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All Hands Magazine's full length documentary "Making a Sailor": This video follows four recruits through Boot Camp in the spring of 2018 who were assigned to DIV 229, an integrated division, which had PIR on 05/25/2018. 

Boot Camp: Making a Sailor (Full Length Documentary - 2018)

Boot Camp: Behind the Scenes at RTC

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Always keep Navy Operations Security in mind.  In the Navy, it's essential to remember that "loose lips sink ships."  OPSEC is everyone's responsibility. 

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OPSEC GUIDELINES

Events

**UPDATE 4/26/2022** Effective with the May 6, 2022 PIR 4 guests will be allowed.  Still must be fully vaccinated to attend.

**UPDATE as of 11/10/2022 PIR vaccination is no longer required.

**UPDATE 7/29/2021** You now must be fully vaccinated in order to attend PIR:

In light of observed changes and impact of the Coronavirus Delta Variant and out of an abundance of caution for our recruits, Sailors, staff, and guests, Recruit Training Command is restricting Pass-in-Review (recruit graduation) to ONLY fully immunized guests (14-days post final COVID vaccination dose).  

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR UP TO DATE INFO:

RTC Graduation

**UPDATE 8/25/2022 - MASK MANDATE IS LIFTED.  Vaccinations still required.

**UPDATE 11/10/22 PIR - Vaccinations no longer required.

RESUMING LIVE PIR - 8/13/2021

Please note! Changes to this guide happened in October 2017. Tickets are now issued for all guests, and all guests must have a ticket to enter base. A separate parking pass is no longer needed to drive on to base for parking.

Please see changes to attending PIR in the PAGES column. The PAGES are located under the member icons on the right side.

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UPDATED for 2019

Hi, I'm Arwen. My son went to boot camp in December 2009. I also mentored the groups from 2010, 2011 and 2012, so I pretty much have this thing down to a science.

December bootcamp is unlike any other month, a LOT is different, and I'm here to explain what is different, and what to expect.

First, no, you will NOT get a Christmas phone call. Do not wait up, do not hang by the phone. Phone calls are earned, and it is incredibly rare for a division with less than 3 weeks of training to earn a phone call.  Your recruit's RDC may even "promise" your recruits a call, but it's an empty promise. Usually they attach it to an impossible task, but the recruits don't hear that part. They may write home and tell you they will get a Christmas call, but don't be fooled. In 2010 and 2011, many recruits wrote home that they might call, and none did. In 2012, due to the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy, many recruits were allowed to call home on or around Christmas, but it was a rare situation. UPDATE: Some recruits may get to call Christmas week, regardless of how long they have been in BC, but nothing is ever guaranteed.

There is a slight possibility of a New Year phone call for some of those who arrive in the first week.

There are NO special provisions for the holidays, except a late start to the day. They get to sleep in an hour, have the morning off to study, write letters, and "relax." If it is a religious holiday recruits are given the opportunity to use the morning hours to attend church services at the base chapel.

UPDATE: Please click this link for the new arrival procedures. What happens upon arrival to GL

Recruits get three "guaranteed" phone calls, the "I'm here" call UPDATE:(If they have access to a cell phone) the night they arrive, the "I'm still alive" call - which comes at the end of their third week of training, and the "I'm a sailor" call, which comes after Battlestations 21. A few recruits may miss this call because they are on watch, or are at medical or another appointment. Sometimes RDCs let those recruits make an individual call to make up for it - and sometimes they do not. The third week phone call will come 4-5 weeks after they arrive, and the timing is measured from the date they begin training, not their arrival at boot camp. Occasionally individual recruits earn an earlier call for excellence in an early inspection, but not usually more than 2-3 recruits per division. They can begin earning division "reward" phone calls after week 4.

Once the division is formed (which can take from one hour to five days) the recruits begin "processing days" or "P-days" which do not count toward their 8 weeks, and are not counted on weekends. For most recruits there are 5 days, (days P-1 through P-5), but December recruits can have 10 or more P-days. P-days also have specific tasks, such as being measured for uniforms, getting health exams, vaccinations, and dental checkups, and taking an exam that, if they pass both written and physical portions of the exam, get them a promotion to E-2 at the end of boot camp.

Mail can be slow because of the holidays, but that's not the only reason. You will start getting mail from your recruit long before s/he gets mail from you. Their first few letters will beg you to send mail and ask why you aren't writing. It can be heartbreaking. They won't get mail from you right away even if you overnight it the day you get the address. Until they begin formal training they will be in temporary barracks and sometimes change barracks nightly. In order to get mail, they must first be in a permanently assigned barracks, AND they have to assign a recruit to be the "mail petty officer." Then s/he must complete a USPS mail handling class. So, while they can mail letters when the division goes to the base store for supplies, they can't *get* mail.

Also, if they change divisions during processing, that will delay their mail even longer, so your recruit may not get mail you sent, even if the other recruits are getting mail.

Recruiting offices, MEPS and the processing units close on the Friday the week before Christmas, and don't open again until after the New Year.  They do not send new sailors to boot camp during this time. Based on past years, I expect the Navy to declare the MEPS closure dates to be Dec. 23 through Jan. 4. UPDATE: Stand Down for 2019 is December 20th through January 4th.

To make up for two weeks of no new recruits, they usually send two to three times as many recruits as usual and "hold" most of them to fill new divisions for the next two weeks. Where do they get all these recruits? They are the recruits who are assigned to report during those two weeks. They are all sent early. If you haven't already received notice that your recruit is leaving earlier than scheduled, you will soon.  The final recruits to arrive for training in the week of Dec. 15-16-17 will probably be stuck in processing for two weeks. The Navy starts a new training group (6-15 divisions) every week, even weeks when none arrive, so they have to "save you" some recruits for these groups.  My son arrived on December 16, but didn't start training until Dec 28. UPDATE:There are no new arrivals to RTC during Stand Down.

As I said earlier, processing days do NOT count toward their official training days. Nor do weekends or holidays.

They also lose a lot of training days. Day 1-1  means "Week 1 Day 1" and Day 6-3 means "Week 6 Day 3." Each training day has a specified activity. Firefighting is on a certain day of training, so is weapons qualifications and division pictures. This helps the Navy keep from having too many divisions trying to do one activity on a single day. Divisions cannot "skip forward" because there are likely other divisions still using the training room or equipment needed.

Typically there are two to four divisions on each training day.  Div 001 -003 starts day 1-1 on Monday, then Div 004-006 begins day 1-1 on Tuesday, etc. They try to divide the divisions evenly through the week, so it is a very small training group, there might only be two divisions per day, for three days. If there are an odd number, the performance (900) division is often left alone on a training day. UPDATE: A TG can begin training on any day of the week, but the first divisions in the TG are always the first to begin training.

You may ask, if holidays aren't counted toward training, and they only get a half-day off for holidays, what are they doing that other half-day? Probably practicing their marching, or having uniform or locker inspections, or doing PT. You would not believe how much time is spent on practicing making and unmaking a bed (The Navy Way™) . And ironing lessons. And clothes folding lessons. Not all training is scheduled classroom work.

No, recruits can NOT receive holiday gifts or care packages - unless you want to send a gift card, which they can't use until after graduation. Have your holiday celebration BEFORE they leave, or after PIR. You can send a greeting card, but make the envelope plain white, no musical cards, and absolutely no glitter on the card.. Some RDCs will harass sailors who get mail that "stands out." RDCs want to be home with their families for Christmas, not babysitting 80+ fresh recruits, so they may have a pretty bad attitude toward recruits at this time. The RDC sometimes look for a reason to give the recruits a little extra training. Not intended to punish, just a little motovation. :)

In 2010 there was a recruit whose grandmother insisted that holiday gifts are okay, that her brother said he could get them (back during the Vietnam War), therefore it is okay. "It's only a box of cookies." When they arrived, the RDCs made him sit in front of the entire division. They did eight-counts until he finished eating the entire box of cookies.

Why are they so strict with recruits during the holidays? Because they're trying to get them to understand that once they get into the fleet, if their ship is out to sea on Christmas, Easter, or their birthday, there isn't going to be any special treatment of that day. No one gets calls home, no one gets a day off. Boot camp is supposed to replicate those conditions, so recruits have an idea of what it will be like once they hit the fleet.

Of course, the question everyone wants to know is, "When will my recruit PIR?" The answer is that no one really knows until the form letter arrives, or RTC announces it. Those who have been through the system before can make educated guesses, but the people in charge keep changing up the "rules," and in three years have used three different determinations of PIR dates. Sometimes the recruiters can get the information from their computers, but if your recruit is one of the late arrivals, the recruiters are already out of the office for holiday stand down and aren't available to get the information for you. UPDATE: Before the form letter arrives it is just a guess on when your recruits PIR will be. There have been many changes to processing with the changes in requirements for the PFA. Please look at the "What happens on Arrival" post in the link above. The information that the recruiter has may only be info upon arrival, and that info can change very quickly. 

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Replies to This Discussion

Thank you soooo much. This was very helpful. I guess I will do Christmas earlier and perhaps go on vacation during Christmas, so I don't miss him as much. (It's not like I'm going to miss his call.) I am positive I will still miss him. But I might feel better if I'm sitting on a beach somewhere. He is giong 12/12/10. I guess we could do the 12 days of Christmas and have a big going to BC Party/New Years Celebration. This site is very helpful. I have learned so much. Rey's mom Rose
My son and his best friend are scheduled to ship out to BC on 12/15 and 12/14, respectively. I LOOOOVE your 12-days-of-Christmas idea!! Can't wait to tell the other momma about it. :D
Don't think I can get away with vacationing for our Christmas . . . too many other family to cook for . . . but it's a thought. Plus my son would be very jealous! LOL!! Never mind that he's about to travel way more than I ever thought about. Maybe I'll make plans and not tell him. Or maybe I'll just save the money so we can all go see him for PIR.

Speaking of PIR, do they do that every day, as well? If they've got new recruits starting each day, do they graduate them all together? Or do they stagger those every day? In other words, will we get to see both boys march?
They hold PIRs each week. All of the divisions who begin training in the same week PIR together. It can be anywhere from 6 to 20 divisions. The largest graduation I have seen was 17 divisions, and the smallest, 6.

The first few divisions are finished with their training and leave immediately (often the day of PIR). The last few divisions are often held over for a few extra days after PIR to complete training.

The final week of training is relatively unstructured, so any training left undone at that time can be completed and sailors (they change over from recruit to sailor when they complete Battlestations at the end of Week 7) can relax. They often get to go to Ricky Heaven (a food court/game arcade) and buy candy in that last week. Basically they try to "wind them down" after the intensity of the previous 8 weeks - so they don't melt down when they are released into the public.

PIRs are usually on Fridays, but there are occasional Thursday graduations when there are Friday holidays.

As for whether your son and his best friend will graduate together, that is up to luck. They're always forming new divisions. If they need one more guy to finish off last week's division, and your son's best friend is chosen, then he will graduate a week earlier. If they come to the end of the week and your son's division isn't quite full, they will wait until the division can be filled the next week. Or one of them may be chosen to be in a performance division, which sometimes takes two weeks to fill with qualified recruits.
Thanks so much for all the information. My son is schedule to leave on Dec 21st!? Its killing that he will be gone so close to Christmas time. I guess will celebrate early with him. I'm missing him already. The holidays will not be the same with him gone. I wonder how these days will affect his PIP? Maybe March?
I would guess Feb 25 or March 4 for your son. I'm very surprised to see a ship-date of the 21st, there's usually a training stand-down that week. Don't be surprised if he is notified that they want him to report to MEPS a week early.
Wow you were so right!! We got a call this weekend that he will be leaving a week early Dec 14. Im still sad his leaving before the holidays. But his looking so much foward this. Im glad his happy.
In that case, I would expect your son to PIR on Feb. 11 or 18.
thanks, you are always full of information making this days easier to cope!!
Arwen's right my son had ship date of 21st but is actually going on 12/14/2010..
my son is scheduled to leave on December 7, 2010. The recruiter had said there was a possibility he may get 'off' on christmas, and we might want to drive over to see him...... guess that i am glad that i saw this post, before we made plans to do this.
They do have a program where people can "adopt" senior recruits for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Many churches host recruits in large groups, but families can also take a few recruits. This is usually only for divisions who are nearly done with their training (week 5 or later).
Arwen, as usual, you are so full of useful information!! I'm sure the new moms here appreciate your input as much as we did when we went through this!

If I may add, I did get a phone call on Christmas, but I was a lucky one. But like Arwen said don't expect one! And yes, training is longer. My son left on Dec 3rd and PIR'd on Feb 5 so it was 9 weeks. We had Christmas in Chicago after PIR. We decorated the hotel room and brought his gifts! There was lots of snow so prepare for the cold weather.

We heard from him 4 times by phone and lots of letters! I suggest you write your recruit everyday even if all you say is what you did that day. They LOVE mail! Even the mundane stuff. I didn't think I would write as much, but I found it helped me get thru boot camp too, but writing my daily letter!

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