From the Diary of One Devil Dog 

Boot camp at MCRD in San Diego required 12 weeks when I joined ranks. Infantry training at Camp Pendleton was another 4 weeks. It wasn't until my 16th week that I had liberty, and that turned out to be a 26-hour weekend stint. We weren't allowed to unbutton our top button (on our utilities' blouse) until the final, 12th week of boot camp. We had a 7th week drill eval(uation) and an 11th week drill eval. Some of those in my boot unit (77 members in Platoon 156) in 1964 had been drafted into the Marines. The Marines reinstituted the draft about that time for additional cannon fodder in Southeast Asia. Not long after, to assembly-line more bodies, boot camp was shortened from 12 weeks to 8 and ITR from 4 weeks to 2 weeks, unless your MOS was infantry and then it was the same as previous. I slipped from 220 on the range (250 max) on Wednesday to 205 on qualifying Friday to earn a manhole cover. I shot sharpshooter some years after, and expert other times. I had never fired a firearm before then. I also qualified with a .45 pistol, made in Ithaca, New York. There were some fabulous shooters back then. A rifle team was comprised of seven Marines and we had M-60s and BARs to go with our M-1s. to create a true "wall of fire." A bayonet we called a K-bar and a C-rations can opener was a John Wayne Key. Assigned then to 29 Palms, my billet was next to HQ. My MOS was assigned as  AdMan (Administration Man), and in true  military parlance, I was a "Remington Raider" (Get it? Remington typewriters). I sat with my typewriter in front of me and a short distance directly across the usually open door of the base commander's office, a two-star general. Later I was reassigned back to artillery and that's when I became the platoon guide for the newly created base artillery school. Comprised of 990 square miles of mountains and desert sand, there was ample room to host such training,  The projectile for the 155 self-propelled howitzer weighed 90 pounds. I've been on OPs 20 miles away from the gun and seen it hit its target squarely once the coordinates are called in and the order to “Fire” takes place. You could get hit with a projectile from that far away and never even know it was coming... if you were the unfortunate enemy.

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