ROWS OF CORN
A True Account of a Parris Island Recruit

NF/NF. Jacket in mylar. (Orangeburg, SC: Sandlapper Publishing, 1983). First Edition. Photographs, 232 pages.

This fast-moving, true adventure clutches the reader and thrusts him into sterile barracks the first day of Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.

The bewildered raw recruits of Platoon 340 come face to face with three glowering DIs under whose domination they must spend the next twelve weeks. The DIs, led by Sergeant Walter Egge, lose no time in convincing the frightened recruits that they live up to their fabled notoriety. The constant supervision and harassment continue at every phase of the intensive make-or-break training program. Every minute seems filled with spit and polish, drill on the smoldering hot grinder, grueling assaults of the confidence and obstacle courses, concentrated classroom instruction, bivouac at mosquito-and-sand-flea-infested Elliott's Beach...

But all is not is not intolerable. The recruits slowly find there is another side to the "monster" -- as the DIs are called -- however fleeting the glimpse. And as the recruits slowly improve in competence and approach peak physical condition, they begin to see signs of order to the madness around them, due in no small part to their knowledge that graduation and evacuation from the Island is approaching. For most of them.

Basic training at Parris Island -- most Marines don't want to talk about it; and neither does the Marine Corps. But it's all here in this factual account of Platoon 340.

OUT OF PRINT.