About Phil Stone

When I went to Navy boot camp two or three lifetimes ago, I had something of a head start. I already had a few years of maritime experience and so was able to help the other recruits with things like tying knots and throwing lines. I also had five years marching experience in high school band, so I knew how to march.

The first day of marching, before we started, the Company Commanders (CC) carefully explained and demonstrated the basic procedures. I paid close attention and knew I had it. Then we marched and, as one would expect, we were pretty ragged as a whole but I had it down right away.

The next day when we went out to march, the Recruit Chief Petty Officer (one of us lowly maggots, sort of like class president), who got the job because he was a ROTC brown-nose that could actually stand up on its hind legs, had somehow changed the procedures, specifically for “forward march” and “company halt.”

All of a sudden I found myself alternately walking on the heels of the man before me and having my heels walked on by the man behind. In-between I struggled to get in step with the rest of the company.

This went on for about five or ten minutes when one of the CCs, who had been following along beside me for the last couple minutes, stopped the company and approached the immediate vicinity of my left ear.

“RECRUIT!” he bellowed calmly in what was, for him, a reasonable and quiet tone, “WHY ARE YOU MARCHING OUT OF STEP!?”

Now I knew I was doing it right and I thought the CC knew it as well. So, at rigid attention, under an ominous, slate-gray Forida sky, feeling increasingly weak and fluttery, resisting the urge to wipe the left side of my face, I answered as loudly and firmly as I could muster: “I’m not, sir.”

This seemed to slow him down about a half a beat. I think he was checking the volume control.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT!!?”.

“I am in step Sir,” I squeaked. “They’re not.”

At this point he apparently decided I could hear better through my nose and adjusted accordingly.

“ARE YOU TRYING TELL ME, RECRUIT, THAT EVERYBODY IN THIS ENTIRE COMPANY IS MARCHING OUT OF STEP EXCEPT YOU!!!?”

“Yes Sir!” I replied.

I think he started feeling a little sorry for me about then as he took on a more compassionate tone of voice over which I honestly felt I could just about hear the DC10 that was at that moment flying about 13 feet over my head.

“THEN FROM NOW ON….. RECRUIT….. YOU…WILL…MARCH…OUT…OF…STEP!!!! (another volume check) IS THAT CLEAR!!!!!?”

“Yes Sir!” And I did, and never had any further trouble in boot camp.

A few years later I found that I am truly out of step with modern society and that if I want to fit in I’d have to march ‘out of step.’ Every day thereafter I found it getting steadily harder to conform without betraying my principles.

Nowadays I accept that, not only am I out of step, I march to a different drummer, outside the box, and against the herd.

Phil