Re: U.S. basic training--frail boys?

I entered Navy boot camp in San Diego in 1962 as a 127-pound bookworm
and wannabe journalist. Bit of a wimp, really. There were guys a lot
bigger and tougher than me, and one was a Golden Gloves champion. A
couple of recruits were weeded out within a couple of weeks due to
psychological and physical problems, but as I recall every other man
in my recruit company made it through without any difficulty. We did a
lot of marching and calesthenics, carrying rifles through most of it.
The food was plentiful and decent enough, and while we didn't get much
more than five or six hours of sleep a night, we all gained a good
deal of muscle. I could scarcely lift my seabag on the first day of
boot camp, but on the last day I carried two seabags down a flight of
stairs on my shoulders without the slightest problem. And I weighed
154 pounds, and didn't feel very wimpish at all. I became a corpsman,
and despite two years of soft duty in the hospital at Yokosuka, Japan
I didn't have any problems keeping up when I joined the Fleet Marine
Force and went to Vietnam where I humped the boonies with the 1st
Marines.

Bob

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