After receiving a letter from my young cousin from Parris Island, I felt it only right I return a letter to him at Boot Camp. Besides, sending a recruit a letter addressed from a Sergeant Major was too good an opportunity to pass up:
J,
No doubt by now you’ve discovered Recruit Training is nothing like you imagined. It will continue to be. I never worried about what we were doing the next day or next week or next month. I simply endured each day until graduation. Just let boot camp happen to you as it does. I think it’s the best way to experience it. For you, time does not exist, only missions and obstacles to overcome in order to complete them.
Don’t obsess about your platoon mates not sounding off. I remember wishing I was in a different platoon because at least they seemed loud. In the end, my platoon won drill and the rifle range so don’t let those initial impressions deceive you. [I‘m not actually sure if we won the range but we ended up kicking a lot of ass]
Don’t attempt to curry favor with your DIs by being a tattle tale. To me it smacks of weakness and you will find some of your platoon mates do so in an attempt to protect themselves. It’s like saving yourself from an alligator by pushing other people into it’s maw. You’re still going to get eaten eventually. I find it unbecoming of what you are trying to transform yourself into. Unless someone is doing something unsafe, leave the tattling to the weasels.
Do continue to keep writing down your experiences and don’t sugar coat things for your parents. You have a sharp mind and quit wit, use it. You will read your own letters years from now and laugh your ass off. Trust me.
You will find yourself being tested to the very limits of your mental and physical endurance. Boot Camp will only be the first time this happens to you. Your mind will want to quit long before you body does. When it really starts to suck ask yourself if your mind has quit, because you body hasn’t. Your body will always have a little more to give than your brain thinks it does. Remind yourself you can always take just one more step, one more bayonet thrust, one more strike, just one more …
Don’t let your mind quit before your body does. Endure the hard things others are unwilling or incapable of enduring. Only then will you have become one of us.
The lad probably needed the encouragement as he was foolish enough to admit to his Drill Instructors he had a cousin who was an active duty Sergeant Major at the time. Of course, it probably didn’t help when I e-mailed his Senior Drill Instructor and told him the kid’s uncle and grandfather were both Sailors. I am confident the team took appropriate action upon learning this.
That's literally a letter for dealing with life at times.