Someone carrying a rifle flashed across my field of view and disappeared into the middle of one of the barracks, where the stairwell was.
There was no waiting around now. He was going into a barracks full of Marines, and I was the only good guy who was armed.
I cut over to put the edge of the wall between it and me. On the concrete walkway I dropped to one knee to peek around the corner. You always expect a head to appear at head height. The stairwell was empty. Around the corner, pistol out in front. I heard footsteps on the concrete. My elbows were locked and I was looking over the sights, trying to control my breathing.
A figure came around the corner, gripping the barrel of a rifle in one hand. "Freeze!" I shouted, and in the enclosed space it sounded like the voice of God.
The figure froze. "Golf Company duty, sir."
"Walk into the light," I ordered.
It was the Golf duty NCO, a sergeant I'd chatted with on an earlier tour of the area. He was holding a civilian rifle.
"Everything's under control, sir," he said. "Here's the rifle, and I've got the Marine in my office."
"Marine?" I said.
"Yes, sir. Dumb fuck was shooting off his own .22."
I holstered my pistol. Inside the office a very sheepish Lance Corporal was being guarded by the firewatch. I pulled the Article 31 card out of my wallet and read him his rights, the military equivalent of the Miranda Warning.
It was only then I realized what had slipped my mind. I dashed out of the office, the duty, firewatch, and culprit all staring at me.
Onto the lawn in front of the barracks, then a complete stop. Unless I missed my guess, a whole shitload of MP's and the base reaction force were out in the darkness. All it would take was one Marine with an itchy finger to fire one round, and it was going to look like the last five minutes of The Wild Bunch.
"I'm the OD!" I shouted out into the darkness, keeping my arms away from my sides. "A Marine shot off his .22. He's in custody. Everything's all right." I didn't even want to think about how many rifles, shotguns, and machine-guns were aimed at me right then. If I'd been wearing night vision goggles I could have seen all the laser aiming dots dancing across my bod.
A spotlight snapped on and blinded me. Then a megaphone-amplified voice announced, "Everyone stand down."
A few seconds later the lawn was filled with people. Marines in cammies; MP's in the khaki and green Bravo uniform. Fortunately the MP platoon commander turned out to be my buddy Ernie. We'd gone to the Basic School together. He was a former staff sergeant who didn't get excited by much.
Which was just as well. The reaction force platoon commander, an infantry 2nd lieutenant even more junior than me, wanted to stay for the questioning of the suspect. For no other reason than they'd been sitting around on alert night after night. Now they were actually out in the air doing something, and none too anxious to have it end.
I would have just told the guy to get lost, but Ernie patiently explained the facts of life. "Look, there's no emergency. We," pointing to me, "have jurisdiction and you don't. And if you don't get back in your trucks and clear out it's going to get logged in. And then the Provost Marshal and Mike's battalion commander are going to call your battalion commander, and he's going to dance all over your balls."
That sold him. And then Ernie and I went inside to see what the story was. As I was writing down the particulars from the ID card of Lance Corporal Koch, the Marine in question, Ernie showed me a good trick. He took off his garrison cap, had Koch breath into it, then smelled it for alcohol. Have a drunk Marine in custody breath into your face, and you just might get it spit into.
Even though Ernie gave him his rights again, we still heard the story. Lance Corporal Koch was as bright about his right to silence he'd been with the rest of his activities.
Lance Corporal Koch had just bought a .22 rifle. Which was okay as long as the weapon was secured in the armory. Koch wanted to clean his rifle, so the duty armorer let him have it. Koch had yet to fire the rifle, and as he cleaned and played with it the siren call of that beautiful weapon became too much for him to bear. He also had an illegal box of .22 ammo in his room—this too should have been in the armory, and the armorer would never have let him have both rifle and ammo without permission. Koch took his rifle and ammo out to the narrow band of woods that separated our regimental area from the next, loaded a round, and squeezed the trigger.
At this point in his story, Lance Corporal Koch paused and said plaintively, "I didn't think it would be that loud."
Ernie and I almost lost it at that point, but we managed to hang on. You might ask yourself who could be stupid enough to test fire a rifle, at night, in the middle of a crowded barracks area, shortly after the most destructive terrorist attack in U.S. history. And the answer to that would be Lance Corporal Koch.
The consequences of his action dawning on him, Koch ran back to the barracks, rifle in hand, as fast as his legs could carry him.
Every firewatch on every barracks heard the shot. This was when I got the call. Staff Sergeant Buck fielded the next four after I left, as did the Regimental and 1st Battalion OD's in their respective offices.
Reaching the barracks, Koch ran into a brand new Private First Class, newly joined to the battalion. Keeping his streak of good judgment intact, he thrust his rifle into the PFC's hands with the words, "Hide this." The evidence now cleverly disposed of, Koch ducked into his room.
The bewildered PFC was still standing on the walkway holding the rifle when the duty NCO came outside. The Sergeant immediately took charge of the weapon and dragged Lance Corporal Koch from his room.
One squared away sergeant had left me with nothing to do but write it all up, or so I thought.
But Ernie got a call and had to leave, turning things over to his Gunny. And it was the same thing as the reaction force. I wanted to get some sleep, but the MP's were on the night shift and finally had something more interesting to do than write tickets and pick up Marines too drunk to walk.
They woke up every Marine in the next regimental area whose room faced the woods, just in case the round had gone through someone's window and plugged them.
Then they called for a couple of dogs and searched the woods for a body, in case Koch had been lying. I thought they were kidding. Who could make up a story like that?
Finally they decided they had to have the expended shell casing as evidence. They were actually going to get everyone on line, shoulder to shoulder, and sweep the woods to find a piece of brass not much bigger than a fingernail, in pine needles two inches deep, at 0300 in the morning.
Enough was enough. I was the only officer there, and it was time to exercise some goddamned authority. I called out, "All right, everyone just stop!"
Fortunately they'd brought Lance Corporal Koch back to the scene of the crime. I said, "Koch, get up here." Two MP's grudgingly released him. "Show me exactly where you were standing," I ordered. "Exactly."
He looked around, walked a ways into the woods, and stopped. I'd noticed that the .22 was a semi-automatic, which meant it ejected the empty case after each shot. And there was the little brass cylinder gleaming in the moonlight three feet to the right of where he was standing.
Without a word I handed it to the MP Gunny, and left.
On my way back I stopped at the Golf Company barracks to compliment the duty and firewatch on a job well done.
The sergeant shrugged it off. "This is my last duty, sir. I get out next week, and this is the reason why. I just can't put up with these stupid assholes anymore."
I still told him I'd write him up an attaboy in the logbook.
After I told the tale to Staff Sergeant Buck, I had to wake up Major Thom once again. All he wanted to know was that it had been handled. I told him it was, and he hung up.
I was still on duty when everyone came in on Monday morning. O'Brien went right for the logbook and read my latest term paper. His smile kept getting bigger and bigger, and then he did a touchdown dance around
the office.
"Yes!" he exulted. "I knew it, I knew it!" He stopped just as the ref was about to throw the flag for excessive celebration. "Hey, next time? Gunplay. I want gunplay. That's all you've got left."
"Don't...even...say...that," I told him. "Don't even think it."
Staff Sergeant Buck was really enjoying the show, which I knew would be grist for the Staff NCO gossip mill.
"We gotta go talk to Colonel Sweatman," O'Brien said. "There has to be some kind of rule—you have three duties like you've had and you don't have to stand any more."
"I'm up for that," I said. "Any time you want to start lobbying, feel free."
Captain Zimmerman came in and read the logbook, pleased because it hadn't happened to his company, and he wouldn't be the one tap-dancing in front of the Colonel's desk. "Mike, what is all this shit with you and duty?"
"I don't know, sir. You tell me. Was I born under an unlucky star because all this shit keeps going down on my watch? Or was I born under a lucky one because I've been able to handle everything so far?"
He gave me a little smile. "I've got a hunch it's lucky."
Maybe it was. The third time was the charm, because after that I had regular boring duty just like everyone else. Though it took me a while to stop flinching whenever the phone rang.
With everything packed up to go on deployment there was nothing to do but sit around or PT. Since Captain Z was our CO we PT'ed.
When we ran in formation, everyone was in step. The Captain in the lead, each lieutenant in front of his platoon, and the Gunny off to the side calling the "Jody," the cadence that kept us together. Usually he brought out the platoon sergeants or NCO's to sing a song. But for our last PT run at Camp Lejeune he called on the lieutenants.
Unfortunately we had to keep it clean within hearing distance of mainside, none of the old favorites like: I don't know but I been told, Eskimo pussy mighty cold.
O'Brien began with the saga of Jody himself, the slimy civilian who messed with your woman while you were away in the Corps. He sang the line and we repeated it, our left feet thudding into the pavement in unison with the verse:
"Ain't no sense in a-lookin' down,
Ain't no six-pack on the ground.
Ain't no sense in a-lookin' back,
Jody's got your Cadillac.
Ain't no sense in a-bein' blue,
Jody's got your girlfriend too."
Then I came out. After getting everyone back in step:
"My Marine Corps color is gold,
Shows the world that we are bold.
My Marine Corps color is green,
Shows the world that we are mean.
My Marine Corps color is blue,
Shows the world that we are true.
My Marine Corps color is red,
Red is for the blood we shed."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"This Marine's wife comes to see me," I told Jenny. "Her husband can't go on deployment. Why? Because she doesn't want him to. I say: sorry, but he's going. She says: he's not. Well, this week he shows up with his arm in a cast."
"Was it really broken?" Jenny asked.
"Oh, yeah. I asked him how it happened. He was working on his car; the jack slipped, and the car dropped on his arm."
"Ouch. What did you say?"
"I asked him how many times he had to drop the car on his arm before it broke."
"You didn't."
"It was the only question I really had."
"He could have killed himself."
"I've got to give her a lot of credit. She's hard-core. I ought to issue her some gear and take her on deployment."
"You don't seem too angry about it."
"Well, the Captain and I went to the battalion surgeon and got him a medical waiver. He's going on float after all."
"What if he breaks his legs this time."
"I bluffed my hand and told him I'd court-martial him. I don't even know if you can court-martial someone for messing themselves up these days, but he bought it."
"Maybe he and his wife will think of something else."
"If you knew him, you'd know it was all her idea. I'm sure she's up for it, but you get paid if you go on deployment, and you don't if you go to the brig."
"I think that's the most profoundly cynical thing I've ever heard."
"Jenny, this is a world where officers trying to impress their superiors chickenshit their Marines so badly that they're not even allowed to have trash in the wastebaskets in their rooms. They have to empty them each time they leave."
"That's a little hard for me to picture, but I may have read something about that. In Kafka."
"Then picture Marines getting married just to get out of the barracks, thinking that then they won't have to put up with any more chickenshit."
"That strikes me as a little overly optimistic. But typical of men. No offense."
"None taken. In that case picture a world in which women go out and get themselves pregnant just to keep from going on deployment. Or sometimes only a major exercise."
"Oh, my God. Why did you have to tell me that?"
"They're not who you hung out with in high school, or went to college with."
"But I can hear it in your voice when you tell me these stories how much you like them."
"You're right. I'm a little ambivalent about the Marine Corps, but I love Marines. It's been an education."
"Mike, I have to tell you something."
"No good news ever came from that tone of voice."
"My contract with UNC is up this year. I've got an offer from the University of Iowa. I'm going to take it."
And here I'd been worried about what was going to happen to our relationship while I was on ship for six months. "So you'll be in Iowa when I get back from deployment."
"That's right."
"You want to drop a car on my arm?"
"Someone will just get you a medical waiver."
I had two choices. I could play the guilt card and make her feel bad about taking a great opportunity. Or I could let her go, which was what was going to happen anyway. At least she told me straight up and didn't let me get on ship and then send me a dear Mike letter. I'll tell you, nobility sucks.
She read it all on my face, and before I could say anything, said, "Let's not part with any hard feelings. Who knows, we might run into each other again."
"I'm torn," I said. "I want you to do what's best for you, because I really care about you. But I don't want you to go for the same reason."
Jenny put her hand very gently on my cheek. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
I have to admit I was taken aback by that. Maybe she and Shakespeare were just saying it was time to be a grownup. Maybe a summer dress was just something to project your fantasies upon. Like Dress Blues.
I suppose it was fitting, though. I'd met her with As You Like It, and lost her with As You Like It. Never really felt the same way about Shakespeare again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The cold January day we shipped out was awful. Nothing to do but hang around waiting for our helo serials. Wives and kids clung to their Marines, grabbing every last second before six months of absence. And maybe more, maybe forever, because even if it hadn't been war accidents always happened. Wives crying. Older kids crying. Little kids not comprehending but still crying because it was bewildering. Just watching it was brutal. I could see it on the Marines' faces, hating to tear themselves away yet wanting to be on the ship so at least the agony of the farewell would be over. When we finally got aboard everyone was emotionally drained, almost shell-shocked.
Mother nature had a surprise in store once we cleared the continental shelf. Doing amphibious work-ups right off the coast had made me cocky. I wondered where all this seasickness bullshit came from.
Then I found out crossing the Atlantic in winter. The human body is not designed to have the platform it stands on rocking violently back and forth.
Now, the
old salts will give you a few tips. You have to eat your chow, whether you feel like it or not. And you have to stay on your feet or sitting upright, no matter how much your churning stomach makes you want to lie down.
The problem I ran into is that you have to sleep sometime. Evidently most people get their sea legs before bedtime. Evidently I was the exception to this rule. Because right after I laid down I went from sick as a dog to about to hurl, which sent me sprinting for the head.
Which became my temporary duty station for the next two days. My roommates brought me back ginger ale and saltines from the wardroom. They wouldn't get the OD so he could shoot me, but they did fetch Doc Patel. He dropped by after I promised not to tell the American Medical Association he'd made a house call, and cheerfully informed me that not only wasn't I alone in my extremity, but he couldn't do a goddamned thing to ease my suffering. Every tablet of Dramamine aboard ship had been expended in our battle with the Atlantic. Wonderful.
By the morning of our third day afloat I was able to make it down to the wardroom for breakfast. As I staggered in between O'Brien, Milburn, and Nichols, Captain Zimmerman looked up from his eggs and said, "Hey, Mike, where you been?"
"Talking to Ralph on the white phone, sir."
The Zooman, our motor transport officer, was sitting beside me. He'd been drinking a glass of milk, and made gurgling noises as it began to leak out his nose.
"Must have been a long conversation," said Captain Z.
"Yes, sir. We had a whole lot to talk about."
I was okay after that. But there were a few who needed to keep wearing the Scopolamine anti-seasickness patch behind their ears. Of course this was known as the pussy patch.
The wardroom was like a combination cafeteria and rec room. It cracked me up because it was more like high school with all the different cliques. The BLT officers at one table, the squadron at another. The Navy apart from the Marines. So much for the brotherhood of men at arms.
William Christie 03 - The Blood We Shed Page 14
