our first formation was a joke, no one knew which end was up. We had been issued used green fatigues that didn't fit and surveyed boondockers, worn out work boots. When we fell in, there was no military bearing and Instructor Waddell just loved it.
He welcomed us with, "Hit the Deck, start Pushing Virginia Away." We had no idea what he was talking about. Waddell quickly informed us what he was talking about. A position we would spend a good part of the next six months in. You start by kicking both feet out behind you, your arms are thrown straight out in front of your chest. If you land properly, you have Hit the Deck. You are now in a lovely position called the Lean and Rest. Your body is parallel to the ground, no sag, you are held up by your extended arms and the tips of your toes, that's the Hit the Deck part. Instructor Waddell gave us our first educational opportunity. Hit the deck on your feet, over and over, until we could do it as a group. When he had us worked into a good sweat, he put us at the Lean and Rest and then walked through the ranks telling us what low life scum we were.
Waddell was particularly good at degrading officers, with respect. Whatever he'd said to them he added a respectful SIR. When he determined that we had learned the Lean and Rest he gave us a class in Push Virginia Away. Push Virginia Away meant, lower yourself until your chest was no more then one fist height from the ground, then raise yourself to the starting position, repeat until ordered to stop or you couldn't do it anymore.
Let me describe Chief Engine man Burney Waddell. A big man six foot two or three, large head, shoulders and arms. The scariest thing about Waddell was his eyes, you knew he could see through steel, they said, "I'll hurt you." Burney was a rich brown color. A colored man of power in the south of the 60's. He handled all that race bull shit the first formation. Instructor Waddell let every one of us know, we were inferior beings. He had talked very rudely about our mothers and how we were conceived. Waddell took off his jacket, folded it neatly and set it on a tree stump. Next, he set his hat on top of the jacket. He folded his big arms across his chest and told us, if we didn't like the things he had said he would be glad to discuss that with anyone, or any group of us, over behind the barracks where whatever happened, couldn't be seen. In the parlance of the day, he had just chose-out one hundred and thirty-four guys. Nobody wanted to fight.
We ran everywhere, an undisciplined snake dance of spastics. Guys running over each other, stepping on your heels, always in each others way. The instructors kept everyone off base. I think they were watching the officers to see who would step forward and organize this mess. The first officer that stood out of the background for me was Lieutenant Junior Grade Richard (Rick) Shea. He should have been a disk jockey was the first thing that came to my mind. He talked like he was on the radio, I called him Swing and Sway with Rick Shea. Mr. Shea was five foot seven or eight, he was tightly packed, laid back energy. The only thing Swing and Sway wanted to organize was a party. He would turn out to be one of the three guys that kept me laughing throughout training.
Most of us enlisted men enjoyed seeing the officers get dumped on, it was usually officers doing the dumping on us. Instructor Waddell and Ensign David Janke, seemed to form an instant bond, Waddell loved to say his name Mr. Janke. He would drag out he mister part, something like, Missster Janke. They would have long one-sided conversations, while Ensign Janke Pushed Virginia Away. David is one of those guys you have to like and Waddell did. He liked to give him pushups, squat-jumps, eight count body builders and the dreaded Duck Walk. I suspect I'm not the only guy that enjoyed Janke and Waddell's conversations, after all, if he was fucking with Janke he wasn't fucking with me.
The third officer that came into focus for me was Ensign James M. Hawes, my first thought was, he looks like a college professor, he ought to have a pipe in his mouth. Hawes became a big part of the reason I made it through training, he passed energy to me with his voice. I was in his boat crew throughout training. There is no more important thing in training then your boat crew. If you don't learn to work as a team, carry your share of the boat, the rest of the crew will make sure you're gone. Hawes was not an open person, I don't mean he was sneaky, but like a good poker player, he didn't let you see on his face what was on his mind. He would blend in, almost disappear, then when needed, BAM, he was right there doing whatever needed to be done. Ensign James Hawes was an officer in the best sense of the word, he always took care of his men, even when he knew damn well the instructors would make him pay. Hawes could look broken down, decrepit, dilapidated, extremely dingy, and still project strength with his voice. I had never done well in a group, unless I have had a good leader. In Hawes I had one, tough, demanding, always willing to put his ass where he would put yours.
The first guy I got tight with was Jack Lynch. He had a quick, funny mind and mouth. God bless him, he could make the whole class laugh at our pain. Jack and I started harassing each other from day one and kept it up right through training and on into the teams. I think Jack needed to be mad every once in awhile, I mean deep down pissed off, and I have always been able to piss him off. What are friends for? If not to help you through life.
They started getting us in the condition of pain and introducing us to all their tools from day one. The sand, running in sand. They loved to get us wet, roll us in the sand, then run us up and down, over and over, the BIGGEST SAND DUNE around. The damn thing even had a name, Mt. Suribachi. We were at times required to carry sand up the damn thing and deposit it at the summit. After all, we didn't want it to get smaller, did we? Strange, I had spent a good part of my youth with sand in my shoes and every other uncomfortable place you can think of, but that damn mountain of sand was the worse thing they could do to me. Our first time on Suribachi was gut wrenching, but worse was the one hundred and thirty-four guys who were falling all over each other. Sand kicked down your throat while you gasped for breath. Trainees stepping on each others feet and hands. If I remember right, that's where the first guy quit.
The obstacle course was another of the instructors' tools of pain, as was just getting there. They never took the shortest route anywhere. You might run past the obstacle course a couple times before you actually arrived. It must have been the third or fourth day of training. I was trying to improve my time on the course, when I scared the shit out of myself, and came very close to wiping myself out of training. One of the obstacles was the cargo net, it was stretched between two large trees. The top of the net was about sixty feet and suspended from a taut cable. You went up one side, over the top, and down the other, simple. I had seen one of the faster guys kind of roll over the top. It looked much faster then getting one leg over, then the other. I went up the net. When my chest was level with the cable, I reached across the top, put my chest hard against the cable, pulled and twisted at the same time. As I went over the top, I lost my grip, oh well. The only thing that saved me was my leg getting caught in the net, about halfway down. I wasn't hurt, but that net had put the fear of God in me. If I would have fallen all the way to the pit at the bottom, I knew training would have been over.
Worse was to come, back at the obstacle course that afternoon. I went through the obstacles before the cargo net no problem, I had a plan. It is amazing how dumb fear can make you. My plan was simple, I would climb the net close to one of the tree trunks. Go to the top, but never cross it, just come back down the same side. My stinking thinking had been, there were so many guys, they would never notice. It worked, I got off the net stepped around the tree and finished the rest of the obstacles. Home free, not quite.
Instructor Tom Blais had me assume the Lean and Rest and began telling me a long story. At least my arms felt like it was long when he was done. It seemed that he had observed my fall early in the day, and had a personal interest in helping me overcome my fear of the top of that net.
A little introduction to Damage Control Chief Petty Officer Tom Blais. He looked like he should be a Viking. Tom would have fit right in, a pointed helmet with horns on his big head. Furs hanging down off wide shoulders, over a thick chest. One of those big double edged swords in his hands. He always spoke calmly, like he was speaking to errant, well-loved children. Tom Blais was a religious man, the only instructor that didn't have a list of profanity to describe our short comings. He always made the pain he was inflicting sound like the only reasonable course of action. I found out later why my fall, half way down the net, had gained so much of Instructor Blais's attention. About a year before he had fallen off the net, top, to the pit at the bottom. He had gotten up and finished the course. Then spent a couple of months in the hospital.
All I knew at the time was I had put myself in deep shit, my arms ached trying to hold my body ridged and Blais was somehow going to make me pay. The rest of the Class 29 had left for the chow hall. I think being alone, at the obstacle course, with Instructor Blais, scared me more then the top of that fucking net. He gave me a special class on going over the top of the net, again and again, time after time. I learned the lesson, DO NOT CHEAT, pain is one of God's teaching tools, Instructor Tom Blais had used it effectively.
Tom McCutchan, Lynch found him right away. Jack was always trying to find out what was going on. Now we had a guy who had been here before. McCutchan had finished everything but the last two weeks of training. He had broken his leg while getting off a truck, with just two weeks to go. The thought that they had made him start all over, was not pleasant. We had just started training, but I was dead sure I didn't want to do one damn day over.
McCutchan was a good guy, but all through training he would say things like, "You think this is bad you should see what is coming next?" It drove me nuts, all I wanted to think about was getting past right now. The funny thing was, if McCutchan didn't tell me what was next, I would ask. It was like having a harassment factor for the future. As if we didn't have enough to worry about right now, let's worry about something we can't do anything about. McCutchan loved it, in some perverse way, I'm sure it helped Tom get through training for the second time. Not many guys have done that. Most couldn't even get there, let alone do it twice. I do remember thinking, if he can do it twice, I can do it once.
There were still one hundred and thirty some guys when they broke us up in boat crews and gave us our boats. The boats were I.B.L.'s, Inflatable Boats Large. Next to the instructors, they were responsible for more people quitting, then any other single factor. One thing you have to understand, these boats were more for carrying then riding in. Each crew carried their boat on their heads, and until your crew got their ducks in a row, everyone suffered. There was no chance of learning how to work as a team, boat crew, until we got rid of the guys that didn't belong in training. They were just an added harassment factor. Sounds cold, but that's life. We and our boats must have been funny to anyone not trying to carry them with some semblance of order. To put it mildly, we were totally fouled up and the instructors loved it.
They had jammed ten guys under each boat, too many, not enough room to move. They made damn sure there were a lot of different heights under each boat. Some boats had guys ranging from six foot five to five foot five, making it difficult for everyone to carry their share of the boat. This was just another of the divide and conquer techniques our instructors were so good at. There were thirteen boats to start with and we were required to move them as one. We did not accomplish this until after HELL WEEK, when there were seventeen officers and forty-five enlisted left. Until then, we suffered more punishment for not handling our boats in the appropriate manor then anything else.
Keep in mind you could leave anytime you wanted. Our instructors liked to remind us that we could just take off our red helmets and they would see we had a HOT shower, dry clothes, and a set of orders to some, nice WARM comfortable duty station.
One ploy Instructor Cook liked to use was start some form of mild torture, say pushup in the winter surf of Chesapeake Bay. When we were good and cold he would tell us we could stop as soon as someone quits. Believe me, if someone I thought was going to quit, was near me, I would encourage them. Using solid logic like, if your going to quit do it now, if you quit later I'll kick your ass! It was strange, but people rarely quit while we were in the middle of something. It was between evolutions, while they thought about what was coming next, that most guys quit.
Food, we were allowed to eat as much as we could, there was no restriction on volume, just on time. For the first two weeks of training we had thirty minutes from the time we fell out, to get through the chow line, eat and be in formation standing by our boats, ready to pick'em up and move out. The time would be cut to fifteen minutes at the start of HELL WEEK. Large amounts of food were stuffed down our throats, "without the benefit of mastication." One of our officers, possibly Janke, had said, "Food, without the benefit of mastication, is a crime against nature." I'm sure most of us didn't know what the word mastication meant, but just the ring of the phrase caused a bunch of us to bust up laughing. Which, of course, caused all of us to Push Virginia Away, until the person who instigated the crime of laughter confessed to his guilt.
Our instructors had many ways to punish, one of the worst was a form of mental/physical torture called the Gig Squad. The infraction could be anything, laughing, not laughing, running too slow, running to fast. After the instructor inflicted whatever on the spot punishment they chose, you would be informed that you would attend Gig Squad that evening. They were held during free time, after chow and before any night evolution we might have. You got to think about it all day, what were they going to do to me at Gig Squad? The damn things lasted about an hour, and consisted of the usual physical tortures: Squat Jumps, Pushups, Duck Walk, etc. Just a little something extra from your beloved instructor to you. I was among a select few that made every Gig Squad held and my good buddy Jack Lynch was right there with me. On occasion, for some unknown reason, a Gig Squad would not be held, you felt like you had just received a gift from God.
Ronald T. Flockton, a.k.a. Shorty, was a third class petty officer with four years in the Navy when Class 29 started. Shorty was like a touch stone for me throughout training. His face always showed what I felt, I would look around for Shorty, check out the look on his face and feel better. Odd when you think about it, what it took to get through each day, one way or another you gave a lift and you were given a lift. If you didn't give, you didn't get. By the middle of the second week you knew who was going to make it. I knew they would have to break Shorty's body to get him out of there, I wondered if it showed on my face like it did Shorty's.
Harry Humphries, he looked just like his name, big head, shoulders and chest with big extra long arms. Coal black hair all over, he'd shaved right up under his eyes. Picture an intellectual caveman, he's the guy you'd pick to guard your children if you couldn't be there and bad things were going to happen. The talk was that Harry came from wealth and was on the family shit list for being kicked out of one of the Ivy League Colleges, then joining the Navy as an enlisted man. There was always a lot of talk about Harry, I'll tell you one of the B.S. stories the guys passed around, just to give you a sense of how we felt about him. Then I'll tell you the real story, with Harry all you had to do was ask, and you got the truth.
There was a long family history with the college Harry was attending, his grandfather had donated one of the buildings to the school and many members of his family were graduates. It seems Harry had been having a good time chasing the ladies and consuming large quantities of assorted booze. He was hanging off the cliff of dismissal by his finger tips. They had already disallowed his participation in sports, he was down to one more thing and your out. At this point our boy Harry, always ready for a challenge, removed one hand from the edge of the cliff and flipped them the finger.
The BIG GAME, football with the number one rival always got everyone up, since Harry wasn't allowed to play, he and some of his fraternity brothers thought up a way to make his presence felt. He would wear an animal skin draped over this large hairy body, at half time Harry was to jump out of his teams' stands, run across the field swinging a big club over this head and generally make rude gestures and sounds in front of the oppositions' stands. Two circumstances escalated their plan well past anything that might have been acceptable: One, it was cold, Harry was sitting in the stands, wrapped in a blanket consuming firewater with his bro's. Two, Harry never wore underwear. When the time came, he threw off the blanket and vaulted over the handrail, someone grabbed the animal skin while Harry was still in mid air. Oops, when he hit the ground, Harry was a naked man with a club in his hand. Knowing he was a goner, our boy went out in style, instead of covering himself and getting out of there, he extended his run. Harry took a slow jog around the stadium swinging his club and waving to the crowd. Good story, now the truth, another good story.
Harry had not been kicked out of college, he was a member of a Naval Reserve Unit that had been called up over the Cuban Missile Crisis. The reason he wasn't playing, in the game in question, had nothing to do with being in trouble, he was a Freshman, and Freshman football was over. It was the big game, with the main rival and Harry was wrapped in an animal skin, drinking with his bro's. There had been no plan, and he didn't have a club, but he sure caused a huge brew-haha at half-time.
The opposing team had a guy dressed as a Bobcat, their mascot, this guy was really getting into the half-time ceremonies, and for some reason, that even Harry didn't understand, that damn Bobcat was pissing him off. The mascot was wearing one of those big phoney football helmets and Harry decided he was going to take it. He ran across the field, tackled the mascot, right in front of the oppositions' stands, jerked the helmet of the Bobcats head and held it up for all the world to see, a captured trophy.
There were a few moments of stunned silence for Harry to bask in the glory of his deed, then he was running for his life, all those college boys wanted their mascots' helmet back. Harry said it seemed like the whole damn stands moved as one, it was haul ass time and Harry did. With the mascot's helmet in hand he made his escape, the opposition fans down on the field in hot pursuit. Well, both the stories, the B.S. one and the truth, capture our man Humphries, and thanks to the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had Harry and the Ivy League didn't. He was the one guy you could have taken out of the equation of Class 29, and everyone would have missed him, even the instructors.
On Monday of week two, we were told to have our heads shaved no later then Friday. The instructors let us know that for the paltry sum of twenty-five cents they would cut our hair, or we could pay the fifty cents at the base barber shop. Hell, I didn't care, I'd had a butch hair cut most of my life. Well, we had foreign classmates, four officers, Major H. A. Qureshi from Pakistan, Lieutenant E. G. Magnnessen from Norway, Ensign A. W. Doumouras from Greece, Lieutenant A. E. J. Tiel from the Netherlands and four enlisted Dutch Marines De Beer, Pauli, Ravensburg and Hack. The Dutch Marines and their Officer Lt. Tiel, went haywire, the air was full of "hac veer duma's," some Dutch curse, they were threatening to leave. It was all about hair cuts, not pain and suffering. These guys carried their share of the boat, they didn't speak English, but a grunt, when your straining, is still a grunt in any language. It took two days to get it straight, at one time our Dutch men were packing their bags. The Counsel of the Netherlands intervened to calm them down and get them to submit to hair cuts. It seemed that in the Netherlands, only criminals had their heads shaved.
Jack had a bright idea. He bought a set of clippers, and went into competition with Instructor Spiegel, cutting hair. Lynch figured any idiot could shave a head, no problem! I of course, was dumb enough to be his first and only client. With about half my head shaved, Jack's entrepreneurial activity, came to a screeching halt. We both received some on the spot instruction, to help us think more clearly, Push Virginia Away. Jack received extra instruction for his monumental stupidity, in the dreaded INSTRUCTORS' HUT. The last place on earth any trainee wanted to find himself.
I believe this is when Jack became a permanent member of Gig Squad. Our instructors had a whole list of reasons why his one stool barber shop was illegal. The two most prominent being: (1) He was not a licenced barber. (2) His enterprise was stealing food from Instructor Spiegel's family. Another small businessman bites the dust.
One of our foreign officers was from Greece, Ensign Doumouras, the man was a bull among bulls, one arm pushups, one arm chin-ups and squat jump all day long. The first time he really got my attention was on the obstacle course, there was an obstacle called the Skyscraper. It was four stories high, with no normal way up, you had to jump up grab the edge of the floor above and pull yourself up, floor after floor. When you got to the top, down the other side. Ensign Doumouras, I always called him Dukie, went up and down that thing fast, but one day he just decided to stop at the top floor and get a good look around. He was just standing up there, taking in the view. Two instructors, Blais and Newell, were hollering up at him trying to get him moving. Now Dukie, like most of our foreign classmates, pretended not to understand English when dealing with the instructors. Instructor Newell is hollering for him to get down, Dukie looks down at them with a, "what are you trying to tell me?" look on his face. Instructor Blais points up at Dukie, points down at the ground then does a couple squat jumps. Dukie gets a big smile on his face and starts squat jumping around on top of the Skyscraper, Newell lost it and started swearing, Blais was just shaking his head, Dukie going up and down like a spring, turning this way and that, getting a good look around.
By the end of the second week there was something happening that took me years to figure out, it was a network of guys that would complete training. It worked like this, say I fell or got knocked down going up Mt. Suribachi, if Lynch was close he would help me up. I may have given Shorty a little push over the top if he was bogged down in the sand. Shorty and Harry might each take an arm and give Pauli a little support, if he was hurting on a bad run. By the end of the second week the guys that didn't give, didn't get, not even a nice word.
There had been no talk about it that I know of, in most cases you still didn't know all the guys' names, but each guy that was putting out knew a couple more that were and each of them knew a couple more. It made a net and anyone that wasn't apart of the net fell through, I don't care how strong they were.
Injuries, everyone had at least small ones, for some guys they ended their training. The guy that had the longest lasting injury I know about was Joe Camp, a third class petty officer with a little time in the Navy. I'm not sure when I found out what Joe was going through, I think it was around the third month, but I saw the signs the second week. The ass of his pants were stained darker. Joe had a bad case of bleeding hemorrhoids throughout training. A case of piles may not sound like much, but we did hundreds of sit-ups every day, not crunches, real sit-ups, where your ass rubs back and forth on the hard ground. Joe never bitched, he just kept going. I know that during the last month or so, he wore Kotex between his ass cheeks so the instructors didn't see all the blood. Anybody that thinks Joe Camp wasn't a hell of a man can kiss my ass.
I just wanted HELL WEEK over, I figured most of the non-hackers would be gone and out of my way, plus things had to get easier. Right, on the non-hackers, wrong, on the easier. Other then our five Dutch Marines, we had started training knowing nothing about each other, except each of us had passed the test to get there.
Thinking back, the officers had a harder row to hoe, not physically but mind game wise. Their rank had always shielded them from the overt rudeness enlisted men heap on each other as the normal way of going about the day. Well, magnify the normal young guy verbal bullshit by ten, put a hard edge on it, that's what our Instructors passed out, regardless of rate or rank. Officers are not use to enlisted men verbally abusing them, any were else in the military, you could be written up and busted in rank, or go to the Brig. The officers pulled together quickly, they were the first net formed, of the sixteen U.S. Naval Officers to start preconditioning twelve were left. HELL WEEK would join all the nets.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Curt Gibby had two special problems: 1) He was the senior of our three LTJGs, the highest ranking officer in our Training Class. Now, in the real Navy, being senior was a good deal, not so in our "Catch 22" world! All good was bad, all bad was bad, and it was the senior trainees fault! Mr. Gibby took life and his responsibilities seriously, but being the senior trainee, was a no win situation. 2) He had big feet, just a little bit bigger then the largest boondockers the Training Department had to offer. Mr. Gibby would have happily purchased civilian shoes that fit, but that wasn't allowed. I think he suffered every foot problem known to man, over the first four months of training. I know at one time he had lost nine out of ten toenails, and had an ugly red line running up his leg. SO, YOU WANT TO BE A FROGMAN?
Copyright 1997, 1998, John Carl Roat, all right reserved.
Used with permission.
