That would be a mistake.

A big mistake.

They're not Drill Sergeants, really--that's an Army Thing. In the Marines they're referred to as Drill Instructors, or as Total Fucking Assholes.

Drill instructor hats have four symmetrical creases in them. So a friend of mine, while he's at boot camp, notices this and decides that the hats look like Phillips head screwtops. Then he thinks that this makes the drill instructors themselves look like Phillips head screws. Then he gets the image in his head of God reaching his hand out of the clouds, screwdriver in hand, and twisting each of these drill instructors comically into the ground as they're screaming at people to help them.

Now all the sudden, he's getting in trouble all the time, and the drill instuctors are just tearing into him because he starts laughing whenever they yell at him.

Story of my life. Minus the laughing part. I just got quarterdecked for no good reason, such as being too tall; my hair being too red; my skin too pale; I'm a ginger.

God, I hated that. A couple of my old DSes were just too fucking hilarious. After being screamed at and smoked, screamed at and smoked, screamed at and smoked for a little while, you get to that dangerous point where you're no longer really scared of your cadre, even when you damn well should be. And when you've got a funny NCO, or a funny squad member, a funny "inside game" you're playing, or just a funny image stuck in your head, then it can become a constant battle to stop from cracking a grin and bringing all hell down on you.

And, of course, the rain of destruction just makes you laugh harder, so it becomes a vicious cycle. I'd imagine it's worse in the Marines, since as a general rule Marines are far more laughable and goofy than their Army equivalents.

My Kill Hat (the term for the most asshole-ish of the DI's in the platoon), would do some funny things, like call the sand pit "McDonald's Magic Play Land", or the quarterdeck "Chuck e' Cheese's".

Yeah, "little kid pop culture references" seems to be a big thing with the Hats! One of our platoons was re-christened from "Mad Dogs" to "Pound Puppies" when they jacked up one too many times, and the company across the way from us used to march around to the Spongbob Squarepants theme-song cadence.

Me and my bunkmates decided that if we ever got pulled for DS duty later on down the line, we'd throw a Strongbad "The System is Down" rave party during one of the night marches, complete with chemlights and singing parts for each of our four squads, as well as a "Badger Badger Badger" themed Overhead Arm Clapathon. "Snake a snake" was going to consist of cobra pushups, but we never quite worked out what to do for "mushroom mushroom" (the Monkey Fucker, maybe?)

I was never in the military, but I read some memoirs from a guy who was a DI in the Marines during Vietnam. He saved labels from cans of cat food, put them on to cans of tuna, and ate them when he knew recruits were watching so they thought he was totally insane.

It's been out for something like four years.

It's good. Too bad they can't hit the recruits for no reason anymore.

There was a highly rated clip on PoeTV from the docu but it got pulled off of Youtube. Some poor slob is standing at attention and a bunch of DIs just come out of fucking nowhere and start screaming into his head.

Says you.

Netflix doesn't have it. Therefore, it doesn't exist.

Nevermind. Just found it through disreputable means.

NEED! NEED! NEED!

DI's have this magical ability to find some poor recruit, swarm him and scream at him until someone decides to take him out back to the sand pit.

It's a beautiful ballet where 3 of them position themselves in 3 different directions and simultaneously demand his full attention

'Head Call', the 'Head' is Navy slang for a bathroom.

Are the Marines really anal (har har) about calling it the head? Back in the Army, our NCOs refused to acknowledge any word other than "latrine", and if you decided to be a smartass and call the thing a "head" (like one 40 year old former Marine who had decided to return to the military after losing his factory job- thanks Bush!) then you were liable to get a three hour, uhhh, "lesson" on the difference between the branches.