An Officer and a Gentleman - Part 1 The First Week

I first saw this movie when I was pretty young. My favorite part was when Richard Gere fights his drill instructor. I didn't see it again until after I had gone through OCS, and realized that they had taken quite a bit of poetic license with it. The other thing I did not remember was the very graphic sex scenes. I had just started seeing a young lady and it was quite awkward choosing this as a movie to watch together. Lots of awkward silence.

Officer Candidate School was an interesting experience. I would never want to do it again, but I am glad I went through the experience. Here is what I can remember:

The school is 13 weeks long and used to be in Pensacola, FL. They have moved it to Newport RI now. The first day is admin day, but they make it as stressful as possible. I made the mistake of checking in quite early. The first thing that happens is you get yelled at by upperclassmen. The only difference between them and you is that they have been there for about 10 weeks longer, but they are wearing uniforms and yelling at you. I think they were going extra loud on me because I was there first one to check in so they had plenty of rage. They made me take off my shoes and pull the laces out. They then had me relace them and constantly yelled "Inboard over outboard" which I eventually understood as how to lace up the shoes with a specific lace going over another one. Of course, they don't tell you this, they simply make you do it over and over until you finally get it right. Everytime they yell at you, you have to yell back. Either "Yes Sir/Ma'am" if it is a question of "Aye Sir/Ma'am" if it is a command. No matter how loudly you yell, you are told to yell louder. You have to acknowledge each time they say "louder" with an "Aye Sir" Of course it is not called yelling, it called "being ballistic" I have no idea where this came from, but for the next 13 weeks we were constantly told to be more ballistic.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur, the two things I remember the most was the chow hall and uniform issue. You don't get your official uniforms until near the end of the week, for the entire first week you wear what are referred to as poopy greens. You are issued a pair of pants and a WWII style helmet painted bright silver. The helmet is referred to as a chrome dome. You also have to march around with a canteen everywhere you go. The funniest part about the poopy green pants is that there is no effort to try to give you a pair that fits. Indeed the upperclass men seemed to delight in giving you the wrong size. The entire process takes about 15 seconds, you march over to this giant closet and they just pull whatever they feel like off the shelf and give it to you. I was fortunate though. I was issued a pair that must have been a 46 inch waist, they looked extremely comical but I could just adjust my belt to stop them falling off. Many of my classmates got issued pairs that were far too tight.

The chow hall procedure was something else. For the next 11 weeks every meal was the same way. Your entire class of about 50 people marches to the chow hall four abreast. You halt outside the building. Your class leader then gives the following instruction "Class 28-01" (We were the 28th class of year 2001), upon receiving the command march, you will halfstep up the ladder-well execute an immediate column left and form up outside the door" Everyone then yells back "Aye Section Leader" If the section leader messes up any of the command, you get to yell back "As you were Section Leader". The Section Leader then shouts, "Ready" at which point everyone inhales very sharply and as balistically as you can inhale. This is then followed by "March" at which time everyone yells "Kill" and marches up the stairs. You are then ordered to "adjust" which means making sure your uniform is squared away. The Section leader then yells "Door Body off the rear". Since we marched in descending height order, the door body is usually the smallest person. Our door body was this small lesbian, before you were allowed to be a lesbian. Once we were allowed off base on weekends, her "aunt" would come visit her. The door body's job is to cup there hand around their head and peer into the chow hall to see if there is another class already waiting in line. If there is, the section leader would yell for the "knowledge body" This person stays in line, but has to recite key Navy knowledge to the group while waiting. Things like general orders of a sentry or code of conduct. Think of someone shouting "I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist." and so on. After a few minutes of this, the Section Leader will order the door body to report the status of the chow hall deck. If the deck is clear, you enter.

You enter the chow hall, one at a time, following the person immediately in front of you. As you cross the threshhold, you stomp your foot on the metal plate at the bottom of the doorway and shout out what number you are. So the first person shouts "zero-one" followed by "zero-two" and so on. Also, you don't get to use regular numbers like thirteen or twenty-five. Rather you would say "one-three" for 13. Inevitably someone screws it up and you have to go outside as an entire class and start all over. Once you enter you form two lines and stand as close as you possibly can to the person in front of you, affectionately designated as "nut to butt". One at a time, you walk forward to a giant stack of trays, you then slam your hands down as hard as you possibly can on the trays and grab one. After the first week you get regular cutlery, but for the first week you only get an oversized spoon, referred to as your "war spoon" You then get whatever they happen to be serving, and hopefully it is something that lends itself to an oversized spoon. Once you have your food, you proceed to your table. You then put your tray on the table, and stand at attention while reading from this pocket sized notebook that you are issued. You have to hold the notebook at arms length with your arm straight out and parralel to the deck (floor). Once the last person has their meal, the class is ordered to sit all at the same time. The worst part was if you sat near one of the legs for the table, because you were not allowed to straddle it. You had to have both feet on the same side of the table leg. There is no talking. The section leader will then order people to pray at will and then you begin your meal.

Even this is extremely regulated. Your two glasses of water must be touching each other and touching the top right corner of your tray. On occasion, the drill instructors would march right down the center of the table and if your glasses were not properly "grounded" he would proceed to kick your drink onto your shipmate. Sometimes entire trays of food would be sent flying. When you were eating, you would snap your head down to look at the food, take your war spoon and try to get a reasonable bite. Once you had the bite, you had to snap your head up and stare straight ahead. It was only then that you were allowed to chew. This procedure was repeated for every bite. The best part was that you were on a strict 20 minute schedule, the Section Leader is the only individual authorized to wear a watch. Every five minutes the section leader would raise his hand. At that point you swallowed whatever food you had in your mouth. The Section Leader would insure everyone was looking at him and then would proceed to slam his hand down onto the table three times as loundly as he could. He would then follow up, ballistically, shouting "Class 28-01, this is your one-five minute warning" And we would all shout out "Aye Section Leader." There are multiple classes all eating at the same time, so every minute or so, someone is pounding on the table and calling out warnings. You get a warning at 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes and 1 minute. The 1 minute warning is stated as "This is your immediate warning"

Clearing your tray is regimented as well, the entire class is given the following instructions. "Prepare to ground glasses on tray" at which point you put your glasses on the tray. Then everyone is ordered to stand. Finally, you grab your tray, as a class, and march to the scullery to turn in your tray. Meals were always scary because lots of drill instructors were present and you never knew who might mess with you. Sometimes, if the class screwed up enough, you were taken outside and ordered to exercise.

You don't actually meet your drill instructor for the first few days. You only interact with upperclassmen. While they can yell at you, they can't order you to exercise. Also, the first week you live in this big open bay. After week 1, you move into 4 person dorm rooms. The first time we met our drill instructor was another great time. We had checked in on Sunday, and I think it was Wednesday morning when our drill instructor showed up. Except it wasn't just him. It was every single drill instructor, probably 8 or 10 of them. They all came running and yelling into our squad bay at 5 am like a pack of wild dogs. At any given time you might have 4 or 5 of them screaming at you, ordering you around. One of them climbed up on these large metal lockers we had to store our clothes, probably 6 feet high or so. The Drill instructors order you to get dressed, but you have to follow their exact sequence, which might mean putting on your left sock, then your shirt, then perhaps your pants, followed by your left shoe and finally your right sock and shoe. They are also tearing around the place pulling sheets off the racks and causing mayhem. From that point on, your drill instructor is never far away and you are in constant danger of screwing up and doing calithenics whereever you happen to be. Their favorite is to take you out to the sandpits to exercise. We affectionately called these the SUYA for Sand Up Your A$$. My favorite time was we had to march around with our mattresses, then proceed to the SUYA, do a ton of calithenics, fill our pockets with sand, bring the sand into our living spaces and dump the sand out, and of course clean it up.

At the end of the week, on Friday, you transition from "Indoctrination Candidate" to "Officer Candidate". They call that day "Black Friday" It all starts off with an inspection. They bring in a bunch of senior officers to inspect your bed (rack) and locker. Inspection is a loose term, really they just come in and throw your stuff everywhere. They then ask you a bunch of questions, whatever you answer is wrong, and they tell you that you will never make it. Once that is done, you have to jam all your stuff into a big green bag called a "sea bag". Though the bag is equipped with straps you are not allowed to use them. Rather, you must bear hug your bag, as you march to the new living spaces. It takes forever because you are constantly doing exercises and standing around with this bag in a very uncomfortable position.

Once you get to the new dorms there is an epic PT Session. The drill instructor marches you all over the two floors of the dorms, doing countless push-ups, leg-lifts, straddle hops (jumping jacks) and so on. What happens next is awesome though. Just when you think you can't do anything else, the drill instructor orders you out of the dorm to presumably do more exercises in the sand pit. However, all of the senior classes are there. They are applauding and handing out water bottles. Then they welcome you to the regiment and even put on a skit for you. You instantly feel like you belong, it is quite touching. More importantly, the drill instructors are gone, it is the first time in a week when you are allowed to laugh and smile. It is only a small break, but it couldn't come at a better time.