Navy Bootcamp in 1951

By: Jerry Blackerby

Basic training in the Navy was a shock to most of the young recruits. I had grown up around the Army so was not quite as surprised as everyone else.

We were sent to Camp Elliott in the desert for the first four weeks of training. It was extremely hot during the day and cold at night. We were drilled from early morning until evening. We attended many classes on Navy history and traditions, regulations and other needed subjects. We did not have any liberty trips into San Diego during those four weeks at Camp Elliott.

A couple of us surprised most of the company by making top grades on every exam we were given. This created a situation later at final exam time.

We carried 1903 Springfield rifles during training but used M1 rifles for actual firing on the rifle range. I qualified very high on the rifle range because Dad had taught me well.

After four weeks, we were moved back to the base at San Diego for the remaining eight weeks. We became eligible for liberty in town on the weekends, but had to be back on base at night. On Sunday, we had to attend church service or go to a reading room during the time of church service and get a signed slip that we had attended church or the reading room. Without the signed slip, we could not get a pass to go to town.

Part of the time, I attended Mormon services with a friend and we could go to town before the rest of the guys because Mormon services were at 8:30 a.m. I even attended early Catholic Mass once at 7 a.m. I had never been to a Catholic service and I wanted to see what it was about. That time I got my liberty pass very early.

The best thing I saw in San Diego was the Zoo. I think I spent every Saturday afternoon at the Zoo. It was a wonderful place. Every time I have ever been to San Diego, I have gone to the Zoo. I went to the beach once, but was not impressed.

We had a television room in one building where we could watch some TV. I had only seen TV once or twice before going in the Navy. If the room was full of people, we had to wait a turn until someone left. I went to the television room once.

Life was definitely different in the military during the 1950s. It was nothing like what my children and grandchildren experienced in the military.

One incident that comes to mind was a man in boot camp who smelled bad. He did not take a shower every day, as the rest of us did. In fact, he probably only took a shower about once a week or less and he stunk. Talking to him did not do anything. This was in August, 1951 at Camp Elliott, in the desert near San Diego.

One evening a group of guys dragged him into the shower and gave him a Kiwi bath. They scrubbed his skin with a Kiwi laundry brush. He spent overnight in sick bay before returning to the company. No one was punished. The man made a point of showering every night after that.

Today, that could not happen.

We washed our clothes each evening by hand. We had a wooden table with a concrete scrubbing surface with running water and a bucket. We used bar soap and a Kiwi brush to scrub our clothing clean. We then tied our clothes, neat and precisely spaced, between two lines that were about two feet apart.

All of the lines were hoisted aloft after all of us had our clothes tied on. These lines were hoisted up like on a ship’s mast. The next morning, we would march out under the lines when we left the barracks area.

In the evening, all the lines were lowered so we could retrieve our dry clothes and repeat the process with what we had worn that day.

I remember one afternoon as we marched back into the barracks area about 1600 hours or 4 p.m., we had to wait because Hollywood was filming Sailor Beware, a movie with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The scene was to be as if the lines were being hoisted and Jerry Lewis had tied himself to the lines and was hoisted up with them. That scene never made the final movie.

We had to stand at ease, but still in ranks, until the filming was completed and the Hollywood crew moved out before we could march on into our barracks area.

The last few weeks of basic training, our weekly final exams were given in a different manner. We were marched to a theater/auditorium. Our company took up about three rows of seats. We were given multiple-choice answer sheets and pencils.

The questions were projected on a screen for one or two minutes. People were stationed throughout the auditorium watching to see that we were not looking at our neighbor’s answer sheet.

Some people in our company were barely passing. A few failed and were set back to a company behind us each week. When it came time for our final exam at the completion of basic, two or three of us that were making the top grades were ordered by the bigger guys in the company to devise a way to cheat so that everyone could pass. We were pushed around a little to make the point that we had to help everyone.

I devised a plan to mark my answer and then momentarily hold my pencil eraser pointing to one of the four points of the compass, based on which of four answers was correct. Each person repeated my moves because a person seated next to someone could see the pencil position without turning their head. It was arranged for the three of us to be seated midway in each of the three rows. I was scared to death.

A few of us aced the exam. The majority of the company missed one question because they thought our answer was wrong. The question was “What is the one sure way to not catch venereal disease?” The correct answer was “abstinence.” The majority thought there were other answers listing protective measures that should be the correct answer.

After the exam was over and the papers graded, our company was called in for an interrogation. They took each of us into separate rooms for interrogation about the exam. An investigator told me they knew I did not have to cheat from my previous test scores, but I had to have helped others. I was scared but played dumb and insisted that I did not know about any cheating.

The final offer from the investigator was that no one in the company would be in trouble, but they needed to know how we did it to prevent it from ever happening again. I still played dumb and said I could not tell them what I did not know. We got by with it. I don’t know how long it took them to figure it out, but I heard later that they quit using that method of testing.

We finished boot camp at the end of October and went home for ten days. I rode a bus from San Diego to Mineral Wells, Texas and then back to San Diego for reassignment to a training center. While home, Dad and I picked out a new living room suite for the house. Dad made a down payment and I started an allotment home after I returned to the Navy to cover the payments.

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