Field Strip Your Butts?

Nick Cash

For those of you, like me, that can remember the Old Corps, that was a common order!

The first time I heard it, I was stationed in that hell hole boot camp that the USMC called MCRD, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego California. This was back when the Marine Corps encourage you to smoke, yes I said, “encouraged you to smoke!" The smokers in the platoon got 5 minutes to smoke and all non-smokers were set to "Policing The Area", another term I came to hate. That meant that non-smokers had to walk around and pick up the smoker’s cigarette butts and "Field Strip" them and by Field Striping the Butts, that meant to tear them up into tiny pieces with which the wind could have it's way. So, I started smoking, only pretending at first just to keep from having to police the area, and then one day while I was sitting on the bottom of my 11 quart bucket (issued as part of our boot camp equipment) outside my quonset hut (something recruits got to do on Sunday morning if there wasn't a church of your denomination on the base to go to morning services, which is why the Marine Corps has me registered as a Moslem, which is another story for another time. Any way sitting on my bucket (I still have a permanent ring on my butt), I discovered that I was actually inhaling the smoke from my previously faked cigarette smoking and enjoying it deeply! So as I said, the Corps encouraged recruits to smoke and not only smoke, but smoke Pall Mall cigarettes by requiring that every boot locker had one carton of Pall Malls in it in a prescribed manner and place so that everybody’s foot locker was uniform!

So much for the reminiscing, I guess I just wanted to say, “Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em”See ya later.

Semper Fi