Category: Sea Stories

Sick, Lame Or Lazy

When I woke up I couldn’t swallow.

I was in Navy boot camp in San Diego so there was no staying in bed. I got up, dressed, mustered with my shipmates and marched to chow even though I couldn’t couldn’t eat or drink.  The order I was waiting for came after breakfast but, thankfully, before calisthenics: “Sick, lame or lazy, fall out!”

I fell out.

IMG_2484 (2)
Seaman Recruit Stith

In boot camp no sympathy is wasted on sick sailors, some of whom, those in charge firmly believe, are not sick at all, just lazy. 

I marched to the spot reserved for sailors who said they were sick [or lame or lazy] and stood at parade rest for more than an hour before Navy corpsman put a thermometer in my mouth.

When he took it out, and looked at it, he called an ambulance and they took me away. I stayed in sick bay –the hospital — for seven days, getting penicillin shots in my bottom.

Postscript: Normally, because I had been in sick bay for a week, the Navy would have sent me to a new company, a week behind mine, so I wouldn’t miss any training. Lucky for me my company was assigned to KP that week, so the only thing I missed was my turn washing dishes.

Coming Friday:  You Want Ugly?

Payback

It was around 2 a.m. when Chief Petty Officer J. R. Mastronardi, who was in charge of our training, turned on the lights in our barracks and rousted us out of our racks.   Then he began calling out names,  12 or 15, including mine. He ordered us to dress, get two rifles, tie them together, and fall in on the grinder, double time.

He was angry.

Navy recruits washed clothes daily.
Navy recruits washed clothes daily.

Every night we washed the uniform we had worn that day or, at least, we were supposed to.  And tied our clothes to clothes lines with square knots, with the fly of our pants always pointing toward the camp nearby where Marine recruits trained.

[You get it don’t you? Pee on the Marines.]

Mastronardi had gone down the line feeling each uniform. Ours, he said, were dry.  He concluded that we had hung our uniforms on the line without washing them.

But I had washed my uniform, and I told him so. I think he knew he had made a mistake, but it didn’t matter.  He ordered us, me included, to do manual of arms drills over and over – and over — until men began collapsing on the grinder.  

* * *

A few days later one of my shipmates said, “Stith, you’re in trouble. You didn’t lock up your change, you left some on a shelf in your locker and Mastronardi found it.”

The Navy was dead serious about a rule requiring recruits to lock up their money because they didn’t want sailors stealing from one another.  The officers and petty officers in charge of our training  could not ignore a theft, however small, but they did not want to waste time on a penny-ante matter.

So lock up your money. Or else.

Chief J.R. Mastranardi
Chief J.R. Mastronardi

Mentally, I braced. This was trouble. But Mastronardi, who was in charge of  our company, never said a word to me. Not one word.

Payback.

NOTE:  Every time I polish my shoes I think of that guy. Because of him I give special attention to the backs, making sure they are as shiny as the fronts, shinier maybe.  That was the only thing I learned in boot camp that I retained for life.  Mastronardi hammered it into our heads:  “A man who won’t shine the back of his shoes won’t wipe his [bottom].”

Coming Friday: Donna, Will You Please Be Quiet!