San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Fear the Reaper
CHAPTER III
After enduring a rigorous 10-mile hike and charging up the Reaper hill, the recruits are on their way to becoming Marines.
On July 31, the recruits of Alpha Company packed their gear, boarded buses and made the roughly 40mile drive to Camp Pendleton. At 125,000 acres, Camp Pendleton is the largest base in the Marine Corps. It’s home to I Marine Expeditionary Force which, by itself, comprises about 25 percent of the entire Marine Corps. Recruit training occurs on a small section of the southwest side of the installation, just out of view of Interstate 5.
The terrain is the last untamed and undeveloped patch of coastal Southern California. Its canyons and hills make for grueling hikes for recruits. During their weeks at the base, the recruits will become riflemen and, in their final exercise, complete the Crucible, a 54-hour marathon of training, with minimal sleep and several obstacles to challenge them.
The Union-tribune caught up with Meier at Camp Pendleton on Aug. 13. He had been quarantined longer than the others because of an illness that he said was not COVID-19. Now, along with the rest of his company, Meier was in the middle of completing a prequalification assessment on the M-16 rifle. Recruits are issued M-16s and keep them with them throughout training.
More than 10 weeks after arriving in San Diego and eight weeks after beginning boot camp, Meier and the other recruits of Alpha Company had settled into routines and were more comfortable in their new roles.
“I don’t really feel as homesick because this is my family now,” Meier said. “We all have been here so long we kinda got used to it.”
Wilson added, “If I could go back, I’d do it all over again — this has been a great experience for me. It really feels like I’m doing something with myself here.”
Glasson, whose weight loss was 20 pounds at this point, said he was already looking forward to the end.
“As we get closer to the end I keep looking more and more toward what’s gonna come afterwards,” said Glasson, who is contracted to be a Marine air traffic controller. “It doesn’t feel as distant as it did when we first started out.”
The ‘confidence chamber’
Eleven days later, all six platoons of Alpha Company met in front of a drab yellow Quonset hut in the wilderness of the base. The Marines call it the “confidence chamber” because it’s meant to instill confidence in recruits that their gas masks will protect them from chemical agents.
Recruits wear the rubber masks as the hut fills with tear gas. They break the seals of those masks with their fingers, letting the gas in, then they clear the mask of gas before being allowed to leave the chamber.
One platoon goes at a time; everyone else waits outside in a single-file. They’re not allowed to wear their masks outside the chamber, so those nearest the door constantly teared up and cleared their noses as the gas seeped from inside while the door was closed and billowed out each time it opened.
The drill instructors appeared to enjoy the spectacle, rotating which recruits stood closest to the door.
Platoon 1009 — with Glasson, Rector, Wilson and Bardales-villa — was nearest the door and the last to go through. Glasson, now down 25 pounds from when boot camp began, was among the unlucky recruits placed next to the door.
“That was the worst part because I didn’t have a gas mask on at all there, so I got to taste the full effects of it on my throat, in my nose, on my tongue, in my eyes and it absolutely just burned like you had paprika in your sinuses,” Glasson said.
The instructors also entered the chamber with their platoons and often at least one of them would have a mask failure and be exposed to the gas.
Drill instructors took the opportunity, while waiting, to engage with the recruits. One told a recruit to wipe his face and when he moved to do so, another told him sharply not to. The instructors all laughed. They then talked about the size of a recruit’s head and laughed as the rest of the company watched in silence.
The confidence chamber was the last major training event before the company began the Crucible the next day.
The Crucible
By the time Alpha Company piled onto bleachers near Edson Range on Camp Pendleton the evening of Aug. 26, they were dirty, weary and ready to dig into their MRES — Meals Ready to Eat. The recruits washed their faces as best they could with wet wipes.
It was the end of the Crucible’s second day, but there was still another event and another hike ahead before they could sleep.
Meier, his face caked with dried mud, talked about the day.
“It was a lot of hard work,” Meier said. “A lot of it’s just teamwork building.”
Each crucible event is designed around actual combat scenarios. There are historical markers at each station detailing the exploits of one Marine Medal of Honor recipient after another.
Wilson said the possibility of going to war was never far from his mind.
“Our drill instructors are really good about making us think critically about stuff like that,” Wilson said. “These stories you hear on these citation boards are really inspirational . ... Hopefully, in the moment, I would (do the same). I want to look out for people.”
Once the sun set, the company prepared for its last Crucible event of the day, a nighttime battlefield crawl that included more piped-in sound effects, frequent booming, concussive, compressed air blasts and smoke machines.
Alpha Company quickly crawled over a wall, through tunnels and into a trench and, when it was over, marched to the corrugated steel garages where they’d sleep for a few hours.
There the recruits washed off the day’s dust, using water from their canteens.
Though weary, they packed their overpacked backpacks in preparation for the next morning’s hike. The packs the recruits will carry up a steep hill called the Reaper weigh about 70 pounds, so it’s important they arrange their gear to evenly distribute the weight across their backs and shoulders. This proved difficult for many of them, who were tired and sleep-deprived.
The next day was the one they’d been waiting for — the Reaper hike.
This nearly 10-mile meandering hike up a ridge culminated in a platoon-wide charge up the Reaper hill — the last obstacle.
At 2:45 a.m., drill instructors woke the platoon. One recruit slept through the lights and commotion and earned a verbal thrashing.
The company ate a quick MRE breakfast. As the sun began to rise, the company made its way up the ridge toward the Reaper. At the foot of the 700-foot hill, each platoon gathered to make the final charge together. They attacked the hill in unison, each yelling as loud as they could.
The drill instructors made the charge with them. Once the last platoon summited, the entire company gathered for the Eagle, Globe and Anchor ceremony.
Drill instructors, one by one, handed each man his Eagle, Globe and Anchor pin. After this, they will no longer be called recruits, but Marines.
Tears streamed down many recruits’ faces and onto their formerly white facemasks, now stained brown. “I had just climbed the Reaper, side-by-side with every
body I’ve been with for 12 weeks,” said Wilson, “and, man, does it feel good. I’ve never felt like this in my life. They said I earned the right to be a Marine.”
For Weidner, who left college for the Marines, it proved something.
“I finally finished something,” he said. “This was something I was able to put my focus toward the entire time and actually finish.”
Graduation day
It was Sept. 10, Rector’s 18th birthday and the day before graduation, what is usually called Family Day.
The new Marines took the traditional motivational run, but instead of hundreds of cheering family and friends greeting them, there’s a smattering of office staff cheering them as they ran by and under a plume of water from a nearby fire engine.
Rector said the first thing he was looking forward to after graduation was going out to eat.
“Probably an expensive restaurant that I know I’m going to regret,” he said.
Rector, like Glasson, had lost weight during boot camp — about 35 pounds.
Glasson also ref lected on his journey, now two years in the making.
“At my heaviest I weighed nearly 370 pounds,” he said. “I was going to school and I had little to no physical exercise in my life. We’d go to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and I couldn’t go on a lot of the rides because I was too big. I’d break chairs, which was embarrassing.”
Now he doesn’t feel embarrassed. Meier, when asked about how he’d changed, said he is more self less than before.
“It’s about the person to my left and right and getting them through with me as a team,” he said.
Bardales-villa, slated to work in logistics in the Marines, said he learned he could lead.
Wilson, set to work in communications, said he sees a different version of himself.
“When I look in the mirror . ... I carry myself a little bit higher,” he said.
On Friday, Sept. 11, the Marines of Alpha Company formed up on the depot’s parade deck. Along the west end of the parade deck was row upon row of empty bleachers. Normally they’re filled with thousands of family members; this time no visitors were allowed.
Weidner, who will be a Marine Corps linguist, talked about how coronavirus kept families away from the graduation, saying he felt the Marines did well keeping the recruits safe.
“It does kind of stink a little bit, not being able to have our family here as other Marines have had before, but that’s just how it is,” Weidner said.
Usually, new Marines are granted 10 days leave between boot camp and their next stop in training, but due to the pandemic all postgraduation leave is canceled.
Instead of mingling with family and friends after graduation, the Marines of Alpha Company fell into a smart formation and marched back to their barracks.
Alongside them, members of a new company en route to meet their drill instructors, watched them go by.
In the barracks, while packing, Weidner pulled out a large portrait of himself he hadn’t seen before. It was him in his Marine dress blue uniform. He placed it on his rack and looked at himself.
“This is by far my largest accomplishment in my life to this day,” he said. “I’m really proud of myself for being able to go through this and I’m glad to gain these brothers.”