Ian Slater - WW III

Strange insects buzzed and flapped against the gauze, reincarnated recruits, though David, trying to remember from his zoology course whether it was the female mosquito that made the zinging noise or the male. Anyway, it was like the DI: the one you didn’t hear was the one that got you, the one you’d like to kill. One of the fluorescent lights had started flickering. They were still at attention.

“Stumble-ass!”

“Yes, sir!”

“What’s in that plastic bag?”

David was so rattled, he couldn’t think. The sweat was pouring down his back. “Ah — candy, I—” It was some candy Melissa had given him when he’d left.

“Candy!” bellowed the DI. “Candy, shit! You’re not going to have fucking time to chew fucking candy, are you, Stumble-ass?”

“No, sir.”

“Now what?”

“No, sir. “ David couldn’t believe the obscenity. The only person he’d ever heard talk like this was an Australian.

“Take off your fucking pants!” the DI bellowed at the recruits, and began walking down the rows. “Oh — lookit this!” A recruit quickly risked a glance to see what the DI was looking at.

“Keep your fucking head up, turd.” The recruit’s head shot back up and stared ahead, eyes glazed by fear.

“Oh, look,” said the DI, his bellow daring anyone to look. “What have we got here, limp dink? Valentine shorts.” David could see far enough up the line without moving his head to see the recruit, a Puerto Rican, his boxer shorts covered with valentine hearts. The DI walked around the man once, reversed direction, and walked around the other way. David had never seen a more miserable-looking soul on God’s earth than the hapless Puerto Rican. The DI stood up to his full height, his nose almost touching the recruit, whose head was straining back while at the same time trying to remain at attention without tipping.

“Who gave you these, Thelma?”

“Name is Thelman—”

“Shut your fucking mouth. Your name’s Thelma. Who gave them to you, Thelma?”

“My mother, sir.”

“Mommy. Long as you’re here, you’ll wear standard issue, Thelma. If you’re good enough to be a marine, which I fucking doubt, you will continue to wear standard issue. Do you read me?”

“Yes, sir.”

The DI turned. “Get your fucking plastic bag up here, Stumble-ass. On the double! Dump it on the floor.” David did so. There was a card from Melissa that fell out with the candy. David was beet-red from embarrassment and anger. He knew what the DI was trying to do. Everyone knew. It didn’t make it easier that you knew. The DI handed him the card.

“You’re the worst fucking lot I’ve seen yet. War brings out the best and worst in men. And you are the fucking worst. Empty your pockets and kits of all shit. Now. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!” reverberated the barrack.

“Shit for you stupid assholes is any substance contrary to regulation. Aspirin is shit, narcotics are shit, vitamins are shit, prescription drugs are shit, candy is shit. Booze is shit. Anything I don’t like is shit. Understand?”

“Yes sir!”

“Only wedding rings are permitted. What’s that?”

“A radio, sir. Transistor.”

“That’s shit.”

The pile of drugs, combs, neck chains, condoms, gum, cigarettes, filled the plastic bag. But this was the easy part. Next day, beginning with the usual breakfast by numbers at 0430, David saw his hair, the last vestige of his individuality, falling from him in great gobs unceremoniously pushed away by an enormous broom into a garbage bag. Then there were the obsessive “forming” rituals of induction week, the humiliating “asshole inspection,” the endless grueling day of DI abuse, the numbingly repetitious use of every weapon from M-16s to the laser-guided TOW, the “Alfa Bravo Charlie Delta…” alphabet so that messages might never be misunderstood, the stifling, nauseating forced run through the gas hut, the issue of standard condoms along with other standard equipment, the bare dining room with the words “TACT, LOYALTY, GUNG-HO, COURAGE, TEAMWORK, HONESTY, KNOWLEDGE, MORALE” stenciled on the support posts above the painted footprints where you had to stand.

What David remembered most was the kind of small incident that for some reason stays with you for life. It was one night just after lights out, the moon cold comfort over the Carolina low country, when the Puerto Rican called Thelma turned to David and said, “I came here to be a marine — to fight for my country— not this kind of crap.”

From near the “mouse house,” the DI’s small room with basin at the end of the hut, a silhouette appeared, its peaked hat sharp against the halo of the moon. The DI’s voice, for the first time that David could remember, was not shouting. “We dish out shit, son, because you’re going to get shit. The Russians and their helpers aren’t going to throw flowers at you.”

The recruit said nothing. The DI turned to walk away to his billet, stopped, and looked over his shoulder. “One more thing, you scumbags. If this thing doesn’t get sorted out over there, the Red bastards will end up in your backyard. I want a marine next to me. I love this country. I love the Corps.”

By the time David Brentwood, Thelma, and the others had gone through basic training, their platoon of seventy-five had only purple streamers attached to their platoon’s standard. This meant that, unlike the “superiors,” they were merely run-of-the-mill marines and had not distinguished themselves above the other marines in platoon marksmanship and other battlefield skills. But they were marines and were told they would be among the first used to plug “the gaps in the dike.”

“Questions?” asked the DI, his voice now approaching normal, not friendly but not as sarcastic as usual.

“What dike’s that, sir?”

“The dikes are everywhere, marine. You just remember everything you’ve been taught and you might just stand a chance.”

Another recruit put up his hand. “Sir, can you tell us how it’s going in Korea?”

“Chongju fell last night.”

After chow, with graduation next morning, they began the difficult informal good-byes, laced with false bravado lest they be thought too sentimental.

It made no sense to David. He’d hated the place, but now that he’d qualified — in fact, he thought his shooting had been pretty good, though the final marks were not in on that yet — there was a feeling of belonging. In the relatively short time they’d known one another, the men who had made it formed a bond that they instinctively knew would last a lifetime and which marine tradition told them would. And each of them as they packed his kit, knowing he would soon be called to war, to face the fear and all the dangers of the unknown, felt ready, toughened, and in each man’s thoughts the honor rolls from Montezuma to Iwo Jima to the fighting retreat from Chosin Reservoir all rang with glory, for as yet none of them had known the smell of it, the feel of it, or the horror. They knew it only in the abstract, and for all they’d been told of what to expect, each of them held the young man’s eternal secret: it would not be him, and in that he found his bravery, his willingness to go forth.

On the last day the DI read out the numbers of assignation to the marine platoon of seventy-five. “Devane… zero three zero zero. Least you can fire a fucking rifle.” There was subdued laughter — training over, the future before them. “Brentwood… zero three zero zero — looks like you and Devane are for MAGTAF.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Sounds like a disease,” said someone else.

“Marine air-ground task force, idiot. Out of Camp Lejeune. Means they think the fuckers can shoot, scratch ass, and jump from a plane at the same time.”