Gustav Hasford: The Short-Timers

The Marines are looking for a few good men...

The recruit says that his name is Leonard Pratt.

Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim takes one look at the skinny red-neck and immediately dubs him "Gomer Pyle."

We think maybe he's trying to be funny. Nobody laughs.

Dawn. Green Marines. Three junior drill instructors screaming, "GET IN LINE! GET IN LINE! YOU WILL NOT MOVE! YOU WILL NOT SPEAK!" Red brick buildings. Willow trees hung with with Spanish moss. Long, irregular lines of sweating civilians standing tall on yellow footprints painted in a pattern on the concrete deck.

Parris Island, South Carolina, the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot, an eight-week college for the phony-tough and the crazy-brave, constructed in a swamp on an island, symmetrical but sinister like a suburban death camp.

Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim spits. "Listen up, herd. You maggots had better start looking like United States Marine Corps recruits. Do not think for one second that you are Marines. You just dropped by to pick up a set of dress blues. Am I right, ladies? Sorry 'bout that."

A wiry little Texan in horn-rimmed glasses the guys are already calling "Cowboy" says, "Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?" Cowboy takes off his pearl-gray Stetson and fans his sweaty face.

I laugh. Years of high school drama classes have made me a mimic. I sound exactly like John Wayne as I say: "I think I'm going to hate this movie."

Cowboy laughs. He beats his Stetson on his thigh.

Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim laughs, too. The senior drill instructor is an obscene little ogre in immaculate khaki. He aims his index finger between my eyes and says, " You . Yeah-- you . Private Joker. I like you. You can come over to my house and fuck my sister." He grins. Then his face goes hard. "You little scumbag. I got your name. I got your ass. You will not laugh. You will not cry. You will learn by the numbers. I will teach you."

Leonard Pratt grins.

Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. " If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon, you will be a minister of death, praying for war. And proud. Until that day you are pukes, you are scumbags, you are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human. You people are nothing but a lot of little pieces of amphibian shit."

Leonard chuckles.

"Private Pyle think I am a real funny guy. He thinks Parris Island is more fun than a sucking chest wound."

The hillbilly's face is frozen into a permanent expression of oat-fed innocence.

"You maggots are not going to have any fun here. You are not going to enjoy standing in straight lines and you are not going to enjoy massaging your own wand and you are not going to enjoy saying 'sir' to individuals you do not like. Well, ladies, that's tough titty. I will speak and you will function. Ten percent of you will not survive. Ten percent of you maggots are going to go AWOL or will try to take your own life or will break your backs on the Confidence Course or will just go plain fucking crazy. There it is. My orders are to weed out all nonhackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. You will be grunts. Grunts get no slack. My recruits learn to survive without slack. Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. Am I correct, herd?"

Some of us mumble, "Yes. Yeah. Yes, sir."

"I can't hear you, ladies."

"Yes, sir."

"I still can't hear you, ladies. SOUND OFF LIKE YOU GOT A PAIR."

"YES, SIR!"

"You piss me off. Hit the deck."

We crumple down onto the hot parade deck.

"You got no motivation. Do you hear me, maggots? Listen up. I will give you motivation. You have no espirit de corps. I will give you espirit de corps. You have no traditions. I will give you traditions. And I will show you how to live up to them."

Sergeant Gerheim struts, ramrod straight, hands on hips. "GET UP! GET UP!"

We get up, sweating, knees sore, hands gritty.

Sergeant Gerheim says to his three junior drill instructors: "What a humble herd." Then to us: "You silly scumbags are too slow . Hit the deck."

Down.

Up.

Down.

Up.

"HIT IT!"

Down.

Sergeant Gerheim steps over our struggling bodies, stomps fingers, kicks ribs with the toe of his boot. "Jesus H. Christ. You maggots are huffing and puffing the way your momma did the first time your old man put the meat to her."

Pain.

"GET UP! GET UP!"

Up. Muscles aching.

Leonard Pratt is still sprawled on the hot concrete.

Sergeant Gerheim dances over to him, stands over him, shoves his Smokey the Bear campaign cover to the back of his bald head. "Okay, scumbag, do it."

Leonard gets up on one knee, hesitates, then stands up, inhaling and exhaling. He grins.

Sergeant Gerheim punches Leonard in the Adam's apples-- hard . The sergeant's big fist pounds Leonard's chest. Then his stomach. Leonard doubles over with pain. "LOCK THEM HEELS! YOU'RE AT ATTENTION!" Sergeant Gerheim backhands Leonard across the face.

Blood.

Leonard grins, locks his heels. Leonard's lips are busted, pink and purple, and his mouth is bloody, but Leonard only shrugs and grins as though Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim has just given him a birthday present.

For the first four weeks of recruit training Leonard continues to grin, even though he receives more than his share of the beatings. Beatings, we learn, are a routine element of life on Parris Island. And not that I'm-only-rough-on-'um-because-I-love-'um crap civilians have seen in Jack Webb's Hollywood movie The D.I. and in Mr. John Wayne's The Sands of Iwo Jima . Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim and his three junior drill instructors administer brutal beatings to faces, chests, stomachs, and backs. With fists. Or boots--they kick us in the ass, the kidneys, the ribs, any part of our bodies upon which a black and purple bruise won't show.

But even having the shit beat out of him with calculated regularity fails to educate Leonard the way it educates the other recruits in Platoon 30-92. In high school psychology they said that fish, cockroaches, and even one-celled protozoa can be brainwashed. But not Leonard.

Leonard tries harder than any of us.

He can't do anything right.

During the day Leonard stumbles and falls, but never complains.