OK lets hear them boys and girls. Lets hear of those moments as ocs when you were scared the most or when you did something totally stupid. The scariest moment for me had to be the combat course, I got stuck in the covert that is 3/4 under water, came out the way I went in. I did that twice and got a thorough a s s chewing.
I was certainly most nervous for pick-up. But I had so much adrenaline going it didn't even phase me, I kind of even enjoyed it. Scariest moment: a period of three days before SULE II. I was puking, congested, coughing, had diarrhea, absolutely no appetite, and was taking meds that dehydrated me. I had no idea whether or not I was going to be able to make it through that one day. Just had to stick it out though, no matter how much it sucked. Ended up getting my best leadership grade on that evolution. First run through the IMC also sucked. I couldn't do the back crawl to save my life the first time I tried. Had instructors yelling over the whole way down. Not fun.
My scariest moment in OCS was when I twisted my ankle and got on Light Duty. I was afaid of being sent home. For me nothing was more scary than being sent packing.
I forgot about being injured, dislocating my shoulder sucked being sent home 2 weeks b4 commisioning was worse, and the scariest part was not knowing if i'd be given a second chance. These are good keep them comming.
lots of scary moments, also for me was fear of being NPQ'ed with an ankle injury...luckily the brace and lots of vitamin I and suck it up kept me going...but the heaviest moment was right after i got my bars pinned on...i was walking around outside and our OCS company gunny walked past me, snapped a salute and said "good afternoon sir"....i hesitated and saluted back...and realized holy sh*t....the responsibility of being an officer never really dawned on me until then. this gunny who i repsected the hell out of....feared for 10 weeks at OCS...was the type of Marine i would be giving orders to before long. he represented the finest of our enlisted Marines and letting them down is never an option. never can you look tired or weak or unsure of yourself in front of them. the bar is set very high for a new Marine Lieutenant. keep that in mind those of you soon to be commissioned. and when you get to TBS don't be one of those FIGMAC guys.
Suckiest moment for me: First off.....i HATE snakes, and during the combat course, a water mokisin swam enetered the water infront of me, and swam through my legs (while i was being yelled at for their being a snake in the water.............) Heh, and to lighten things up, got offered a 300 word essay if the snake bit me. Most painful: Was on the fartlek course for Jrs, and jsut after the frog sit ups, my right eye collided with a tree branch....got a massive corneal abbreasian that went entirely across the cornea. I stuck out the rest of the run though, then went to the main side hospital. Luckily this was the day after sule 1 and all the graded events, so i was not sent home, i did miss my platoons log race though, and got back in for 3v3 wooded engagment.
My scariest moment at OCS was also the funniest. It was August 2005, the end of week 5 at Seniors, and the platoon was getting ready to go to the wooded pugil stick engagement. We were squaring away the house at like 0530 when one of our sergeant instructors busts in and screams at us to get on line. Then he walks back inside the duty hut. After what seems like an eternity (probably 2 minutes or so), he and the platoon sergeant come out and the platoon sergeant says in his low rumbling voice, "I'm only going to ask you this once....who did it? Integrity check, candidates. Whoever is responsible, step out under my lights right now. No one, huh? Very well." Meanwhile, the sergeant instructor gets in my face and eyeballs me without saying a word (I lived right next to the duty hut, which was awesome). Then they both go back inside the duty hut and close the door. At this point the entire platoon is pretty much scared sh*tless. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what happened. I look out of the corner of my eye, all the rifles are still there at the end of the squad bay as far as I can see. There are no gaps in either row of candidates, not that anyone would go UA at that point anyway. I'm trying for the life of me to figure out what we could have done wrong. A couple of minutes later our platoon sergeant comes back out and says, "Ears!" "OPEN!!" "Rick James is dead. I want to know which one of you nasties is responsible, and I want to know right now. I know we trained you to kill, but this is just daggone unacceptable, y'unnastand?" There's nothing quite like the sound of 32 candidates all simultaneously trying not to lose their bearing. Good times.
I was thinking about the culvert just from reading your title ... come to think of it, that was the only time I was 'scared' at OCS. I made it through the thing first time, but I have to admit that I was a little more than nervous...
Mine is when I fell off the combined part (jump up to the bar, shimmy down the sloping parallel bars, and balance walk on the log) of the O-course and slammed my chest on the 2x8 plank you jump off and over the final log at. I had the wind knocked completely out of me and the GySgt from another platoon who was timing me said something about inner strength to finish so I took off running to the next obstacle. Then he started yelling at me that I had to get back up and go over the log at the end of the combined. Extremely lucky to not to break a rib. I still have a big mark/scar on my chest too. Another time I went to the chow hall (during a liberty) in my cammies alone, grounded my war belt, ate, came back and the war belt was gone. Plt Sgt from another company had picked it up, and called one of my SI's. Got a nice 300-word essay on gear accountability. I thought I had to start doing OCS without canteens.
And.... First place goes to motiv8r. That is the funniest thing ever. My scariest moment was on liberty. I was in my camaro screaming toward Brown Field. Suddenly, an MP car with it's cop lights on gets behind me and pulls me over. All I could think was "****, there goes my future". The cop pulled up beside me and shouted, "I clocked you at 46 in a 25, you need to slow the hell down candidate!" He rolled his window up and sped off faster than hell. I was amazed. I never, ever, speed on base anymore.
Yup. Sitting there at medical. Looks like you got a stress fracture, son. How long'll it take before I can take the (stability)boot off? We'll see, but it typically takes 4-6 weeks to heal(this was week 7) This candidate only has three weeks remaining at OCS, ma'm. We'll see. 24 hours later I was on a plane out of DC.
My scariest moment OFF OCS happened after week 8 liberty. My buddy who works for the NSA came down from Arlington and picked me up. We met some other friends at College Park, MD then went to Adam's Morgan in DC. We had a few then were headed back to College Park and decided to go through the Capitol area in downtown DC. As we were turning left a car ran a light, hit the back right fender of the my buddy's car, we spun into a tree, airbags deployed and the car that hit us took off. My buddy's car (my ride back to OCS in 12 short hours) was totaled. The cops came and took the report. We didn't get back to Arlington until 5:30AM (24 hours after I had gotten up for the day). I was lucky to be alive riding in the front passenger seat much less injured but we borrowed a friend's car and I got back to OCS and resumed candidate life.
Not that it matters, but the anecdote above happened at Seniors summer of 2004, not 2005. Typo. Of course everyone knows that the great Mr. James passed away in 2004, so I'm sure y'all knew what I meant....
wasn't that scary for some reason, mostly had to keep a straight face, but in probably the second week i stepped out of a class to refill my canteens when i saw a GSgt and he noticed tat i'd seen him. having not been there long and not having any prior military experience or military family or anything, i didn't know my rank well enough to give the proper greeting. i nodded hello and resumed filling my canteens. he set me right but quick =)
Its the day of the platoon drill competition. I find out the night before I'm becoming the candidate platoon sergeant that day, but no worries because we've been training some other candidate to drill our platoon in the competition. So I've never drilled anything before, and I dont even march them to the chow hall because the other candidate is getting warmed up or whatever. So 30 minutes later we're at the competition and guess what, the rules have changed and now I have to drill the platoon. I dont think I had ever even seen a drill card before then. Anyway, that was the scariest thing ever, but we won because my platoon rocked so it was all good.
At the beginning of week 6 for PLC Jr's I had to have an abcess cut out of my back. Before the surgery they gave me one tylenol to ease the pain. The problem is, that tylenol did not help as they stuck a knife in my back and carved out a hole that was about .5" deep and a quater size around. It was the worst experience I had there...but I got a real nice scar out of it.
