January 7, 1973, Saturday

CC was in early this morning. The SOB. Don’t he know it’s a weekend? He didn’t stay long, again. He gave his instructions to Rodger and left. Later we found out that we failed the test and all the retests. I don’t understand it we answered the questions like the CC taught us, what more can we do. The usual turds magically appeared in the toilets. Blemishing another wise spotless barracks. From the front of the formation, where I am it looks like we are marching correctly. I can’t see what happens in the back.

Once again we pick up the pieces. We straighten out the barracks, sorting through the scattered cloths and the over turned lockers and bunk beds. After wards we go to a class then chow. The shit hit the fan after chow, again.

Rumor has it; over eighty percent of the boot campers brought back drugs. And the Brass knows it. When we arrived at the barracks we were greeted by the CC. Not a good greeting like, “Hi, how you been?” No, this was a “Fall out, you worthless worms! Get to you bunks and stand at attention!” Double time!” greeting.

We ran. We stood at our bunks at ridged attention. Ten minutes later the SPs (shore patrol) burst through the doors like the storm troopers they are. The looked down on us like we were lunch, lunch that they wanted to eat just to spit us up. They had drug sniffing dogs. I hoped no body was stupid enough to hide their drugs around their bunks. With this bunch one can never be too sure. We didn’t dare to move, we stood at attention.

The troopers and the dogs ran around in a frenzy. They found nothing. They took the show out front. I started to worry, I would hate to lose my stash. That’s where I kept it buried down a foot.

I have never seen a drug dog. I grew up around dogs. I know the ways of dogs. The more I watched the dogs out the window. The more it occurred to me that these dogs didn’t have a clue to what the handlers wanted. They were running around in circles. They smelled the ground and peed on the flowers and bushes. Each dog pissing where the other pissed. They kept getting the leashes’ tangled. When a handler pointed to something, the dogs had no clue what they wanted. Some of the dogs thought it was play time. The dogs were more interested in each other and pissing. They were a bunch of family dogs on an outing.

I laughed hard on the inside, Keystone cops. After a while they got tired and moved to the next barracks. We were ordered to stand down and gather around the CC. He told us about the 80% drug number. He said the navy was offering amnesty to any recruit ready to turn themselves in, or somebody else. Most of us glanced at Chris, he was silent. We fell in and marched to chow. Later.