Naval Training Center at Great Lakes

The Naval Training Center at Great Lakes is the setting for the brief military episode in William Stanley Milligan’s life: within a week of passing the General Education and Development Test, he arrived for basic training, took charge of a company of recruits, and was later discharged from the Navy after evaluation. The center’s role in the narrative is defined by that sharp contrast. Under Allen, military routine becomes a problem to solve with discipline and ingenuity; under Philip, the same institution becomes a system of demands from which Milligan increasingly withdraws.

Arrival and Initial Responsibility

William Stanley Milligan was assigned to Company 109, Battalion 21, at the Naval Training Center at Great Lakes. His earlier experience in the Civil Air Patrol led to his appointment as Recruit Petty Officer in Charge, or RPOC, of 160 young recruits. As Allen, he carried out the role as a strict disciplinarian, taking responsibility not only for his company’s conduct but also for its performance in the daily schedule.

The training environment offered a concrete measure of success: the company most proficient in the sixteen-count manual would become the honor company. Allen and Tommy set out to find time in the morning routine without discarding its requirements. Tommy proposed eliminating showers; Allen objected that regulations required the recruits to enter them, whether or not they used soap. The exchange establishes the practical limits within which their solution had to work: efficiency was welcome, but the prescribed routine still had to be observed.

Allen’s Training Method

Tommy worked out an assembly-line method for the showers, and Allen turned it into an order that could be followed by the whole company. The recruits were to hold a rolled towel in the left hand and soap in the right, move continuously through the rows of showers, switch the soap at the corner, and wash the other side of the body and their hair while proceeding backwards. Allen explained the sequence in terms of the shower layout and the need to avoid water that might scald or leave a recruit cold.

He then demonstrated the method by walking through the showers in uniform while checking his watch. His estimate was forty-five seconds per recruit, enough for all 160 men to wash, dress, and be ready in less than ten minutes. The demonstration gives the episode its distinctive mixture of regimentation and improvisation: Allen does not reject the institution’s schedule but reorganizes movement inside it. The following morning, his company was the first on the parade grounds. Allen was pleased with the result, and Tommy was already looking for further ways to save time. Allen also received the Service Medal for good conduct.

Evaluation and Discharge

The episode’s successful start did not last. On April 12, 1972, two weeks and four days after Tommy joined the Navy, Philip was assigned to the Recruit Evaluation Unit. The company commander’s report described a reversal in his performance: he had first served as RPOC, but then, in the commander’s account, focused on bossing others; after being relieved of the position, he began going to sick call, increasingly found reasons to miss classes, and fell behind the rest of the company. The report concluded that he would require watching.

A psychiatrist interviewed David, who did not understand what was happening. The Navy checked Milligan’s records from Ohio and discovered both that he had previously been in a mental hospital and that he had lied on his recruitment papers. The psychiatric report judged him to lack the maturity and stability required to function effectively in the Navy and recommended discharge as temperamentally unsuitable for further training. On May 1, a month and a day after his enlistment, William Stanley Milligan was discharged under honorable conditions.

Departure and Narrative Significance

The center’s place in Milligan’s story ends with departure rather than completion of training. He received his pay and an airline ticket to Columbus, but, on the way from Great Lakes to O’Hare Airport in Chicago, Philip learned that two recruits on leave were going to New York City. Instead of using the ticket, he joined them on the bus. The change of destination turns the discharge into a transition: the military had formally sent Milligan back toward Columbus, while Philip chose to travel toward a city he felt he belonged to but had never visited.

Taken together, the training and evaluation episodes make Great Lakes a setting where different personalities meet the same institutional structure with markedly different results. Allen’s command depends on order, timing, and measurable achievement; the improvised shower routine even turns a regulation into an opportunity to excel. The later reports record a breakdown in that performance, followed by scrutiny of Milligan’s history and a decision that he could not continue training. The Naval Training Center at Great Lakes is therefore not developed as a general portrait of naval life; its narrative significance lies in the brief arc from appointment and achievement to evaluation, discharge, and an unexpected journey onward.