Elephant Platoon
When I first enlisted in The Marines I weighed 205 lbs. I played football, baseball
and basketball in high school, so I was in excellent physical condition when I
arrived at Parris Island for training.
I was only there two days, when the drill instructor Sgt. Williams called out my
name, and that of Roosevelt Benton to come to his office immediately. Roosevelt
“Rosie” weighed about 225 lbs. of pure muscle. He played for Central High in
Rhode Island, and I played for West Warwick.
When we arrived at the drill instructor’s office, he told us we were selected for a
special battalion, and would be leaving first thing in the morning. We both returned
to our bunks and wrote home to explain we were selected for this Special Infantry
Battalion and assumed they would all be very proud of us.
In the morning Rosie and I waited outside for the bus to take us to our new
barracks and assignment. When we boarded the bus we could not help but notice
that everyone else on the bus was very fat and extremely out of shape.
We felt maybe they were going to some other barracks and just along for the ride.
Well we were dumbfounded when our bus pulled up in front of this barracks,
which had a flag with an elephant painted on it, and when our new drill instructors
boarded the bus and announced, “Welcome to Elephant Platoon”. What the hell is
going on I said to myself? We were hustled off the bus into the barracks, and as we
stood in front of our new bunks, we were told how fat and disgusting we all were,
and that we would have to lose a lot of weight in order to prove we were fit to
become Marines
Rosie and I could not believe what just took place. We were told to strip down and
get weighed before we began the program. Immediately following the weigh in,
they had us outside running a mile and then perform all kinds of pushups and
jumping jacks. Rosie and I found it all easy to perform, however the other recruits
could not complete any of the exercises that were required. They were so out of
shape that I thought they would each drop with a heart attack if pushed too far. We
exercised for several hours, then we were brought to the mess hall for lunch. We
were given very small portions of food, and were told we had to eat everything on
our plates or else we would suffer the consequences. Believe me, when you are this
big you usually eat everything on your plate.
We were embarrassed that we were assigned to this Elephant Platoon and did not
want to write home about it. We exercised morning, noon and night, we wore
plastic ponchos over our bodies and had to do 500 jumping jacks in a hot shower,
in order to make us sweat more and lose weight. Four day later, I was 11 lbs.
lighter and Rosie lost about the same. We were both weak from the loss of fluid
and also from helping the others throughout a run or while trying to climb ropes or
walls, when they fell down we had to stop and pick them up, because marines do
not leave anyone behind.
On the fifth day, Rosie and I were called into the doctor’s office for a physical, to
see how we were progressing, and when he saw me and Rosie stripped down in the
nude, he said, “ You two recruits should have never been selected for this fat body
platoon! You are both in excellent shape, and I am having you ordered back to
your original companies. There must have been a mistake he said, because we only
select those recruits over 200 lbs. who are out of shape, and we believe, will not be
able to complete the rigorous training provided.
We both felt relieved, but at the same time, felt bad for the guys still there, because
it was pure hell to say the least, to watch them struggle throughout each exercise
they would have to perform, in order to prove they were able to continue and
graduate.
When we wrote home and told them what happened, our parents and friends had a
good laugh, and at the same time, were relieved we were not sent to a special
battalion where we could have been trained to go on special combat missions or
assignments where our lives would have been in constant harms way.