Tag: Navy boot camp

The Racist

I won what the Navy called the “American Spirit Honor Metal” as the top recruit in my 800-man boot camp battalion.

MedalI think the chief who ran Company 526 picked me to represent the company mainly because I had the highest average score on the weekly tests we were given.  That’s not saying much. In those days a good many Navy recruits were high school drop outs.

The 10 of us, one from each 80-man company in the battalion, were questioned, one by one, by an officer who cut the list of candidates to three.  The questions he asked were easy. One, I remember, because of his reaction to my answer.

“What is your first obligation if you are captured?” he asked.

“To escape,” I answered.

He looked at me with a hard face and asked, “Have you been given the answers to these questions?”

“No sir,” I answered. “There are posters outside all of our classrooms. One of the posters said if we are captured our first obligation is to escape. I read them while we wait for class to start.”

That's me, being recognized as the top gradate in my 800-man batallion.
That’s me, being recognized as the top recruit in my 800-man battalion.

The three candidates who survived the first cut were interviewed by a three-member panel of officers and I won.  The next day the chief who ran my company asked, “What did you tell them, Stith?”

“What do you mean?” I said.  “I answered their questions.”

“They didn’t want to pick you. They said you are a racist.”

 *  *  *

The three-officer panel had asked me a lot of military questions which I easily answered. I don’t think I missed any.  And then they asked me how I felt about racial segregation.

They had my military record. They knew I was a Southerner, born in Alabama, raised in Alabama and North Carolina in the 1940’s and 50’s.  For the first time, I paused, torn between the truth and what I knew they wanted to hear.

“Take your time,” one of the officers said.

Then I thought, What the hell.  I told them.  I said I had no problem taking orders from a Negro enlisted man or officer, or serving side by side aboard ship. But I did not believe in what I called “social mixing.”

In an odd sort of way I am grateful for that day. A lot of other people don’t remember what they were 58 years ago, exactly where they stood, and, consequentially, can’t know how much they’ve changed.

NOTE: My battalion and another battalion graduated on the same day. The top recruit from the other battalion was a black man.

Coming Friday: Let’s Try Again

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!