Originally Posted by docputer

Funny, I watched that movie again last night. My boot camp experience was a lot like that, except no drill instructors died during mine. That was back before they supposedly made boot camp a kinder gentler experience.

We had a total fuckup that ended up getting that same kind of blanket party, we had another kid from Boston who cried himself to sleep every night while insisting that he wasn't supposed to be there. He eventually cracked up, and ended up carted away in a catatonic state.
One difference was nobody was called a different name by the drill instructor. We were all Private Willie.
In the movie, all the recruits had their rifles in bed with them. In our situation, we had to go to the armory in the morning, check out our rifle, then take it back that night unless we were on sort of overnight duty.
Some parts of boot were hell, and other parts were fun as hell.