Have you seen Biloxi Blues? When they get off the train Jerome says "God it's hot! It's like Africa hot! I don't know if I'm gonna be able to stay here if it's gonna be this hot!" That's pretty much what Parris Island is like. It's humid ALL the time. It's hot ALL the time. This is not an exaggeration. It's hot when it rains. It's hot at night. It's so hot here that the Marine Corps has to categorize how hot it is with the cunning use of flags. It's called the Automatic Heat Stress Index or AHSI (I swear to God I should have signed up for the MOS that makes acronyms because the Marine Corps has an acronym for F@#$ING everything!) and it has four levels: 1) Green Flag Condition is 80 to 84.9 degrees. Heavy exercises, for unacclimatized personnel, will be conducted with caution and under constant supervision. 2) Yellow Flag Condition is 85 to 87.9 degrees. Strenuous exercises or physical labor will be curtailed for unacclimatized, newly assigned Marines and Civilian Marines in their first 3 weeks. Avoid outdoor classes or work in the sun. 3) Red Flag Condition is 88 to 89 degrees. All PT or very strenuous work will be curtailed for those not thoroughly acclimatized by at least 3 weeks. Personnel not thoroughly acclimatized may carry on limited activity not to exceed 6 hours per day. 4) Black Flag Condition is 90 and above degrees. All nonessential physical activity will be halted. There have been days when the black flag is up by 9 am. If we are out practicing drill on the parade deck and the black flag goes up they we go back to the barracks. It should be noted that drill instructors hate these limitations and take it out on us when they have to alter their plans. Now we may be in the barracks but that doesn't mean we are getting a break. We will drill in the squad bay. This gets extremely messy. Platoon 2070 sucks at drill and trying to drill in a closed space just makes it worse. The barracks are air conditioned. This is not for comfort. That would be an amenity and there are no amenities here. They are air conditioned so we can train when it gets too hot outside. There are 110 guys in this platoon. It gets hot when 110 guys are running back and forth in a closed space.
I wish I could tell you that the recruits of Platoon 2070 are some of the finest young men America has to offer, but I can't. Truthfully this might be the biggest collection of assholes and retards ever assembled. These morons don't listen. They can't walk in a straight line. They won't sound off when answering the DIs. We get chewed out and punished for everything and I'm actually beginning to think we might deserve it. Why go off on this rant when I've been talking about black flags? Well, because the funniest and saddest thing that has happened to date occurred while we were drilling inside during a black flag. We were in our four squads lined up facing starboard in the squad bay. There are two types of drill: marching and rifle manual. We were doing rifle manual. The Senior was standing on a foot locker calling out the commands and the other three jackals were moving through the platoon watching and correcting mistakes. The Senior yelled "Left Shoulder Arms!" and you can hear all the rifles move but one loud thud on the ground. Hockenberry for some unknown reason went to order arms. In case you are wondering what the difference is I'll explain it quickly. Left shoulder arms basically means that the muzzle of the rifle is above the left shoulder and the buttstock of the rifle is in the left hand. Order arms means that the muzzle of the rifle is in the right hand and the buttstock is on the ground. There is slightly more to it but that is the gist. Now the Senior saw this and lost it.
Senior: "Hockenberry?!?! God dammit?!?! Do you even know what state you're in?!?!"
Hockenberry: "Sir Pennsylvania Sir!"
WTF?!?!? Seriously?!?! I can only assume that Hockenberry thought the Senior said from instead of in. Well all hell broke loose after that. The Senior actually fell off the foot locker laughing. Most of the platoon laughed. Sgt Smith started cussing out Hockenberry for being too stupid to breathe! SSgt Askew got angry because everybody laughed. Sgt Cain just stood there looking angry in a stupid way. The Senior got himself together and ordered us all into the pit. The sandpit behind the barracks is for punishment PT. We spent almost 30 minutes in the pit that day. We weren't even supposed to be outside.
..W...O...W!
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