Robert Frye
ENG 101
Ms. Dobson
17 April 2014

Military Writing

In June of 2006 I was on a bus heading for Navy boot camp in Great Lakes, Chicago. My life was going no-where, and I knew I had to make a change. If you look at boot camp like 18 years of teaching in eight weeks, where you are taught everything you have ever learned all the way down would be taught everything in my life all over again, but I did not expect to be taught how to write and speak all over again. When I first arrived at boot camp it was late at night maybe midnight if not later. A large man stepped on the bus dressed in an all white uniform. In a yelling voice he let us know “ welcome to Great Lakes you have five minuets to get off this bus, and you have already wasted two of them”. We ran as fast as we could off that bus thinking that if we made it fast enough we wouldn’t get yelled at anymore. When we got off the bus we ran to more yelling these instructors told us to stand on these little yellow footprints. These footprints were in the shape of a triangle all spaced exactly apart from each other. We were told this is the position of attention and if we would like to speak we must first asked and been in this position to speak. The night went on with a lot of yelling and a lot of standing around to wait for things like a haircut. The next morning when I awoke it was not gently or quietly, that a same instructor who had talked to us on the bus was the same one who threw a metal trash can down the middle of the room. One of the other men in my barracks asked the instructor what time breakfast was. The instructor flipped out he got about two inches from the mans face and explained to him in a very loud tone that it is no longer breakfast it is chow. This was just the first of many words that were different then my outside world knowledge. As the time passed new words were bestowed upon us for example, the bathroom was the head, a pen was an ink stick. Even the way you explained a room was different the walls were bulkheads, the floor a deck, the celling the overhead. A man was no longer a man but a male, a women not a women but female. There are hundreds of words that have absolutely changed in my vocabulary since boot camp. The thing that was the craziest to hear is that we had to learn how to count and write again. Believe it or not the writing still comes back to haunt in the way I write today. We were told we could only write in block upper case writing and that meant anything we wrote. They would take it so far as to read the letters we were sending to our parents and loved ones to make sure we were following code. If at anytime during boot camp training we did not follow in accordance with the ways of writing or speaking we were punish accordingly. For example, I did spoke without being in the position of attention and, I was made to be in the pushup state of attention, which for those of you who do not know what that is it’s the front leaning rest or the push up position. Another example of being punished for not following in accordance with the rules was three of us did not write in the block lettering on a letter that was sent home. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning three instructors ran in the barracks screaming with spotlights and splashing water in our faces. Once we were all about half awake we were marched out in the cold and told to write in block lettering while we did pushups. The reason for this drastic punishment was due to such a short amount of time we had to grasp the information along with the theory that boot camp breaks you completely down and builds you back up in accordance with the rules and regulations the military is founded upon. The theory of breaking us down and build us back up are based upon the information that no matter what a man or women age, race, or creed no when is better than the other, the only thing that made another different than another was the rank that he or she had earned. The military had many changes on my life that changed me for the better. I never thought that I would have been taught how to write or speak again; I could have understood the walking, the dressing, and the grooming. Once I graduated boot camp and started working at my duty station I started to understand why I was told to write in block lettering. It was to make sure what you put on the paper was clear and readable to make sure no matter whom it was reading it. The speaking part came very clear due to being able to speak clear and concise over the radio to communicate missions or even to call in air support to an exact position. What I learn from this was no matter how crazy you think something might be it has a purpose and a use.