I'll always remember our days one through five at Recruit Training Command in San Diego. We had received our Bicillin shots that morning, and our posteriors were stiff and sore. We limped through the rest of the morning, marching from one location to the other as best we could, then went to noon chow.
After chow, we were marched back to our barracks and were informed that our barracks inspection that morning had been a total flop and we were going to suffer for it.
The door burst open and a crowd of men wearing black aiguillettes on their left shoulders came in. We had all been warned about them, they were the dreaded "troubleshooters" who visited recruit companies that were not performing up to speed. Our company commander walked out and left us to these beasts, who proceeded to run us through various physical training exercises, such as leg-lifts, up-and-down push-up positions and others that time has allowed me to forget, all orchestrated by several whistle blasts. They ripped through our lockers, throwing clothing and possessions all over the place; tore up our bedding; and had men running around the interior perimeter of the barracks with blankets between their teeth, smacking themselves on the back of their head with shower shoes, skivvies on their heads and socks on their ears.
My rack was made up incorrectly (the "catch edges" on my sheets were not facing the right direction), and I was instructed to climb between the sheets and mattress and ask my sheets why they were wrong. Trust me, I took this as no joke and climbed in there and seriously questioned them as to their state and why they allowed themselves to be that way. I never did get an answer to the question, but I was not going to stop asking come hell or high water.
Finally we were pulled from our various activities that we had been assigned, run through another series of group exercises and then assembled around the centerboard. We received a good talking to about what we had done to merit the visit we had just received, that we'd better get our s--- in one ditty bag and not let it happen again.
They left and our company commander walked back in. He told us if we didn't want to see them again, we'd better follow their advice, and get our barracks squared away ASAP. We did, but we noticed that while we were doing so, the effects of the shock we had gotten earlier had eased off quite a bit and began wondering if this was just a ruse that had been set up to force us to work out the kinks in our butts. We learned later that it hadn't been.
A few weeks later one of the companies in our battalion—that had also had an earlier experience—blew another inspection and received a second visit. They were one deck above us, and we could hear the screams, shouts and cries from our shipmates as they endured a second visit from the team. Thankfully, we were never visited again, but every time we were in formation or marching either on the grinder or to and from classes, if we ever saw them looking in our direction, we made sure to appear as smart as possible to prevent just that.
