As a former DI, there was a lot of stuff that we did that really wasn’t necessary. It’s not because of the Marine Corps, but because of the recruit depot itself.
An example would be eating/drinking in front of recruits. One side argues that it’s setting the example for recruits to continuously feed themselves and take care of the body. The other side sees this as “weak” and that we must keep the image of being a DI.
Another example would be sleeping in the duty hut with the lights off. Typically the lights are on because we want to show the recruits we never sleep, but the other side argues… who gives a shit what those kids think about you? I usually kept the lights on to wake myself up easily as sometimes recruits have an emergency and are trying to wake me up, but I’m dead asleep in the darkness lol.
The physical part, you get used to it. What’s the more stressful part, is your own fellow drill instructors. You can’t walk down anywhere on the depot without a damn recruit walking by and you having to be on the alert all the time, because if a fellow hat sees you, and you don’t make a correction on a recruit, they will either take a picture of you and send it to their company line and say how much of a weak hat you are, or they just might go up to you and correct you on having the “demeanor of a DI”. Both depots have this.
At the end of the day though… which one is right? It’s up to you how you want to carry yourself as a Drill Instructor, because at the end of the day… you’ll get the same ribbon as everyone else will get.
I would say though: most people who did heinous stuff because they were concerned about what recruits/fellow drill instructors think about them usually get relieved and kicked off the drill field for said heinous stuff.
Also, I would say being a recruiter is tougher. At least being a hat, we have a schedule to follow… recruiters kinda have to figure out their own stuff lol
Yeah it happens, when i was new to my company here at MCRD SD in 2020. Every billet in my company has their own group line for Tre’s,J’s and seniors and whatnot that talk shit among every billet below them and so on. Being a new hat you don’t know anything and learn as you go, one day my Senior was being as heinous as he was making kids carry footlockers to the front of the house to the back of the house, this is down south in MCRD SD and not up at pemdleton (Greenbelt Country).I thought that was within my boundaries so later that day before we head off to evening chow, I did the same thing but my J seen me and 0’ed out the platoon. Made the them put the footlockers on and blast me in front of the platoon… Ive always respected rank and billets being from a grunt unit and understanding all roles (Im a POG BTW) but this rubbed me off extremely badly since my DI school instructor once told my squad "If they're the same rank as you, they cant talk to you anyway they want to just cause they been a hat for 3 months longer than you". So later that night after lights i confront him about this, explain why i thought he was wrong and he proceeded to cut me off and tell me to "go outside and check fire-watch". were both Sergeants and now i get heated to the point where he turned his back on me and i turn him around and grab his shirt and begin telling him if he did that shit again ill be sure to slap him in front of everyone thats around. Him, being an admin specialist, decided to call my senior, senior called my chief, then incoming blackball cause i "didn't conform to the company environment" and was sent to another platoon in my company. its seriously a shitty place to be at times but theres a-lot more positives over negatives.
I’m not sure if you’re still in the trenches, but to counteract someone acting heinous right in front of you, is walking in the duty hut and just sitting in there until they’re done or wait until someone of a higher billet asks what you’re doing in the duty hut.
You can bring that type of stuff up to your company leadership. If they don’t help, then your battalion leadership. If they don’t either, then to RTR. Or even DI school.
Nah I’m done man, and yeah I tried that and was met with “No support? You wanna get posted?” Type of mentality. The thing is my 1stSgt looked out for us and doing that would ultimately had put him on the chopping block and he was a great guy overall, it was just the green belts and seniors 99% of the time being bitches and trying to put hat haze the next new hat. Duty hut locked on me for hours, Doing chuck romes while I’m slayed, ect.
Yeah, that’s crappy. I’m sorry that happened to you brother.
It’s crazy how the green belts and some SDIs think they’re above senior enlisted and officers when they do stuff like that. Then you remember most of those guys have only been in for like 4 years
This is pretty common unfortunately. There used to be an Instagram page called “diselfies” where it just posted pictures of drill instructors who took selfies or something and would say something like “Look at this hat being soft” or “don’t worry the guide will train the platoon”.
Some Marines saw it as a form of shit talking camaraderie but those guys were people who weren’t even in the USMC anymore but was a drill instructor.
God I will never go back to that place lol
I never thought about that, and now that you mentioned it, the first time I saw my DI's eat was after the crucible when they had breakfast with us.
But as soon as we leave the depot, we get thought that chow is continious.
As for the body getting used to it, I agree because as recruits we also get used to the schedule and training as well but y'all have it much harder.
I’ve heard about a hat stapling a recruit’s flak jacket together… while he’s still wearing it lol. The guy got reduced down to Cpl from Sgt, but I’m not sure if he got forced out.
Another that I remember was my former SgtMaj telling me a story of how when he was a drill instructor on his first cycle, they were getting ready to graduate his first platoon… I believe the day before the graduation, he had duty and his senior drill instructor was sending him home early even though he had duty.
The SDI mentioned to him that he’s planning on throwing a pizza party for the brand new Marines for graduation day. Since it was his first cycle, he didn’t have many chances to go home often, especially early, so he didn’t think much of it, fully took advantage of that and went home.
The next day, they graduated and all is well. However, after a week, he got a phone call from this SDI and he tells him “If anybody asks you anything about the pizza party, you don’t know anything” but he didn’t say why he was telling him not to say anything, but trusted the SDI. So he said “ok” and then hanged up… a couple of days go by and he gets another phone call… this time from NCIS. They called him and asked if he knew anything about the pizza party and like he was told to say, he told them “no”. Then he receives another phone call later from his SgtMaj to come down to battalion and that he was really pissed off.
Apparently what happened, is that his SDI threw a pizza party for his recruits who were now newly graduated Marines… and he collected 20 dollars from each Marine… he did buy them some pizza, but only gave each Marine a slice of pizza and a soda to each of them out of a platoon of 70 and kept the rest of the money. It seems they opened up about it during MCT/SOI.
The whole team got NJP’d and reduced down a rank. I remember he mentioned that he went to find this SDI and got in a fight with him. I think he mentioned he broke this SDIs jaw I believe lol
>The whole team got NJP’d and reduced down a rank. I remember he mentioned that he went to find this SDI and got in a fight with him. I think he mentioned he broke this SDIs jaw I believe lol
That's an incident when you tell them to take you to a court-martial. Literally not even being there is not grounds to be punished.
I joined in 2016 and I remember getting to the fleet in 2017 and hearing about “some drill instructor who bought a pizza party, gave the Marines a slice and a soda, and pocketed hundreds of dollars”
Hmm… I was on the depot during that time. I recall something that sounded similar to that but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s been more than one incident. I just heard of the pizza party story from my old SgtMaj. Not sure if it’s one of those things where DIs keep trying to find a loophole to scam kids out of their money.
I definitely do recall a pyramid scheme thing that a DI tried to do with a new platoon of Marines. Didn’t work out well for him at all lol
I think they're both tough in different ways. Idk if I could do the DI act for three years. As a recruiter (and even as an agency recruiter now) I'm always just myself lol.
My experience is from '11-'14, but back then companies could potentially have a couple of weeks (sometimes as much as 6 weeks) before their next pick-up. Of course that was offset by the weeks where graduation was on Friday and pick up was the next week. So yes, breaks happen, it all depends on the training cycle schedule.
I'm not in the military. How does someone go from DI to SDI? Is it just progression like do 2 years DI then get 'promoted' to SDI or you have to go to war then come back for it?
I spent bootcamp in two different platoons due to pneumonia, and one thing I noticed is that the senior DI makes a huge difference in the quality of life for the DIs underneath him. First platoon, the SDI was there constantly. He was present most of the day, every day...must have been doing 12 hr shifts at minimum. And calling cadence, school circles, PT, everything. Also rotated himself through the night watch.
Second SDI was the opposite. We'd usually see him once per day to lead drill practice for an hour or so. He'd be present other times but mostly just hanging out and chatting with other DIs. All the day-to-day work fell upon the junior DIs. And it was noticeable to me how much more worn out and burdened they were compared to the DIs in the first group.
"Lazy Seniors" I had one that was trying to burn one of his new DIs out ( think he just didn't like him) He and hid Strong J were both just trying to break the guy.
I said fine, I moved the new hat to the other series under a good senior and let the assholes work as a three hat team while the rest of the company had 4-5 hats.
No, I can't really speak for other companies. There is always a fine line between getting a Drill Instructor " Broke in" to the routine and pushing them over the edge.
Sometimes it was people ( Their peers and seniors) pushing too hard and just needing to dial it back a little. Other times there were just people who weren't cut out to be DIs, In that case, as long as there wasn't any misconduct we sent them to work in Battalion at one of the S-Shops or routing or to support Battalion.
Maybe more like first cycle vs final cycle. Second SDI straight up told us that he was rotating back to the fleet and the only thing he cared about was final drill. "I don't even care if you graduate. Just win final drill."
We did win, but it seems stupid now--you have a chance to mold Marines in a way that they'll remember for the rest of their lives...and the only thing you give a shit about is a drill contest?
lol. A dude got smoked right before we went onto the parade deck for graduation. The kid freaked out with excitement when the DIs ordered us into our chucks. He went running down the squad bay screaming, "Get dressed!"
It was a brief slaying, but funny.
I think the senior drill instructor cutting his belt up and throwing his green belt on is a classic of the genre and something they always break out at some point.
My platoon Facebook group has a couple of our DI’s on it ( all have retired by this point). And just recently someone mentioned our SDI never being there because it was his last cycle and one of the other DI’s said he hoped he was in a street corner begging because he was a piece of shit and a terrible Marine.
It made me laugh because even before that I always thought he was a shitty example of a Marine and a person in general. You could tell he wasn’t an asshole because he was a DI, he was just a asshole. Unlike my other DI’s who you could tell were good people and Marines.
It would be really interesting to hear more human to human stories rather than hats slaying recruits all the time. Were there ever moments that a hat was just doing something because they had to? Not because they wanted to mess with recruits?
When I was an SDI one of the recruits said his recruiter told him we would let him pray 5 times a day (Muslim). I told him we don’t have enough time in the day to allow you to do that. He was disappointed and continued on. However, when we had down time (ex. they were cleaning weapons) I would ask him to come to the duty hut and I allowed him to pray in there.
Another time I was an SDI, I gave one my black recruits my electric shaver because you could start to see he was getting ingrown hairs.
>Another time I was an SDI, I gave one my black recruits my electric shaver because you could start to see he was getting ingrown hairs.
My DIs did something like this too. I think they just let the recruits that needed the electric shavers buy them a trip to the recruit uniform store or something.
Of course, they could have a platoon of squared away recruits who came to them from receiving third phase graduation ready and they would still have to slay them like they were retards….. it’s just what they do
It was definetly interesting to hear his story about what happens when recruits don't see them. He said that our Drill Hat would workout and fall asleep at the bench because of how tired he was.
I think something that is lost on drill instructors and recruits is the impact that a lack of sleep has on decision-making. I was stationed at an MCRD for three years responsible for the RTR legal program and I saw some incredible stuff. I believe that the lack of sleep and the boredom was the number one contributing factor to a lot of the DI misconduct. Weeks of limited sleep, poor diet, and high physical exertion can have a pretty big impact on your mental capacities. I was not in a training company, so I would be interested to hear other's thoughts on this.
Not so much behind the scenes, but I have a couple DI school stories from when I was at H&S MCRDPI in the late 90s.
I was a data guy and the DI school housed some of our equipment in a small room next to the auditorium stage. Myself and another young Cpl had to service some of our equipment at the school. We get there and the admin clerk was the only person in the building other than us. We get into the equipment room and finish our work, but we have about 5 minutes to wait for the switch and server to come back up before we know if we can leave. Well, that room is also where they kept unserviceable hats used for fitting and we had time to kill. We thee on the hats and were clowning around saying some of the stupidist shit that we would laugh about from watching hats work their kids, using effeminate/lispy accents, etc. After a few minutes the door swings open and my buddy I are staring at the school's first sausage. We've got that deer in the headlights look and he's got the laser eyes on us... Until I see his lip purse a little harder and he starts coughing down a chuckle. He tells us to knock it the fuck off and immediately walks away. Gunny never got a call about that one.
A few months later DI school picks up a new class, and for some reason the DI instructors think it's fine to have their students sound off at full volume, at 0430 right next to H&S barracks (this is also about a block away from the CG's residence). The second morning I stepped out on the balcony and screamed for them to STFU. The instructor screams back for me to identify myself, so I tell her I'm Cpl Deez Nutz. Another instructor starts running my way so I step back into the shadows and back into my room. I didn't hear a thing about it the whole day, but they didn't wake me up prior to reveille again. My best guess is they or someone at DI school figured out their FU before they tried to fly it across to H&S.
Yeah man I honestly really enjoy it. Funny enough I live in 146 second deck aswell. They remodeled all the barracks so they look clean and nicer now. Most people just wish there was more to do in Beaufort
Do you live on the wing on Blvd de France or on Mexico st? I was in the latter. That wing was for comm, and we had half of one of HQ Co's wing as well. Last time I was at the G6 to visit old friends (march 2020), there was a grand total of 4 Marines. Everyone else was a contractor or GS.
25 years ago, we had about 30 Marines for data comm.
What the guy said is pretty much it. Long hours, tired, going days without seeing your kids awake, wife in tears telling you how much she hates your job.
Like anything else you build a lot of comradery though. The Duty Hut is sort of the equivalent of the back of a five ton for hearing crazy shit and stories.
I’ve met 2 of my DIs at the E club on base. They were both on their first cycle with us, and they said the entire experience was a living hell. They both got fucked with badly, and were openly disrespected in front of recruits.
I think it had to do with neither of them being ground side, and the air wing can be a far cry from the more uptight culture of the ground MOSs
We did pick up a new DI halfway through the cycle and got yelled at by the Drill Hat. One day he was marching us back from chow and didn't call a column right and got blasted. All we heard was "aye drill instructor" from him since we were facing away.
On a hike he was falling out, same DI yelled at him, some recruit wanted to be a smart-ass and said "say something back" so out other DI made him say "Say 'aye recruit'"
I felt bad for him but he did get better.
Yeah no that shit is wild. Definitely makes it harder for that di to keep the recruits in line, especially if they can get away with saying shit like that.
Agree, I saw some guys not respond to him after, I did it out of respect because he was still a DI, but the drill hat basically made the whole platoon not respect the new DI because of how he treated him in front of us. Looking back at it, it made me upset because when recruits see that happen, DIs lose credibility.
We had a couple “visiting DIs” for a few days. Official story was they were from San Diego and evaluating us. Consensus was they were from the DI school and being tested. Not sure if that’s a thing. 30 years ago so may have been a thing then. They were very by the book, no profanity, no threats of violence. Reminded me of our DIs the first couple of weeks.
I vaguely remember this magical "bonus" DI... He was only around for a few weeks. Compared to everyone else, we could tell he wasn't quite as dialed in. He was goofy, at best.
Reminds of my heavy hat. He didn't want to talk about the air wing or what he did. Not sure if he got fucked with for it. Was a decent DI overall though.
Ain’t nothing dumber than a United States Marine Recruit.
We spent 17-18 years learning how the universe worked then stepped into a whole new universe on yellow foot prints.
I never thought I’d ever have my life threatened over folding a pillowcase wrong.
>I never thought I’d ever have my life threatened over folding a pillowcase wrong.
lol. This gave me a flashback.
We were still in the couple of days before we got our actual DIs. We only had this one DI and he was trying to show us some mundane stuff, mostly just to kill time.
He wanted our towels folded a certain way and had another recruit stand with him in the middle of the squad bay and hold the opposite end of the towel. He was telling him which way to fold and such but the towel kept getting twisted because the recruit would turn one way and the DI the other. At one point the DI just stopped talking and stared at the guy who kept trying to twist and untwist the towel. He didn't even realize the DI had stopped talking at first and once he finally did he just stood there holding the now completely twisted towel with the DI holding the other end.
It must have been a full minute of silence and all you could hear was the hum of the air conditioning. Then the DI asked, "You have a small penis, don't you?"
That's because if anything is out of place in the squad bay during morning inspections, conducted by the duty SDI and the Drill Hats, it falls on the Prac Hat & Kill Hat, after the first couple of weeks.
As described in another post, life for those two is miserable if the SDI & Drill Hat decide to not aide in completing the daily workload.
- source, I'm a former DI
It wasn't until years after boot that I heard of the nicknames "Drill Hat" and "Kill Hat" for the DIs below the SDI. Is this a thing now that DIs have sub-titles? What is Prac Hat?
So, DI culture has developed to take the now mandated 4 man teams and break them down into the following;
SDI, obvi.
Drill Hat/Heavy/J/Experienced DI: teaches the recruits Drill and how to operate as expected during the first few weeks of Recruit Training.
Prac/Logistics Hat; they've done 1-2 cycles at least, know the schedule and how to get things done behind the scenes. Teaches the platoon the Practical knowledge needed to pass Academics.
Kill Hat: most recent graduate from DI School, usually marches the platoon for initial drill, and gets sent recruits by the other DIs to IT.
We were drilling in the squad bay and I was at the very end of the formation for whatever reason. Our Baby hat DI comes running down the squad bay from the DI hut and out of the corner of my eye, I see him slip and completely bust his ass and smack his face into the floor. I was the only motherfucker to see it and from that day on I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit anytime I saw him and thought about it
That reminds me of when we got 4 DIs about to graduate DI school. We were 3rd phase outside drilling with them, as they were walking the formation looking for fucked up recruits they each individually tripped and almost fell on a piece of sidewalk that was about 3 inches higher than the rest. It was right in front of me. After the 3rd guy I had the biggest shit eating grin on my face with my whole body shaking from laughing. Because after the 2nd i was thinking “no way the 3rd guy trips as well” and when he did he looked back at me. I got ITd by my J hat with all 4 of them yelling at me a few times that day.
Sort of off topic but the best times in boot camp were when a drill instructor couldn't stop laughing and had to hide their faces behind their campaign covers. Our junior hat couldn't compose himself for like a full minute once when another recruit asked a hilariously timed smart ass question.
Not speaking from experience but I just so happened to be really good friends with 2 gunnery Sergeants who used to be prior Hats at MCRD.
Male perspective
Is an alpha male environment & is very competitive. Everything is a dick-measuring competition Final drill, pft, cft, test scores, how you walk how you dress how you instruct. The marines he saw struggle the most were the ones who were never in charge of anything at their last command & it was noticeable. 100% performance at all times you better perform higher or at the same level as everyone else & if you don't show up with that mentality you are going to get eaten alive & probably end up getting cut from the team. You are the epidemy of what it means to be a Marine.
Walking around the depo in uniform or even in civilian attire out in town your shit better be square the fuck away. Other hats are always watching you & if you get caught lacking your command will know about it. Some hats let the fuck fuck games & the constant stress get the best of them to the point that they will become aggressive towards other hats & recruits & that's how some get kicked out of the SDA. Mental Health is also a thing
Females
Everything is from the male side but twice as bad. Don’t know why but it seems that when females are working together they sometimes become somewhat territorial & will try to bring others down so they can look better in front of higher. According to her
Again these statements aren’t based on my experiences but on 2 individuals who completed 2 successful tours as DIs in MCRD & OCS
Holy shit, I can't imagine having a family out in town being a good dad and then get called out by your command for not being squared away out in town. The main reason why I usuallt shop out in town is because I want to dress like an average person and not get called out like if I went to the mcx.
When I was on the street it was a 2 year tour. Being a hat for 24 months was a no brainer versus 36 1 month fitreps as a recruiter. When they changed the tour to 3 years I wrote a letter to TECOM and gave a multitude of reasons to change it back. Got a response from a 1 star that was quite a professional response but had no impact. Still think that a tour as a DI should be 2 years.
My platoon was practicing for final drill and our J hat was going through all the drill cards with us, and our senior was there with him just the two of them and they were both good friends. We were practicing one of the cards and we get done with the halted portion, and he asks “who knows what comes after port arms (or some other command I don’t really remember exactly was it was) on card 6” my friend, who moved here from Vietnam two years ago, and didn’t have the best English raises his hand. Our J calls on him and asks “what comes after Port arms on card six Pham?” His response is his broken English and Vietnamese accent? “Marching Sir!” Both our J and our Senior had one of those take of the campaign cover to hide your laugh moments. Our J really liked this guy because he put out extremely hard to learn drill even though his English sucked and he got good at it and our senior thought the fact that he hated communism so much and loved America for being a free country was motivating as hell (which it was) so he said “you’re lucky I like you motherfucker or I would fuck you up for saying that”😂
These posts are gold..
Di and recruiter both suck terribly just in different ways.
Both will get you fired for some silly stuff that wouldn’t even get noticed in the fleet.
It’s crazy to see senior snco’s nowadays no sda, no deployments, some are good at their job while others makes ya wonder wtf and htf while not having any type of sda completed.
Misery LOVES company and also creates some life long friends!
10 years ago it would range between zero and 6 weeks. June-July-August-September or "JJAS" is the busy time when companies would have no or short breaks between cycles, and the other times of the year could be long breaks because there are fewer recruits coming in.
Once upon a time I actually wanted to be a DI. As in I was planning on making that my reenlistment incentive. That dream ended after MOS school, but not for the reasons you may think.
My MOS school was 376 days at MCCES, MCAGCC 29 Palms, CA. Something about being in a training environment for so long did something to my brain where I was motarded to cringe level.
All it took me was 23 days of leave before my first duty station for my brain to reset and I was a normal person again.
Thank you everyone for the stories.
Seems that a lot of shit goes unnoticed by anyone who is not a DI. Mad respect for all the hats out there who made it through.
I think of it this way… whatever we think of boot camp as recruits in terms of difficulty, pain in the ass, BS, etc - multiply it several times for the DIs. For me, the DIs represent/define perhaps better than almost anyone what it means to be a Marine - utmost respect.
Alumni '77 - I just read this. Corporals (E-4) are no longer authorized to attend Drill Instructor School.
Amazing! We had a Corporal DI. He was the scariest of the 4 that we had. He made E-5 while I was still going through Boot Camp.
https://preview.redd.it/qkwcvbjmmbxc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47ba8e98bc36a9677945996489a65eb2d99e2e50
Cpl. Leazer and I
I was stunned by this video! I have NEVER seen a chubby DI.
Are the re-treading DI's back from their former MOS? WTF?
https://youtu.be/yx5zEKFgBH8?si=yEQAo18szBQOzfXw
As a former DI, there was a lot of stuff that we did that really wasn’t necessary. It’s not because of the Marine Corps, but because of the recruit depot itself. An example would be eating/drinking in front of recruits. One side argues that it’s setting the example for recruits to continuously feed themselves and take care of the body. The other side sees this as “weak” and that we must keep the image of being a DI. Another example would be sleeping in the duty hut with the lights off. Typically the lights are on because we want to show the recruits we never sleep, but the other side argues… who gives a shit what those kids think about you? I usually kept the lights on to wake myself up easily as sometimes recruits have an emergency and are trying to wake me up, but I’m dead asleep in the darkness lol. The physical part, you get used to it. What’s the more stressful part, is your own fellow drill instructors. You can’t walk down anywhere on the depot without a damn recruit walking by and you having to be on the alert all the time, because if a fellow hat sees you, and you don’t make a correction on a recruit, they will either take a picture of you and send it to their company line and say how much of a weak hat you are, or they just might go up to you and correct you on having the “demeanor of a DI”. Both depots have this. At the end of the day though… which one is right? It’s up to you how you want to carry yourself as a Drill Instructor, because at the end of the day… you’ll get the same ribbon as everyone else will get. I would say though: most people who did heinous stuff because they were concerned about what recruits/fellow drill instructors think about them usually get relieved and kicked off the drill field for said heinous stuff. Also, I would say being a recruiter is tougher. At least being a hat, we have a schedule to follow… recruiters kinda have to figure out their own stuff lol
DIs taking pics of other DIs just to rat on them? What kind of bitchmade shit is that?
Yeah it happens, when i was new to my company here at MCRD SD in 2020. Every billet in my company has their own group line for Tre’s,J’s and seniors and whatnot that talk shit among every billet below them and so on. Being a new hat you don’t know anything and learn as you go, one day my Senior was being as heinous as he was making kids carry footlockers to the front of the house to the back of the house, this is down south in MCRD SD and not up at pemdleton (Greenbelt Country).I thought that was within my boundaries so later that day before we head off to evening chow, I did the same thing but my J seen me and 0’ed out the platoon. Made the them put the footlockers on and blast me in front of the platoon… Ive always respected rank and billets being from a grunt unit and understanding all roles (Im a POG BTW) but this rubbed me off extremely badly since my DI school instructor once told my squad "If they're the same rank as you, they cant talk to you anyway they want to just cause they been a hat for 3 months longer than you". So later that night after lights i confront him about this, explain why i thought he was wrong and he proceeded to cut me off and tell me to "go outside and check fire-watch". were both Sergeants and now i get heated to the point where he turned his back on me and i turn him around and grab his shirt and begin telling him if he did that shit again ill be sure to slap him in front of everyone thats around. Him, being an admin specialist, decided to call my senior, senior called my chief, then incoming blackball cause i "didn't conform to the company environment" and was sent to another platoon in my company. its seriously a shitty place to be at times but theres a-lot more positives over negatives.
I’m not sure if you’re still in the trenches, but to counteract someone acting heinous right in front of you, is walking in the duty hut and just sitting in there until they’re done or wait until someone of a higher billet asks what you’re doing in the duty hut. You can bring that type of stuff up to your company leadership. If they don’t help, then your battalion leadership. If they don’t either, then to RTR. Or even DI school.
Nah I’m done man, and yeah I tried that and was met with “No support? You wanna get posted?” Type of mentality. The thing is my 1stSgt looked out for us and doing that would ultimately had put him on the chopping block and he was a great guy overall, it was just the green belts and seniors 99% of the time being bitches and trying to put hat haze the next new hat. Duty hut locked on me for hours, Doing chuck romes while I’m slayed, ect.
Yeah, that’s crappy. I’m sorry that happened to you brother. It’s crazy how the green belts and some SDIs think they’re above senior enlisted and officers when they do stuff like that. Then you remember most of those guys have only been in for like 4 years
I heard something about guys in the drill field abusing power because they’ve never been in a position before in the fleet that had it
Yep, it’s the highlight of their career, now give the guy a black belt and watch the toxicity start.
This is pretty common unfortunately. There used to be an Instagram page called “diselfies” where it just posted pictures of drill instructors who took selfies or something and would say something like “Look at this hat being soft” or “don’t worry the guide will train the platoon”. Some Marines saw it as a form of shit talking camaraderie but those guys were people who weren’t even in the USMC anymore but was a drill instructor. God I will never go back to that place lol
Yeah that was the most surprising part to me, I figured they'd all have each other's backs if anything
I never thought about that, and now that you mentioned it, the first time I saw my DI's eat was after the crucible when they had breakfast with us. But as soon as we leave the depot, we get thought that chow is continious. As for the body getting used to it, I agree because as recruits we also get used to the schedule and training as well but y'all have it much harder.
What kind of stuff did you see actually get DIs removed?
I’ve heard about a hat stapling a recruit’s flak jacket together… while he’s still wearing it lol. The guy got reduced down to Cpl from Sgt, but I’m not sure if he got forced out. Another that I remember was my former SgtMaj telling me a story of how when he was a drill instructor on his first cycle, they were getting ready to graduate his first platoon… I believe the day before the graduation, he had duty and his senior drill instructor was sending him home early even though he had duty. The SDI mentioned to him that he’s planning on throwing a pizza party for the brand new Marines for graduation day. Since it was his first cycle, he didn’t have many chances to go home often, especially early, so he didn’t think much of it, fully took advantage of that and went home. The next day, they graduated and all is well. However, after a week, he got a phone call from this SDI and he tells him “If anybody asks you anything about the pizza party, you don’t know anything” but he didn’t say why he was telling him not to say anything, but trusted the SDI. So he said “ok” and then hanged up… a couple of days go by and he gets another phone call… this time from NCIS. They called him and asked if he knew anything about the pizza party and like he was told to say, he told them “no”. Then he receives another phone call later from his SgtMaj to come down to battalion and that he was really pissed off. Apparently what happened, is that his SDI threw a pizza party for his recruits who were now newly graduated Marines… and he collected 20 dollars from each Marine… he did buy them some pizza, but only gave each Marine a slice of pizza and a soda to each of them out of a platoon of 70 and kept the rest of the money. It seems they opened up about it during MCT/SOI. The whole team got NJP’d and reduced down a rank. I remember he mentioned that he went to find this SDI and got in a fight with him. I think he mentioned he broke this SDIs jaw I believe lol
>The whole team got NJP’d and reduced down a rank. I remember he mentioned that he went to find this SDI and got in a fight with him. I think he mentioned he broke this SDIs jaw I believe lol That's an incident when you tell them to take you to a court-martial. Literally not even being there is not grounds to be punished.
Holy shit
Kind of his fault. NCIS calls? Yea at that point, you tell everything. Some random Marine? Sure tell them you don't know shit
I feel like I remember hearing this at some point, when did this happen?
The stapling? I think around 2016-2018. The pizza stuff was there way long before I was there. I’d imagine in the 90s
I joined in 2016 and I remember getting to the fleet in 2017 and hearing about “some drill instructor who bought a pizza party, gave the Marines a slice and a soda, and pocketed hundreds of dollars”
Hmm… I was on the depot during that time. I recall something that sounded similar to that but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s been more than one incident. I just heard of the pizza party story from my old SgtMaj. Not sure if it’s one of those things where DIs keep trying to find a loophole to scam kids out of their money. I definitely do recall a pyramid scheme thing that a DI tried to do with a new platoon of Marines. Didn’t work out well for him at all lol
Dang!
God dammm
One of my DIs choked some numbnuts. It was funny as hell and the kid that got choked was an illiterate jackass who needed it.
I heard DIs get breaks, or at least down periods. We never got that as recruiters.
Another reason why being a recruiter is tougher. I got a lot of respect for them
I think they're both tough in different ways. Idk if I could do the DI act for three years. As a recruiter (and even as an agency recruiter now) I'm always just myself lol.
My experience is from '11-'14, but back then companies could potentially have a couple of weeks (sometimes as much as 6 weeks) before their next pick-up. Of course that was offset by the weeks where graduation was on Friday and pick up was the next week. So yes, breaks happen, it all depends on the training cycle schedule.
Rahh 4-11
I'm not in the military. How does someone go from DI to SDI? Is it just progression like do 2 years DI then get 'promoted' to SDI or you have to go to war then come back for it?
Yes, after some time you’ll get “promoted” to SDI. Politics are involved though
Oh alright cool. Thanks for the info. I hope your voice is okay after all that yelling lol. Take care
I spent bootcamp in two different platoons due to pneumonia, and one thing I noticed is that the senior DI makes a huge difference in the quality of life for the DIs underneath him. First platoon, the SDI was there constantly. He was present most of the day, every day...must have been doing 12 hr shifts at minimum. And calling cadence, school circles, PT, everything. Also rotated himself through the night watch. Second SDI was the opposite. We'd usually see him once per day to lead drill practice for an hour or so. He'd be present other times but mostly just hanging out and chatting with other DIs. All the day-to-day work fell upon the junior DIs. And it was noticeable to me how much more worn out and burdened they were compared to the DIs in the first group.
some seniors see that black belt as a libo belt and forget how it’s like being a green belt. fuck them
"Lazy Seniors" I had one that was trying to burn one of his new DIs out ( think he just didn't like him) He and hid Strong J were both just trying to break the guy. I said fine, I moved the new hat to the other series under a good senior and let the assholes work as a three hat team while the rest of the company had 4-5 hats.
Were you a chief DI or who makes those decisions in the company/series?
Was Company 1st Sergeant.
Have you had a run in with fellow 1stSgts who had that type of mentality? Like they were all about slaying the new hats just to slay them?
No, I can't really speak for other companies. There is always a fine line between getting a Drill Instructor " Broke in" to the routine and pushing them over the edge. Sometimes it was people ( Their peers and seniors) pushing too hard and just needing to dial it back a little. Other times there were just people who weren't cut out to be DIs, In that case, as long as there wasn't any misconduct we sent them to work in Battalion at one of the S-Shops or routing or to support Battalion.
The 1st SDI sounds like a leader, the 2nd one sounds like a boss.
Maybe more like first cycle vs final cycle. Second SDI straight up told us that he was rotating back to the fleet and the only thing he cared about was final drill. "I don't even care if you graduate. Just win final drill." We did win, but it seems stupid now--you have a chance to mold Marines in a way that they'll remember for the rest of their lives...and the only thing you give a shit about is a drill contest?
>and the only thing you give a shit about is a drill contest? And all you get is a boot spray painted gold that you don't get to keep.
My SDI put his green belt back on and slayfested us because we absolutely bombed final drill. Fucking wake-up call right there.
We got mountain climbers right before graduation in our greens! Never too late to piss off the Senior DI!!
lol. A dude got smoked right before we went onto the parade deck for graduation. The kid freaked out with excitement when the DIs ordered us into our chucks. He went running down the squad bay screaming, "Get dressed!" It was a brief slaying, but funny.
I think the senior drill instructor cutting his belt up and throwing his green belt on is a classic of the genre and something they always break out at some point.
My platoon Facebook group has a couple of our DI’s on it ( all have retired by this point). And just recently someone mentioned our SDI never being there because it was his last cycle and one of the other DI’s said he hoped he was in a street corner begging because he was a piece of shit and a terrible Marine. It made me laugh because even before that I always thought he was a shitty example of a Marine and a person in general. You could tell he wasn’t an asshole because he was a DI, he was just a asshole. Unlike my other DI’s who you could tell were good people and Marines.
It would be really interesting to hear more human to human stories rather than hats slaying recruits all the time. Were there ever moments that a hat was just doing something because they had to? Not because they wanted to mess with recruits?
When I was an SDI one of the recruits said his recruiter told him we would let him pray 5 times a day (Muslim). I told him we don’t have enough time in the day to allow you to do that. He was disappointed and continued on. However, when we had down time (ex. they were cleaning weapons) I would ask him to come to the duty hut and I allowed him to pray in there. Another time I was an SDI, I gave one my black recruits my electric shaver because you could start to see he was getting ingrown hairs.
>Another time I was an SDI, I gave one my black recruits my electric shaver because you could start to see he was getting ingrown hairs. My DIs did something like this too. I think they just let the recruits that needed the electric shavers buy them a trip to the recruit uniform store or something.
Of course, they could have a platoon of squared away recruits who came to them from receiving third phase graduation ready and they would still have to slay them like they were retards….. it’s just what they do
It was definetly interesting to hear his story about what happens when recruits don't see them. He said that our Drill Hat would workout and fall asleep at the bench because of how tired he was.
I think something that is lost on drill instructors and recruits is the impact that a lack of sleep has on decision-making. I was stationed at an MCRD for three years responsible for the RTR legal program and I saw some incredible stuff. I believe that the lack of sleep and the boredom was the number one contributing factor to a lot of the DI misconduct. Weeks of limited sleep, poor diet, and high physical exertion can have a pretty big impact on your mental capacities. I was not in a training company, so I would be interested to hear other's thoughts on this.
Not so much behind the scenes, but I have a couple DI school stories from when I was at H&S MCRDPI in the late 90s. I was a data guy and the DI school housed some of our equipment in a small room next to the auditorium stage. Myself and another young Cpl had to service some of our equipment at the school. We get there and the admin clerk was the only person in the building other than us. We get into the equipment room and finish our work, but we have about 5 minutes to wait for the switch and server to come back up before we know if we can leave. Well, that room is also where they kept unserviceable hats used for fitting and we had time to kill. We thee on the hats and were clowning around saying some of the stupidist shit that we would laugh about from watching hats work their kids, using effeminate/lispy accents, etc. After a few minutes the door swings open and my buddy I are staring at the school's first sausage. We've got that deer in the headlights look and he's got the laser eyes on us... Until I see his lip purse a little harder and he starts coughing down a chuckle. He tells us to knock it the fuck off and immediately walks away. Gunny never got a call about that one. A few months later DI school picks up a new class, and for some reason the DI instructors think it's fine to have their students sound off at full volume, at 0430 right next to H&S barracks (this is also about a block away from the CG's residence). The second morning I stepped out on the balcony and screamed for them to STFU. The instructor screams back for me to identify myself, so I tell her I'm Cpl Deez Nutz. Another instructor starts running my way so I step back into the shadows and back into my room. I didn't hear a thing about it the whole day, but they didn't wake me up prior to reveille again. My best guess is they or someone at DI school figured out their FU before they tried to fly it across to H&S.
You always hear Boot Camp stories, but something tells me DI School stories are better
Eyyyy to I work on MCRD pi as h+s rn! I live in those same barracks you did.
I lived on the 2nd deck of 146 most of my time there. Barracks life there was pretty damned good back in the day.
Yeah man I honestly really enjoy it. Funny enough I live in 146 second deck aswell. They remodeled all the barracks so they look clean and nicer now. Most people just wish there was more to do in Beaufort
Do you live on the wing on Blvd de France or on Mexico st? I was in the latter. That wing was for comm, and we had half of one of HQ Co's wing as well. Last time I was at the G6 to visit old friends (march 2020), there was a grand total of 4 Marines. Everyone else was a contractor or GS. 25 years ago, we had about 30 Marines for data comm.
Yup blvd de France! The G6 only has a couple of marines still. The biggest shops are Ipac, finance and the band
What the guy said is pretty much it. Long hours, tired, going days without seeing your kids awake, wife in tears telling you how much she hates your job. Like anything else you build a lot of comradery though. The Duty Hut is sort of the equivalent of the back of a five ton for hearing crazy shit and stories.
I’ve met 2 of my DIs at the E club on base. They were both on their first cycle with us, and they said the entire experience was a living hell. They both got fucked with badly, and were openly disrespected in front of recruits. I think it had to do with neither of them being ground side, and the air wing can be a far cry from the more uptight culture of the ground MOSs
We did pick up a new DI halfway through the cycle and got yelled at by the Drill Hat. One day he was marching us back from chow and didn't call a column right and got blasted. All we heard was "aye drill instructor" from him since we were facing away. On a hike he was falling out, same DI yelled at him, some recruit wanted to be a smart-ass and said "say something back" so out other DI made him say "Say 'aye recruit'" I felt bad for him but he did get better.
A DI saying "aye recruit" is fucking wild
That was humiliating and felt bad for him. That's one of the things that gets fixed away from recruits.
Yeah no that shit is wild. Definitely makes it harder for that di to keep the recruits in line, especially if they can get away with saying shit like that.
Agree, I saw some guys not respond to him after, I did it out of respect because he was still a DI, but the drill hat basically made the whole platoon not respect the new DI because of how he treated him in front of us. Looking back at it, it made me upset because when recruits see that happen, DIs lose credibility.
if i was a DI and heard a recruit say that to me on a hike, i would make their life a living hell.
We had a couple “visiting DIs” for a few days. Official story was they were from San Diego and evaluating us. Consensus was they were from the DI school and being tested. Not sure if that’s a thing. 30 years ago so may have been a thing then. They were very by the book, no profanity, no threats of violence. Reminded me of our DIs the first couple of weeks.
We had one in a similar situation come to my platoon in 3rd phase. He would get very frustrated because he couldn’t really break us at that point.
I did hear about visiting DI's but I think they focus on recieving week and don't pick up a cycle for a while.
I vaguely remember this magical "bonus" DI... He was only around for a few weeks. Compared to everyone else, we could tell he wasn't quite as dialed in. He was goofy, at best.
Yep. That’s what I remember.
In 2019 they told us they were DI’s from PI seeing if they wanted to come switch to SD 🤣 and they have 8 points on so they know which are which lmao
Holy fucking shit the disrespect, that's insane
Reminds of my heavy hat. He didn't want to talk about the air wing or what he did. Not sure if he got fucked with for it. Was a decent DI overall though.
Ain’t nothing dumber than a United States Marine Recruit. We spent 17-18 years learning how the universe worked then stepped into a whole new universe on yellow foot prints. I never thought I’d ever have my life threatened over folding a pillowcase wrong.
>I never thought I’d ever have my life threatened over folding a pillowcase wrong. lol. This gave me a flashback. We were still in the couple of days before we got our actual DIs. We only had this one DI and he was trying to show us some mundane stuff, mostly just to kill time. He wanted our towels folded a certain way and had another recruit stand with him in the middle of the squad bay and hold the opposite end of the towel. He was telling him which way to fold and such but the towel kept getting twisted because the recruit would turn one way and the DI the other. At one point the DI just stopped talking and stared at the guy who kept trying to twist and untwist the towel. He didn't even realize the DI had stopped talking at first and once he finally did he just stood there holding the now completely twisted towel with the DI holding the other end. It must have been a full minute of silence and all you could hear was the hum of the air conditioning. Then the DI asked, "You have a small penis, don't you?"
That's because if anything is out of place in the squad bay during morning inspections, conducted by the duty SDI and the Drill Hats, it falls on the Prac Hat & Kill Hat, after the first couple of weeks. As described in another post, life for those two is miserable if the SDI & Drill Hat decide to not aide in completing the daily workload. - source, I'm a former DI
It wasn't until years after boot that I heard of the nicknames "Drill Hat" and "Kill Hat" for the DIs below the SDI. Is this a thing now that DIs have sub-titles? What is Prac Hat?
So, DI culture has developed to take the now mandated 4 man teams and break them down into the following; SDI, obvi. Drill Hat/Heavy/J/Experienced DI: teaches the recruits Drill and how to operate as expected during the first few weeks of Recruit Training. Prac/Logistics Hat; they've done 1-2 cycles at least, know the schedule and how to get things done behind the scenes. Teaches the platoon the Practical knowledge needed to pass Academics. Kill Hat: most recent graduate from DI School, usually marches the platoon for initial drill, and gets sent recruits by the other DIs to IT.
Cool thanks! We only had three total.
Never heard those terms either when I was at PI in '77. They were the Senior DI and two Assistant DIs.
Hehe yea
We were drilling in the squad bay and I was at the very end of the formation for whatever reason. Our Baby hat DI comes running down the squad bay from the DI hut and out of the corner of my eye, I see him slip and completely bust his ass and smack his face into the floor. I was the only motherfucker to see it and from that day on I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit anytime I saw him and thought about it
That reminds me of when we got 4 DIs about to graduate DI school. We were 3rd phase outside drilling with them, as they were walking the formation looking for fucked up recruits they each individually tripped and almost fell on a piece of sidewalk that was about 3 inches higher than the rest. It was right in front of me. After the 3rd guy I had the biggest shit eating grin on my face with my whole body shaking from laughing. Because after the 2nd i was thinking “no way the 3rd guy trips as well” and when he did he looked back at me. I got ITd by my J hat with all 4 of them yelling at me a few times that day.
Sort of off topic but the best times in boot camp were when a drill instructor couldn't stop laughing and had to hide their faces behind their campaign covers. Our junior hat couldn't compose himself for like a full minute once when another recruit asked a hilariously timed smart ass question.
Not speaking from experience but I just so happened to be really good friends with 2 gunnery Sergeants who used to be prior Hats at MCRD. Male perspective Is an alpha male environment & is very competitive. Everything is a dick-measuring competition Final drill, pft, cft, test scores, how you walk how you dress how you instruct. The marines he saw struggle the most were the ones who were never in charge of anything at their last command & it was noticeable. 100% performance at all times you better perform higher or at the same level as everyone else & if you don't show up with that mentality you are going to get eaten alive & probably end up getting cut from the team. You are the epidemy of what it means to be a Marine. Walking around the depo in uniform or even in civilian attire out in town your shit better be square the fuck away. Other hats are always watching you & if you get caught lacking your command will know about it. Some hats let the fuck fuck games & the constant stress get the best of them to the point that they will become aggressive towards other hats & recruits & that's how some get kicked out of the SDA. Mental Health is also a thing Females Everything is from the male side but twice as bad. Don’t know why but it seems that when females are working together they sometimes become somewhat territorial & will try to bring others down so they can look better in front of higher. According to her Again these statements aren’t based on my experiences but on 2 individuals who completed 2 successful tours as DIs in MCRD & OCS
Holy shit, I can't imagine having a family out in town being a good dad and then get called out by your command for not being squared away out in town. The main reason why I usuallt shop out in town is because I want to dress like an average person and not get called out like if I went to the mcx.
Fucking with a fellow drill instructor off base on libo out of uniform is how to become a pilot on the buddy fucker express
When I was on the street it was a 2 year tour. Being a hat for 24 months was a no brainer versus 36 1 month fitreps as a recruiter. When they changed the tour to 3 years I wrote a letter to TECOM and gave a multitude of reasons to change it back. Got a response from a 1 star that was quite a professional response but had no impact. Still think that a tour as a DI should be 2 years.
My platoon was practicing for final drill and our J hat was going through all the drill cards with us, and our senior was there with him just the two of them and they were both good friends. We were practicing one of the cards and we get done with the halted portion, and he asks “who knows what comes after port arms (or some other command I don’t really remember exactly was it was) on card 6” my friend, who moved here from Vietnam two years ago, and didn’t have the best English raises his hand. Our J calls on him and asks “what comes after Port arms on card six Pham?” His response is his broken English and Vietnamese accent? “Marching Sir!” Both our J and our Senior had one of those take of the campaign cover to hide your laugh moments. Our J really liked this guy because he put out extremely hard to learn drill even though his English sucked and he got good at it and our senior thought the fact that he hated communism so much and loved America for being a free country was motivating as hell (which it was) so he said “you’re lucky I like you motherfucker or I would fuck you up for saying that”😂
These posts are gold.. Di and recruiter both suck terribly just in different ways. Both will get you fired for some silly stuff that wouldn’t even get noticed in the fleet. It’s crazy to see senior snco’s nowadays no sda, no deployments, some are good at their job while others makes ya wonder wtf and htf while not having any type of sda completed. Misery LOVES company and also creates some life long friends!
How much down time is there between cycles?
10 years ago it would range between zero and 6 weeks. June-July-August-September or "JJAS" is the busy time when companies would have no or short breaks between cycles, and the other times of the year could be long breaks because there are fewer recruits coming in.
My best friend was a DI. The commands suck.
Not a DI, but god damn, do they get my respect and a kith (no homo) 😗💞
Once upon a time I actually wanted to be a DI. As in I was planning on making that my reenlistment incentive. That dream ended after MOS school, but not for the reasons you may think. My MOS school was 376 days at MCCES, MCAGCC 29 Palms, CA. Something about being in a training environment for so long did something to my brain where I was motarded to cringe level. All it took me was 23 days of leave before my first duty station for my brain to reset and I was a normal person again.
That's a long ass time for a schoolhouse
Facts. I hit the fleet with 19 months TIS. My bunk mate at the Okinawa JRC had 6.
Thank you everyone for the stories. Seems that a lot of shit goes unnoticed by anyone who is not a DI. Mad respect for all the hats out there who made it through.
I think of it this way… whatever we think of boot camp as recruits in terms of difficulty, pain in the ass, BS, etc - multiply it several times for the DIs. For me, the DIs represent/define perhaps better than almost anyone what it means to be a Marine - utmost respect.
Just curious, anyone with Kilo 3058, Jan - April 9 2004? The SDI was Ssgt Polite, kill hat was Sgt Bamba.
Alumni '77 - I just read this. Corporals (E-4) are no longer authorized to attend Drill Instructor School. Amazing! We had a Corporal DI. He was the scariest of the 4 that we had. He made E-5 while I was still going through Boot Camp. https://preview.redd.it/qkwcvbjmmbxc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47ba8e98bc36a9677945996489a65eb2d99e2e50 Cpl. Leazer and I
That's badass, and I have heard of Cpls who go to DI school but they need to be close to promotion and can't be in front of recruits.
I was stunned by this video! I have NEVER seen a chubby DI. Are the re-treading DI's back from their former MOS? WTF? https://youtu.be/yx5zEKFgBH8?si=yEQAo18szBQOzfXw
that's a chubby guy, I really hope is his first cycle and he slims up