Through the Gate: The Chronicles of Cornu Book 1

by L J Dalton Jr

  Mike knew that Phil hadn’t missed the doctor remark. “So, Mike, exactly why did he call you the doctor? You holding out on us?”

  “Well, Phil, yes I did graduate from MIT, but I’d already had my bachelors from Columbia. I was at MIT for my doctorate. Which by the way I got.”

  “DOCTRORATE?”

  “Ah yeah, that’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you say something at OCS?”

  “Well, I just didn’t see the need to shout it from the rooftops. Being from MIT was weird enough but adding that I was a PhD candidate, I thought was over the top.”

  “Well I guess this means that I may have to listen to your esteemed opinion more than I have in the past.” Phil said smiling.

  Mike found weekends at The Basic School were far too short. He spent them squaring things away and a little bit of recreation and sleeping. ‘The Rack Monster’ regularly grabbed Mike and a lot of his fellow students trying to catch up on all the missed sleep. The Basic School was not an 9 to 5 day. It was grueling long day that often extended well into the night. TBS was designed to make sure that they could operate under harsh conditions and little sleep. Things that they would have to endure in combat situations. And they did a good job of it.

  During down times Mike and Phil, to the amusement of their fellow classmates, discussed various outdoor topics. Phil argued that Mike’s .243 Remington 700 was in his words a ‘girls’ gun’ and that he should be shooting .30-06. Mike’s reply was that if you were a good shot that the .243 took deer down. Both realized that they were ribbing each other. At other times the discussion was more substantive about the differences in hunting in the east and out in Oklahoma. In the east Mike told Phil that he and his family use tree stands. Phil and his family were more into stalking their prey and had to take longer shots than Mike did. Mike listened to Phil when he discussed bass fishing in a big lake. That was something he really wanted to try. Mike promised to take Phil surf fishing if they ever got a chance.

  When land navigation part of the course came around, Mike and Phil were assigned to a group that would use training area TA-3. The first part of the land navigation was instruction. They both had a pretty good idea of how to go about it having done well at OCS, nevertheless both listened intently. The first part was a small group led by an instructor. Not surprisingly the instructor was a bit surprised at Mike’s ability do it in rough terrain. “Mr. Mulvaney did they teach land navigation at MIT?” he asked.

  “No sergeant, I’ve been hunting since I was twelve and hiking and camping longer than that. I took a couple of wildernesses tracking and survival courses when I was younger. So, I’ve had a lot of experience out in the woods and not getting lost.” Mike replied.

  Towards the end the instructors gave them a map and compass and took them out at night to navigate to a specific spot. That was a lot harder in the dark. There were muffled curses as the trainees tripped over obstacles in the dark. One ran into a tree he couldn’t see. At the end Mike’s group made it. They were dirty and all had a few bruises. There was the usual sarcasm about the night exercise from the trainees. The instructors had no problem with that as a ‘Bitching Marine is a happy Marine’. They would have been more concerned if the group were sullen.

  The MCMAP training, which was unarmed combat was another area Mike surprised people. He was a fourth-degree black belt in Karate and had been taking the martial arts since he was nine years old. The hand to hand came pretty easily. In fact, he threw the instructor a couple of times and generally held his own. The knife fighting was something else. It took him a bit to get the hang of it and in the process got more than a few bruises for his trouble. Mike was not better or worse than any of his other classmates in using a bayonet and other techniques. After seven weeks Phase I was complete. Everyone had had gotten through the humps, which he and Phil agreed were as brutal as advertised.

  They were told that the second phase consisted of decision making, tactics and combined arms theory and practice. It also had scouting and patrolling. Mike and Phil were paired together in the same group of students. They were both experienced hunters and trackers so that were able to complete the exercises successfully. It only took two such exercises to figure out the it wasn’t just Phil that was good at this. The instructors had expected him to do well. On the second exercise he’d been instructed to hang back. He did, and Mike took over with the same result. The instructors questioned Mike and found out about his hunting and wilderness courses. He was switched to another group and told to help but let everybody else figure it all out. As they were walking away one of the instructors said to the other. “A kid from MIT with that background, no wonder he did well with the small arms and land navigation. MIT, who wouda thunk it."

  "He also took Manny down a couple of times in hand to hand after Manny told him to stop holding back.” Added the other. “He’s got infantry written all over him.”

  “I agree, but what’s his story?”

  “His father was in one of the Towers on 9/11. He made it out, but other people they knew didn’t. He’s got a score to settle. Plus, his brother is an LCDR flying hornets. The word is that the brother has at least eagles in his future.” The other instructor just nodded.

  Tactics, engineering, convoys and of course humps were on the menu for the third phase. Mike sarcastically referred the humps as ‘Heavenly Humps’ others called them ‘Nature Walks’ and still others referred to them in more crass terms. To Mike and many of his fellows the night humps were the worst. Not only were you carrying a heavy load, but the dark made it far too easy to do a face plant. Bruises were common. They’d all learned their lessons, so blisters were not as common as they could be. Taking care of their feet became important to every one of the students. When a blister did occur, moleskin was the preferred remedy.

  The best part of this period was the crew served weapons. He found the light machine guns interesting. He loved MA Deuce, the M2 Browning .50 caliber heavy machine gun. His next favorite was the 40mm grenade launcher. He had no idea why he liked them, but he did. His fellow students gave him some good-natured ribbing that it was to make up for his own sexual inadequacy. Which they claimed was a known problem for eggheads like Mike. In the other portions of the Phase he did well in because he viewed them as puzzles, and he was very good at puzzles.

  Phase IV was the last phase, and Mike knew enough not to look ahead and slack off. They’d already lost two students to injuries, a broken leg and a broken arm. Both of these had happened on night humps. They had gone to ‘Mike’ Company and would have to resume training when they recovered. Mike did not want to join his namesake company. Everybody told each other not to look to the future but keep going until they got through it.

  This last phase was more tactics and training as well as a basic appreciation of Uniform Code of Military Justice, the UCMJ. What were legal orders and not legal orders were. Also, the instructors went over various rules of engagement (ROE) and their importance. The military had not forgotten My Lia in Vietnam. The Marines viewed that as an army screw up and they wanted to make sure that none of their officers ever let something like that happen. The UCMJ was logical and in many ways very fair.

  Finally, TBS or The Basic School was over. He was very pleased with his performance; he came in as number 45 in the course. Phil was just ahead of him at 42. They had good-naturally jawed at each other on how Mike could accomplish that and how he lucked out. He picked infantry as his MOS and knew that meant another three months at Quantico for the Infantry Officer Course (IOC). It was almost Christmas and all the IOC students had TAD orders to take them through to when IOC started the second week in January. Mike spent Christmas with his brother Jack and his family in Virginia Beach. When he got back to Quantico, he spent as much time as he could in the gym and running with his weight jacket.

  IOC started and Mike buckled down. His friend Phil was in the class as well. Sixty percent of the course involved some sort of field exercise designed to teach by doing. The most p
hysically taking was a couple ‘tactical movement’ exercises where the load was close to 150 lbs. At the end of one of those Mike was exhausted and sore. His shoulders, feet and his hips all hurt. The sergeants thought it might be fun if they double timed when people became separated. What he really didn’t like was doing field exercises in cold rain. As his friend Phil pointed out they’d have had heat and cold at Quantico. The one thing IOC taught him was to be miserable and keep going. Mike graduated from the course in the top quarter of his class. He felt that he survived the course. Phil got assigned to a Marine Battalion on the west coast and Mike got a battalion at Camp Lejeune.

  Iraq

  As soon as he arrived, Mike reported to Battalion CO, Colonel Miller. After the preliminaries he was told report to his company commander Captain Simms and that he’d be taking over from Lieutenant Morgan who was transferring out. And they were deploying in six weeks to Iraq for a year. Mike went over to the company offices. Captain Simms was about average height and heavily muscled, the man he was replacing was a large black lieutenant who explained that he was going to pin on his captains’ bars soon and was going to become a company XO in another battalion. They went over some preliminaries and then Lieutenant Morgan took him out.

  “Don’t worry Mike. Everybody knows your new. You’ll be do fine. We’ve almost got the pre-deployment checklist done. Your biggest job is to make sure all your people have everything they need to get done prior to deployment. Also, they need time to spend with their families. The basics are wills, power of attorney, getting all their monetary obligations settled. We’ve got people who help with all that. Your platoon sergeant is Sergeant Riley. He knows the ropes; you listen to him and you’ll be all right. And as to getting your stuff in order, that goes for you to.”

  They left the office and Lieutenant Morgan brought him to meet Sergeant Riley. Riley was tall, rangy man and a twelve-year veteran of the Corps. Morgan left them. Riley looked at Mike. “What would the lieutenant like to know, sir?”

  “Sergeant, my Dad and Uncle were both in NAM. Their one piece of advice to me was to listen to your senior NCOs, especially when your brand new. I’m as new as they come. So, you tell me what I need to know, and I’ll ask questions about anything I don’t understand or think I’m missing. Sound good?”

  Riley smiled. “NAM. OK first thing we’re moving out you probably should stay in the ‘Q’. Big thing we have left to do is get everybody’s paperwork squared away, wills etc. Make sure that all the families know who to contact if they need help. That means you too sir.” Mike nodded. Riley continued “We’ve got a couple of items we’ve got to birddog to make sure we get them, but I’ve got that handled. If I run into trouble, I’ll bring you into it. Also, make sure everybody gets some extra time with their families. Every tour somebody gets a shock from the family. Sudden divorce, something like that. We’ll need to handle that when we’re over there. Some of these young families just can’t take the yearlong separation.”

  Mike sighed. “I know your right sergeant; I just hope that we can avoid that.”

  “Me too, Me too Lieutenant. Now sir you need to go see the company clerk and get your paperwork straightened out. We can introduce you right after colors in the morning. See you then.”

  Mike went over to the company office and the company clerk had everything ready for him. Filling out all the papers drove home the fact that he was going into danger. All is pay was direct deposited into the Navy Federal Credit Union, all the proceeds from the two patents went into a Charles Schwab account. He gave his father power of attorney and made his sister Julie secondary should his father not be able to do it. He made a will out and everything was to be divided among his nieces and nephews and held in trust until they were twenty-five. He got all the necessary papers notarized and shipped them off to his father to put in a safe deposit box.

  The next morning, he was introduced to the platoon after colors. Then he sergeant Riley and Lieutenant Morgan retired to go over paperwork. Mike read everybody’s personnel file in the platoon and then got briefings from Morgan and Riley. He then did his best to associate faces with names. He also met with everybody in the platoon individually to get to know them. One of his squad sergeants asked him. “Sir if you don’t mind me asking, the scuttlebutt is that you’ve got PhD from MIT is that true?”

  Mike laughed. “Yes, it is. But I don’t advertise it. It has nothing to do with being a Marine Officer and is more of a curiosity than anything else. What may be more relevant is that I’ve been hunting and fishing since I was a kid, so I’m reasonably comfortable out in the boonies.”

  Mike spent the next eight weeks going over the pre-deployment check list with Sergeant Riley and giving Captain Simms regular updates. He started to get into the swing of things. Both Riley and Simms were privately pleased with his progress. The last two weeks were making sure that everybody was ready. Their affairs straight and their families taken care of.

  When the time came to leave, they loaded all their gear into trucks and then boarded buses. They went to an airfield where they got on to C-17s for the long trip to Iraq. The seats on military transports make civilian economy seats look good. Mike had brought along some reading. A couple of journals he wanted to read as well as a trashy sci-fi novel. He also had noise cancelling earphones and a sleep mask. None of it helped. By the time they got to Iraq, his butt was sore and he was bored out his mind. Walking into the blast of desert heat was almost a blessing. They got all their gear together. Retrieved their armor and personal weapons and loaded up on transports to head to Al Anbar Province. They’d be operating out of the city of Habbaniyah. It was located on the Euphrates River and near a large lake of the same name. When the battalion got there, daytime temperatures were routinely over 100 degrees. Patrolling with full armor in that heat was a bear. Heat stroke was a constant worry as was the roadside bombs or IEDs.

  Upon arriving, Mike made sure to become familiar with the area. Al Anbar province was a Sunni stronghold and a major area of resistance. Except for the area around the Euphrates River it was arid and dry. By the river there were date palms and fields of wheat and barley and to Mike’s surprise potatoes. Also, the river provided a way for foreign fighters to travel from Syria down into the province to try and kill Americans. It was the ‘Ho Chi Minh’ tail of Iraq.

  Foot patrols were a regular occurrence. Walking through the city and the countryside was mentally oppressive. Mike could almost feel the hate and distrust that radiated off the population. They were Sunni and the government were Shia. The Marines supported the government, so they were automatically the enemy. It was an enmity that had gone on for hundreds of years. In ways it made the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland look like a minor disagreement. The big thing was to watch out for roadside bombs. Usually artillery shells with some sort of remote denotator. The cell phone was the favorite. On patrol they looked for places for the bombs and for people with the sudden need to place a cell phone call as they passed.

  Occasionally they got into firefights with some of the rebels and members of the radical Sunni groups. In one of the fights Mike noticed that it took more than one hit to bring them down. Afterwards in discussing it with Riley, he found out that a lot of the fighters got juiced up on drugs before going into battle. They were more interested in killing Americans than staying alive. In Mike’s view there was something wrong with people who decided that their religious beliefs meant that they had to go out and kill people. But to be honest, it wasn’t that long ago historically speaking, that it was a common occurrence in Europe and elsewhere. Not having such religious strife was the exception.

  After a couple of months Mike got the hang of it and started to take more initiative. He always debriefed with his squad leaders and platoon sergeant looking for things that could be done better. They soon learned that all Mike was interested in was doing the job right and keeping his guys in one piece if possible. Once they realized that, he got good feedback both positive and negative. He did the same
with the company CO. Always looking to do things better. The one thing that was always a challenge was the IED. Sometimes, you could spot them. Too many times they weren’t seen until they went off and hurt people.

  Mike was impressed to be in Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers. The cradle of civilization. This was part of the so-called fertile crescent. Now except for the land near the rivers it was far dryer than it must have been in ancient times. He realized that many of the ancient places were being desecrated by religious fanatics and simply people looking to get valuable things to sell on the black market.

  On his off-time Mike would often read. He had brought some books with him. There were several trashy science fiction novels, works by Mao and Che Guerra on guerrilla war. The art of war was a natural. He had the ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ which he found interesting. And several science journals. It was an eclectic collection.

  Early in the tour, when he was coming back from a run, he stopped to watch some of the Iraqi soldiers playing soccer. The ball came off to him and he dribbled it and made a good pass back to one of the players. They smiled and between some bad English and bad Arabic, they found out Mike could play and invited him to join the game. It was fun and they all laughed and enjoyed themselves. Soon Mike became a regular participant in the pickup soccer games. Mike enjoyed it and it did go some small way in building bridges between the Iraqis and the Marines.

  There were also the night raids. These were in some ways more dangerous and in a strange way Mike preferred these to foot patrols. If they got a tip that there were insurgents holed up somewhere, they would wait until late at night. Then they would move out. Humvees would block the streets and then a strike team would break down the door and pour into the house or apartment. This was overwhelming force, and rarely did they have any opposition. More often than not, they found the insurgents, rounded them up and headed out. Rarely, they had to apologize due to bad intel, or the insurgents had moved. It didn’t matter, they still paid some reparations to repair what they had destroyed.