Monday morning began like all the others. I got up, took out the dogs, fed them and the cat, and drank coffee. But mid-second cup I started to feel like something was off. Actually, something was off … but I had no idea what it was.

I thought maybe I had an appointment but in typical Dopish fashion had forgotten what it was. I checked my Month-at-a-Glance. Nope, no appointments — just Monday, April 29. And once I saw that, the “something” that had nagged at me nailed me like a direct hit amidships: On that day 55 year ago, I’d arrived at boot camp.

Actually, strictly speaking, that’s not true. I had arrived at Great Lakes command, but not at boot camp.

It was because of the Seabee who drove us recruits from the airport to Great Lakes. It was his first day on the job and he had no idea what he was doing. So instead of taking us to the boot camp section of the base, he dropped us off at headquarters on Mainside.

As soon as we stepped off the bus, I knew that wherever we were, it was the wrong place.

Mainside was the command’s showcase and as such was beautiful, as only a high-class, old-time military base can be. Surrounding the quad were gorgeous turn-of-the century stone buildings, and of course the most gorgeous was headquarters, in front of which we’d been dropped off. It was huge, with wide stairs leading up to the entrance, at least 50 yards away. At the top of the stairs were columns that looked like Parthenon wannabes.

The quad was vast, green and immaculate, and was surrounded by majestic maples. It looked less like a military base than the campus of an antebellum Virginia university.

There were about 20 of us, fresh off the plane from Syracuse — and fresh off the farm as well. And each of us was as lost as the other.

At the recruiting center in Syracuse, a guy named Darryl Grubner had been appointed our group leader, by dint of his having the highest score on the Navy aptitude test. He was a great guy, smart as a whip and already an accomplished artist … and he was as clueless as the rest of us.

Finally, some kid spoke up.

“So what’re we gonna do?” he said.

Grubner just stood there frowning. Then he shrugged, and frowned some more.

“Well, I don’t know about anyone else,” I said, “but I’m gonna sit down and have a cigarette.”

Apparently, it was a brilliant idea, as a bunch of the other guys followed my example.

I sat there admiring the beautiful day. It was warm and sunny, the sky was a bright blue, and as the birds were chirping their little heads off, an admiral appeared at the top of the stairs.

OK, so he wasn’t an admiral. He wasn’t even an officer. Instead, he was a chief petty officer. But he was in dress blues and had a chestful of ribbons and gold rank insignia and hash marks that were blinding in the sunlight. So to me there, in my first 10 minutes in This Man’s Navy, for all I knew he was the Chief of Naval Operations.

The gold insignia and hash marks — as opposed to the usual red ones — showed he’d earned three consecutive good conduct ribbons. In other words, he’d served 12 years of undetected rascality.

“What’re you guys doing?” he said, not unkindly.

“We’re in the Navy,” said one kid. “We’re here for boot camp.”

“OK,” said the chief, as if he hadn’t known. “Well, you just stay here and I’ll get someone to take you there.”

Then he turned and vanished into the sacred inner chambers of the Parthenon.

–

Bullies in blue

–

Ten minutes later a figure came shambling toward us. He was young and wearing the dungaree work uniform and white spats, so he was clearly a recruit himself. Though we didn’t know it at the time, he was a “service week.”

Service week was the sixth week of boot camp, when everyone was assigned to various chores base chores. “Service week” also referred to the guys themselves. During service week, some guys worked in the chow hall (galley slaves), some were on grounds maintenance, some were in offices, and the rest were gofers of one kind or another. This guy was a gofer.

“Awright, form your sorry asses into two lines, and face forward,” he said, pulling rank on the only people he could. After we did that, he barked, “Ten-shun! Forward … harch! Hup one, hup two, hup …”

We ambled, rambled and stumbled forward as best we could, resembling less military men of any sort than a bunch of sad cases who couldn’t tell their cadence from their elbows. Similarly, the service week couldn’t count cadence. So as much as we tried, we weren’t marching in step. In fact, we weren’t marching at all. Instead, we lurched and staggered, looking like a bunch of luckless slobs with one leg eight inches shorter than the other.

We bungled our way out of Mainside and through a gate, above which was the sign, Camp Barry. Within seconds I underwent the most dislocating and disorienting experience of my life — before, or since.

While Mainside had been a whiff of heaven, Barry was a bottomless buffet of hell.

I can’t remember much, probably because I was in shock, but I remember the noise. Crowds of recruits in formations were being hustled and bustled all over the place, led by petty officers who were yelling orders and obscenities — both in equal measure.

I found myself trapped, not in a different world, but a different solar system. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore … but Toto was.

Luckily, I didn’t have the time or wherewithal to think about that, or anything else. Instead, some petty officer came over and bullied a bunch of us into something resembling a unit. Then he marched us to what looked like (and actually was) a wooden WWII building — all the while barking orders and bellowing insults.

The building was the barber shop, where the putative barbers took maybe 15 seconds to shear our hair down to the epidermis. Then we were marched to the chow hall for lunch.

–

Food, and food for thought

–

The chaos and cacophony outside the chow hall continued inside it, with service weeks yelling at us to line up and crush together so tight “you make the man in front of you smile.”

Of course I couldn’t see the face of the man in front of me, or the man in back of me either. But I knew neither of them was smiling, because I sure wasn’t, nor was anyone else.

We inched forward, our right sides brushing the wall, trays held to our chests, not enough space for a playing card between any of us.

Suddenly, I was standing next to a poster on the wall. It was a printed in light blue on white and I later found out they were a staple in Navy chow halls. They were of the Go, Fight, Win ilk — a drawing of some old-time Navy hero or battle or some such, with accompanying text guaranteed to make us sink enemy subs with only a bayonet and a snarl.

This one was of Nathan Hale. On it, of course, was his timeless quote about being bummed he could die only once for the home team. It also had his birth and death dates. When I read them, I blurted, “The hell?”

The guy in back of me, who I became buds with all through boot camp, was a kid from PA named Wallace Hagar. He was a freckled-faced Norman Rockwell imp, who proudly claimed to be a fourth generation bootlegger.

Hearing my “Oh hell?” he leaned over and said, “What was that about?”

“That,” I said, pointing my chin at the poster.

“What about it?”

“It’s Nathan Hale,” I said. “You know who he was, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, “The I-only-regret-I-have-one-life-to-give-to-my-country guy.”

“Right,” I said.

“So what about him?” he said.

“He was 20 when he got hanged by the Brits,” I said. “I’m two years older than that and I’m sure not ready to do the same.”

Wallace said nothing for a bit, obviously processing what I’d said. Then he spoke.

“The way I figure it,” he said, “is if it’s worth dying for, it’s sure worth living for.”

As I said, we stayed pals for the rest of boot camp, but I never saw him after that.

And that’s too bad because I would’ve loved to have told him his comment became my motto, mantra, and main focus for the entire rest of my less-than-glorious Navy career.