Marine Corps Lougie

As many of you know I am a former Marine. I served my Country proudly and it was a life changing experience. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience but I wouldn’t take a million dollars to do it again either. Now for those of you who are squeamish should stop reading here, actually you should have stopped reading at the title probably. This story goes back to boot camp where I first experience both real excitement and real terror. Let’s visit that time.
Its spring of 1984, late February or March I guess, but regardless spring had already started to make the trees and flowers bloom and to give me my first sinus infection of the year. I know it was a Sunday afternoon because it was Parent’s Day on the island. That’s Parris Island of those of you that weren’t Marines. It is where they train us Devil Dogs to protect and serve. The Sunday prior to your “graduation” is when they allow your parents to visit you, tour the island, and see how Uncle Sam has transformed their sons and daughters. On this particular day while all this was going on my platoon, Platoon 1042, was practicing drill on the parade deck. This is where the drill instructor takes his platoon in formation, marching them back and forth across the mile wide /deep parade deck (picture a large empty parking lot) teaching them to turn right, turn left, about face (turn around) and all the intricacies of marching. This of course, with 18 year old boys who generally can’t remember which is their left and which is their right when asked to turn in that particular direction. It was hot, I’m thinking high 80’s with lots of humidity on that day and my sinus infection had morphed into bronchitis where I could feel it rattling around in my chest. After several hours of marching-stopping-yelling, marching-stopping-yelling, then marching some more I wasn’t feeling so great and out of nowhere I had a deep chest rattling cough. At that precise moment out of my mouth flew a giant lougie!
Now there are many things that you want to do while marching in formation at Parris Island with your drill instructor watching on Parent’s Day but unfortunately “hocking a lougie” is not one of them. Immediately, and I mean perhaps before “it” hit the parade deck my drill instructor was screaming, “Halt, Halt everyone @&&^%$ Halt”. I will tell you it turned some of the parent's heads. Rushing up to where I was in formation (luckily for the rest of the Marines I was on the outside rank) we had the following conversation, that is if you can use the word conversation to describe one person screaming at another person that is standing at attention:
Drill Instructor: Recruit White did I just see you hock up a Marine Corps lougie on my parade deck?
Me: Sir yes Sir!
Drill Instructor: Let me get this straight, you actually just hocked a lougie on my sacred Marine Corps parade deck? The same parade deck that thousands of men who gave their lives in the service of their country marched across?
Me: Sir yes Sir
Drill Instuctor: You maggot, in the Pit right now!
Me: Sir yes Sir
Well off I ran to the "pit". The pit is the Marine Corps version of a large sand box. Its probably 50 yards long and 30 yards deep, big enough to have a 50 Marine platoon standing in it at one time. When you go to the pit it's not just to stand around in, the pit is strictly for "incentive PT". Incentive PT (PT + physical training) is just fancy words for exercise until you are about to pass out. Apparently my "lougie" had really incensed my drill instructor and he began to scream different incentive PT exercises to me, "bend and thrust, jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups, leg lifts (a particularly evil exercise in which you lay flat and elevate your legs approximately 6 inches off the ground and hold them there). This went on for approximately 45 minutes. I was dying. The rule governing incentive PT that I found out later is that a drill instructor cannot provide more than 20 minutes of incentive PT in one hour. Apparently my drill instructor had forgotten this rule. Then came the most dreaded command for any Marine in the pit, "make it snow, recruit, make it snow" This particularly insidious command requires the recruit to run in place reaching down to grab handfuls of sand and throw them in the air above his head. Now I don't have to tell you the effect this has on someone that has been sweating in almost ninety degree heat and 80 percent humidity. In mere seconds you are covered in sand, it's in your hair, inside your camo uniform, your boots, your underwear, your....you get the picture. Here's the rub if you'll pardon the pun, you only get one shower a day there and this is right before lights out, so you go the rest of the day in this condition. It is miserable! Try this tomorrow. Put on a dress or a suit depending on who you are, run 5 miles, roll around in the sand and spend the next 12 hours at work without a shower. You get the picture.
What the drill instructor didn't notice and quite frankly I had gone into sort of a dazed state from lack of oxygen, is that every parent from that was visiting the island on that day had begun to gather to watch this experience. I can't be sure how many of them there were watching because I could only look straight ahead but by my count it was close to 50 or 60 parents with their Marine sons. This spectacle prompted him to immediately stop my "incentive PT". It might have been the several mothers that had begun to weep and wail while watching or it might have been my weeping that stopped him. Regardless I wish to thank all those parents now and to ask their forgiveness for not being more gracious to them at the time (I hope they'll understand). Where were we? Yes, my drill instructor then ordered me back into formation. You might have thought it was over at this point but trust me it was just beginning. When I got back into formation (oh and if you want to be unpopular with your fellow Marines, just have them stand for 45 minutes at attention while you are being worked in the pit) the drill instructor approached me again:
Drill Instructor: Recruit White did you hock a lougie on my parade deck?
Me: Sir Yes Sir
Drill Instructor: PICK IT UP!
Me: Sir? (imagine a voice that sounds like Pee Wee Herman when he's out of breath here)
Drill Instructor: What part of "Pick it up" did you not understand?
Me: Sir recruit understands Sir
Drill Instructor: Then pick it up.
Needless to say compared to picking up a lougie, hocking them up is a breeze. I will spare you the ugly details but I did mange to get most of it off the parade deck.
Drill Instructor: Now put it in your pocket!
Me: Sir (again imagine Pee Wee Herman)
Drill Instructor: Are you stupid? What about "put it in your pocket" do you not understand? Did you go to school growing up? Are you a moron? Did you mother marry her brother? (I think there were more insults, but I can't write them here and I think you get my point.)
Me: Sir yes Sir
I then placed the scraped up, nasty sticky, sand covered lougie in my pocket. Then as if nothing happened my drill instructor turned barked a command and off the platoon marched. I was grateful thinking the incident was over for me. I was sadly mistaken, but that's for my next blog entitiled; "Recruit White did you hock a lougie on my parade deck this morning?" Sigh......