M14 Forum

CharlieEcho

This was told to me many years ago when the man's mind was as sharp as the crease on a DI's trousers. It's raining and I'm stuck inside for the day. Here's the story. We always secured our M14's to our rack or bunk with the old style bicycle combination padlock.



My Bad Day


comm pogue


as related to


CharlieEcho


June 1968, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California 2nd Bn, Plt. 2019.


We had only been there, at the depot, a few days and had just gotten our guns, (rifles). We were cleaning up our tents when word came to fall out with our rifles. Well, I either lost my combination or someone threw it away. I fell out and it didn't take long for old Bennny, (SSgt. Benavides) to notice I didn't have a gun, (rifle). Well that got me a slap on the head, (really) and I was sent to Sgt. Ponder, (SSgt. W.C. Ponder), the Platoon Commander who we had just met. Well he was a little pixxed to say the least. Sgt. Ponder had to take me to the recruit PX to get a new set of padlocks and sign for them. Remember the PX was behind the theater and that's a long walk with your Senior DI. Then we went to battalion Police for bolt cutters.


By this time the platoon had come back, secured their rifles and gone some place else. So I ran back to the tent and cut my locks and made sure I put my combination in my wallet. Then I stepped out the tent and froze in place. I realized that there were only three tents between me and the duty tent. NOT FOUR!!! I didn't know what to do now, so I decided to sneak a smoke before I had to go tell Sgt. Ponder what I just did.


After a while I went in and told him, Sgt. Ponder, what I had done. There were other Drill Instructors in the tent and they all started laughing and gave Sgt. Ponder a hard time. This probably saved my life at the time.


Well, that second walk to the PX was lot worse than the first. Sgt. Ponder said he should let someone steal my rifle so I could spend the rest of my life in Portsmouth. That is also when he said he wished I had joined the Russian Army so he could kill me.


Well I was probably the first guy in the platoon he knew by name. Two sets of padlocks took a big chunk out of that first twenty dollar bill. That's the story of my bad day.


comm pogue


Platoon 2019 commenced training, June 17, 1968 and graduated August 15, 1968, 2nd Bn, Co. G; graduating 72 Marines.
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Only our names have been changed to protect the guilty. comm pogue is a friend of mine that normally (?) hangs out at the CMP forums. Neither one of us is as sharp as a DI's crease though today. Semper Fi!

wbm

You are indeed lucky to have survived. You could have ended up in a "motivation" platoon!

One thing that brought back a memory of PI was the "sneaking a smoke" line. At PI all smokes were secured in your foot locker. About once or twice a day, if we were lucky, we would hear, "smoking lamp is lit, prepare to smoke." At that point one designated smoker would retrieve a bucket of sand and another a bucket of water. The rest of us would open our locker and wait for the command, "you will retrieve one cigarette, one cigarette only." When we got outside we would stand at attention around the buckets and wait for the command to light up. One guy had hidden a second cigarette and after "hot boxing" the first lit the second one. At that point in time all hell broke loose and the DI who had seen the offense made all of us return to the squad bay, retrieve our buckets, and take out one cigarette. After we were ordered back outside, he had us light the smokes and put our buckets over our heads. He then ordered us to smoke the cigarettes "by the numbers" under our buckets. "Ready, SMOKE! Inhale! Exhale!...etc. This was all followed by bends and thrusts for what seemed like an eternity.

CharlieEcho

Yeah if the our DI had caught him smoking the locks would have been way secondary. I don't believe we had actually started our training cycle yet but were on the last day or two of processing in.



I recall most of the smoke breaks were taken in from of the tents or huts in roll-call formation. You had to do squat-thrusts or push-up in order to have a smoke. Another buddy next to me ask me to do the exercise and light up and extra for him. So I did. But I never smoked until I got out in the fleet.