Word: boote
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...nine weeks of Navy basic training begin on a luxury bus that takes recruits from O'Hare airport to the Navy's lone boot camp, Great Lakes Recruit Training Command, just north of Chicago. Onboard they watch an 18-min. orientation video with a rock-music soundtrack in which recent boot-camp grads tell the new arrivals that "physically, anybody can get through boot camp," and that it's O.K. to cry. Recruits get a "Blue Card," which helps them deal with stress. The card instructs a recruit to hand it over to a Navy trainer...
...Marines relish being different from the other three services--tougher and cheaper, Leathernecks like to say--and that attitude is reflected in their boot camp. While the other branches have relaxed their training, last year the corps stretched boot camp from 11 weeks to 12. "This is not making things easier," says General Charles Krulak, the Marine Commandant. "This is making things tougher--physically, mentally and morally." Unlike the other branches, the Marines have also refused to mix men and women in basic training, which angers some who believe that it shortchanges women. Each sex trains the same...
Last October the Marines added a grueling new climax to boot camp called the Crucible. Spread over 54 straight hours near the end of their training stint, it requires recruits to simulate a variety of battlefield actions amid 40 miles of hiking. They traverse a 20-ft.-wide creek with a pair of 10-ft. boards, and they carry a "wounded" Marine for a mile over rugged terrain. They perform with scant sleep or food, through day and night, and have to ignore scrapes and sprains. "I had to keep going and not let my team down," says Private Scott...
Still, many Marines say boot camp is easier than they expected. And even if it was too tough for boxer Riddick Bowe--he dropped out after 11 days last February--recruits are not immune to society's trends. Krulak, for example, has had to ban the practice, popular among some male Marines, of wearing fingernail polish...
...Marines now trumpet matrimony. Four years ago, General Carl Mundy, Krulak's predecessor, was denounced for trying to bar married Marine recruits. But earlier this year, the corps heralded the wedding of a young Marine couple that left for boot camp at Parris Island shortly after they exchanged vows. "We'd see each other when our formations passed each other," recalls Private Sarah Wallace of Sioux City, Iowa, the uniformed bride...