We had times in ’66 and ’67 when we would pick up a platoon of privates out of the receiving barracks the week before we even graduated the platoon that we were on!

Ermey is recalling the tempo of Marine Corps training during the Vietnam War buildup, when manpower demands were so intense that drill instructors could be assigned a new intake of recruits before finishing (graduating) the platoon they were already training. The quote conveys both institutional strain and a kind of grim pride in endurance: the system was pushing instructors and recruits through an accelerated pipeline, emphasizing throughput over comfort. It also underscores how war reshapes routine military life—turning what is normally a sequential training cycle into overlapping, relentless production. Coming from Ermey, whose public persona centered on drill-instructor toughness, the memory functions as testimony to the extraordinary pressure behind that toughness.