There are many things that can and cannot be said about the Crucible, but now I understand why, when we asked senior platoons what is was like, all they would say is, "It's an experience."
On one hand, it wasn't what I expected. Somehow I expected it to be…harder? No. While you were doing the events you sometimes thought, "I thought it would be harder," but looking back I realize that was only due to sheer adrenaline, because we are all broke off, exhausted, and ready to do it again.
You did everything in teams of 18-22 people, each of which had one DI and one recruit as team leaders. The DIs mostly weren't DIs, just regular Marines mostly - they lost their DI mask for the event and it was cool. The teams themselves were picked alphabetically, so there I am as Teams 1 and 2 get assigned, listening for my name for Team 3, "Ledwell, Minck, Munoz, O'Keefe, Peters, Polodna…" I'm like, "Wait, where's my name?" Turns out there was a special Team 6, run by both Senior DIs from Platoons 4000 and 4001, comprised of the top nine of each platoon. As SDI Sgt Renteria said, "Now this team is obviously stacked." Us: "AYE Ma'am!" Renteria: "They said I had to have a team, and I don't want any drama. You know what to do, so get it done."
Them basically they let us do our thing, and with handpicked members it was AWESOME. The whole Crucible is like a combo of the Obstacle Course, the Confidence Course, endurance courses and hiking trails, except all the events are taller, higher, longer, and harder. Several of your teammates are 'casualties;' we have weapons and gear and have to cross the events with ammo cans, water jugs, barrels and people in stretchers.
The hardest part is that it just went on and on and on. Each day consisted of 19 1/2 hours of patrolling, climbing, hoisting each other, and crawling under barbed wire and through sand. One half hour was "field weapons maintenance." The remaining 4 hours were called "sleep time" but all that really meant is that the lights were out and we were tactical (silent with hand signals) while we reapplied cammie paint, fixed our gear and our feet, ate our limited MREs, took 30 minute rifle watches, made head calls and talked (um, tactically?). We were all exhausted, yes, but you sort of get to where you're so busy you don't notice.
It.
Was.
Awesome.
So both nights were 23:00 - 3:00 minus getting ready and packing our gear time. The last morning was a quick 10-mile hump back to the squad bay to Warriors Breakfast. Basically, it's what the males get to eat, only awesome! Real bacon, sausage, ice cream, hot chocolate, cake, bagels, muffins, omelets … soooo gooood.
So a lot of the other teams were extremely jealous that we had both SDIs AND the Gunny. We got candy (once) and they thought we had it really easy because the DIs weren't being that hard on us. This was totally untrue, though. They weren't that hard on us because we were doing EXCEPTIONAL though the Crucible - unlike any other team, we were completing nearly every obstacle within the time limits (female recruits usually don't). And we were doing exceptional because, think about it. The team representing the Senior Drill Instructors and the Series Gunnery Sgt HAS to do well. There was no other option for us if we didn't want to DIE later at the hands of the DIs for not impressing their bosses. We literally ran our asses off, but while we were more physically broke off than the other groups, I will say that they could be jealous of us mentally. No drama in our team, no bickering, positive attitudes all around. We were loving it.
The second day we did pugil sticks against Team 5, and I have never seen such aggressive behavior. SDI warns us "I don't want to see any wussy fights" and then we notice all these officers are out to watch - the Series Commander 1st Lt. Griswold, the Company Commander Captain Hasley, the Company 1st Sgt. Sanderson, Gunny Hilton and both SDIs. So we knew we had to put on a show. And we did. The officers were LOVING it. We beat the shit out of each other.
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