Mississippi was already dripping with sweat as I stepped inside the pot shack on my second day and pulled on my rubber gloves, which I later realized were useless and gave up altogether. “Whar th’ fuck ya been? We nine mahls b’hind!” Liked to have smashed him in the face for about the ninety-fifth time in the last seventeen hours I had known him, but I reminded myself that the Marine Corps has some very bad places for people who don’t get with the program. There was the brig McQueen threatened me with, which was pretty much like hell without the fires. There were the chain-link dog cages behind the brig where they threw you in naked except for your drawers, cotton, and where they cooled you off with a fire hose if you complained about the accommodations. Rations in the dog kennels consisted of three slices of stale bread and two canteens of water supposedly followed by a full meal every third day and then back to bread and water. My recruiting sergeant didn’t exactly promise me a rose garden, but I certainly wish he would have told me about those dog kennels and the brig chasers with big biceps and billy clubs, most of whom looked like close relatives of Charles “Sonny” Liston, the then current heavyweight champion of the world. I wondered if my recruiter had any colored glossy brochures entitled “The Brig and Its Environs”; I would have liked to have seen them before I joined. I might have changed my mind and done something more sensible like joining the Foreign Legion.