...Speaking of passing out in a wall locker. It was one of our Marine reserve unit's annual tours of duty to Camp Pendleton in Southern California. As part of the celebration for the last day of our two-week adventure, the unit sponsored a trip to the beach with a day off, transportation and liquor supplied. The trucks left for the ocean at 8 a.m.

Well, you can see where this is going. We were back on base drunk, happy and sunburned by nightfall and the group went straight to a smaller, less-supervised enlisted club in our area. By 9 p.m. we were dancing topless on the tables and foaming beer on each other. Keep in mind that there wasn't a female within miles of our location, so this was heterosexual male bonding of the most primitive nature.

After being thrown out of the e-club, we retired to the Quonset hut where we'd had our communications shop set up all fortnight. Here we found our C.O., quietly discussing the successes of our tour with the platoon sergeant (in other words he was being debriefed). This seemed an appropriate venue for continued activities for the half dozen severely inebriated, half-naked Marines loudly wandering around after lights-out with a recently discovered and unfortunately unopened bottle of cheap tequila.

Being true gentlemen, the sober leaders of our unit had spotted the opportunity for some cheap entertainment and suggested that it might be fun have us stand in a line taking repeated whacks in the stomach with a six foot length of 1x2" pine, just so we could shout "thank you Sir, may I have another?"

Then it degenerated.

We decided that to cover the discomfort of the welts and bruises on our sunburned stomachs, we needed to finish off the booze but shot glasses aren't standard Marine issue gear. However, improvisation is the watchword of the Corps and we were soon back on track downing tequila out of a pop-flare cap (A pop-flare is an illumination device contained in cylindrical, aluminum tube about a foot long, that you activate by removing the cap, placing it on the other end of the tube and slamming the pin hidden inside against the bottom).

I'm not really sure what happened next, but I definitely remember being convinced to do pushups while sucking tequila out of a half-inch deep crevice left in the poorly-poured concrete floor while having my feet held in the air by a helpful volunteer. I also vaguely recall a chair being thrown in through a window from the outside, while on the other end of the building, a high ranking officer was storming in to find out who was making "so much fucking noise so late at God damn night!?!"

It starts to get kind of fuzzy from here but I do recall being stirred from my wall locker at four a.m. to start packing for the bus trip to the airport. My situation was not helped by "friends" who convinced me that the best thing for still being very drunk and having to report for duty in an hour was to eat something, namely lots of MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) packages of spaghetti. As a result, I wasn't able to accomplish much packing by I did manage to throw up a lot. Tequila and half-digested spaghetti in the wall locker, in the barracks, on the short walk to the bus, on the bus, in the airport... well you get the idea.

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