The Last Marine

by T. S. Ransdell

  “Look, the Corps, the military in general, needs a lot of people in this war. Most of them are not in combat arms, let alone the infantry. Check out what the Army can do for you. The Navy, Air Force. They’ll give more money for school and shit like that. They got better bonuses for enlisting and that sort of thing. Do your research and sleep on it before you make a decision.”

  “How come the Marines don’t give better bonuses than the Army?” Sean was curious why a prideful, elite force would not try to be more competitive.

  “Because the Marines ain’t promising you a chance to go to school or get technical training. We’re not trying to better prepare you for the civilian world. We’re trying to win a war. We want, we need men who have the heart to kill our enemies and probably get themselves killed in the process. Once that’s done, we’ll worry about civilian life.” The gunnery sergeant fished out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up without offering Sean one or even asking if he minded him smoking. He didn’t care if Sean minded or not.

  “I want to sign up. I want to kill the ChiComs, the Muslims, whoever. I want to win this war. I want my family to live in peace. I want to be a Marine.” Sean had never been more serious in his life. The gunny looked the boy in the eye for several moments. He exhaled all the smoke from his lungs and without a word began the paperwork to give Sean Harris the opportunity to become a United States Marine.

  ***

  “All that was easy compared to telling my mother.”

  “Was she angry?” Joel was surprised to hear Harris say that. He had this notion of the Harris family as being somewhat blind in their patriotism.

  “Oh, you’re goddamn right she was.” Harris slightly slurred from the effects of the bourbon. “She didn’t say a word though. She just stared at me with those dark brown eyes of hers.” Harris’s demeanor became very solemn. Joel even wondered if the old butcher would even begin to tear up again, and if so, how he could spin it for maximum literary effect. “I get it now. I didn’t then. She didn’t want me to join. Specifically, she didn’t want me to go to war. At the time I thought maybe she thought I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t man enough. But that wasn’t it. Every male relative she had, had been in war. Her granddad fought the Nazis. Her father was in Vietnam. She lost a brother in the Islamic Wars. She lost her husband in the Sino-American War. And was about to lose her firstborn son to the same war. Fuck yeah, she was mad. Not ’cause I wanted to fight. She was a strong woman born of strong men and was married to a strong man. She wasn’t mad that I wanted to fight. She was mad that I had to.” Harris’s tone became more resentful. “She was mad at bullshit politicians who are so fucking slow to want to stop evil, then are so fucking quick to want to go to war against it, just to be so fucking hesitant to destroy it.”

  Chapter Seven

  Harris stood up and limped over to get himself another drink and fill up another plate of food.

  “This is some goddamn good cheese. You should try some of this, Mr. Levine. Better than the prison’s chow, that’s for sure. You keep up with the food and booze, you’ll keep me talking all day.” The evil old man smiled from his scarred face and sat back down.

  “How soon after you enlisted did you ship off to your training?” Levine wanted to pass off the comment about the good food as if it was routine for him, but it was not. His pride compelled him on this matter, but it did burn him that the government that he had tried to serve so faithfully would cater to this murderer for information. However, he needed this man to talk as much as the government was wanting him to talk, so Joel smiled and nodded his head in response to the comment.

  “It was only three days. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out in those days. How I miss it now, though.”

  “Was that the last time you saw your mother?”

  “No, I had five days leave after I graduated boot camp, and we’d video chat now and then when I was overseas. After my visit home, I didn’t see her again in person until my trial.”

  Joel had never been to Kansas. No one he knew had anything good to say about Kansas. He had no idea how anyone could miss it, but given the region’s recent resistance to federal authority, it really didn’t surprise him that Harris felt that way.

  “So you left for boot camp?” Joel said, not certain he had the syntax right, but he was wanting to get on with the history.

  “Yeah. She drove me to the recruiter’s office. The recruiter drove me to the bus station. From there I was taken to Kansas City and put up in a hotel for the night. They fed me breakfast the next day and then sent me to the airport. From there I flew to San Diego.

  “At the airport I reported to a liaison office. It was where other recruits like me waited for the bus that would take us to MCRD.”

  “MCRD?”

  “Marine Corps Recruit Depot. San Diego’s where I went. They had another recruit depot on Parris Island in South Carolina back then. If you were from west of the Mississippi, you went to San Diego.”

  “Were these other recruits, guys you would serve with?”

  “Honestly I don’t even remember. We were ordered to sit on the floor. No talking. No looking around. I really didn’t notice anyone who was there. I was gung ho, and I wanted to do everything right from the very start. So I didn’t say a word. I didn’t look around. I didn’t pay attention to anyone else. I sat there, cross-legged, until the bus came to pick us up.

  “It was nighttime. Hell, for as long as a bus ride it was, you’d have thought MCRD was in Arizona.” Harris’s jest seemed cut short a bit as his mind seemed to wander.

  “What? What did you just remember about Arizona?” Joel inquired.

  “That’s where it all ended. The end of my war. The end of my great adventure.” Harris waved his hand around at nothing in particular. “But that’s the end. Let’s go back to the beginning…”

  ***

  Sean tried to see San Diego from the bus window. Nighttime was hurting his efforts. His father had told him San Diego was a beautiful part of the country, just too many people ruined it. He’d never been there himself. A family trip to Orlando, Florida, once, was as far as he had ever been from home. He had no idea what time it was, just that the bus ride from the airport to MCRD seemed to take a long time.

  When the bus pulled through the security gate, Sean’s excitement and apprehension soared to a new height. He was no longer a child on the sidelines of life, watching and listening to what men were doing or had done. He was in the arena now. He would face the challenges and risk his life for the sake of others, just as his father and Harris men of past generations had done for him. Intellectually, he knew there’d be pain. He knew he could die. Emotionally, Sean Harris thought he was invincible. He would face and defeat the demons that had caused so much pain for him and his family.

  The bus stopped in front of a pale yellow warehouse. A very tall, muscular drill instructor stepped on the bus. He succinctly stated in a loud, clear, gravelly voice that the first and last word out of their miserable mouths from this time on was to be sir and to be stated with as much volume as their miserable little lungs could muster. He continued with instructions to move as fast as their miserable little fucking legs would carry them off the bus and onto yellow footprints outside. Once the order was given, all hell broke loose.

  The base’s streetlamps glowed gold against a purple sky heavy with moisture. There was an odor in the air that was foreign to Sean, but pleasant. He relished the moment.

  “Sound off when I call out your name,” the muscular drill instructor commanded. “Ackerman.”

  “Here.”

  “What’s your malfunction, shit for brains?!” another drill instructor emerged from the dark and screamed into recruit Ackerman’s face. “What’s the first fucking word out of that miserable suck hole of yours?!”

  “Sir! Here, sir!”

  “No fucking shit there, Einstein,” another gravelly drill instructor voice called out.

  “What the fuck are those asshole recruiters giving us to work
with?” yet another gravelly voice commented.

  And so it went for the next seventy-three names.

  “Listen up, douche bags. When I call out the first row, you will in a fast and orderly fashion line up through those doors and stand asshole to belly button. Do any of you sorry-ass shit stains not understand me?” Sean didn’t know what “asshole to belly button” meant, but seeing how he was in the middle of the formation, he thought he could watch the others and figure it out. He knew for sure he did not want to ask what it meant. He was glad to move. His legs and feet were starting to hurt.

  Sean learned that asshole to belly button was as bad as it sounded. They stood in line so close to each other that the phrase was nearly literal. Sean was not used to standing this close to other men and he did not like it. Feeling the body heat of other men grossed him out. Staring at the sweaty neck in front of his face quickly became psychologically painful, but he wasn’t going to say a word.

  Sean had never considered himself pampered, but the brutality of the haircuts was shocking to him. Gone were the capes and tissue around the neck. Recruits were yelled at to quickly sit down in the barber chair. Clippers were recklessly combed over their scalps. No sooner was their hair gone than the recruits were yelled at to get out of the barber chair and stand asshole to belly button in the hallway. More psychologically painful minutes were spent staring at a sweaty neck covered in hair and streaked with blood from the nicks on the recruit’s scalp.

  From the next line Sean entered a warehouse, where he was thrown a seabag to place all the gear that was thrown at him after that. Once all the gear was issued to the recruits, they stood in formation and undressed and redressed “by the numbers” as per the order of a drill instructor in government-issued boots and utilities. The last of Sean Harris’s civilian persona was boxed up, labeled, and shipped back to Kansas. He was now one of seventy-five hairless recruits dressed in camouflage. Life as he had known it, ended that night.

  The next twenty-four hours was disorienting. Lines, formations, yelling, paperwork, testing—all was at a hell-bent-for-leather pace. Harris was so exhausted he actually was dozing off while slumped in the only chair he was allowed to sit in during an aptitude test. Only his falling head would wake him up.

  For what he hoped to be the last time, Harris humped his seabag across the hot asphalt of the MCRD’s parade deck. The remnants of his haircut dug into his neck and shoulders. The cool breeze was incapable of penetrating the new, stiff cammies now stained with sweat and reeking of body odor. Another training platoon marched by in shorts and T-shirts, PT gear; Harris felt envy. Not only did he want out of the sweaty cammies, the recruits looked so organized, in control and confident. Nothing like his platoon.

  The gaggle of new recruits were called to a halt before a dull, rectangular barracks. To Harris’s surprise they were being turned over to another group of four drill instructors that would see them through basic training. The shortest of the drill instructors stepped forward.

  “I am Junior Drill Instructor Sergeant Jameson. When I call out your name, move your nasty ass through that ground-floor hatch. You will stand at attention in front of the first available rack until further orders. Do you understand me?”

  “Sir, yes, sir, Junior Drill Instructor Sergeant Jameson, sir!” Harris was impressed that they seemed to get it right the first time around; however, Junior Drill Instructor Sergeant Jameson was not. He made them repeat it three more times at maximum volume before he proceeded with calling out names.

  “Ackerman, Liam T.”

  “Sir, here sir!”

  “Fucking move, maggot! Fucking now! Go!” Again outflanked by another yelling drill instructor, Ackerman spastically ran towards the barracks, the yelling drill instructor on his heels the whole way. In his awkward attempt to run fast, Ackerman fell and skidded to a stop on the asphalt. Harris’s chest hurt just watching it. The drill instructor pulled Ackerman up by the collar of his shirt and kicked him right square in the backside to get him moving again, yelling at him the whole way in.

  Drill Instructor Sergeant Jameson glared at the remaining recruits from under his “Smokey Bear” cover. His disgust was blatant.

  “Atchison, Connor J.” Atchison was quick to beat feet into the barracks without incident.

  “Holy fucking shit! Fat body, are you that goddamn stupid? Get your ass down here!” boomed the voice of the other drill instructor from the open squad bay windows. Harris fought the notion that he might have made a mistake. Perhaps something just wasn’t right. How was he going to survive this for the next three months? How was he going to survive this until evening chow?

  Once all the recruits were lined up in the barracks, they learned to make their racks the Marine Corps way. After which all the recruits were ordered into the “classroom,” which was the front of the squad bay by the drill instructor’s office known as the duty hut. Once they were all sitting on the floor cross-legged, left over right, the tallest of the drill instructors came out of the office. He was dressed like the drill instructors except he wore a thick black leather gun belt instead of the green gun belts worn by the junior drill instructors.

  “I am Senior Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant MacAlister. Over the next three months I will turn you all into the greatest of all warriors, United States Marines, or I will kill you in the process. YOU do not join the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps accepts you, but only after you prove yourself to me. Before your time is done here, you will all hate me. I don’t give a fuck. My job is to turn you into the toughest, meanest motherfuckers on the whole goddamn planet; or I will not let your sorry asses into my Marine Corps. Being a US Marine is a privilege, not a goddamn right. You recruits will have to earn the title US Marine.

  “When you earn that privilege, your job will be to defend the Constitution of the United States and the American people so that the freedom and the natural law of our Creator will prevail upon this planet. You will be sent to kill the people of those that oppose our freedom and oppose our Creator.

  “The United States Marine Corps is an all-volunteer force. If at any time during your training you decide you do not want to be a Marine, report to Junior Drill Instructors Sergeant Jameson, Sergeant Jennings, or Sergeant Finch. You will not be accommodated here. You will meet the Marine Corps’s requirements or you will get the fuck out.” The senior drill instructor’s dark blue eyes glared from between his Smokey Bear cover, his high cheekbones, and black shadow of a beard. Harris thought the look of his face alone might be enough to kill a man. If that was not enough, Senior Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant MacAlister had the largest fists and forearms he had seen. He truly looked like he could easily beat a man to death with his bare hands. His demeanor left no room for doubt in the recruits’ minds that he probably had, multiple times.

  “Now, are there any questions?” MacAlister asked in conclusion of his pep talk.

  Harris actually had a lot, but was too afraid to ask. Perhaps they all were, for they sat in silence for an awkward few seconds.

  “Answer your senior drill instructor, you fucking maggots!” Jameson shouted.

  “Sir, yes, sir!” they answered in a discombobulated fashion.

  “Bullshit! Sound off like you got a pair!”

  “SIR, YES, SIR!” the recruits screamed in a quasi-hysterical manner.

  “Fucking pathetic,” Jameson spat out with contempt.

  MacAlister turned to the junior drill instructor and told him to carry on.

  “Aye, aye, Senior Drill Instructor. Now listen up, you maggot-invested piles of horse shit. Due to our blessed country’s candy-ass public school system”—Jameson’s tone was casual and very matter-of-fact—“most of you have been raised to be a bunch of effeminate pussies. Most of you have no idea how to take a punch let alone handle yourself in a fistfight. Within a year some of you will be on a battlefield against men who have been beaten into compliance and training to kill since they were six-year-old boys, yet still they cannot compete with the deadly s
kills of a United States Marine. The path from schoolboy pussy to deadly US Marine, while shorter than the ChiComs’, is a whole fucking lot more intense. Instead of teaching you to be strong young men, your teachers over your school years have taught you to be whining victims. Therefore many of you will want to quit and will not have the balls to say so. You will want to pass on the responsibility of your failure to the United States Marine Corps and to your fellow Americans. Many of you will attempt some chickenshit form of suicide in order to get out of training and make others feel sorry for you. In order to expose your cowardice or to assist you to die if you find that preferable to becoming a US Marine, your first lesson will be how to effectively and efficiently kill your nasty self.”

  While the subject matter caught Harris completely by surprise, he did find himself fascinated by the lesson. Jameson showed them where vital arteries were in the neck, groin, underarms, forearms, and thighs. He was amazed at the speed with which a man would die if a blade were inserted under his sternum or behind his clavicles. Contrary to what he had always believed about people killing themselves by slitting their wrists, Jameson taught them it was far more effective to slice one’s self deeply under the armpit. Another deadly place to slice one’s self open was the groin. While Harris could not imagine slicing his own groin open, or even killing himself for that matter, he could envision using this knowledge against the enemy of his people. Using this knowledge to kill those that had killed his father. He was fascinated. He wanted the information seared into his brain.

  After the lesson, and much yelling, the recruits formed up and marched to evening chow. The food was all right. Harris savored the air-conditioning in the chow hall. He would have liked more food and more time to sit down in a chair and not be yelled at, but that was not to happen in boot camp.