Arriving in Camp Lejeune

We were activated and amid gear inspections and paperwork we prepared for our departure to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I was chosen to go ahead of the rest of the company in order to assign rooms and iron out any other details prior to the rest of the company’s arrival. This ‘advance party’ assignment only meant I ended up spending a few less days in Utah with my wife (to include a weekend) and a few more days in the VERY muggy Camp Lejeune! The base is located right on the Carolina coast and includes a large river/inlet which increases the coastline bordering parts of the base. This means I sweat A LOT. I think I have my father’s gene for sweating, he sweats a lot too. The advance party duties are not difficult but the NCOs here on base that we work with to iron out these details would say otherwise. You would think it was the hardest thing on earth for some of them to find room keys or missing furniture for the rooms. I think really they just pick the Sergeant or Corporal that they don’t want around or doing anything important and put them in charge of things like barracks. When we first got here the rooms they wanted to assign us looked like a hurricane came through. They were torn apart and dirty. I was shocked and appalled that anything military related could look like this. Half of the damage looks to be the result of stupid drunken behavior or just mere carelessness. Boy am I glad I haven’t had to live the barracks life for very long in my Marine Corp career. I would go nuts. The people here are loud and obnoxious and are constantly throwing beer bottles and cigarette butts off of the higher floors. The grass in between buildings is littered every morning as if the back to school fall frat party just took place. While there may be some adjusting to do and some kinks to work out here, I think Camp Lejeune won’t be that bad, once everyone gets here I think we will make it livable and accomplish our training schedule. Our company gunny/ops chief is also good at hooking up lots of great things like rental mini-vans for each platoon to use to drive around base and town. All in all it won’t be so bad and could definitely be worse. The only complaint is that we have 3 months to accomplish the tasks we could complete in 1 back in Utah. I guess that is part of being on active duty. Wasted time and resources and lots of inefficiency.