The years roll by awfully quickly after a while. The calendar provides a stark reminder that 40 years ago this summer I began training at the Navy’s Officer Candidate School, then in Newport, Rhode Island. I had just completed my sophomore year of college. In the Reserve Officer Candidate program, as it existed then, enlisted reservists took half their training one summer, half the next, and then were commissioned on graduation from college.
Within hours of my arrival I was issued wash khaki uniforms. Headgear consisted of a fore-and-aft garrison cap, much more commonly known as a “piss cutter.” In that summer of 1964 we members of Delta Company marched wherever we had to go: to class, to chow, to physical fitness, and, of course, to marching practice. The result, after weeks of such daily drill, was an “OCS tan.” Our faces were brown up to mid forehead and white from there up. Topping the whole works was a stubble of hair shorn initially to about an eighth of an inch for reasons that are now obscure.
Each day started with reveille at 0530. We had to get ourselves ready for inspection of both barracks and our uniforms. A miscue in military appearance, barracks cleanliness, or infractions of the dozens of OCS regulations could bring demerits known as red gigs. Too many red gigs could result in extra drill with rifles, loss of liberty, or, in extreme cases, in expulsion from the program. We attended classes on a variety of naval topics, including navigation, maneuvering board, rules of the road, communications, naval organization and history, damage control, the steam cycle in shipboard engineering plants, ship stability, naval justice, weapon systems, and the customs and traditions of the service. Tests were frequent and almost always multiple choice. Fortunately, many instructors were known to pass out the “gouge,” a series of hints on what material was likely to be on tests. One of the code phrases was, “Pay attention. This might come up again.”
We did exercises known as “JFKs” in honor of the recently slain President John E Kennedy, who emphasized physical fitness. We drilled with rifles and prepared for weekly pass-in-review parades in which the ability to stay in step and move our rifles in unison was graded and compared with the scores for other companies. In the evenings, after chow, we had mandatory study period for three hours, a half hour of free time, and then taps at 2230. It was a long day, punctuated by very few opportunities to relax. During the periods when we marched between classes a loudspeaker blasted out tinny musical numbers. Even now, when I hear a recording of “The March of the Toy Soldiers,” I think of OCS.
At the outset of the summer Delta Company was in a “splinter barracks,” probably built during World War II or shortly afterward. Halfway through our tenure, we moved into separate two-man rooms in a brand-new barracks known as Nimitz Hall. Looking back, though, I preferred the scuffed, time-worn wooden barracks. There was more togetherness when we all slept, studied, polished our brass belt buckles, and shined our shoes in the same large compartment. One end was filled with bunk beds and the other with picnic tables at which we studied for class. The camaraderie in that environment was similar to the feeling in a wardroom or mess deck on board ship.
In the mornings, while getting ready for inspection, we listened to portable radios that brought songs such as “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime,” reports on the nomination of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater at the Republican National Convention, and the news of torpedo boat attacks on a U.S. warship in faraway Tonkin Gulf. (We thought we’d be shipped overseas immediately, which, of course, we weren’t.) The time in the barracks also provided the opportunity to sling a little bull.
An enjoyable part of the experience was that the weather in Newport is great in the summertime. The downside was that there was little chance to get out and savor the delights of that city on Narragansett Bay. Features of Newport summers were the annual folk festival and jazz festival. Occasionally, during our drilling, we could hear the sounds from the festivals wafting into our compound from wherever the musicians were producing it. Our only liberty lasted from noon on Saturdays till evening chow on Sundays. Saturday nights were thus highly treasured by officer candidates. A local women’s college, Salve Regina, held Saturday evening dances to which we gravitated. The female students apparently also lived a cloistered existence during the week, so they were as eager to see the Navy men—bad hair and all—as we were to see them. Those dances could definitely be classified as contact sports.
Having absorbed half the curriculum in 1964, I came back a year later the get the second half. And a year after that I really was on the way to Vietnam on board ship. The lessons from Newport were tucked away in my mind, ready at last to be applied in a real world that held potential perils but, fortunately, no more marching.