entering the Coast Guard, pt1

In my senior year of high school, I made the decision to join the armed forces. My father is an active duty officer in the US Army so obviously the preferred path was to attend the academy at West Point, NY (our family happened to be stationed there at the time). I wasn't prepared to commit nine years of my life (four at the academy, five paying the Army back with service) so that ruled out all of the service academies. That left enlisting as my only option and I eventually settled on the Coast Guard, which led to the family joke that I was only doing it because I like the word "coast" har, har.

My basic plan was to enlist for four years and to then use the Montgomery GI Bill to attend college. I had no reason to attend college right after High School because I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. In light of that, how could I possibly decide what to major in? I only viewed college as a means to an end so if I didn't know the end (my future career) then there was no reason to waste that kind of money.

I went into New York City in search of a recruiting station. The first one was the small booth in Times Square (the one that was bombed recently) but it turned out the Coast Guard was the only branch without a representative there. The next stop was at the recruiting station in Battery Park. Upon reaching the door, I was asked by a civilian security guard if I had an appointment. Being young and ignorant, I had figured it was like the movies where you just walked right in so I did not have an appointment.

As I was getting ready to leave, a recruiter happened to walk by, overheard the discussion and joined in. He asked me what I had received for an SAT score. I replied that I has gotten a 1370 and he asked me to follow him to his office.

He started giving me all the standard handouts, including a pamphlet containing all the ratings in the Coast Guard accompanied by a brief description. I had attended an Outward Bound course several years ago and one of my favorite parts was the orienteering/navigation. This seemed to be best embodied by the Quartermaster (QM) rating but I was informed that the rating was being merged into the Boatswain's Mate (BM) rating. It turns out the Coast Guard was hurting for BMs so I was given the opportunity to go directly from Basic Training to BM "A" School in Yorktown, Virginia. I decided that it sounded like the best path to take, as opposed to going to an operational unit and either having to do on the job training (striking) or waiting on the list to attend "A" school.

I signed up for a four year enlistment, but that also includes eight total years of IRR, which essentially means the government keeps you contact information so they can reactivate you after your enlistment was over (in fact, this happened after 9/11 to many ex-coasties). Under advice from my father, I entered the Delayed Entry Program in May 2003 to start my IRR time running early (that way there would be less of it when my enlistment ended). All that this really involved was attending MEPS, the medical screening program used by all the Armed Forces. I also took the ASVAB and did well enough to qualify for every rating in the Coast Guard.

After that, I just finished up my senior year of high school and kept in touch with my recruiter to let him know how things were going. When the time came to depart for Basic Training, I had to go through the entire MEPS journey again because it had been more than thirty days since my last screening.

A quick, look into MEPS. Hopefully your own experience is or was better than mine. The trouble began with the medical questionnaire we had to fill out. The first question on there is regarding tuberculosis, which I had been exposed to five years ago. It had never been active in my system but to be safe I was treated with a few pills, monthly blood tests, and a chest X-ray that confirmed there wasn't any lung damage. I asked if I should check the "yes" box for TB and the corpsman said I should just to be on the safe side.

After finishing our forms, we each saw a civilian doctor one at a time to review our paperwork. The doctor had very little patience for my explanation of why I checked the box for TB and basically said I would have to provide evidence that there wasn't any lung damage (BTW this all took place in a hospital, I don't see how hard it would've been to send me down the hall and be done with it). Moving on, it came time for me to drop my boxers and the berating started again. He asked me why I had written that I didn't have any scars or tattoos. I replied "Uhhh, because I don't." He pointed angrily at my right buttock where I have a birthmark, at which point we engaged in a lively discussion about whether a birthmark qualifies as a scar or not (mind you, this entire debate took place while my boxers were around my ankles, it's funny looking back but I failed to see the humor at the time).

The MEPS personnel that were in the military were extremely professional and helpful, but the civilian component left something to be desired. I suppose I can kind of understand their exasperation as they had to deal with a constant stream of eighteen-year-olds running around like idiots but it still wasn't a positive indoctrination into the military.

In any case, I eventually got the documentation between my first and second trip to MEPS and I then spent the night in a hotel waiting to go to the airport the next day...