Semper Fi! I saw "The D.I." in 1957. Two-and-a-half -years later I joined the Corps.<br /><br />Web and company got it as right as they could in '57. Boot, in '59, was more like, in fact, exactly like, the Boot Camp shown in "Full Metal Jacket" - Yes. A black recruit, in my training platoon, was called "Snowball." I was called "Stick," because I was skinny as a rail. Every recruit had a nickname, some rather vile, that stuck with him through his service in the Corps. Getting smacked, or knocked on your ass, when you screwed-up was SOP. "Drop, and give me fifty," got to be ho-hum. Then, it turned into,"Drop, and give me two-hundred!"<br /><br />The D.I.'s were a bunch of sadistic bastards, but it was a controlled sadism, and with a primary purpose of keeping us stupid MoFos alive when we hit combat. 200 years of experience was ingrained in that "sadism," and everything the D.I. did, or said, had a purpose geared to his mission.<br /><br />A bad D.I. gets grunts killed. A good D.I., though seemingly the world's biggest asshole, keeps 'em alive. You can't kill the enemy if you're dead.<br /><br />In case you didn't know, the Marine Corps has one primary mission: Kill the enemy. PFD.<br /><br />Everything else is pure bravo sierra.<br /><br />MstGySgt WHT, USMC (ret)