Every Marine must be able to swim. This is established in boot camp, where everyone does increasingly difficult swimming tasks until they either can't succeed, or they reach the qualification level needed for their assigned job. There are four levels, Combat Water Survival Level 4 is the easiest, CWS1 is hardest. In boot camp I qualified up to CWS2, which was as much as I needed. That was a good thing, because I almost drowned doing it, and I doubt I can make it through CWS1.

Swim qualifications are only valid for two years, but most squadrons don't get their people re-qualified as they should. We got called out on that by higher command, so this morning over three-quarters of our enlisted personnel had to go to a pool on Camp Hanson. There is a pool on Futenma, the base where I live; but said pool is dry pending repairs right now.

There was a bus going to Hanson, but I caught a ride in a van belonging to a friend of mine. He didn't know the way, so we followed the bus driver. When we got to Hansen, we discovered the problem: the bus driver didn't know where the pool was either.

So we drove around, asking random pedestrians. That didn't work at all; half of them didn't know where the pool was, and the other half directed us to the motor pool.

We did get there on time, by using a navigation technique known to us motivated NCOs. It's also a algorithm used in computer science, known there as exhaustive search. There are only so many roads on Camp Kinser, and by driving them all we found the pool.

With almost two hundred people to process, they didn't have time for anything fancy. We all got to qualify as CWS4 and leave. I made sure to be in the very first stick.

Wearing cammies but no boots or other gear, we did a 25 meter swim in the shallow end to establish that weren't "non-swimmers" needing special attention. Then it was a three-meter jump into the water followed by a four-minute float, which could be accomplished by treading water, inflating clothing, back floats, whatever. I did all three just to amuse myself. Then I got bored and started cracking jokes, which almost drowned my friend Cpl McS_ because he started laughing and sucked in some water. Sorry, Mick, my bad. After time was up, we swam 25 meters in the deep end, got out, signed the roster, hit the locker room, filled up the van and went back to work. Fun times.

I have the good fortune to be from a family that thought it was important that I learn to swim, and a school that had a pool. As best as I could tell, all of our problem non-swimmers had grown up either outside the US, or in the inner city. I swim so nonchalantly, I have to remember that my skill is born of literally hundreds of hours of practice, which the struggling Marines never had.

The Corps is full of jokers though. One of the guys is from Puerto Rico, so he was getting hassled that "We know you can swim, how the hell else did you get to the recruiter's office?" He came back with "Sure I'm not a good swimmer- while you were sixteen and hanging out at Scout camp, I was meeting girls!" which was generally acclaimed as being a point for him.

As a last comment, after we finished, we all changed into dry clothing, of course. Then at noon it started raining and hasn't stopped since. When I got off work, I was just as wet as I'd been the moment I hopped out of the pool. That's Okinawa for you.

Posted by: Boviate at 04:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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