In the beginning (continued)

1  <  Previous

What they want

Josh Piper and James Landree circulated around a hot supply room during uniform issue. As prior-enlisted Marines, they and another Candidate were showing those new to the Corps how to fold the sleeves of a camouflage blouse, thread belts through brass buckles and how to properly fit a cover. As fingers fumbled through unfamiliar motions, the men and women of Class 186 spoke in hushed tones about what lay ahead.

This was the first day they were allowed to wear the green, brown and black pixel-pattern Marine camouflage uniform. It also was the day they’d be “picked up” by their training platoons.

The dread was almost universal among the Candidates. The horror stories of the stress and shock that comes with “pick-up” wafted through the conversations like a foul odor even as they quietly discussed their reasons for submitting to such a grueling indoctrination.

Folding his crisp new uniforms into neat piles, Patrick Amalfi didn’t look much like the leatherneck officer he aspired to be. Only days into OCS, the Texan still looked more like a college student than a future warrior, despite the freshly shaven head.

With an easy southwestern twang, he explained why he signed on and what he eventually wants to be.

“Infantry, without a doubt,” Amalfi declared. “If I’m going to push myself to do OCS, then I’m going to do that job. I think it would be an absolute honor to lead Marines into combat – to have 40 men look up to me and ask me what to do. It’s an honor.”

His answer is not uncommon. Most of the Candidates without guarantees as aviators or lawyers want to be in the infantry.

His journey would begin this day, and no matter how much Amalfi and his fellow Candidates thought they knew about what to expect from the Marine Corps, it would change radically in only a few hours. There would be no time to think about the future – only time enough to contemplate their fate two hours, 20 minutes or two seconds away.

The day would throw all of their assumptions into doubt, turning resolute, high-minded officer Candidates on their heads as they stepped in an alien world. Amalfi’s rock-jawed pride would yield to indecision, confusion and fear as his platoon’s enlisted instructors hammered away at him with orders and nitpicked his failings.

In the chaos of those first days, the sergeant instructors would begin stripping away the civilian exterior of each Candidate, pushing each to either find the strength to make it through the next 10 weeks – or just walk away.

Pick-up day

He sounded confident at uniform issue a few hours earlier, but when the sergeant instructors started bellowing into his ear and scattering the neat rows of desks and chairs across the cold concrete floor, Amalfi was anything but sure of himself.

His eyes scanning side to side, Amalfi wondered what to do as his fellow Candidates scrambled out of the building known as “Classroom 3.” At that moment, he looked as if he’d opened his eyes and realized the nightmare he’d been having was real.

It was the moment they’d been dreading and more. Pick-up.

The sergeant instructors who would be a source of unrelenting discipline during their 10 weeks at OCS set them into motion, barking orders, hustling them out of the classroom and across the black asphalt of the parade ground. The Candidates were so confused and frazzled that they could barely maintain a ragged formation as the sergeant instructors buzzed in and out of their lines like angry bees, shouting orders that seemed to make little sense.

The Candidates were ordered to rush upstairs to their third-floor squad bay, grab their belongings and haul them back down to the parade ground for “contraband check.” As they poured T-shirts, notebooks, pens, socks, running shoes and more out of their sea bags and onto the hot tarmac, the Candidates got their first taste of boot camp-style stress. The hell of pick-up day would blur into an equally difficult and confusing night, with instructors barking out impossible time limits for the simplest tasks.

As sweat poured down Amalfi’s pale face, it was clear the idealism of those first few days was gone. Now, it was all about just making it through.

And so it starts

At five minutes before reveille, everyone was already awake.

The tension of pick-up hadn’t yet worn off, making for a fitful night in the rack. When the clock read 5 a.m., sergeant instructors walked into the squad bay on cue, the heavy thud of their boots filling the room over the noise of the industrial-sized fan blowing at the other end of the long row of bunk beds. When they flipped on the lights, the world these young men and women had once known was gone.

The squad bay was dank with the sweaty odor of the night’s harried events, when something as simple as making a bed took nearly an hour with the shouts of sergeant instructors blasting in everyone’s ears. Organizing clothes and shoes took just as long, as the team of enlisted Marines pushed and pushed the Candidates to execute their demands to the letter.

They awoke to a view of dingy grey linoleum tiles, dented green lockers and chipped wooden trunks, a view that wouldn’t change for two months.

Tumbling out of their racks, the Candidates’ bleary eyes grew wider with each new shouted demand from their instructors.

Piling into the bathroom, the 57 men of Charlie Company’s 4th Platoon frantically shaved, showered, brushed their teeth and stumbled back to their racks as the instructors counted down the time.

“Put your PT gear on!”

Heads turned left and right in confusion; hands tumbled through the government-issue footlockers looking for thin nylon shorts and a green T-shirt. Amalfi’s face was covered in sweat, his eyes blank with confusion.

“Get those go-fasters laced up! Ten, nine, eight, seven ... You better be ready when I’m done,” bellowed Gunnery Sgt. James Dixon, a sergeant instructor who soon earned a reputation as least liked among the Candidates.

“Alright, let’s go! Go! Go!” shouted 4th Platoon’s top enlisted instructor, Gunnery Sgt. Ruben Velez.

The Candidates rolled out the door, down flights of concrete stairs and out the side door of their barracks. The air was already hot and sticky, a typical June morning in northern Virginia.

For the next few hours the Candidates would be driven to the edge of exhaustion – and some well beyond. It was their first meeting with the obstacle course.

The physical training

Moments after tackling the first obstacles, the Candidates’ faces were drawn with fatigue. Concentrating on the instructions offered by the enlisted staff who demonstrated how to negotiate each obstacle was next to impossible.

Men struggled up the 25-foot rope climb, using their legs to help push themselves rather than using purely arm strength to edge their way up the thick ropes.

For the women, the rope climb was a distant worry – the obstacles preceding that last challenge were tough enough. Many hurled themselves against wooden walls and horizontal telephone-pole-sized logs in vain, unfamiliar as they were with the tricks and techniques that would become second nature later in their training.

Running the course in the thick summer air proved too much for some – cramps and dehydration plagued many, and one Candidate collapsed in the squad bay, his legs locked in spasms of dehydration.

But the would-be officers knew they would have to toughen up. At the Basic Underwater Demolition School where Navy SEAL commandos learn their trade, there is a saying: “The easiest day was yesterday.” That’s equally true at OCS.

Within three days of meeting their sergeant instructors, the Candidates would be enduring 3-mile platoon hikes, humping packs stuffed and seams bursting, through the northern Virginia woods and negotiating a 25-foot rope ascent wearing a rucksack – the last a task that would prove nearly insurmountable for even the strongest Candidates.

That second week was a pretty fair indicator of the intense physical tasks the future lieutenants could expect for the rest of their time at OCS.

If a newly commissioned second lieutenant were to fall behind when leading his platoon on a run through the pine woods of Camp Lejeune, N.C., for example, it would be a huge loss of face. The idea that officers should be at the top of the heap physically is drilled into every officer Candidate here, and the amount of physical training at OCS was a shock to some.

“You know, when you first see these guys you think ‘Oh yeah, another boot lieutenant,’ ” said Sgt. Jennifer Truslow, 22, a supply Marine now assisting with OCS training at Quantico. “Since I’ve been here, I definitely have a different perspective on officers.”One can’t help but see that when the Corps says it wants its officers to lead from the front, that means literally as well as figuratively.

Much like boot camp

Much of what the officers endure mirrors the enlisted training experience, and anyone who’s been through enlisted boot camp will recognize the formula.

The sergeant instructors berate the Candidates for their mistakes with as much color – and volume – as any drill instructor at San Diego or Parris Island, S.C. In fact, these instructors all have worn the “Smokey Bear” cover of an enlisted drill instructor at least once in their careers.

For the prior-enlisted Candidates, there is a strong sense of déjà vu as the shouts ring out through the squad bay.

“There is no ‘me,’ ‘my’ or ‘mine’ anymore!”

“Oh, I get it! It’s ‘Semper I,’ huh!?”

But unlike enlisted recruit training, the emphasis here is not on breaking down a Candidate and building him back up as a Marine. These college grads are expected to adapt on the fly to use the skills and apply the talents they bring from the civilian world as they learn to lead Marines.

But in the early days of their training, applying talents was far from the Candidates’ minds. Just two weeks into the training, their goals were simple. Keep moving. Stay out of trouble. Survive.