Fleet Marine Life #91 – Black Light
Hey, there reader. Have you ever wanted to take all the furniture out of your room, put it outside in the grass, clean your room for 6 hours and then put all of your furniture back in? No? Well congratulations! You aren’t border-line retarded! However, if you said yes then you have a future in the US Marine Corps!
I hated Thursday and so did every Marine in my unit. Every Thursday was Field Day. On every Field day, a small piece of me would die inside. I joined to be a Marine and not a fucking house-keeper. This was the day where every Barracks Marine would have to clean their room, and common areas, for at least 4 hours. Then they had to sleep for like 5 hours, wake up at negative zero five hundred, clean for another hour, get inspected and pray to the field day gods that their Gunny’s vagina wasn’t hurting that day.
For inspection, I’ve seen people fail field days for the dumbest shit. One of my Marines failed because he had clean trash bags on the bottom of his trash bag container. I failed field day one day because I had a black mark on my floor, which I had to scrape off with a knife. Whenever my “leaders” inspected our rooms, they would flip out and throw a bitch fit whenever they would find a speck of dust like it’s the carrier of the Ebola Virus.
Fuck! I hated field days like nothing else in the Corps. I have never met any Marine who has liked field days. It is one of the top reasons why I got out. The Barracks Enlisted Quarters (BEQ) campaign plan (November 9, 2006) says that “Unit Commanders will conduct Field Days on an as needed basis.” Unfortunately, my command wants us to do field days every fucking week.
My entire company at one point failed field day for no reason. My Gunny didn’t even give us a reason. He just said that we were all fucked up and that we needed to fix it on a Saturday. Like, gee-golly whiz, Gunny! What the fuck am I supposed to fix if I don’t know what the fuck to fix?! And thanks for wasting my fucking weekend, asshole. I’ll be sure to carve your name on my forearms when I hang myself.
My entire company lived on the first floor. The thing about living near the parking lot was that there was always a shit ton of trash everywhere. We all knew that everyone above the first floor was throwing their trash downstairs. We informed our Gunny but he said that if “no one saw anything, nothing happened.” Fuck, I hated my useless ass Gunny. So my company would walk around the barracks and its parking lot to pick up such things like:
*Beer bottles (Lots of them)
*Broken beer bottles
*Dead animals
*Cigarette butts (Several bags worth)
*Condoms (Normally Used)
*Food wrappers
*Cans
*Cigarette boxes
*More cigarette butts
My command says that field days build discipline and attention to detail. I disagree. It destroys morale, wastes money and wastes a lot of time.
There IS a place where discipline and attention to detail is built. It’s called Boot Camp.
Chinese Field Day
Motivated Marine Corps Field Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVqzXwX4pm4&feature=related
Disassembling furniture to look for ghost turds since 1775.
Constant training builds attention to detail. It’s all an image to look like Marines work ‘harder’ than everyone else. As a unit leader, I hate that shit. Efficiency is what’s important, not how hard you work and waste time with bullshit work.
In Oki, they actually tore the little metal part that you hang your towel on and looked inside. Thing is, that thing was tag welded, so who in their right mind would rip that off? After they did that the towel and metal would constantly slip off.
The worst was when you had a hike the next day. So field day until 1 am, go to bed and wake up at 4 am to do a 15 to 20 mile hike. One more reason to get the hell out of the corps.
Makes you wonder who planned this shit out…