Fire Watch At USMC Boot Camp — What It Is, How Often You Do It, And How It Impacts Your Training

If you’re like most Marine Corps hopefuls, you’ll do plenty of research on boot camp before you even make the decision to contact a recruiter. After all, the Marines are infamous for having one of the hardest basic training pipelines to get through. When researching your future suffering, you’ll inevitably hear about something called “fire watch,” and probably have no idea what it is. Continue reading to get a detailed explanation.

So, What Is Fire Watch?

You ship out from MEPS, and you’re told that you’ll be standing fire watch on the first night. Fire watch is a duty that all recruits will eventually stand while in recruit training. It’s broken down into two hour shifts, which total four shifts throughout the night. Each shift will consist of three recruits, each with their own assigned tasks. I’ve broken down the duties below.

• 1 — Scribe, notates important events in the duty log book.
• 2 — In charge of cleaning the head and keeping a log of who uses it.
• 3 — Does laundry and passes it back out when finished.

Duties also depend on which shift you’re assigned throughout the night. For instance, if you’re the #2 post on the first shift, you’ll…