OCS Adventures – 2
I hate making beds. I was never very good at it. At OCS everyone had to make up his bed every morning. The sheets had to be so tight that an inspecting officer who came through in the morning could drop a twenty five cent coin on it and the coin would bounce. Failure to make up your bed correctly would earn you a demerit. There were other ways to get demerits. We all had areas to clean and dust daily. An incomplete job meant another demerit. Our uniforms had to be worn perfectly. Misalignment of the line of shirt buttons with your belt and trousers was worth another demerit. Brass belt buckles and insignia had to be shined, and no trace of the Brasso cleaner could be left on them. This was often difficult because there are crevices where the liquid Brasso could flow into and then dry and harden. You didn’t remove it? Another demerit. Then there was my worst personal nightmare, shining shoes. An officer candidate was supposed to have shoes with a glossy sheen that was so reflective you could use them as a mirror for shaving. I earned a lot of single demerits from these.
There were also offenses that earned you several demerits each, like not being lined up in formation, talking while in ranks, and, worst of all, forgetting your textbook. Loss of a classified text could result in 50 demerits and an immediate automatic hearing before a disciplinary board that could expel you from the program.
Academic failure could also result in being dropped from the course. There were several subjects and many were brand new to a large number of the officer candidates. Sailors have a language of their own. Walls are bulkheads. The ceiling is an overhead. Port is left and starboard right. There are dozens of items in a new terminology to be mastered. Short term memory is very important. Every week there were quizzes or exams on material covered during the past few days. Grades were given on a 4 point system, and anyone who did not get at least a 2.5 grade was failing. Everyone needed to pass every course subject. For many, it was high pressure learning. And it was definitely hard for them.
Summary, or quarterly, grades were posted at the end of each month. I had little trouble with academics. I breezed through the exams and had high scores in every subject at the end of the quarter. Every subject that is, except for one, military aptitude. It was a combination of our company officer’s subjective evaluation and a grade from the sections peer ratings. Peer ratings were a compilation from questionnaires that each of us filled out listing who we thought would be a good officer. We only listed the 5 best and five worst members of the section. At the end of the first quarter I was at or near the top of every academic subject. I had even started helping some of the other candidates in those subjects during our evening free study periods. But I had a failing grade in Military Aptitude. I requested an interview with the company officer to see why. Part of it was obvious. I had more demerits for bed, brass, and shoes than anyone else. What hurt most was that I had received the lowest mark I peer ratings in the entire section. In retrospect it should not have surprised me. Most of my barracks mates knew little or nothing about me except that I kept accumulating demerits. The only thing I knew to do was to ty to avoid my daily bad mark, and to make sure anyone with any kind of problem in an academic subject would know I was willing and able, to assist them.
A few days later I was aiding one of them when another man tapped me on the shoulder.
“Give me your shoes to shine.” he said.
“The time you spend on what you’re doing is more valuable than the time you waste shining your shoes.”
I soon had more requests for tutoring than I could handle alone. So I recruited a few others who were doing well in specific subjects and asked them to help in those subjects while I helped in anything and everything else.
At the end of the next quarter grades were posted again. Again I received a failing grade in Military Aptitude. I knew my tutoring had gained me a positive image among my section mates, so I asked for another session with the company officer.
“Am I still getting low marks in peer ratings?” I asked.
“No”, he replied. “You went from rock bottom to near the top”.
“But I know what’s going on”, he continued, “Your mates got together to save you. No one gets such a drastic improvement in one quarter. So I threw out your new ratings”.
I left with a solid feeling of animosity towards my company officer and resolved not to ever request another interview.
During the next quarter our navigation classes began to cover celestial navigation. It isn’t easy to understand spherical trigonometry for most people, OCS candidates were no exception. We managed to steal a blackboard and some chalk. During our study hour I gave a class to several men together on celestial navigation. We hid the blackboard in the showers during the day. I even gave some classes after “lights out”. We posted a lookout to warn us if anyone was coming so we could stow the blackboard and pretend to be asleep.
Another aspect of military aptitude was marching. We marched from the barracks to the mess hall, to classes, and between classes. A different man served as “Section Leader of the Day” every day and received a grade for moving the section from place to place. At the end of the course there were still a few men, myself included, who had never been assigned and therefore need a grade. The section fell in in front of our barracks and each ungraded man had to give a few manual of arms commands and march the section around the barracks. Alphabetically, I was last. When we reached the back of the barracks I decided to give my company officer a show. I had been in high school ROTC and knew a few drill team maneuvers. Also, by then everyone was used to marching and executing commands together. I designated the right hand column as squad one, the left hand as squad two, and the after part of the center column as squad three. The forward half was squad four. Then I carried out a drill team routine we used to call “To the Winds”. Squad one turned together to the right. Squad two turned together to the left. Squad three was told “To the Rear, March”. Now all 4 parts were going in different directions. I next reversed everyone and as they came back turned each squad back bring the entire section together again, albeit marching in the opposite direction. It was just a matter of timing the commands correctly. To prove it wasn’t a fluke I executed the maneuver again. Then I marched the section back to the front of the barracks, halted them, and asked the company officer, while trying not to sound too sarcastic. “Will there be anything else, Sir?”
When final grades were issued I had a passing grade in Military Aptitude., probably grudgingly bestowed. I also had the highest grade in the entire class in seamanship. I was near the top in other subjects like navigation and operations as well. The seamanship grade earned me prize, a year’s subscription to the U S Naval Institute Proceedings. It was the only individual award in my company.
Wetherhorn 