Week 3

There isn't much to be said about Week 3. Just the usual PT, folding clothes, and preparing for two key inspections coming up in week 4. This whole week was spent practicing Weapons Turnover and Drill and one event called Marlinespike. We would practice with a 9mm pistol that had the firing pin removed and would have to go over the proper procedures for turning it over to the oncoming watch stander. That brings me to a little introduction to watch standing. There is at least one watch for the compartment 24/7 unless it is secured because of inspections or specific instructions. Watches in our compartment are usually 2 hours long, but in the fleet they can go up to 12 or maybe even more! The watch stander is responsible for the safety and integrity of his or her shipmates. Everything important done in the compartment, whether it was go for a roving tour around the compartment, logging it off spot (messy or not right) due to instruction or training, or even checking temperature) had to be written in the log. Official logs can be used in Captain's Mast cases where disobedient sailors are punished for being ignorant or reckless. An improper watch stand can even result in punishment because it is that person who is supposed to make sure everything is in order. That's about all I will delve into on watch standing; I may make a page about it later if anyone seems interested. Now that all of that watch standing is out of the way, our next task was practicing for our first drill inspection. They would play a tape and we would have to execute all of the commands swiftly and efficiently. This tape was basically what is on the graduation schedule so it truly is very important to understand it sooner than later. The final task of the week was Marlinespike. This is basically preparation for getting the ship underway and mooring it to the pier. In civilian terms it is untieing the lines from the ship so it can go out to sea and tieing it back up to the pier. There was even a short exercise of a man overboard drill in which I was the lucky one to be the man overboard (I got to hide in the back of the ship). Our division had listening problems all around so we didn't do exceptionally well, but at least it was done with. By this time everything is getting very repetitive with only a couple events each week that are different. Pretty easy stuff...

Week 2

I thought this week was so important...and then I realized that RDC's live up everything as if it were working on a million dollar piece of equipment. This week had 3 inspections and the academic test that I stated before. The first two inspections were on the same day and one after the other. They called this the CART PI/DMI. CART is phase 1 of boot camp. I am not sure of exactly what it means, though I do know the other two. PI stands for personnel inspection, while DMI stands for dynamic material inspection. The PI is where they have you do a few commands that they will pass down to the Recruit Chief Petty Officer (RCPO though said as RPOC). A couple of the commands were to:

1 pace forward march
hand salute
cover
uncover
attention
parade rest

Not very hard at all. Well the inspector goes around and checks every single person for uniform infractions. A couple of the infractions, or hits, you could take on your uniform are:

gig line not even (shirt to belt to pants line)
gear adrift (loose threads)
dirty boots
dirty uniform
metal to metal on belt not even
bootlaces not tight enough
belt not through all of the loops
all buttons not buttoned

The inspector would also ask a question about the 11 general orders, chain of command, or rate and rank recognition, and you had to answer it in the correct manner while keeping proper military posture and bearing. Some other hits the inspector could give are:

military posture
military bearing
incorrect or no answer to a question

I actually remember getting my first PI question wrong because I was so nervous and forgot that a perched eagle was part of what a second class petty officer wears on the sleeve of his or her dress blue uniform. Anyway, before we knew it, the PI was over and we did pretty good on it. Next was the DMI. One side had bunk making, the other with lockers. I was very pleased to have the locker inspection because I hated making a bunk. We had to take out a utility shirt, trousers, and jacket and unbutton and unzipper everything on them and then re-button and zipper and fold and stow them properly. I took one hit on my jacket's zipper pointing up when I refolded it. Zipper must be down on many things in boot camp. A majority of the bunk making side failed while we did great. To end this day, we were warned of bunk drills ahead because the one side did terrible on it.

Two days later was our zone inspection. This is where FQA inspects every area of the compartment, including the RDC office. We had multiple problems with that office, and I think one of them was dust. Now a petty officer would inspect every top bunk's lucker and every bottom bunk's bunk. Since I was a bottom bunk, you would probably think I would fail right? No sir; we were able to make the compartment look good and dress our bunks and lockers accordingly. I had help from a shipmate and my bunk looked really good. After about 2-3 hours of the inspection, we came out with almost the whole division failing. I am glad to say that I was one hit away from failing because the petty officer was going really in depth and was looking for everything that he could find. Well..another taps and we were ready for our first test! Time to show off my awesome EPO skills, hoo-yah! Well it turns out that I didn't know that our utilities could be regular machine-washed. Our laundry PO's never washed them in our compartment, but that was simply because there was too much clothing to be washed. I made a 4.9 (49/50 correct) on that test, so it wasn't bad at all. We had 2 people fail, and both that I tutored ended up passing the second time around. We got our first achievement flag to march with: the Academic Flag. That was our very stressful second week of training, and now we were off to MCA Phase (Mid Cycle Assessment).