The tall and the short of it!

When I was in Boot Camp, we had two guys who really stood out. Aince it has been almost 50 years ago, I can't remember their names. But one guy was black and stood 6 ft 7 inches tall. The other was short and was only 4 ft 8 inches tall. The short guy was white. Of course they became the best of friends and went every where to gether. We always called them Mutt and Jeff. They did graduate from boot camp and went on to other duty stations. The tall guy wore size 17 shoes. The Navy had none in his size, so he wore his civilian shoes all through boot. The last I heard, he went to shore duty and then was medically discharged due to his size. They couldn't send him aboard ship, as there were no bunks large enough for him. I did hear through the grape vine that the small guy was killed in an auto accident about a year after boot camp. Here were two strangers who became close friends for 3 months of their lives and then never got to see each other again. Very sad.

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Permalink Reply by Claudia Bartow on January 5, 2012 at 10:55pm

How did they not stop the too-tall guy during the recruitment process? Wouldn't they have known he has too tall, or were there not height standards then? What a site they must have been.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Kirkpatrick on January 6, 2012 at 10:12am

Back then, before Viet Nam, a recruiter did not get credit for an enlistment until the recruit finished Boot Camp. So the people at Boot Camp did everything they could to help the recruiter get credit. Plus they did get 3 years of service out of him by assigning him to shore duty. When I was a recruiter in the early 80's, we got credit for the enlistment when they shipped to boot camp. Like in any sales job, it was all about the numbers. And that's all it was, was a sales job.