Navy Story: Hiding In The Limelight

Most people I knew in the Navy had a story about a RDC (drill instructor) that would torment them. Someone always had some weird saying or had some borderline silly activity they used to harangue people with. I thought it was funny that my lead RDC was someone that was sarcastic but relatively fair. He had good lessons for all, outside of his wild gestures and hyperbolic speech patterns.

I wasn’t tortured by the E5 of our group, either. You could tell that they were annoyed and bored by their job. We also had a Seabee E6 who was asleep half of the time. Apparently the Navy liked to torture people close to retirement with unappealing jobs, too.

The person who scared the shit out of me was a neighboring divisions lead RDC. This dude was a somewhat muscular but short as f*ck individual. He didn’t yell, but he had weird speech patterns. He would threaten you with baseless claims and soft speech patterns. He would often tell you that “it never ends, recruit”. He would use a medium volume tone to mention that “my division is always squared away” and that “we never lose anyone, but people have a way of not graduating with us”. His threats that “you may never recover” had a bizarre echo to it.

He would stop by when he was making his rounds. He had this one tall white guy with a crisp uniform that he would parade around as an attempt to make us feel like shit. (I will call the tall white guy “Du Motier”). Du Motier had a blue blood hyphenated last name, I sensed some non-backwater Louisiana in the guy when I heard him speak. The RDC would talk about his razor sharp creases and his mirror shined boots. I would be regaled with promises just short of the heavens opening up if I would make my uniform like his.

I faintly remember the last time I saw the weird RDC and Du Motier in bootcamp. No more weird psych outs or impromptu parading around of rando recruits.

I left bootcamp better knowing that the short RDC was done with us.

Fast forward to two weeks later, I stumble off the bus to electronics school. The school would parade us around in huge numbers through the soon to be condemned buildings. I would see a collection of strange characters in those buildings. (I remember the two former marines that seemed depressed. I also remember a few nerdy looking perv types).

But the most surprising was a tall muscular gentleman with a familiar name tag, it was Du Motier. I sauntered up to him and asked him about that short, weird RDC. Du Motier laughed and told me that it was him. He did inform me of a strange fact. Du Motier wasn’t that great of a recruit. He would disappear without permission. He would rack up long distance phone calls on the administrative phone. He fell asleep in odd places. He also would crack jokes about that weird RDC guy.

Du Motier mentioned that the RDC did parade him around to other divisions as a service. He mentioned that he did not put that much effort into his uniforms. It was not widely known that he was one of the least enthusiastic recruits in that division. But he went on to tell me that it was easy to get away with stupid crap because the RDC was too busy telling everyone how great he was.

I looked back fondly at those times. I learned real quick that some of the biggest scam artists hide in the limelight. Du Motier became an unsung hero of mine. I shared his story with other people that ran into him.