First Letter from Tom

Please note, the letter started on really small paper and later he found larger paper so there are some addition notes on the top of a few pages that will be noted by *...* Enjoy!

Nicky,

I apologize for writing to you on this ridiculously small paper, but I am currently at church and this is the first time I have found to write in the past week, and this is the only paper I have to write on. As far as Officer Candidate School is concerned, all I can say is this: everything you read online, everything people tell you about how bad it is can't even describe how down, worn out, and beat you feel as you go through your first week here.

The first week here is called Indoctrination week and its sole purpose is to suck so bad as to force you to quit. The first Sunday we got here we spent about 2 hours filling out paperwork before being taken to the housing dorms, where we were given a 2 minute speech on how to properly tie your shoes, which closed with "Welcome to OCS" followed by 20 Candidate Officers storming through a door and screaming at us at the top of their lungs. The rest of the day was spent being verbally berated, not being allowed to talk to anyone (which is often the hardest part), and being forced to stand at attention, and sit on the first 1/3 of your chair. Basically, the whole point of the first day is to get you to question the strength of your committment to this program, and absolutely everyone has the thought "What the fuck am I doing here?"

The next couple of days were far easier, except for staving off boredom because you still are not allowed to talk to anyone, or use personal pronouns like I or we. The worst part about Monday and Tuesday was the suspense building up over the three "Evolutions" we had coming up on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. What compounded this was the Candidate Officers kept giving us little tantilizing hints about the hell we were about to go through.

When wake up Wednesday came, we were woken up at 4:30 AM by our DI, Gunnary Sergeant Milender, United States Marine Core (which of course was our first time meeting *Note: Found bigger paper* our Drill Instructor. They pulled us out of our wing into the hall, where every Drill Instructor here (there are about 8), proceeded to beat us (By making us do push ups, sit ups, jumping jacks, all that fun stuff) for about five minutes, then we were taken outside, ran around, and then were promptly beat by about 8 DIs again. The hardest part about these beating sessions is being forced to sound off at the top of your lungs continually and not ever being allowed to wipe your face. This means you are screaming at the top of your lungs, doing push ups, and having sweat drip down your face into your eyes, burning them. If you touch your face or drop your knees to the ground, the beating session just gets worse. However, the worst part of wake-up Wednesday was our beating session just before lunch. he got pissed at us, so we heard "Get on your face" and got beat up in our wing, were forcedto strip our sheets and bring them into the hall, one in each hand and one in the mouth. Then we had to go inside, grab out mattresses and bring the out in the hall in 10 seconds. Following this we went to the sand pit (he calls it his rose garden), filled every pocket with sand (we have 8), did push ups, sit ups, and ran for 10 more minutes. Next, we went back to our wing, dumped the sand all over the floor, and then did more push ups in another beating session. We were then given 20 minutes to clean up all the sand and remake every rack (which is made far harder by the fact that they all need to have hospital corners). I don't think any of us have ever cleaned up faster in our lives, and we did it with 2 minutes to spare.

Outpost and Welcome Aboard Friday and Saturday were similar, with us getting beaten up every day by every DI once again. For Outpost, we were verbally berated by the officers first (I think they even got a couple guys to cry), then the DIs beat us, forced us to run around with our full seabags, and stopped periodically to beat us. Unfortunately we lost our first team member this day as she could not complete the run and got rolled. Welcome Aboard was similar, we woke up at 4:30 AM and got beat in every wing of a 3-story building, were taken to another sand pit and hosed down with a fire hose while being beaten. We actually lost another guy later that day after he passed out from heat exhaustion after another beating.

Then nice part though is that we are finally with the rest of the regiment and are actually being treated like actualy people by them finally. I know after making it through this first week I will be able to get through the rest of this, you just have to be dedicated to becoming a Naval Officer. However, this is made far easier by the pride I get everyday putting on my uniform (which they just started letting us wear yesterday). One note, the Navy switchec over to blue camoflauge uniforms as the working uniform (I still get summer whites and dress whites though) which doesn't seem to make much sense given that it means you blend into the water if you ever fall off the ship. Apparently they are great for boarding ships at night or generally sneaking around at night (great burglary uniforms).

A few other random notes, you get 3 minute bathroom calls, eat everything with a spoon in a very regimented process, get about 5 hours of sleep every night, stink hideously, and are generally just beat down everyday. They say here you live chow hall to chow hall, which I can easily attest to. I can say with confidence this is the hardest thing I have ever done, but I am determined to make it through. I will say this though, after this, if I ever see a Marine Core DI again, I am going to turn and run for the hills.

Anyways, that is just a small portion of what life is like for me here and I know it is a lot of rambling and full of misspellings, but keep in mind I am sleep deprived and stressed to no end. I would really love to hear about what is going on with you and everyone else in ASCE, it would be a welcome escape from this palce. I hope you guys have a great Bay Area Road Trip, drink lots of booze for me, and let everyone in ASCE know I miss them and can't wait to see them again. (I believe my graduation is September 27th, so I am going to try to be in LA if I can for a few days after that. I know that is a long way away, but just a heads up).

Sincerely,
TJ Curtis