Comment of the day: The Marine boot camp drill instructor as a psychologist

I liked this story about boot camp in the olden days. You may have missed it because it was posted waaaay down in the anti-Catholicism discussion the other day:

…our DI’s terrorized us and were absolute gods…and yes, I remember to this day the full names of our 3 DI’s at MCRD San Diego. Anyway, after two months of Boot Camp, the platoons went cross country to the rifle range for intensive rifle training, culminating in shooting for qualification. The pressure for a platoon to qualify 100 percent was enormous. That, plus the normal daily struggles of a boot’s life, put huge stress on us 18-year olds. The night before our platoon was to go up to shoot for quals, we gathered around one of our DI’s for a final briefing and instructions. At the end of which, the DI told us in a lowered voice that he had a Navy corpsman friend at the dispensary who smuggled him some tranquilizer pills. He wasn’t recommending it to anyone, but he would give one to anyone who wanted to take one before going to the range. We all lined up and took one of the pills. The next day was a long and tense day, and our platoon qualified 100 percent, even Pvt. Roberts, the platoon f–ckup. We were on Cloud 9 and double-timed all the way back to base camp. A few weeks later, as we were getting ready for graduation, the DI’s loosened up a bit and started being conversational with us. The rifle range DI told us then that the "tranquilizer pills" he had offered us at the range were really just vitamin pills that he got from the dispensary. But they did the trick! Semper Fi!