United States Marine Corps School of Infantry

So you'll be a basic rifleman, and they will send you off to boot camp.

You will then go to the infantry training battalion, ITV.

You'll do that for a couple months.

And from there, if you are assigned to be an MSG for your... for your MG contract, you'll probably be met by one of my screeners, one of my Marines, and they'll show up and they're going to screen you right there.

He writes, It was a Saturday night when our battalion went out for a field exercise.

We were somewhere up on the Alpha Shelf between the School of Infantry, SOI, and Horno, where Marine Combat Training always does their defenses.

Each company was sent in different sections along the Alpha Shelf bound for different stations to be evaluated on.

I'm with Golf Company during this.

So, you get out of boot camp.

Where do you go from there? So, the School of Infantry.

And I

had had a recon guarantee.

So recruit Sunday, you know, when they give you that day off before, the week before graduation, we had our recruit Sunday, and then the next day, we had our, our final PFT, and after that, we're starting our process to, you know, to buy, you know, to go, go, you know, when you graduate, you get your tickets.

You're gonna go to your MOS school, which for me was gonna be SOI, School of Infantry, but everybody at that time was going to MCT first.

It was, it was a new program that General Gray had just instituted, and regardless of MOS, all Marines went to MCT, even infantry and, and, uh, combat arms.

But during that week, the drill instructors and, and the administration, we, we were in a, a news blackout.

They took our gear and turned it in to, to the supply.

They got on the buses or went to their next school.

We just went down the street, reported to the School of Infantry, and then we started it all over again, except this time we had no shit instructors.

We actually had no shit MOS instructors.

They have SOI.

It's the School of Infantry.

And then you pick from there based on various factors and tests of a machine gunner, a mortarman, an assaultman, or a tow gunner.

And then if you want to do special ops or whatever, there's two paths.

Shortly, I, I got into residential construction, but then I quickly found myself, uh, joining the Marine Corps, um- So I spent four years in, in the infantry in the Marine Corps.

I joined prior to September 11th, but, um, I was actually in the School of Infantry when September 11th happened, and, um, that obviously changed the trajectory of my, my time in the Marine Corps.

So I, I got out in 20-- or sorry, in 2005.

Um, and it was very natural for me to jump back into residential construction, and so I'm a carpenter by trade, let's say.

Um, so, you know, I got finagled by, by my recruiter, which, you know, 29 years later I, I've learned from other, you know, folks that I've talked to that they also got hosed by their recruiters.

And so my, my, my contract ended up being in the reserves, um, with the promise that once I came back from basic training or from, you know, uh, School of Infantry or my trade, that I would then go on active duty.

And so for those five and a half years, I spent just about every day trying to Get back, get onto active duty or do as much active duty, um, schools or, or floats or what- whatever I can be part of in order to kind of earn a spot, uh, to be able to... for the Marine Corps to bring me back on.

And so essentially I was a, uh, a tow gunner in Miami, which I didn't even know we had that capability.

I've always liked academia, and so I really loved being an intel guy, right? Like it was just so...

I, I guess just 'cause I was fortunate to have that hard skill, young hard skill background, and then learned to be an intel guy, I think it's a really deadly conversation, uh, or a combination, excuse me.

Um, and as I was finishing school of infantry, or not, excuse me, I was finishing Goodfellow, um, I got kinda got hooked up and someone came up to me and said, "Hey, you know, what are your plans?" I'm like, "I got no idea how this army thing works.

I don't know where I'm gonna go." And they're like, "Hey, we're, there's this thing called Seven Special Forces Group.

But yeah, that was crazy.

But OK, so you go to SOI, I'm guessing you went to Pendleton School of Infantry.

Yeah.

OK.

didn't do Bridgeport, so we came right after Bridgeport.

Oh, okay.

How many guys in y'all's drop from School of Infantry were going to 2-4?

I'd say it was most of the drops spread out by the companies.

But we're pretty isolated when we go to boot camp.

And then right after that, I graduated the School of Infantry in December of 2002 and arrived to my first unit in January of 2003 and shipped off to Kuwait three weeks later.

And then from Kuwait, you were part of the invasion? I was.

I was.