Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes is located in Northern Chicago, Illinois

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  • Yeah I was a top bunker also. I remember the long aching butt from the Bicillian shot, but not any problems getting out of my rack in the morning.
    Cold? Understatement. I remember the double penalty of having to shovel snow so we could march.
    Waiting in long cold lines outside with that itchy wool watch cap on.
    You know, I am almost thinking (now) that I miss those days!
  • No doubt great lakes has a rep for cold nasty winters. I was17and a half a week or so out of highschool but had a head start joined the reserves 8 march while still a senior in high school rode the train columbus ohio to state st Chicago and the EL thru the city with clothes flying on the buildings next to the tracks out to the lakes
  • I was there when it was cold and there was three feet of snow! You were lucky Michael. Oh, and if I am not mistaken, I think there was a record snowfall sometime within the time you were there and I was. I seem to remember them (company commanders in staff training where I worked) talking about a major snow a few years earlier...Stick probably knows, and may have been there when it happened in fact.

  • Feb 69 to May or June

    then home for a couple weeks and then Memphis NATTC for AME and then NAS Albany Georgia with RVAH3 (RA5C Vigilantes squadron) and finally RVAH1 at NAS Albany.

  • It was a house of horors live the story what year were you there I was there june to sSeptember 62
  • Incidentally Michael, your experience may have been the incident that we heard about and helped to save a lot of recruits from suffering a similar fate. Kudos to ya brother! 

  • I guess the stories we heard were true then. We were warned that guys who jumped down from the top bunk the next morning after the horrible shot collapsed!

    Hate to hear you were one of them Michael :(

    I remember when we were waiting in that room for the shot and had been told to be silent and a fellow in front of me whispered something to another guy and a first class pulled him out of the group and said since he couldn't keep his mouth shut he would get to go first! The look on that poor guys face is one I can still see today...he went pale and there was a frozen look of sheer terror in his face.

    Anyway, they ordered him to drop his trousers and bend over and the guy took a syringe and jabbed it in and literally "smacked" the plunger in and the guy yelled and jumped forward a good four feet! Then, before he could do the recommended workout to get the stuff absorbed, he was ordered to sit down on a metal stool and told that he would swab our butts with alcohol as we filed by. After that, you could have literally heard a pin drop to the floor and there were about a hundred of us in that room I bet.

  • Oh yeah Jack I was a top bunker and got the bicillin shot next morning when they ran the coke bottle round and round in the shit can I jumped up and out when I hit the deck I just colapsed in a puddle after chow we got the day off to recoup that is a day burned in my memory forever
  • Oh yeah, I remember the ditty bag and ties lol. And the smoke and coke breaks too. They taught us to "field strip" the cigarette butts too.

    Did you guys get the dreaded "bicillin" double butt shot? And were either of you top bunkers?

    I was so scared that I did so many deep knee bends that I couldn't hardly walk the next morning because my knee joints hurt so bad lol. The shot was rubbed into my backside so much (I did a lot of that too) I barely felt it. But my aching knees....

  • Thanks for the nightmares Douglas remember the ditty bags and clothes stops one time we went 3 weeks without a smoke&coke seems like we did the 16 count manual of arms every day in camp moffet close to graduation had a test and the guys that finished first got caught playing baseball with a stick and wad of paper the cc made the whole company run the obstical course 3 timesback to back in our whites never got that set clean agin truley old navy I dont think kids today could make it
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