W Griffin - The Corps I - Semper Fi

Eventually there were nearly thirty young gentlemen who had not found their breakfast appetizing and had left much, in some cases most, of it on their trays.

Corporal Pleasant stood before them.

"Gentlemen," he said. "The Marine Corps loves you. Because the Marine Corps loves you, it has gone to considerable effort and expense to provide you with a healthy, nutritious breakfast. The Marine Corps expects you to eat the healthy, nutritious breakfast it has provided for you."

The young gentlemen looked at him in some confusion for a moment. Then one of them, delicately holding his stainless steel tray in one hand, tried to fork a lump of scrambled egg with the other hand while simultaneously going into contortions trying to keep his U.S. Rifle, Caliber.30, Ml from slipping off his shoulder.

Corporal Pleasant immediately stepped in front of him, put his hands on his hips, and inclined his head so that the stiff brim of his campaign cap almost touched the young gentleman's forehead.

"What the fuck are you doing, asshole?" Corporal Pleasant inquired.

"Sir," the young gentleman bellowed, "eating my breakfast, sir!"

"With a fork! Did you hear me say anything, asshole, about eating with a fork?"

"No, sir!"

The young gentleman looked at him in absolute confusion, not quite able to accept what Corporal Pleasant seemed to be suggesting.

Corporal Pleasant nodded his head.

"Eat, asshole!" he said. "Every last fucking crumb!"

The young gentleman raised the tray, and then lowered his face and began to gulp and lick the tray.

Corporal Pleasant looked at the others.

"On my command," he said, "slurp it up. Ready, slurp!"

Nearly thirty young gentlemen raised their stainless steel trays to their faces and slurped.

When Pickering went outside the mess hall, McCoy was waiting where the trainees would be formed in ranks. There was a barely perceptible smile on his face. Pickering went and stood beside him.

"Now I know why you ate everything on your tray," he

said. _

"I've been through this sort of shit before," McCoy said.

"What are you doing here?"

"What does it look like?"

"I thought you were going to get out of the Marine Corps?"

"You were right, there's a freeze on discharges," McCoy said.

"Well, we can buddy around," Pickering said. "That'll be nice."

"It would be a bad idea," McCoy said.

"Why?" Pickering asked, surprised, wondering why McCoy was rejecting him. "Why do you say that?"

"I know about Pleasant," McCoy said. "Or people like him. If there's one thing he hates more than a college boy who wants to be an officer, it's another corporal who wants to be an officer. As soon as he finds out that I'm a Marine, he'll start in on me."

"So we'll be even," Pickering said. "He's already started on me."

"Take my word for it, Pickering," McCoy said. "It would be worse if he knew we were buddies. For both of us."

"I don't understand," Pickering said.

"You don't have to understand," McCoy said. "Just take my word for it. Stay away from me."

"Well, fuck you," Pickering said, his feelings hurt.

McCoy smiled at him.

"That's the spirit," he said. "Pick, honest to God, I know what I'm talking about," McCoy said. "Sooner or later, they'll have to give us some time off. Then we can see if there are any fourteen-year-old virgins in Virginia. But what you have to do until we can get away from that prick, especially if you plan to get through the course, is make yourself invisible."

Pickering still didn't understand. But he realized he was enormously relieved that McCoy was not rejecting his friendship. Then he wondered why he was so relieved.

(Two)

Company ' 'C' Marine Corps School Battalion

Quantico, Virginia

1805 Hours 1 September 1941

Corporal Pleasant placed the platoon "at ease" and then announced that it was now his intention to show them how to disassemble the Cosmoline-covered rifles they had been carrying around all day.

When they had them apart, they would clean them, Corporal Pleasant said. He would return at 2100 hours and inspect the cleaned pieces, and then he would show them how to reassemble their rifles. He knew, he continued, that they all wished to begin Day #2 of their training with spotless rifles. Good Marines prided themselves on having clean pieces.

This was pure chickenshit, Platoon Leader Candidate McCoy decided. A little chickenshit was to be expected, and was probably even a good thing: Pleasant had to make it absolutely clear to these college boys that they were under his absolute control. The college boys who had slurped their breakfast from their trays would never again take more chow than they could eat from the mess line. There had been a point to that.

But there was no point to this rifle-cleaning idea except to make everybody miserable. Except, of course, that Pleasant wanted something on every last one of them that would give him an excuse to jump their ass. There was absolutely no way to remove all the Cosmoline from a rifle with rags. Cosmo-line did what it was intended to do, preventing rust by filling every last nook, crevice, and pore in both the action and the stock. You could wipe for fucking ever, and there would still be Cosmoline oozing out someplace.

There were two good ways to clean Cosmoline from a weapon. The best (and most dangerous) was with five gallons of gasoline in the bottom of a garbage can. If you didn't strike a spark and blow your ass up, the gasoline would dissolve the Cosmoline.

The second way was with boiling water. You took a field mess water heater (A gasoline-fired water-heating device inserted into a fifty-five gallon garbage can. Mess kits are sterilized by dipping them into the boiling water) and filled it with rifle actions and let the sonsofbitches boil like lobsters.

Pleasant was offering neither alternative. He was just being a prick, and McCoy decided there was a limit to the chickenshit he would take. He had promised himself he would keep his nose clean, stay out of sight, and do whatever was demanded of him. But that did not go so far as spending the next three hours in a futile attempt to rub a rifle free of Cosmoline.

He was standing one rank behind and three files to the left of Pick Pickering as Corporal Pleasant delivered his lecture on the disassembly of the U.S. Rifle Caliber.30, Ml. He considered for a moment taking Pickering with him, but decided against it. For one thing, cleaning an uncleanable rifle was probably an essential part of training for a college boy. For another, Platoon Leader Candidate McCoy was about to go AWOL, which (as Corporal Pleasant had with some relish informed them during one of the lectures during the day) was frowned upon. Anyone caught AWOL (defined as not being in the proper place, at the proper place, at the proper time, in the properly appointed uniform) would instantly have his ass shipped to a rifle company and could forget pinning the gold bars of a second lieutenant on his shoulders.

When they were dismissed and double-timed into the barracks, McCoy went directly to the latrine and washed his hands as well as he could with GI soap. Then he grabbed his Garand with a rag, and went out the back door of the barracks.

As he made his way toward the provost marshal's Impound Yard, he considered that after successfully evading every Jap sentry in Shantung Province, it was entirely possible that he'd be nailed cold by some eager college boy guarding a barracks with an unloaded Garand.

But he wasn't challenged. He hid the Garand in a ditch, and then went into the provost marshal's office. Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's order was on file, and an MP corporal went and unlocked the compound for him.

McCoy drove to where he had hidden the Garand and reclaimed it. Then he opened the trunk, took out a dungaree shirt with corporal's stripes painted on the sleeves, put it on, and then took his campaign hat from the hat press and set it on his head at the approved jaunty angle.