Corrected entry: In the Marine Corps, none of the men would have had any duty (including fire watch) the night of their graduation day. Also, never is any live ammunition allowed into the barracks (they count every cartridge at the firing range).
RJR99SS
30th Sep 2005
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
8th Jan 2005
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Joker and Rafterman are at the mass grave site in Vietnam, a colonel walks over and questions Joker about the writing on his helmet and about his peace sign. When the colonel is done and is about to walk away, the colonel salutes first. This is wrong because enlisted personnel always salute officers first.
Correction: This one is pretty iffy. While that is the general rule, an officer can always elect to salute first, usually as a sign of respect for the enlisted man. The colonel chastises joker at first, then tries to re-motivate him, by suggesting that he join the Hue city offensive. He even flat out says that all he expect from his marines is that they do everything that he says. Joker is pretty smart about it, and agrees to everything the colonel says, so I can see it's possible that the colonel would salute him; sort of saying "way to go marine, thats what I like to hear!", trying to keep his spirits high in an effort to motivate him.
8th Jan 2005
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Corrected entry: In the scene in boot camp where Joker is teaching Pile how to lace has boots, he tells Pile to lace them left over right then right over left. As a former marine i can tell you marines are taught to lace their boots left over right then left over right throughout the entire lacing.
Correction: As another former marine, I can never recall ever getting any explicit instructions on how the laces were supposed to be tied. As long as they were tied, that seemed to be fine enough.
Correction: We were never taught either way in boot.
8th Jan 2005
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Corrected entry: In the scene in boot camp where Joker is teaching Pile to make his bed, he tells Pile to fold his blanket and sheet back with a 4 inch fold. As a former Marine I can tell you this is wrong. Marines are taught to make their beds with a 6 inch fold.
Correction: As another former marine, I can say that the bed folding procedure varies from place to place. In boot camp, I recall one drill instructor in our platoon would always tell us 4 inches, and another would always tell us 6 (this caused quite a bit of confusion, and was probably intentional). I can even recall seeing another platoon's squad bay, where they weren't even required to make a fold, they simply drapped another blanket over the pillow and the regularly exposed portion of the sheets.
3rd Nov 2004
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Corrected entry: When Private Joker and Rafterman are interviewing Lt. Cleves in front of the row of dead Vietnamese covered with lye, Private Joker introduces himself as "Sergeant" Joker.
Correction: There's a large gap of time that isn't accounted for between the first bootcamp segment of the film, and the later vietnam segment. It appears to be at least three or four years, obviously Joker earned some promotions between that time.
22nd Apr 2004
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Corrected entry: R. Lee Ermey was an actual Marine Vietnam veteran, but never a drill instructor. He drew upon the DIs he met during basic training in performing his role.
Correction: This is just flat out false. R. Lee Ermey definitely was a drill instructor. He only served as one tour of duty as one, and never attained the position of senior drill instructor as shown in the film, but he was one.
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Correction: I had fire watch on graduation night. Plus, I personally saw one instance where a recruit got hold of live ammunition and brought it back to the squad bay, with the intent to kill himself. While the firing range is very cautious of these things, there is other ammunition to be had elsewhere. In this case, while on a work detail this recruit found a full magazine in an NCO's desk.
RJR99SS