[LJ Idol, Season 7-9] Marching Orders, With Style
All right people, gather round. For this week's entry I'm breaking out one of my infamous, "no shit there I was", bona fide Navy stories. Now you may say to yourself "Self, how's he gonna come up with a Navy story about Marching Orders? Isn't that Army crap?" Damn straight that's Army crap, there's no marching on ships! But I'm reaching way back here, all the way to Boot Camp.
In Boot Camp, there's tons of marching. You march to class. You march to chow hall. You march just to march to show people you know how to march properly, and they score you on it. Six columns across, average company had about 18 or 20 rows of people. They teach you how to make left hand turns (called "left turn"), and right hand turns ("right turn", big surprise there), and reverse direction ("to the rear"). The only thing you learn that might be considered fancy is flanks. For "left flank", everyone turns 90 degrees to the left at the same time, so you're now marching sideways. I'll let you geniuses figure out what "right flank" is for yourselves.
Anything fancier than the by-the-books evolutions listed above, and you've learned a new term: hotdogging. And there's a rule in Boot Camp, NO HOTDOGGING! This ain't band camp, you're in the military! You get caught doing it and your ass is in a sling.
Now this is where it gets interesting. Our Chief Petty Officer had a thing for hotdogging. He thought if done properly it could show us we were a well-oiled machine, all the cogs working together to do something complex that we could take pride in. So on days we had done well with everything we were supposed to, he'd march us out to a drill field that wasn't in use where nobody could see us, and he'd teach us a new trick and let us practice it. On a day we screwed up, he marched us back to the barracks and exercised us until it rained inside. That's a different story, but suffice it to say we were warned if anybody caught us hotdogging anywhere other than when he was with us on that drill field, it was gonna rain hard.
Eventually we learned all kinds of tricks, with intermeshed rows marching through each other and turning this way and that. We loved doing it, and he took great pride in how well we did. But, you have to start somewhere. Now pay attention, as this comes up later in the story like a quiz. The first thing we learned is "double to the rear". He gives the order as the unit is stepping down with their right foot. Everyone takes a left step, with the left foot directly in front of the right foot. Weight shifts to the balls of the feet, and you pivot to the right 180 degrees so your facing backwards. That's a standard "to the rear". Now, you simply pivot back to your left 180 degrees to face forward again. That's "double to the rear". Simple.
Somewhere along the way, one of us thought we'd impress Chief by coming up with a version of our own. They suggested "double to the dog". Same as "double to the rear", except as you turn to face backwards you stomp your right foot and give a loud "HOOF!" like a dog bark. With all 100+ of us doing it in sync, we thought it'd be loud and impressive. So we talked among ourselves to make sure everyone knew what to do when the order was called out.
Couple days later, we're marching back from a class. Chief isn't with us, so one of our own that's designated as "recruit chief" is leading us and giving the orders. Another company, one of our direct rivals, turns onto the same walkway behind us. They march right up on our ass, with their cadence caller trying to drown out our cadence caller and make us look bad. Shit like this happens all the time. It was irritating. Our recruit chief decided that was it.
"COMPANY! DOUBLE TOTHEDOG, MARCH!"
Pivot, stomp, scream (and we may have bared teeth a bit), pivot, right back to marching. Everyone hit every beat perfectly, the well-oiled machine we knew we were. It was every bit as impressive as we thought it would be. We know this, because the company two steps behind our last row completely lost their shit and collapsed. Their front row, seeing us turn to march straight into them and scream, stopped marching and stepped backwards into the row behind them. They all collided and fell over. The next row back stepped to the sides to avoid them, then the row behind them, until their whole unit was a snarl of disorganized, messy looking knobs. We were very proud of ourselves, until the Lieutenant on the other side of the walkway that saw what we did started screaming for us to halt and came over.
Yes sir, we know hotdogging is bad. No sir, nobody taught us to do that. No sir, it's not proper military bearing. Yes sir, we understand you're going to tell our Chief as soon as you finish escorting us back to barracks.
So we're in the barracks lined up stiff as boards, as Chief marches up and down between us yelling about how stupid we are, and he doesn't understand what the hell we thought we were doing. It was funny how he could yell like that with such a wide smile on his face, and I swear I might have seen a tear of pride in the corner of his sparkling gaze. He then exercised us for almost five whole minutes, we pretended it rained, and he told us to never do that again.
Just cause you have your marching orders, doesn't mean you can't follow them with style, and a little bit of attitude :D
In Boot Camp, there's tons of marching. You march to class. You march to chow hall. You march just to march to show people you know how to march properly, and they score you on it. Six columns across, average company had about 18 or 20 rows of people. They teach you how to make left hand turns (called "left turn"), and right hand turns ("right turn", big surprise there), and reverse direction ("to the rear"). The only thing you learn that might be considered fancy is flanks. For "left flank", everyone turns 90 degrees to the left at the same time, so you're now marching sideways. I'll let you geniuses figure out what "right flank" is for yourselves.
Anything fancier than the by-the-books evolutions listed above, and you've learned a new term: hotdogging. And there's a rule in Boot Camp, NO HOTDOGGING! This ain't band camp, you're in the military! You get caught doing it and your ass is in a sling.
Now this is where it gets interesting. Our Chief Petty Officer had a thing for hotdogging. He thought if done properly it could show us we were a well-oiled machine, all the cogs working together to do something complex that we could take pride in. So on days we had done well with everything we were supposed to, he'd march us out to a drill field that wasn't in use where nobody could see us, and he'd teach us a new trick and let us practice it. On a day we screwed up, he marched us back to the barracks and exercised us until it rained inside. That's a different story, but suffice it to say we were warned if anybody caught us hotdogging anywhere other than when he was with us on that drill field, it was gonna rain hard.
Eventually we learned all kinds of tricks, with intermeshed rows marching through each other and turning this way and that. We loved doing it, and he took great pride in how well we did. But, you have to start somewhere. Now pay attention, as this comes up later in the story like a quiz. The first thing we learned is "double to the rear". He gives the order as the unit is stepping down with their right foot. Everyone takes a left step, with the left foot directly in front of the right foot. Weight shifts to the balls of the feet, and you pivot to the right 180 degrees so your facing backwards. That's a standard "to the rear". Now, you simply pivot back to your left 180 degrees to face forward again. That's "double to the rear". Simple.
Somewhere along the way, one of us thought we'd impress Chief by coming up with a version of our own. They suggested "double to the dog". Same as "double to the rear", except as you turn to face backwards you stomp your right foot and give a loud "HOOF!" like a dog bark. With all 100+ of us doing it in sync, we thought it'd be loud and impressive. So we talked among ourselves to make sure everyone knew what to do when the order was called out.
Couple days later, we're marching back from a class. Chief isn't with us, so one of our own that's designated as "recruit chief" is leading us and giving the orders. Another company, one of our direct rivals, turns onto the same walkway behind us. They march right up on our ass, with their cadence caller trying to drown out our cadence caller and make us look bad. Shit like this happens all the time. It was irritating. Our recruit chief decided that was it.
"COMPANY! DOUBLE TOTHEDOG, MARCH!"
Pivot, stomp, scream (and we may have bared teeth a bit), pivot, right back to marching. Everyone hit every beat perfectly, the well-oiled machine we knew we were. It was every bit as impressive as we thought it would be. We know this, because the company two steps behind our last row completely lost their shit and collapsed. Their front row, seeing us turn to march straight into them and scream, stopped marching and stepped backwards into the row behind them. They all collided and fell over. The next row back stepped to the sides to avoid them, then the row behind them, until their whole unit was a snarl of disorganized, messy looking knobs. We were very proud of ourselves, until the Lieutenant on the other side of the walkway that saw what we did started screaming for us to halt and came over.
Yes sir, we know hotdogging is bad. No sir, nobody taught us to do that. No sir, it's not proper military bearing. Yes sir, we understand you're going to tell our Chief as soon as you finish escorting us back to barracks.
So we're in the barracks lined up stiff as boards, as Chief marches up and down between us yelling about how stupid we are, and he doesn't understand what the hell we thought we were doing. It was funny how he could yell like that with such a wide smile on his face, and I swear I might have seen a tear of pride in the corner of his sparkling gaze. He then exercised us for almost five whole minutes, we pretended it rained, and he told us to never do that again.
Just cause you have your marching orders, doesn't mean you can't follow them with style, and a little bit of attitude :D