How to Make a Tribe

Thoughts on US Military Boot Camp

Introduction

What is a “cult,” exactly? What does it mean for a group of people to be a cult?

Usually when we call something a cult, we're talking about a group of people who were deliberately indoctrinated into a shared group identity. Cults are typically based on ideas, and the group identity formation happens when people have their pre-cult identities broken down, and a new identity formed based on the idea. This idea-based identity supplants other, more shallow forms of identity, so often a cult will include members who were originally from very different walks of life, but who bonded together over their shared commitment to the idea.

Also, cults are always bad. You never hear about a good cult. The members have always been duped into believing something wrong. The idea that they’re bonding over is always something crazy and obviously false, like that they need to commit suicide so that they can be taken to heaven by aliens. It’s automatically understood that referring to a group as a cult is an insult, since the term implies all these negative aspects.

Is there a word that means something similar to “cult,” except without the implied negative aspects? I can’t think of one. What would you call a group that practices deliberate group identity formation around an idea, where the idea is not something wrong or crazy? It seems like the same techniques used to build identities around bad ideas could, in principle, be applied to good or neutral ideas. At the very least, it seems like it would be interesting to study the identity-formation process from a morally neutral standpoint, without automatic moral judgement.

I’ve actually been through something like this myself. When I was 23, shortly after graduating from college, I enlisted in the US Coast Guard and went through the service’s two-month long basic training course – colloquially called “boot camp.” Despite all the jokes (some of which are pretty funny), the Coast Guard is in fact a real branch of the US military. Its boot camp training is pretty similar to the other branches, with the same goal: to transform civilian recruits into military personnel, by breaking down the recruits' sense of individual identity and building up a sense of group identity in its place.

And interestingly, the military is pretty open about what they’re doing – they even use the word “indoctrination” unironically and without negative connotation, as simply a noun to describe what’s happening. Normally if you ask a cult leader about this kind of thing, they deny it: “What?! Break down the members' sense of individual identity to replace it with a group identity?! Of course not, that’s ridiculous!” But the military owns it. This is a straightforward goal that they pursue, not an accusation of something negative.

The identity-formation process is also remarkably effective. Consider the starting point: a bus full of strangers, chatting and joking around at first, but getting quieter and more nervous as the bus makes its way to a training center in southern New Jersey. Most are young men, though some are young women, and they’re roughly representative of the US population in terms of race/ethnicity, religion, geographic-point-of-origin, and socioeconomic background – as if you’d taken a cross section of American society. After two months of boot camp, this group will feel an extremely high level of cohesion and camaraderie with each other (really the highest level of camaraderie I’ve ever felt in my life), and with the Coast Guard as a whole. All of them will have a new sense of identity as United States Coast Guardsmen, and for many of them it will be the most important aspect of their identity, at least for a time.

The goal of this essay is to give a first-person account of how this happens. We’ll explore how a person’s sense of individual identity can be deliberately broken down and replaced with a sense of group identity, and approach this not as something good or bad, but simply as an interesting phenomenon worth understanding.

Separateness

The first key element in the process of identity formation is the removal of recruits from the outside world for the duration of boot camp training. Many of the recruits are only 18-19 years old, so for a lot of them it’s the first time away from home and their family.

Part of this is the physical separateness. Coast Guard boot camp takes place on a base in Cape May, New Jersey, and recruits are physically separated from the outside world during this time. The location is actually somewhat interesting, since Cape May is a beach town and popular vacation spot. I went through boot camp during the summer months, and it occurred to me at one point that only a couple miles away families were hanging out on the beach, enjoying a relaxing vacation, but that might as well have been in a different universe.

USCG Training Center Cape May. Image source

Perhaps even more important than the physical separateness, there’s also the social and informational separateness. Recruits have practically zero contact with the outside world for the duration of boot camp, other than periodically writing and receiving letters from friends and family. But no phones, no visits, no internet, no social media, no watching the news or reading the newspaper, so it’s a near-total information cutoff from the outside world.

Getting back to the cult analogy, it’s easy to see some similarity here. A key part of cult indoctrination typically involves cutting members off from their previous lives, both in terms of physical location (often some kind of remote compound) and by limiting contact with friends and family. An important difference though, is that for cults the cutoff is indefinite – they try to keep you cut off from the outside world for as long as possible. The military, on the other hand, has about two months to try to transform you.

Disorientation

One of the most striking things about boot camp is how utterly different it feels from normal life. It’s hard to explain, and it’s hard to even remember the exact feeling, but I remember thinking that it feels like a strange, dystopian nightmare – a different reality from the outside world.

Rather than being gradually eased into this new reality, recruits are thrown in headfirst, in a deliberate attempt to disorient them and induce culture shock. After a day of traveling from various parts of the country to Cape May, the recruits arrive by bus at the training center. Upon arrival, a drill instructor¹ steps on the bus and it begins.

The recruits are introduced to several strange things about the new environment immediately. One is the volume. In boot camp, you’re usually required to yell everything at the top of your lungs, as loud as you can. This is called “sounding off.” It begins before the recruits have even gotten off the bus and continues for the duration of boot camp, pretty much all the time (except when you’re in a classroom, medical clinic, etc). And typically, your loudest isn’t loud enough to satisfy the drill instructors, who are also constantly yelling at you at the top of their lungs. This is actually pretty physically and mentally strenuous to do all the time, and many recruits end up losing their voices after a couple weeks of it.

Another unusual thing about boot camp is the altered sense of time. Much of what the recruits do will be in a hurry (even things like showering, shaving, and getting dressed), and will often be explicitly timed with a punishment if the time limit is not met. This feeling of constantly being rushed has the effect of locking you into the present. Whatever you’re trying to do, you’re doing it as fast as you can, and it still probably isn’t fast enough. This begins immediately, with the first order the recruits are given: to get off the bus, grab their bag, and line up on a set of markings on the pavement – all to be done as fast as possible, while the drill instructor screams at them.

At this point, the drill instructor introduces the recruits to one of the strangest things about this new environment: the language. In boot camp, you’re required to speak a strange new dialect of English. The floor is called a “deck.” The wall is a “bulkhead.” Bathrooms are “heads.” Left and right are “port” and “starboard.” The cafeteria is the “galley” and your fellow recruits are your “shipmates.” These are all nautical terms, but some other terms seem to come out of nowhere – pens are “ink-sticks” and sneakers are “go-fasters.” There are also all kinds of rules about what you’re supposed to say, and how and when you’re supposed to say it – a kind of new grammar to go along with the new vocabulary. For example, if you ever want to say something to a drill instructor besides “yes,” “no,” or “aye-aye²,” you need to yell: “Chief [your drill instructor’s last name]. Seaman recruit [your last name]. I request to inform you that [whatever you’re trying to say]³.” So the beginning of boot camp is a bit like a language immersion program, where you’re under extreme pressure to learn this new dialect and will get screamed at if you say the wrong thing.

Before the real training begins, the first couple days are spent on administrative in-processing steps. You get issued your uniforms and have your hair buzzed completely off, so pretty soon everyone’s starting to look the same. There’s also gear issue, paperwork, a drug test, etc. But this is all done within this loud, chaotic new environment, where everything is rushed and you learn what the rules are by getting screamed at for accidentally breaking them. Come to think of it, I could probably write an entire essay about how hard it is to pee in a cup with a maniac screaming at you and counting down on a timer!

So even before the real difficulty starts, you’re already having a completely different sensory and psychological experience, rushing to follow commands as quickly as possible, literally speaking a strange new language that must be shouted at the top of your lungs. It hit me the hardest the first night there, lying in the bunk bed (called a “rack”) and looking at the ceiling. I remember thinking “What did I get myself into?” It’s just very different. Importantly, you’re experiencing this differentness with a group of people who you don’t really know yet, but who are in the same boat as you.

Extreme Difficulty

After the first couple days of administrative processing, the real training begins. The most notable thing about the boot camp training is the sheer difficulty. It’s extremely difficult, both physically and mentally – the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, by far.

The difficulty comes mostly from the totalitarian nature of the training. Boot camp is totalitarian in the sense that there’s a rule for practically every single thing you do: how you talk (as loudly as you can and with the new language mentioned before), how you walk (marching in formation), how you stand, how you hold your tray in the cafeteria, how you make your bed, how you organize your things (measured down to the inch), how you wear your uniform. Plus a million other little things. You’re not allowed to touch your face⁴. When you’re done using a sink, you can’t leave any “standing water” left in the sink. Random stuff like that. Two of the most common rule violations are simply being too slow (again, lots of orders are timed) and not being loud enough.

There’s also basically zero free time. Every second of every day is controlled. No breaks. Not even a minute to relax. You’re scrutinized from the moment you wake up in the morning, throughout the day, until the moment you go to bed at night, trying to navigate this totalitarian environment. Even the meals offer no relief from the pressure – best case scenario is you sit and eat in complete silence, and worst-case scenario is this.

All this pressure is backed up with the threat of physical punishment (called “beatings” or “getting smoked”). To be clear, this doesn’t involve the drill instructors actually hitting the recruits. Rather, the drill instructors simply order the recruits to do physically exhausting and painful things. I remember having a philosophical musing during one of these beatings: Hmm so the drill instructor can’t hit me, but he can order me to do physically painful things. Is there actually a difference between the two in utilitarian terms?

Sometimes these punishments take the form of a punitive calisthenic exercise – the stereotypical “DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!” These could be pushups, squats, or things like that, and they push you beyond your physical limit to make sure it really is very difficult and painful. The recruits are also issued rifles (with no ammunition, obviously), and these rifles are often used as props for punitive calisthenics. An especially tough one is “rifle squats” – doing a squat while holding the rifle (which is pretty heavy) straight out in front of you. The drill instructor calls these out with “DOWN! UP! DOWN! UP!” and often leaves the recruits in the “DOWN” position for a while to make it as hard as possible.

Recruits suffering in the “DOWN” position of a rifle squat. Image source (purchased from copyright holder and used with permission)

Besides punitive calisthenics, there’s also the use of stress positions. In my experience, the worst punishment (and also one of the most common ones) was being ordered to simply hold a full canteen of water over your head for about 20 minutes. This might sound easy, but after 10 minutes or so it becomes very painful. There’s also the mental agony of not knowing how much longer it would go on for – again, the altered sense of time locking you into the present moment.

Recruits holding canteens above their heads. Image source

When someone is caught breaking a rule, they incur the punishment. Sometimes they’ll be punished individually, but usually the whole recruit company will be punished collectively. The punishment will occur either on the spot, or they’ll build up a punishment “debt” to be paid all at once later, often for several hours, with only short water breaks interspersed in a long series of “beatings.” In theory, if the recruits behave perfectly all the time, they’ll never be punished. However, since there are so many rules and so many recruits, someone is caught accidentally breaking a rule constantly. So, for the first 4-5 weeks of boot camp, at least a couple hours per day are spent simply getting punished with calisthenics and stress positions. Of course, there are other things you do throughout the day, various classes and chores, but those parts aren’t the highlight, and they aren’t what I remember. The part of boot camp I remember most distinctly is the time spent holding a canteen over my head.

Besides all the rules, there’s also the “required knowledge” – various facts the recruits must memorize, word-for-word, and be able to recite at any time, under threat of the same punishments. Some of this is pretty important and will be useful for their time in the service. For example, they must memorize all of the ranks and their insignia (including word-for-word descriptions), so that they can properly identify a person’s rank from their uniform and know how to address them. They also memorize the NATO phonetic alphabet (“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta…”), and their chain of command starting from their drill instructors and going all the way up to the president.

But some of the required knowledge is useless outside of boot camp and exists only to add to the stress and difficulty. For example, there’s something called the eleven general orders. These are simply eleven sentences that recruits need to memorize word for word, and be able to recite on command. The orders are loosely related to watchstanding, but their meaning is never really discussed or explained. They’re just sentences that need to be memorized, and will be forgotten almost immediately after boot camp.

Recruits can be called out and asked about required knowledge at any time. You could be silently eating a meal in the cafeteria and suddenly hear: “RECRUIT SO-AND-SO, WHAT IS YOUR FOURTH GENERAL ORDER?!?” Then you have to stand up, while everyone else continues silently eating, and yell the correct word-for-word answer as loud as you can, or else everyone will get punished later. As with the rules, there’s simply so much required knowledge that for the first month or so people are constantly getting things wrong and the group is constantly getting collectively punished for it.

This is the extreme difficulty of boot camp: the totalitarian set of rules to be followed and arbitrary knowledge to be memorized, backed by the threat of physically painful collective punishment that often takes up several hours per day. This adversity is one of the most important elements in the group identity formation process. Again, you’re in this with a group of people who are also going through it, and that makes for a powerful bonding experience. An unexpected takeaway from my experience in boot camp was that (and I know this sounds bad, please don’t cancel me) I became more sympathetic to fraternity hazing rituals. Before I just thought they were a dumb and pointless form of bullying. Now, I at least kind of understand the point of them, and would guess that they probably are effective at bonding together new members through shared hardship.

The Other

Importantly, the source of this hardship has a name, a face, and… a Smokey Bear hat. This is the drill instructor. They are in control of every aspect of this totalitarian environment. Typically a recruit company will have three drill instructors (a lead instructor and two assistants) and at least one of them will be with the recruits most of the time, screaming orders and dealing out punishments.

A common misconception is that the scary thing about drill instructors is just the yelling or the saying mean and insulting things. Sometimes you hear a self-styled tough guy say “I could never join the military. If some drill instructor started yelling at me, I’d just get angry and punch him in the face!” No, they wouldn’t. That’s because the scary thing about the drill instructors isn’t the yelling – it’s the total control they have over you, and the power they have to make your life hell, which they frequently exercise.

We already talked about the punitive exercises, but there’s actually an even worse punishment than that: getting rolled back a week in training, which drill instructors can do at their own discretion. And this is no empty threat – probably something like 25% of a given recruit class will get rolled back at least a week, often as the result of failing one of the periodic inspections. These inspections are especially stressful because you can be rolled back on the spot over tiny things, like having a piece of clothing folded the wrong way or in the wrong place, or having a loose thread on your uniform. Of course it’s impossible to be perfect all the time, so these inspections often come down to the drill instructor's discretion and how closely they decide to look.

Besides that, you can also be rolled back simply for screwing up too much. As I’ve mentioned before, there are so many rules, so much required knowledge, and so many hurried orders to be followed that it’s impossible for anyone to be perfect all the time. So the real threat from the drill instructors isn’t the yelling or insults like you see in the movies. Rather, it’s the possibility of a scrutiny-spiral, where if you run afoul of the drill instructor in any way, this will cause them to notice you more, which will lead to them catching you screwing up, which will cause even more scrutiny – and this spiral could very easily end up with you getting rolled back in training and having to spend even more time suffering with a canteen held over your head.

As you’ve probably already guessed, the drill instructors play a key role in the process of group identity formation for the recruits. They’re the antagonist, the Other, the Outgroup that the recruits must band together in opposition to. And it works. Facing this extreme difficulty and adversity personified by the drill instructors, the recruits quickly learn to work together and have each others’ backs, helping out and cheering on the struggling members.

Value and Habit Formation

So a lot of boot camp is basically hell. When you’re holding your full canteen over your head, or stuck in the “DOWN” position of a rifle-squat, you feel like you’re in hell.

A side-effect of this is that any time not spent in hell is a relief. For example, towards the beginning of training recruits have to go to the base dentist to have their teeth inspected, and some recruits will be scheduled to have their wisdom teeth removed during boot camp. Amazingly, this is considered to be a lucky, fortunate thing! When you’re in hell, getting to temporarily take a break for a day and go get your wisdom teeth removed is a stroke of good luck.

This is the context in which the Coast Guard attempts to teach values like cleanliness, grooming standards, and fitness. Towards the middle and end of training, when the recruits are getting better at following the rules and not getting punished all the time, a decent amount of time is spent on “breaks” like scrubbing the bathroom floor, cleaning the barracks, ironing uniforms, polishing boots, organizing your things, and silently studying the required knowledge. Compared to the alternative of getting screamed at while holding a canteen over your head, these things seem like a relief.

Likewise, physical exercise isn’t just used as a punishment – it’s also used neutrally and even as a reward. We’ve covered the punishments already: the punitive exercises and stress positions. But often a neutral, non-punitive workout will just be on the schedule as a thing to do, like one of the other classes.

Other workouts are treated as rewards and must be earned. For example, sometimes there will be an off-base run, where recruit companies that have been well-behaved enough are taken on a ~4ish mile run in formation, through the streets of Cape May, while singing cadences. This is a lot of fun, especially during the summer when Cape May is full of tourists cheering you on and shouting encouragement. Besides that, one of the best rewards we ever got was towards the end of training, after a day of particularly good behavior, our drill instructor just took us to the base gym for an hour and let us do whatever workouts we felt like. Anyway, with physical exercise being used as a punishment, a reward, and as something neutral that’s just on the schedule to do, you spend quite a lot of the time at bootcamp working out.

Culture Formation

At this point, you might have noticed something peculiar: I haven’t mentioned any job-skills training – just pain, suffering, stress, working out, cleaning, etc. That’s because the “training” at boot camp really isn’t about learning job skills. Sure, you take classes on various maritime topics, tying knots, firefighting, and learning how to shoot a gun, but if your eventual post-boot-camp job requires any of those things you’ll need to redo the training at your new unit anyway. The real purpose of boot camp is cultural indoctrination, and much of the time not spent getting screamed at or doing punitive exercises is devoted to this goal.

For example, a lot of time in boot camp is spent on something called “close order drill” – basically marching and doing ceremonial rifle movements in formation. Hours and hours of grueling practice are spent learning these movements, practicing them as a group, and getting inspected on them by drill instructors. It’s actually very difficult to perfect these movements as a group. A strange side effect of going through boot camp myself is that (again, please don’t cancel me) I now have a kind of respect for the North Korean army’s ability to march in formation.

North Korean military parade. Marching with this level of coordination is actually a lot harder than it looks! Image source

After boot camp, the recruits will almost never do close order drill again, other than maybe for the occasional parade or retirement ceremony. So, what’s the point of it?

Well, one answer is that it has to do with teaching attention to detail and teamwork. It isn’t about the marching or the “RIGHT SHOULDERRRRRR ARMS!” being important for its own sake. No, it’s about learning precision and group coordination. This is basically what drill instructors tell you towards the very end of boot camp when they start to drop the mask a little bit and explain some of the rationale behind things.

Another possible answer, though, has to do with culture creation through shared arbitrary practices. One of the most straightforward ways to create a distinct culture is to just have some unusual, arbitrary practices that distinguish you from other cultures. Orthodox Jews, for example, follow a very strict set of rules on the Sabbath. For example, many will not press elevator buttons on Saturdays because of a prohibition against “creating sparks or fires,” which is interpreted to include operating electrical switches (like elevator buttons). There’s actually a special type of elevator designed to get around this problem.

Taken literally as a matter of theology or moral philosophy, this just seems silly and is an easy thing for atheists to criticize and score points on. But as a matter of culture creation, these arbitrary rules and practices work well. Of course they seem silly to me because I’m not an Orthodox Jew. That’s the point! They allow for commonality among members of the culture, and differentness from the external culture.

I think close order drill also serves this purpose, in addition to teaching attention to detail and teamwork. It gives the recruits something in common – a shared experience. Importantly, the commonality persists even after boot camp is over and they will probably never have to do a “RIGHT SHOULDERRRRRR ARMS!” again. It’s like how I, as an lapsed-Catholic, can still find commonality and bond with other lapsed-Catholics over the strictness of Catholic school. In the military, thinking back on all the marching and close order drill has the same feeling: “Pssh, what a waste of time that was.” But the joking cynicism can itself be used as a bonding mechanism between two people who are both feeling it.

Besides the total arbitrariness of close order drill, some parts of boot camp are more recognizable as culture in a straightforward sense. One of the most obvious examples is the uniforms. Although we didn’t earn the right to be called Coast Guardsmen until we graduated, we began wearing the uniforms almost immediately. This, combined with the shaved heads, contributes to the loss of individuality and the feeling of collectiveness. This loss of individuality might sound pretty dystopian, but it can actually feel pretty great to be a part of. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed wearing uniforms, even at minimum-wage jobs I had as a teenager. It was cool to feel like part of a team. Wearing the uniforms in boot camp felt the same way. It was a source of strength, like wow, I’m really part of this thing.

Of course, the uniforms also contribute to the stress of boot camp, since they come with a ton of rules, and frequent inspections. I knew one guy who got rolled back a week in training because he was caught with a wrinkly shirt (called a “blouse”) that he apparently hadn’t ironed enough. While a lot of the rules at boot camp are completely arbitrary and exist only to create a high-stress environment, the recruits will continue to follow the rules around uniforms and grooming standards (shaving, etc) throughout their time in the military. The extreme pressure of boot camp basically serves to deeply ingrain these rules so that the recruits get used to following them and it becomes a habit. For example, one of the rules is that when you’re outdoors in uniform you must be wearing your hat (called a “cover”). Being outdoors in uniform without your hat is one of the things that can bring down the wrath of the drill instructor on the entire recruit company. To this day, even though I’m no longer in the Coast Guard, the thought of being outdoors in my uniform without my hat gives me a physical cringe sensation, like if I had my fly down in public or something.

Some other things were learned were also recognizable as regular culture: Coast Guard history, famous heroic Coast Guardsmen, how to sing the Coast Guard hymn, and a variety of practices called “customs and courtesies” that include saluting officers when outdoors, how to address superiors, how and when to stand at attention, etc. Like the uniform regulations, the customs and courtesies will continue to be followed even after boot camp is over.

Getting Used to Another Plane of Existence

The sum total of all of this is that boot camp feels like an alternate universe. Your days are spent navigating a strange, totalitarian environment under extreme pressure from the Smokey-Beat-hat-wearing Outgroup, who are eager to inflict punishment on you. You navigate this environment with your fellow recruits, who you practice your new culture with and endure the suffering with.

And after like 5-6 weeks of extreme mental and physical stress, you start to get used to it. Things also get easier, as everyone gets more familiar with all the rules and the punitive beatings become less frequent (maybe ~40 minutes per day rather than a couple hours). You get used to living in hell, and hell also gets a bit easier, and then it doesn’t feel like hell anymore. It just feels like an alternate universe that is now your existence. And your previous life feels very distant.

I’ve actually never heard anyone else describe this feeling before after going through boot camp, and I think that’s because it’s easy to feel without consciously noticing, and then easy to forget once it’s all over. But there was a specific moment that caused me to consciously put my finger on this feeling and promise myself that I would remember it.

About 6 weeks into the training there was a blood drive on the base, and recruits who wanted to were allowed to go donate blood. When I was there, I saw that one of the nurses collecting the blood had a coffee cup from Wawa, a regional chain of convenience stores in the Pennsylvania / New Jersey area. And when I saw that, I thought “Oh, yeah…”

In that moment, I remembered that there was another universe out there that had this thing called Wawa. And I remembered that in a previous life, I used to like to go to Wawa when I wanted some time alone with my thoughts. I’d especially like to go late at night, often after a shift at work, and get a snack or a coffee, and just sit in the parking lot and relax. I remembered that in this parallel universe, you had the freedom to just decide to go to the store, get a snack, and sit in the parking lot if you wanted to.

Because of the altered experience of time in boot camp, where everything is rushed and you’re locked into the present while feeling constantly stressed, you don’t really get a chance to reflect on what’s happening. So when I saw that nurse’s Wawa cup, that was really the first time I reflected on things and thought “wait a minute – something pretty wild is going on here.” And I told myself that I needed to purposely try to remember this feeling, because it would probably be easy to forget.

And that’s basically what happens. After about two months of boot camp, you eventually graduate, and are back in the regular world just as quickly as you left it. After graduation, you get about a week of leave before you need to actually check into your new unit, so the very same day that I graduated, I was back in my hometown in Pennsylvania that night, having a drink at the bar with a couple of my high school friends. And that was a weird feeling, because I could already feel myself starting to forget that alternate plane of existence. It was like time had skipped over the past two months (a bit like how time skipped over Covid), and I was just left with a feeling like: “Woah… that was weird.”

Epilogue: Yeah, It Works

This essay was about deliberate group identity formation – whether or not it’s possible to take a diverse group of people from all kinds of different backgrounds with very little in common, break down their individual identities, and create a group identity in their place. Well, it is. The boot camp training process works very well. Towards the end of training, everyone is extremely hyped up about the Coast Guard, and the feeling of group camaraderie is really amazing – the highest level of camaraderie I’ve ever felt. The day I graduated and could officially call myself a United States Coast Guardsman was the proudest day of my life.

Of course, the sense of identity fades over time, and its staying-power varies from person to person. Some people get cynical pretty quickly and forget the feeling entirely. If you ask them, they might deny ever having felt it.

I think for most people though, the feeling fades but doesn’t disappear. That’s how I feel at least. I still like to wear my old unit sweatshirt because it sometimes leads to interesting conversations. For example, one night I was picking up some groceries at the supermarket and an older guy asked me about the sweatshirt. It turned out he had been stationed at the same unit back in the 1980s, and we spent about 20 minutes talking about it. Maybe that’s what it feels like to be a scientologist and run into another scientologist out in public. Anyway, it was pretty cool.

1. They’re actually called “company commanders” in the Coast Guard, but I’m going to call them “drill instructors” since that’s the term people are familiar with.

2. “Aye-aye” means that you understand an order and are about to do it. This is different from “yes” which is used to answer a question in the affirmative.

3. This grammar of “[Person you’re addressing], [identifying yourself], [whatever you’re trying to say]” is actually the grammar of radio communications in the maritime industry.

4. Many of the rules are completely arbitrary, but this one is actually for hygienic reasons to try to limit the spread of germs.