No Pain, No Gain for Recruit at Boot Camp
Deborah Winograd broke down in the restroom.
She had done everything the Navy required of her so far in this final torture session of boot camp, the hell they call Battle Stations. Exhausted, she didn’t feel like going any further.
“I was crying,” she said. “Everyone was going, ‘No, you can’t give up. You’re almost halfway through.’ But I was freaking out. I didn’t know what to do.”
When she graduated from Thousand Oaks High School in June, she knew the Navy was the way to go. At 18, college didn’t seem right just yet, but when it was time, the Navy would help foot the bill. Besides, there was this thing about serving one’s country, about getting involved with a lofty goal in a way she couldn’t have as a cheerleader or a member of the swim team.
Then there was boot camp.
You don’t think about lofty goals in boot camp. You think about getting out.
“You’re living with 90 people in a small room, 24 hours a day,” she said. “There’s never a moment of privacy. Someone is always watching you.”
For eight weeks, you drill endlessly, work like a dog and live in terror of messing up and having to do it all over again. A nasty remark, an unshined shoe, a flunked exam, a late arrival from liberty: All can set you back, sometimes even to the wretched first day.
But now, at last, Winograd was almost out. All she had to do to leave the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois was make it through Battle Stations. In less than one agonizing day, she could be assured of a one-way ticket to a Navy school for sonar technicians in San Diego.
Battle Stations started at 9 p.m., when an alarm sounded in the barracks. Everyone knew what that meant: Helmet, fatigues, gas mask, combat boots--and scramble.
Running double time to the first of Battle Stations’ 12 exercises, Winograd felt a familiar pain in her ankle. A few weeks before, she’d hurt it running in her combat boots--but it was no big deal. Now it was throbbing, but she could handle it.
The grueling exercises were all about a mile from each other.
In one you leap in full battle gear from a high tower into a pool and grapple your way into a life raft. In another, you crawl on your belly through narrow, dark, rock-strewn tunnels.
In the “confidence course,” you climb ropes, slide down poles and team up to haul a 180-pound dummy up a trail on a stretcher. Lights flash, bombs explode and people scream: “Let’s go! LET’S GO!”
After the third exercise, Winograd’s ankle was hurting like never before.
After the fourth, she hobbled into the restroom.
“At the end of that run, I totally collapsed,” she said. “But I had to be careful. If they see you limping, they can kick you out.”
At the least, that would mean doing Battle Stations over again in a few days. Or it could mean hanging out in a Basic Training holding unit for weeks or even months with no newspapers, no magazines, no phone calls, no TV, no nothing.
Winograd had to keep going--and had to show no pain.
“While I was running, I could get away with it,” she said. “I’d just slam my leg down as hard as I could. It was swollen and huge, but I could deal with it.”
She kept it up. Planting her heel, she wouldn’t have to put as much pressure on her foot. But walking was a different story. At one point, she was wincing in agony just trying to pull on a rain boot.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?” screamed a medic.
“Just bad tendinitis, I think. I can handle it.”
And she did.
For 12 hours, Winograd pushed herself through all 12 stations--running, climbing, leaping, crawling, hurtling down manholes with no help from a right leg that turned out to be cleanly broken just above the ankle.
She graduated boot camp with her division. As soon as her cast comes off, Seaman Winograd is headed for San Diego.
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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com
