Squad bay life is chaotic underneath all the order. If you've ever seen Full Metal Jacket, you'll know what a squad bay is. However, at OCS, the squad bays were much smaller and only had two rows of racks. I was surprised at some of the rules of the squad bay because I was imagining the worst. A friend told me boot camp stories where the instructors would follow the recruits into the showers and watch them shower. At OCS, the instructors were not allowed in the head.
Racks are bunk beds. A lot of people don't like the top rack, but I had the top and I liked it. It was more private and I used the top of the wall lockers as my own little shelf for my canteen. My rack mate was prior Parris Island DI, and she was surprisingly quiet. She told me on more than one occasion to keep my head down and do my time. I feel like I invaded her space a bunch. I would peek my head over after lights and whisper to her and she would push my face back. Then I would lean on the other side to talk to my OCS bestie at the bottom rack next to my rack and then she would threaten to use her foot in my face, while kind of smiling.
There is something about being crammed in with unfamiliar people in a place like military training that just made me such a social creature. Maybe survival? You'll do things that are out of character because of lack of sleep, nervousness, etc. Luckily my OCS bestie, while not as energetic and outgoing as me, was also just as nervous and uncomfortable as me. We were inseparable to the annoyance of both the instructors and other classmates. But like I said, it's about survival and people work best with a partner in crime.
My rack mate and I always had the perfect rack. She told me that we were, and since she was a DI, you knew our rack looked good. I asked her if I could copy the way she set up her gear and everything, and she said "You better be doing everything I do." So I did everything she did, and then I helped my friend with hers. You'll get issued gear one of the first days, and you'll see you are issued the most comfortable blanket on earth, called a "poncho liner." I might be exaggerating, but anytime we got to wrap up in a blanket was a good thing, so that blanket became my favorite. I saw my rack mate use her poncho liner to sleep with, on top of the perfectly-made rack. She told me everyone did this, so they wouldn't have to completely fix their racks in the morning. It was true. We all slept on top of those itchy green blankets, and used the poncho liner as our blanket.
While I shared my rack with the prior DI, I shared my little aisle with my friend. At the foot of each rack were two foot lockers, stacked on one another. This was me and my rack mate. In each aisle, there were two wall lockers, against the wall, that faced inboard. These belonged to me and my friend. Only one locker could open at a time, and you can imagine the chaos in the morning when they give us a minute to get dressed. After a couple days, my friend and I decided to share lockers. People always got us mixed up. We were the same height, weight, and had similar hair styles. Our last names were similar. After a few days, we realized our locker combinations were the same except by one digit, and we decided to put clothes in my locker, things that we needed fast, and everything else in hers. We were the first ones ready because all I had to do was open my locker and throw two of everything on the rack. We bragged about this and the next day we did the same, with stupid grins on our faces.
The instructors asked what was going on, and one of our classmates ratted us out. At this time one of the male instructors came into our squad bay. (Note: You will always wear "green on green" under your uniforms, and to bed. So when you get dressed in the morning, you are really just putting on camis over green on green). Back to the story. A male instructor came in, the one that was known for yelling super loud. He came right over to us and demanded to see our lockers. He said, "I've never seen this before," honestly kind of quietly. Our instructor told us we had until the next day to fix the lockers. The male instructor said,
"I'm seeing double. You!" He pointed to my friend. "Picture you're in a fox hole, and she!" (Points to me) "Gets shot and taken away. All the way to Germany. Her stuff goes with her, they take the whole foot locker, the one with her name. That goes with her. You go to settle for the night and you find out all you have is your letter-writing kit, her toothbrush, her family pictures, and other useless junk. Meanwhile she's living it up in a hospital with all your clean camis and dry socks. What's that gonna do for you?"
I had never seen him so calm and I realized that maybe sometimes a candidate does something that can have such unforeseen bad consequences that the instructor has to put on their mentorship hat. He totally had a point. There will be times you want to cut corners or there will be things you think are stupid, but just know there sometimes is a method behind the madness, even if the point is to make you mad. To be honest it was kind of morbidly funny picturing my friend stuck in a fox hole with only pictures of my cat to boost her morale.
You will get very very frustrated with things. JUST ROLL WITH IT. Everyone else is messing up as much as you are. As more people get dropped, you'll move the unused lockers to the back and you'll have more room. Things get better! The beginning is chaos and will feel overwhelming. It doesn't last forever.
I'm not going to spoil Fire Watch because that's a horrible rite of passage that you need to experience for yourself.
You'll have laundry rooms. Have a clearly marked laundry bag. Honestly with laundry, my friend and I did put out stuff together because it was the same, and it was one bag to keep track of instead of two, and it's not like we had ALL of our stuff in there.
Yeah you'll shower together. I honestly didn't care.
You will get stencils. Mark all your stuff! You'll be issued a little Candidate Guide. It'll tell you how to mark your stuff. Read this thing over and over!
A random dumb thing I did. I kept boot bands everywhere. Chest pocket. Assault pack. Under my pillow. Under one of the lockers. They always came in handy.