The Wall Locker

            During the 10 weeks that I was at my Basic Training, we used a wall locker as a place to store all of our equipment and uniforms. It was a rather simple idea. Much like a wardrobe it had two doors that opened up to the inside where one could hang their uniforms. Inside of it was also a small dresser. The dresser had three drawers to it and along the side was a little hatch that could be locked to where none of the drawers could be opened. There was also a shelf in the locker where clothes and other gear would be placed. Inside the front panel of the wall locker hung a photo of what the inside of it was to look like. Every ones wall locker was to look exactly the same. Everything had a place, whether it was inside of one of the drawers or hanging up on the rack. Everything was to be kept neat and clean within the lockers, because our Drill Sergeant would do wall locker inspections and if it was a mess they would pull everything out and throw it on the ground.

            On top of keeping the locker clean and in order, it was also a requirement to keep the locker locked at all times. If we didn’t and the Drill Sergeants walked by and saw that it wasn’t they would have quite a good time ripping out everything. I remember once leaving to go to chow and returning to find one of my buddies had left their wall locker unsecured. The Drill Sergeants had discovered it and had thrown all the clothes on the ground; they then proceeded to spill out all the laundry detergent on top of the clothes. Written in toothpaste a little ways past the clothing pile was “Sucks 2 be you”. From that point on I never forgot to leave my wall locker “unsecured”.

I also remember that we had to have everything cleaned up within five minutes, which meant it had to be spotless. If it wasn’t our Drill Sergeant said that we would be “smoked”, which is a whole other personal reflection in itself. I remember another time in which a wall locker was “cleaned out”. It was week eight of our training, one of our privates who was constantly screwing up was outside doing some “corrective training”. We were inside talking with one of our D.S. about this private who kept screwing up. In an effort to make an example out of what a bad soldier looked like he walked over to the window where the private was down below moving sandbags and yelled at him. The window happened to be located directly next to the privates’ wall locker. I remember him laughing at the private saying how he will always be a “screw-up”. Then he turned and faced us making a joke about how he even bet that the private’s wall locker was unsecured, even though it had a lock on the locker. He pushed down on the lock only to be surprised at the click that it made as the lock came undone. Then we all managed to start laughing as both of our D.S. proceeded to dump out all of his clothes, pour laundry detergent on them, along with a bunch of personal hygiene products including toothpaste, and mashed deodorant. After laughing for a few more minutes we as a platoon (minus that private) proceeded to pick up all of his clothes. We were then yelled at to leave the clothes alone because the private was going to pick everything up by himself. If he was going to act like an individual we were going to let him be one.

It was such a simple concept yet such a hard habit to break in. I would have to force myself to go back to my lock and check it a second time before going anywhere to make sure that it was locked for fear of having my stuff ripped out of it. By the ninth week anytime I didn’t check my lock twice I became overwhelmed with fear. Looking back now I’m glad that the wall locker became the symbol that it did. It became a symbol of security and a reminder of how important personal belongings are. Something worth fighting for without a doubt; who would’ve thought that by learning to secure a wall locker, a lesson would be learned?