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© Copyright Gustav Hasvord
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Dedicated to
"Penny"
John C. Pennington, Corporal
Combat Photographer, First Marine Division
KIA, June 9, 1968
Adieu to a Solider
Adieu, O soldier,
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,
Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific
game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you and
like of you all fill'd,
With war and war's expression.
Adieu, dear comrade,
Your mission is fulfill'd--but I, more warlike,
Myself and this contentious soul of mine,
Still on our campaigning bound,
Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,
Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here,
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.
Walt Whitman, Drum Taps, 1871
The Spirit of the Bayonet
I think that Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
--Michael Herr, Dispatches
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.
At night, as the platoon sleeps in double-tiered metal bunks, Leonard
cries. I whisper to him to be quiet. He stops crying.
No recruit is ever allowed to be alone.
On the first day of our fifth week, Sergeant Gerheim beats the hell out
of me.
I'm standing tall in Gerheim's palace, a small room at the far end of
the squad bay.
"Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?"
"NO, SIR!" I say. It's a trick question. Any answer will be wrong, and
Sergeant Gerheim will beat me harder if I reverse myself.
Sergeant Gerheim punches me in the solar plexus with his elbow. "You
little maggot," he says, and his fist punctuates the sentence. I stand to
attention, heels locked, eyes front, swallowing groans, trying not to
flinch. "You make me want to vomit, scumbag. You goddamn heathen. You better
sound off that you love the Virgin Mary or I'm going to stomp your guts
out." Sergeant Gerheim's face is about one inch from my left ear. "EYES
FRONT!" Spit sprinkles my cheek. "You do love the Virgin Mary, don't you,
Private Joker? Speak!"
"SIR, NEGATIVE, SIR!"
I wait. I know that he is going to order me into the head. The shower
stall is where he takes the recruits he wants to hurt. Almost every day
recruits march into the head with Sergeant Gerheim and, because the deck in
the shower stall is wet, they accidentally fall down. They accidentally fall
down so many times that when they come out they look like they've been run
over by a cat tractor.
He's behind me. I can hear him breathing.
"What did you say, prive?"
"SIR, THE PRIVATE SAID, 'NO, SIR!' SIR!"
Sergeant Gerheim's beefy red face floats by like a cobra being charmed
by music. His eyes drill into mine; they invite me to look at him; they dare
me to move my eyes one fraction of an inch.
"Have you seen the light? The white light? The great light? The guiding
light--do you have the vision?"
"SIR, AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Who's your squad leader, scumbag?"
"SIR, THE PRIVATE'S SQUAD LEADER IS PRIVATE HAMER, SIR!"
"Hamer, front and center."
Hamer runs down the center of the squad bay, snaps to attention in
front of Sergeant Gerheim. "AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Hamer, you're fired. Private Joker is promoted to squad leader."
Hamer hesitates. "AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Go."
Hamer does an about-face, runs back down the squad bay, falls back into
line in front of his rack, snaps to attention.
I say, "SIR, THE PRIVATE REQUESTS PERMISSION TO SPEAK TO THE DRILL
INSTRUCTOR!"
"Speak."
"SIR, THE PRIVATE DOES NOT WANT TO BE A SQUAD LEADERS, SIR!"
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. He pushes his
Smokey the Bear campaign cover to the back of his bald head. He sighs.
"Nobody wants to lead, maggot, but somebody has to. You got the brain, you
got the balls, so you get the job. The Marine Corps is not a mob like the
Army. Marines die--that's what we're here for--but the Marine Corps will
live forever, because every Marine is a leader when he has to be--even a
prive."
Sergeant Gerheim turns to Leonard. "Private Pyle, Private Joker is your
new bunkmate. Private Joker is a very bright boy. He will teach you
everything. He will teach you how to pee."
I say, "SIR, THE PRIVATE WOULD PREFER TO STAY WITH HIS BUNKMATE,
PRIVATE COWBOY, SIR!"
Cowboy and I have become friends because when you're far from home and
scared shitless you need all the friends you can get and you need them right
away. Cowboy is the only recruit who laughs at all my jokes. He's got a
sense of humor, which is priceless in a place like this, but he's serious
when he has to be--he's dependable.
Sergeant Gerheim sighs. "You queer for Private Cowboy's gear? You smoke
his pole?"
"SIR, NEGATIVE, SIR!"
"Outstanding. Then Private Joker will bunk with Private Pyle. Private
Joker is silly and he's ignorant, but he's got guts, and guts is enough."
Sergeant Gerheim struts back to his "palace," a tiny room at the far
end of the squad bay. "Okay, ladies, ready...MOUNT!"
We all jump into our racks and freeze.
"Sing."
We sing:
From the halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli,
We will fight our country's battles,
On land, and air, and sea.
If the Army and the Navy
Ever gaze on heaven's scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded by
United States Marines...
"Okay, herd, readdddy...SLEEP!"
Training continues.
I teach Leonard everything I know, from how to lace his black combat
boots to the assembly and disassembly of the M-14 semi-automatic shoulder
weapon.
I teach Leonard that Marines do not ditty-bop, they do not just walk.
Marines run; they double-time. Or, if the distance to be covered is great,
Marines hump, one foot after the other, one step at a time, for as long as
necessary. Marines work hard. Only shitbirds try to avoid work, only
shitbirds try to skate. Marines are clean, not skuzzy. I teach Leonard to
value his rifle as he values his life. I teach him that blood makes the
grass grow.
"This here gun is one mean-looking piece of iron, sure enough."
Leonard's clumsy fingers snap his weapon together.
I'm repulsed by the look and feel of my own weapon. The rifle is cold
and heavy in my hands. "Think of your rifle as a tool, Leonard. Like an ax
on the farm."
Leonard grins. "Okay. You right, Joker." He looks at me. "I'm sure glad
you're helping me, Joker. You're my friend. I know I'm slow. I always been
slow. Nobody ever helped me..."
I turn away. "That sounds like a personal problem," I say. I keep my
eyes on my weapon.
Sergeant Gerheim continues the siege of Leonard Pratt, Private. He
gives Leonard extra push-ups every night, yells at him louder than he yells
at the rest of us, calls his mother more colorful names.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are not forgotten. We suffer, too. We suffer
for Leonard's mistakes. We march, we run, we duck walk, and we crawl.
We play war in the swamp. Near the site of the Ribbon Creek Massacre,
where six recruits drowned during a disciplinary night march in 1956,
Sergeant Gerheim orders me to climb a willow tree. I'm a sniper. I'm
supposed to shoot the platoon. I hang on a limb. If I can see a recruit well
enough to name him, he's dead.
The platoon attacks. I yell, "HAMER!" and Hamer falls dead.
The platoon scatters. I scan the underbrush.
A green phantom blinks through a shadow. I see its face. I open my
mouth. The limb cracks. I'm falling...
I collide with the sandy deck. I look up.
Cowboy is standing over me. "Bang, bang, you're dead," he says. And
then he laughs.
Sergeant Gerheim looms over me. I try to explain that the limb broke.
"You can't talk, sniper. You are dead. Private Cowboy just took your
life."
Sergeant Gerheim promotes Cowboy to squad leader.
During our sixth week, Sergeant Gerheim orders us to double-time around
the squad bay with our penises in our left hands and our weapons in our
right hands, singing: This is my rifle, this is gun; one is for fighting and
one is for fun. And: I don't want no teen-aged queen; all I want is my M-14.
Sergeant Gerheim orders us to name our rifles. "This is the only pussy
you people are going to get. Your days of finger-banging ol' Mary Jane
Rottencrotch through her pretty pink panties are over. You're married to
this piece, this weapon of iron and wood, and you will be faithful."
We run. And we sing:
Well, I don't know
But I been told
Eskimo pussy
Is mighty cold...
Before chow, Sergeant Gerheim tells us that during World War I
Blackjack Pershing said, "The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and
his rifle." At Belleau Wood the Marines were so vicious that the German
infantrymen called them Teufel-Hunden--"devil dogs."
Sergeant Gerheim explains that it is important for us to understand
that it is our killer instinct which must be harnessed if we expect to
survive in combat. Our rifle is only a tool; it is a hard heart that kills.
Our will to kill must be focused the way our rifle focuses a firing
pressure of fifty thousand pounds per square inch to propel a piece of lead.
If our rifles are not properly cleaned the explosion will be improperly
focused and our rifles will shatter. If our killer instincts are not clean
and strong, we will hesitate at the moment of truth. We will not kill. We
will become dead Marines. And then we will be in a world of shit because
Marines are not allowed to die without permission; we are government
property.
The Confidence Course: We go hand over hand down a rope strung at a
forty-five degree angle across a pond--the slide-for-life. We hang upside
down like monkeys and crawl headfirst down the rope.
Leonard falls off the slide-for-life eighteen times. He almost drowns.
He cries. He climbs the tower. He tries again. He falls off again. This time
he sinks.
Cowboy and I dive into the pond. We pull Leonard out of the muddy
water. He's unconscious. When he comes to, he cries.
Back at the squad bay Sergeant Gerheim fits a Trojan rubber over the
mouth of a canteen and throws the canteen at Leonard. The canteen hits
Leonard on the side of the head. Sergeant Gerheim bellows, "Marines do not
cry!"
Leonard is ordered to nurse on the canteen every day after chow.
During bayonet training Sergeant Gerheim dances an aggressive ballet.
He knocks us down with a pugil stick, a five-foot pole with heavy padding on
both ends. We play war with the pugil sticks. We beat each other without
mercy. Then Sergeant Gerheim orders us to fix bayonets.
Sergeant Gerheim demonstrates effective attack techniques to a recruit
named Barnard, a soft-spoken farm boy from Maine. The beefy drill instructor
knocks out two of Private Barnard's teeth with a rifle butt.
The purpose of the bayonet training, Sergeant Gerheim explains, is to
awaken our killer instincts. The killer instinct will make us fearless and
aggressive, like animals. If the meek ever inherit the earth the strong will
take it away from them. The weak exist to be devoured by the strong. Every
Marine must pack his own gear. Every Marine must be the instrument of his
own salvation. It's hard, but there it is.
Private Barnard, his jaw bleeding, his mouth a bloody hole,
demonstrates that he has been paying attention. Private Barnard grabs his
rifle and, sitting up, bayonets Sergeant Gerheim through the right thigh.
Sergeant Gerheim grunts. Then he responds with a vertical butt stroke,
but misses. So he backhands Private Barnard across the face with his fist.
Whipping off his web belt, Sergeant Gerheim ties a crude tourniquet
around his bloody thigh. Then he makes the unconscious Private Barnard a
squad leader. "Goddamn it, there's one little maggot who knows that the
spirit of the bayonet is to kill! He'll make a damn fine field Marine. He
ought to be a fucking general."
On the last day of our sixth week I wake up and find my rifle in my
rack. My rifle is under my blanket, beside me. I don't know how it got
there.
My mind isn't on my responsibilities and I forget to remind Leonard to
shave.
Inspection. Junk on the bunk. Sergeant Gerheim points out that Private
Pyle did not stand close enough to his razor.
Sergeant Gerheim orders Leonard and the recruit squad leaders into the
head.
In the head, Sergeant Gerheim orders us to piss into a toilet bowl.
"LOCK THEM HEELS! YOU ARE AT ATTENTION! READDDDDY...WHIZZZZ..."
We whiz.
Sergeant Gerheim grabs the back of Leonard's neck and forces Leonard to
his knees, pushes his head down into the yellow pool. Leonard struggles.
Bubbles. Panic gives Leonard strength; Sergeant Gerheim holds him down.
After we're sure that Leonard has drowned, Sergeant Gerheim flushes the
toilet. When the water stops flowing, Sergeant Gerheim releases his hold on
Leonard's neck.
Sergeant Gerheim's imagination is both cruel and comprehensive, but
nothing works. Leonard continues to fuck up. Now, whenever Leonard makes a
mistake, Sergeant Gerheim does not punish Leonard. He punishes the whole
platoon. He excludes Leonard from the punishment. While Leonard rests, we do
squat-thrusts and side-straddle hops, many, many of them.
Leonard touches my arm as we move through the chow line with our metal
trays. "I just can't do nothing right. I need some help. I don't want you
boys to be in trouble. I--"
I move away.
The first night of our seventh week of training the platoon gives
Leonard a blanket party.
Midnight.
The fire watch stands by. Private Philips, the House Mouse, Sergeant
Gerheim's "go-fer," pads barefoot down the squad bay to watch for Sergeant
Gerheim.
In the dark, one hundred recruits walk to Leonard's rack.
Leonard is grinning, even in his sleep.
The squad leaders hold towels and bars of soap.
Four recruits throw a blanket over Leonard. They grip the corners of
the blanket so that Leonard can't sit up and so that his screams will be
muffled.
I hear the hard breathing of a hundred sweating bodies and I hear the
fump and thud as Cowboy and Private Barnard beat Leonard with bars of soap
slung in towels.
Leonard's screams are like the braying of a sick mule, heard far away.
He struggles.
The eyes of the platoon are on me. Eyes are aimed at me in the dark,
eyes like rubies.
Leonard stops screaming.
I hesitate. The eyes are on me. I step back.
Cowboy punches me in the chest with his towel and a bar of soap.
I sling the towel, drop in the soap, and then I beat Leonard, who has
stopped moving. He lies in silence, stunned, gagging for air. I beat him
harder and harder and when I feel tears being flung from my eyes, I beat him
harder for it.
The next day, on the parade deck, Leonard does not grin.
When Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim asks, "What do we do for a living,
ladies?" and we reply, "KILL! KILL! KILL!," Leonard remains silent. When our
junior drill instructor asks, "Do we love the Crotch, ladies? Do we love our
beloved Corps?" and the platoon responds with one voice, "GUNG HO! GUNG HO!
GUNG HO!." Leonard is silent.
On the third day of our seventh week we move to the rifle range and
shoot holes in paper targets. Sergeant Gerheim brags about the marksmanship
of ex-Marines Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald.
By the end of our seventh week Leonard has become a model recruit. We
decide that Leonard's silence is a result of his new intense concentration.
Day by day, Leonard is more motivated, more squared away. His manual of arms
is flawless now, but his eyes are milk glass. Leonard cleans his weapon more
than any recruit in the platoon. Every night after chow Leonard caresses the
scarred oak stock with linseed oil the way hundreds of earlier recruits have
caressed the same piece of wood. Leonard improves at everything, but remains
silent. He does what he is told, but he is no longer part of the platoon.
We can see that Sergeant Gerheim resents Leonard's attitude. He reminds
Leonard that the motto of the Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis--"Always
Faithful." Sergeant Gerheim reminds Leonard that "Gung ho" is Chinese for
"working together."
It is a Marine Corps tradition, Sergeant Gerheim says, that Marines
never abandon their dead or wounded. Sergeant Gerheim is careful not to come
down too hard on Leonard as long as Leonard remains squared away. We have
already lost seven recruits on Section Eight discharges. A Kentucky boy
named Perkins stepped to the center of the squad bay and slashed his wrists
with his bayonet. Sergeant Gerheim was not happy to see a recruit bleeding
upon his nice clean squad bay. The recruit was ordered to police the area,
mop up the blood, and replace the bayonet in its sheath. While Perkins
mopped up the blood, Sergeant Gerheim called a school circle and poo-pooed
the recruit's shallow slash across his wrists with a bayonet. The
U.S.M.C.--approved method of recruit suicide is to get alone and take a
razor blade and slash deep and vertical, from wrist to elbow, Sergeant
Gerheim said. Then he allowed Perkins to double-time to sick bay.
Sergeant Gerheim leaves Leonard alone and concentrates on the rest of
us.
Sunday.
Magic show. Religious services in the faith of your choice--and you
will have a choice--because religious services are specified in the
beautiful full-color brochures the Crotch distributes to Mom and Dad back in
hometown America, even though Sergeant Gerheim assures us that the Marine
Corps was here before God. "You can give your heart to Jesus but your ass
belongs to the Corps."
After the "magic show" we eat chow. The squad leaders read grace from
cards set in holders on the tables. Then: "SEATS!"
We spread butter on slices of bread and then sprinkle sugar on the
butter. We smuggle sandwiches out of the mess hall, risking a beating for
the novelty of unscheduled chow. We don't give a shit; we're salty. Now,
when Sergeant Gerheim and his junior drill instructors stomp us we tell them
that we love it and to do it some more. When Sergeant Gerheim commands:
"Okay, ladies, give me fifty squat-thrusts. And some side-straddle hops.
Many, many of them," we laugh and then do them.
The drill instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their
control. The Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants
killers. The Marine Corps wants to build indestructible men, men without
fear. Civilians may choose to submit or to fight back. The drill instructors
leave recruits no choice. Marines fight back or they do not survive. There
it is. No slack.
Graduation is only a few days away and the salty recruits of Platoon
30-92 are ready to eat their own guts and then ask for seconds. The moment
the Commandant of the Marine Corps gives us the word, we will grab the Viet
Cong guerrillas and the battle-hardened North Vietnamese regulars by their
scrawny throats and we'll punch their fucking heads off.
Sunday afternoon in the sun. We scrub our little green garments on a
long concrete table.
For the hundredth time, I tell Cowboy that I want to slip my tube steak
into his sister so what will he take in trade?
For the hundredth time, Cowboy replies, "What do you have?"
Sergeant Gerheim struts around the table. He is trying not to limp. He
criticizes our utilization of the Marine Corps scrub brush.
We don't care; we're too salty.
Sergeant Gerheim won the Navy Cross on Iwo Jima, he says. He got it for
teaching young Marines how to bleed, he says. Marines are supposed to bleed
in tidy little pools because Marines are disciplined. Civilians and members
of the lesser services bleed all over the place like bed wetters.
We don't listen. We swap scuttlebutt. Laundry day is the only time we
are allowed to talk to each other.
Philips--Sergeant Gerheim's black, silver-tongued House Mouse--is
telling everybody about the one thousand cherries he has busted.
I say, "Leonard talks to his rifle."
A dozen recruits look up. They hesitate. Some look sick. Others look
scared. And some look shocked and angry, as though I'd just slapped a
cripple.
I force myself to speak: "Leonard talks to his rifle." Nobody moves.
Nobody says anything. "I don't think Leonard can hack it anymore. I think
Leonard is a Section Eight."
Now guys all along the table are listening. They look confused. Their
eyes seem fixed on some distant object as though they are trying to remember
a bad dream.
Private Barnard nods. "I've been having this nightmare. My...rifle
talks to me." He hesitates. "And I've been talking back to it..."
"There it is," says Philips. "Yeah. It's cold. It's a cold voice. I
thought I was going plain fucking crazy. My rifle said--"
Sergeant Gerheim's big fist drives Philip's next word down his throat
and out of his asshole. Philips is nailed to the deck. He's on his back. His
lips are crushed. He groans.
The platoon freezes.
Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. His eyes glare out from
under the brim of his Smokey the Bear campaign cover like the barrels of a
shotgun. "Private Pyle is a Section Eight. You hear me? If Private Pyle
talks to his piece it is because he's plain fucking crazy. You maggots will
belay all this scuttlebutt. Don't let Private Joker play with your
imaginations. I don't want to hear another word. Do you hear me? Not one
word."
Night at Parris Island. We stand by until Sergeant Gerheim snaps out
his last order of the day: "Prepare to mount....Readdy...MOUNT!" Then we're
lying on our backs in our skivvies, at attention, our weapons held at port
arms.
We say our prayers:
I am a United States Marine Corps recruit. I serve in the forces which
guard my country and my way of
life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense, so help me
God...GUNG HO! GUNG HO! GUNG HO!
Then the Rifleman's Creed, by Marine Corps Major General W.H. Rupertus:
This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle
is my best friend. It is my life. I
must master it as I master my life.
My rifle, without me, is useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must
shoot straighter than my enemy who
is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me.
I will.
Leonard is speaking for the first time in weeks. His voice booms louder
and louder. Heads turn. Bodies shift. The platoon voice fades. Leonard is
about to explode. His words are being coughed up from some deep, ugly place.
Sergeant Gerheim has the night duty. He struts to Leonard's rack and
stands by, fists on hips.
Leonard doesn't see Sergeant Gerheim. The veins in Leonard's neck are
bulging as he bellows:
IT AS A
BROTHER. I WILL LEARN ITS ACCESSORIES, ITS SIGHTS, ITS BARREL.
WILL
BECOME PART OF EACH OTHER.
OUR
ENEMY. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY LIFE.
SO BE IT, UNTIL VICTORY IS AMERICA'S AND THERE IS NO ENEMY BUT PEACE!
Sergeant Gerheim kicks Leonard's rack. "Hey--you--Private Pyle..."
"What? Yes? YES, SIR!" Leonard snaps to attention in his rack.
"AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"What's that weapon's name, maggot?"
"SIR, THE PRIVATE'S WEAPON'S NAME IS CHARLENE, SIR!"
"At ease, maggot." Sergeant Gerheim grins. "You are becoming one sharp
recruit, Private Pyle. Most motivated prive in my herd. Why, I may even
allow you to serve as a rifleman in my beloved Corps. I had you figured as a
shitbird, but you'll make a good grunt."
"AYE-AYE, SIR!"
I look at the rifle on my rack. It's a beautiful instrument, gracefully
designed, solid and symmetrical. My rifle is clean, oiled, and works
perfectly. It's a fine tool. I touch it.
Sergeant Gerheim marches down the length of the squad bay. "THE REST OF
YOU ANIMALS COULD TAKE LESSONS FROM PRIVATE PYLE. He's squared away. You are
all squared away. Tomorrow you will be Marines. READDDY...SLEEP!"
Graduation day. A thousand new Marines stand tall on the parade deck,
lean and tan in immaculate khaki, their clean weapons held at port arms.
Leonard is selected as the outstanding recruit from Platoon 30-92. He
is awarded a free set of dress blues and is allowed to wear the colorful
uniform when the graduating platoons pass in review. The Commandant General
of Parris Island shakes Leonard's hand and gives him a "Well done." Our
series commander pins a RIFLE EXPERT badge on Leonard's chest and our
company commander awards Leonard a citation for shooting the highest score
in the training battalion.
Because of a special commendation submitted by Sergeant Gerheim, I'm
promoted to Private First Class. After our series commander pins on my
EXPERT'S badge, Sergeant Gerheim presents me with two red and green chevrons
and explains that they're his old PFC stripes.
When we pass in review, I walk right guide, tall and proud.
Cowboy receives an EXPERT'S badge and is selected to carry the platoon
guidon.
The Commanding General of Parris Island speaks into a microphone: "Have
you seen the light? The white light? The great light? The guiding light? Do
you have the vision?"
And we cheer, happy beyond belief.
The Commanding General sings. We sing too:
Hey, Marine, have you heard?
Hey, Marine...
L.B.J. has passed the word.
Hey, Marine...
Say good-bye to Dad and Mom.
Hey, Marine...
You're gonna die in Viet Nam.
Hey, Marine, yeah!
After the graduation ceremony our orders are distributed. Cowboy,
Leonard, Private Barnard, Philips, and most of the other Marines in Platoon
30-92 are ordered to ITR--the Infantry Training Regiment--to be trained as
grunts, infantrymen.
My orders instruct me to report to the Basic Military Journalism School
at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, after I graduate from ITR. Sergeant
Gerheim is disgusted by the fact that I am to be a combat correspondent and
not a grunt. He calls me a poge, an office pinky. He says that shitbirds get
all the slack.
Standing at ease on the parade deck, beneath the monument to the Iwo
Jima flag raising, Sergeant Gerheim says, "The smoking lamp is lit. You
people are no longer maggots. Today you are Marines. Once a Marine, always a
Marine..."
Leonard laughs out loud.
Our last night on the island.
I draw fire watch.
I stand by in utility trousers, skivvy shirt, spit-shined combat boots,
and a helmet liner which has been painted silver.
Sergeant Gerheim gives me his wristwatch and a flashlight. "Good night,
Marine."
I march up and down the squad bay between two perfectly aligned rows of
racks.
One hundred young Marines breathe peacefully as they sleep--one hundred
survivors from our original hundred and twenty.
Tomorrow at dawn we'll all board cattle-car buses for the ride to Camp
Geiger in North Carolina. There, ITR--the infantry training regiment. All
Marines are grunts, even though some of us will learn additional military
skills. After advanced infantry training we'll be allowed pogey bait at the
slop chute and we'll be given weekend liberty off the base and then we'll
receive assignments to our permanent duty stations.
The squad bay is as quiet as a funeral parlor at midnight. The silence
is disturbed only by the soft creak-creak of bedsprings and an occasional
cough.
It's almost time for me to wake my relief when I hear a voice. Some
recruit is talking in his sleep.
I stop. I listen. A second voice. Two guys must be swapping
scuttlebutt. If Sergeant Gerheim hears them it'll be my ass. I hurry toward
the sound.
It's Leonard. Leonard is talking to his rifle. But there is also
another voice. A whisper. A cold, seductive moan. It's the voice of a woman.
Leonard's rifle is not slung on his rack. He's holding his rifle,
hugging it. "Okay, okay. I love you!" Very softly: "I've given you the best
months of my life. And now you--" I snap on my flashlight. Leonard ignores
me. "I LOVE YOU! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? I CAN DO IT. I'LL DO ANYTHING!"
Leonard's words reverberate down the squad bay. Racks squeak. Someone
rolls over. One recruit sits up, rubs his eyes.
I watch the far end of the squad bay. I wait for the light to go on
inside Sergeant Gerheim's palace.
I touch Leonard's shoulder. "Hey, shut your mouth, Leonard. Sergeant
Gerheim will break my back."
Leonard sits up. He looks at me. He strips off his skivvy shirt and
ties it around his face to blindfold himself. He begins to field-strips his
weapon. "This is the first time I've ever seen her naked." He pulls off the
blindfold. His fingers continue to break down the rifle into components.
Then, gently, he fondles each piece. "Just look at that pretty trigger
guard. Have you ever seen a more beautiful piece of metal?" He starts
snapping the steel components back together. "Her connector assembly is so
beautiful..."
Leonard continues to babble as his trained fingers reassemble the black
metal hardware.
I think about Vanessa, my girl back home. We're on a river bank,
wrapped in an old sleeping bag, and I'm fucking her eyes out. But my
favorite fantasy has gone stale. Thinking about Vanessa's thighs, her dark
nipples, her fully lips doesn't give me a hard-on anymore. I guess it must
be the saltpeter in our food, like they say.
Leonard reaches under his pillow and comes out with a loaded magazine.
Gently, he inserts the metal magazine into his weapon, into Charlene.
"Leonard...where did you get those live rounds?"
Now a lot of guys are sitting up, whispering, "What's happening?" to
each other.
Sergeant Gerheim's light floods the far end of the squad bay.
"OKAY, LEONARD, LET'S GO." I'm determined to save my own ass if I can,
certain that Leonard's is forfeit in any case. The last time Sergeant
Gerheim caught a recruit with a live round--just one round--he ordered the
recruit to dig a grave ten feet long and ten feet deep. The whole platoon
had to fall out for the "funeral." I say, "You're in a world of shit now,
Leonard."
The overhead lights explode. The squad bay is washed with light.
"WHAT'S THIS MICKEY MOUSE SHIT? JUST WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESUS H. CHRIST ARE
YOU ANIMALS DOING IN MY SQUAD BAY?"
Sergeant Gerheim comes at me like a mad dog. His voice cuts the squad
bay in half: "MY BEAUTY SLEEP HAS BEEN INTERRUPTED, LADIES. YOU KNOW WHAT
THAT MEANS. YOU HEAR ME, HERD? IT MEANS THAT ONE RECRUIT HAS VOLUNTEERED HIS
YOUNG HEART FOR A GODDAMN HUMAN SACRIFICE!'
Leonard pounces from his rack, confronts Sergeant Gerheim.
Now the whole platoon is awake. We all wait to see what Sergeant
Gerheim will do, confident that it will be worth watching.
"Private Joker. You shitbird. Front and center."
I move my ass. "AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Okay, you little maggot, speak. Why is Private Pyle out of his rack
after lights out? Why is Private Pyle holding that weapon? Why ain't you
stomping Private Pyle's guts out?"
"SIR, it is the Private's duty to report to the drill instructor that
Private...Pyle...has a full magazine and has locked and loaded, SIR."
Sergeant Gerheim looks at Leonard and nods. He sighs. Gunnery Sergeant
Gerheim looks more than a little ridiculous in his pure white skivvies and
red rubber flip-flop shower shoes and hairy legs and tattooed forearms and a
beer gut and a face the color of raw beef, and, on his bald head, the green
and brown Smokey the Bear campaign cover.
Our senior drill instructor focuses all of his considerable powers of
intimidation into his best John-Wayne-on Suribachi voice: "Listen to me,
Private Pyle. You will place your weapon on your rack and--"
"NO! YOU CAN'T HAVE HER! SHE'S MINE! YOU HEAR ME? SHE'S MINE! I LOVE
HER!"
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim can't control himself any longer. "NOW YOU
LISTEN TO ME, YOU FUCKING WORTHLESS LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT. YOU WILL GIVE ME
THAT WEAPON OR I'M GOING TO TEAR YOUR BALLS OFF AND STUFF THEM DOWN YOUR
SCRAWNY LITTLE THROAT! YOU HEAR ME, MARINE? I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOUR FUCKING
HEART OUT!"
Leonard aims the weapon at Sergeant Gerheim's heart, caresses the
trigger guard, then caresses the trigger...
Sergeant Gerheim is suddenly calm. His eyes, his manner are those of a
wanderer who has found his home. He is a man in complete control of himself
and of the world he lives in. His face is cold and beautiful as the dark
side surfaces. He smiles. It is not a friendly smile, but an evil smile, as
though Sergeant Gerheim were a werewolf baring its fangs. "Private Pyle, I'm
proud--"
Bang.
The steel buttplate slams into Leonard's shoulder.
One 7.62-millimeter high-velocity copper-jacketed bullet punches
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim back.
He falls.
We all stare at Sergeant Gerheim. Nobody moves.
Sergeant Gerheim sits up as though nothing has happened. For one
second, we relax. Leonard has missed. Then dark blood squirts from a little
hole in Sergeant Gerheim's chest. The red blood blossoms into his white
skivvy shirt like a beautiful flower. Sergeant Gerheim's bug eyes are
focused upon the blood rose on his chest, fascinated. He looks up at
Leonard. He squints. Then he relaxes. The werewolf smile is frozen on his
lips.
My menial position of authority as the fire watch on duty forces me to
act. "Now, uh, Leonard, we're all your bros, man, your brothers. I'm your
bunkmate, right? I--"
"Sure," says Cowboy. "Go easy, Leonard. We don't want to hurt you."
"Affirmative," says Private Barnard.
Leonard doesn't hear. "Did you see the way he looked at her? Did you? I
knew what he was thinking. I knew. That fag pig and his dirty--"
"Leonard..."
"We can kill you. You know that." Leonard caresses his rifle. "Don't
you know that Charlene and I can kill you all?"
Leonard aims his rifle at my face.
I don't look at the rifle. I look into Leonard's eyes.
I know that Leonard is too weak to control his instrument of death. It
is a hard heart that kills, not the weapon. Leonard is a defective
instrument for the power that is flowing through him. Sergeant Gerheim's
mistake was in not seeing that Leonard was like a glass rifle which would
shatter when fired. Leonard is not hard enough to harness the power of an
interior explosion to propel the cold black bullet of his will.
Leonard is grinning at us, the final grin that is on the face of death,
the terrible grin of the skull.
The grin changes to a look of surprise and then to confusion and then
to terror as Leonard's weapon moves up and back and then Leonard takes the
black metal barrel into his mouth. "NO! Not--"
Bang.
Leonard is dead on the deck. His head is now an awful lump of blood and
facial bones and sinus fluids and uprooted teeth and jagged, torn flesh. The
skin looks plastic and unreal.
The civilians will demand yet another investigation, of course. But
during the investigation the recruits of Platoon 30-92 will testify that
Private Pratt, while highly motivated, was a ten percenter who did not pack
the gear to be a Marine in our beloved Corps.
Sergeant Gerheim is still smiling. He was a fine drill instructor.
Dying, that's what we're here for, he would have said--blood makes the grass
grow. If he could speak, Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim would explain to Leonard
why the guns that we love don't love back. And he would say, "Well done."
I turn off the overhead lights.
I say, "Prepare to mount." Then: "MOUNT!"
The platoon falls into a hundred racks.
I feel cold and alone. I am not alone. All over Parris Island there are
thousands and thousands of us. And, all around the world, hundreds of
thousands.
I try to sleep...
In my rack, I pull my rifle into my arms. She talks to me. Words come
out of the wood and metal and flow into my hands. She tells me what to do.
My rifle is a solid instrument of death. My rifle is black steel. Our
human bodies are bags of blood, easy to puncture and quick to drain, but our
hard tools of death cannot be broken.
I hold by weapon at port arms, gently, as though she were a holy relic,
a magic wand wrought with interlocking pieces of silver and iron, with a
teakwood stock, golden bullets, a crystal bolt, jewels to sight with. My
weapon obeys me. I'll hold Vanessa, my rifle. I'll hold her. I'll just hold
her for a little while. I will hide in this dark dream for as long as I can.
Blood pours out of the barrel of my rifle and flows up on to my hands.
The blood moves. The blood breaks up into living fragments. Each fragment is
a spider. Millions and millions of tiny red spiders of blood are crawling up
my arms, across my face, into my mouth...
Silence. In the dark, a hundred men are breaking in unison.
I look at Cowboy, then at Private Barnard. They understand. Cold grins
of death are frozen on their faces. They nod.
The newly minted Marines in my platoon stand to attention, horizontal
in their racks, their weapons at port arms.
The Marines wait, a hundred young werewolves with guns in their hands.
I lead:
This is my rifle.
There are many like it, but this one is mine...
Body Count
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked...
--Allen Ginsberg, Howl
A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.
--William S. Burroughs
Tet: The Year of the Monkey.
Rafter Man and I spend the Vietnamese lunar New Year's Eve, 1968, at
© Copyright Gustav Hasvord
WWW: http://www.gustavhasford.com/ST.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------
Dedicated to
"Penny"
John C. Pennington, Corporal
Combat Photographer, First Marine Division
KIA, June 9, 1968
Adieu to a Solider
Adieu, O soldier,
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,
Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific
game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you and
like of you all fill'd,
With war and war's expression.
Adieu, dear comrade,
Your mission is fulfill'd--but I, more warlike,
Myself and this contentious soul of mine,
Still on our campaigning bound,
Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,
Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here,
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.
Walt Whitman, Drum Taps, 1871
The Spirit of the Bayonet
I think that Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
--Michael Herr, Dispatches
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.
At night, as the platoon sleeps in double-tiered metal bunks, Leonard
cries. I whisper to him to be quiet. He stops crying.
No recruit is ever allowed to be alone.
On the first day of our fifth week, Sergeant Gerheim beats the hell out
of me.
I'm standing tall in Gerheim's palace, a small room at the far end of
the squad bay.
"Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?"
"NO, SIR!" I say. It's a trick question. Any answer will be wrong, and
Sergeant Gerheim will beat me harder if I reverse myself.
Sergeant Gerheim punches me in the solar plexus with his elbow. "You
little maggot," he says, and his fist punctuates the sentence. I stand to
attention, heels locked, eyes front, swallowing groans, trying not to
flinch. "You make me want to vomit, scumbag. You goddamn heathen. You better
sound off that you love the Virgin Mary or I'm going to stomp your guts
out." Sergeant Gerheim's face is about one inch from my left ear. "EYES
FRONT!" Spit sprinkles my cheek. "You do love the Virgin Mary, don't you,
Private Joker? Speak!"
"SIR, NEGATIVE, SIR!"
I wait. I know that he is going to order me into the head. The shower
stall is where he takes the recruits he wants to hurt. Almost every day
recruits march into the head with Sergeant Gerheim and, because the deck in
the shower stall is wet, they accidentally fall down. They accidentally fall
down so many times that when they come out they look like they've been run
over by a cat tractor.
He's behind me. I can hear him breathing.
"What did you say, prive?"
"SIR, THE PRIVATE SAID, 'NO, SIR!' SIR!"
Sergeant Gerheim's beefy red face floats by like a cobra being charmed
by music. His eyes drill into mine; they invite me to look at him; they dare
me to move my eyes one fraction of an inch.
"Have you seen the light? The white light? The great light? The guiding
light--do you have the vision?"
"SIR, AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Who's your squad leader, scumbag?"
"SIR, THE PRIVATE'S SQUAD LEADER IS PRIVATE HAMER, SIR!"
"Hamer, front and center."
Hamer runs down the center of the squad bay, snaps to attention in
front of Sergeant Gerheim. "AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Hamer, you're fired. Private Joker is promoted to squad leader."
Hamer hesitates. "AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Go."
Hamer does an about-face, runs back down the squad bay, falls back into
line in front of his rack, snaps to attention.
I say, "SIR, THE PRIVATE REQUESTS PERMISSION TO SPEAK TO THE DRILL
INSTRUCTOR!"
"Speak."
"SIR, THE PRIVATE DOES NOT WANT TO BE A SQUAD LEADERS, SIR!"
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. He pushes his
Smokey the Bear campaign cover to the back of his bald head. He sighs.
"Nobody wants to lead, maggot, but somebody has to. You got the brain, you
got the balls, so you get the job. The Marine Corps is not a mob like the
Army. Marines die--that's what we're here for--but the Marine Corps will
live forever, because every Marine is a leader when he has to be--even a
prive."
Sergeant Gerheim turns to Leonard. "Private Pyle, Private Joker is your
new bunkmate. Private Joker is a very bright boy. He will teach you
everything. He will teach you how to pee."
I say, "SIR, THE PRIVATE WOULD PREFER TO STAY WITH HIS BUNKMATE,
PRIVATE COWBOY, SIR!"
Cowboy and I have become friends because when you're far from home and
scared shitless you need all the friends you can get and you need them right
away. Cowboy is the only recruit who laughs at all my jokes. He's got a
sense of humor, which is priceless in a place like this, but he's serious
when he has to be--he's dependable.
Sergeant Gerheim sighs. "You queer for Private Cowboy's gear? You smoke
his pole?"
"SIR, NEGATIVE, SIR!"
"Outstanding. Then Private Joker will bunk with Private Pyle. Private
Joker is silly and he's ignorant, but he's got guts, and guts is enough."
Sergeant Gerheim struts back to his "palace," a tiny room at the far
end of the squad bay. "Okay, ladies, ready...MOUNT!"
We all jump into our racks and freeze.
"Sing."
We sing:
From the halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli,
We will fight our country's battles,
On land, and air, and sea.
If the Army and the Navy
Ever gaze on heaven's scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded by
United States Marines...
"Okay, herd, readdddy...SLEEP!"
Training continues.
I teach Leonard everything I know, from how to lace his black combat
boots to the assembly and disassembly of the M-14 semi-automatic shoulder
weapon.
I teach Leonard that Marines do not ditty-bop, they do not just walk.
Marines run; they double-time. Or, if the distance to be covered is great,
Marines hump, one foot after the other, one step at a time, for as long as
necessary. Marines work hard. Only shitbirds try to avoid work, only
shitbirds try to skate. Marines are clean, not skuzzy. I teach Leonard to
value his rifle as he values his life. I teach him that blood makes the
grass grow.
"This here gun is one mean-looking piece of iron, sure enough."
Leonard's clumsy fingers snap his weapon together.
I'm repulsed by the look and feel of my own weapon. The rifle is cold
and heavy in my hands. "Think of your rifle as a tool, Leonard. Like an ax
on the farm."
Leonard grins. "Okay. You right, Joker." He looks at me. "I'm sure glad
you're helping me, Joker. You're my friend. I know I'm slow. I always been
slow. Nobody ever helped me..."
I turn away. "That sounds like a personal problem," I say. I keep my
eyes on my weapon.
Sergeant Gerheim continues the siege of Leonard Pratt, Private. He
gives Leonard extra push-ups every night, yells at him louder than he yells
at the rest of us, calls his mother more colorful names.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are not forgotten. We suffer, too. We suffer
for Leonard's mistakes. We march, we run, we duck walk, and we crawl.
We play war in the swamp. Near the site of the Ribbon Creek Massacre,
where six recruits drowned during a disciplinary night march in 1956,
Sergeant Gerheim orders me to climb a willow tree. I'm a sniper. I'm
supposed to shoot the platoon. I hang on a limb. If I can see a recruit well
enough to name him, he's dead.
The platoon attacks. I yell, "HAMER!" and Hamer falls dead.
The platoon scatters. I scan the underbrush.
A green phantom blinks through a shadow. I see its face. I open my
mouth. The limb cracks. I'm falling...
I collide with the sandy deck. I look up.
Cowboy is standing over me. "Bang, bang, you're dead," he says. And
then he laughs.
Sergeant Gerheim looms over me. I try to explain that the limb broke.
"You can't talk, sniper. You are dead. Private Cowboy just took your
life."
Sergeant Gerheim promotes Cowboy to squad leader.
During our sixth week, Sergeant Gerheim orders us to double-time around
the squad bay with our penises in our left hands and our weapons in our
right hands, singing: This is my rifle, this is gun; one is for fighting and
one is for fun. And: I don't want no teen-aged queen; all I want is my M-14.
Sergeant Gerheim orders us to name our rifles. "This is the only pussy
you people are going to get. Your days of finger-banging ol' Mary Jane
Rottencrotch through her pretty pink panties are over. You're married to
this piece, this weapon of iron and wood, and you will be faithful."
We run. And we sing:
Well, I don't know
But I been told
Eskimo pussy
Is mighty cold...
Before chow, Sergeant Gerheim tells us that during World War I
Blackjack Pershing said, "The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and
his rifle." At Belleau Wood the Marines were so vicious that the German
infantrymen called them Teufel-Hunden--"devil dogs."
Sergeant Gerheim explains that it is important for us to understand
that it is our killer instinct which must be harnessed if we expect to
survive in combat. Our rifle is only a tool; it is a hard heart that kills.
Our will to kill must be focused the way our rifle focuses a firing
pressure of fifty thousand pounds per square inch to propel a piece of lead.
If our rifles are not properly cleaned the explosion will be improperly
focused and our rifles will shatter. If our killer instincts are not clean
and strong, we will hesitate at the moment of truth. We will not kill. We
will become dead Marines. And then we will be in a world of shit because
Marines are not allowed to die without permission; we are government
property.
The Confidence Course: We go hand over hand down a rope strung at a
forty-five degree angle across a pond--the slide-for-life. We hang upside
down like monkeys and crawl headfirst down the rope.
Leonard falls off the slide-for-life eighteen times. He almost drowns.
He cries. He climbs the tower. He tries again. He falls off again. This time
he sinks.
Cowboy and I dive into the pond. We pull Leonard out of the muddy
water. He's unconscious. When he comes to, he cries.
Back at the squad bay Sergeant Gerheim fits a Trojan rubber over the
mouth of a canteen and throws the canteen at Leonard. The canteen hits
Leonard on the side of the head. Sergeant Gerheim bellows, "Marines do not
cry!"
Leonard is ordered to nurse on the canteen every day after chow.
During bayonet training Sergeant Gerheim dances an aggressive ballet.
He knocks us down with a pugil stick, a five-foot pole with heavy padding on
both ends. We play war with the pugil sticks. We beat each other without
mercy. Then Sergeant Gerheim orders us to fix bayonets.
Sergeant Gerheim demonstrates effective attack techniques to a recruit
named Barnard, a soft-spoken farm boy from Maine. The beefy drill instructor
knocks out two of Private Barnard's teeth with a rifle butt.
The purpose of the bayonet training, Sergeant Gerheim explains, is to
awaken our killer instincts. The killer instinct will make us fearless and
aggressive, like animals. If the meek ever inherit the earth the strong will
take it away from them. The weak exist to be devoured by the strong. Every
Marine must pack his own gear. Every Marine must be the instrument of his
own salvation. It's hard, but there it is.
Private Barnard, his jaw bleeding, his mouth a bloody hole,
demonstrates that he has been paying attention. Private Barnard grabs his
rifle and, sitting up, bayonets Sergeant Gerheim through the right thigh.
Sergeant Gerheim grunts. Then he responds with a vertical butt stroke,
but misses. So he backhands Private Barnard across the face with his fist.
Whipping off his web belt, Sergeant Gerheim ties a crude tourniquet
around his bloody thigh. Then he makes the unconscious Private Barnard a
squad leader. "Goddamn it, there's one little maggot who knows that the
spirit of the bayonet is to kill! He'll make a damn fine field Marine. He
ought to be a fucking general."
On the last day of our sixth week I wake up and find my rifle in my
rack. My rifle is under my blanket, beside me. I don't know how it got
there.
My mind isn't on my responsibilities and I forget to remind Leonard to
shave.
Inspection. Junk on the bunk. Sergeant Gerheim points out that Private
Pyle did not stand close enough to his razor.
Sergeant Gerheim orders Leonard and the recruit squad leaders into the
head.
In the head, Sergeant Gerheim orders us to piss into a toilet bowl.
"LOCK THEM HEELS! YOU ARE AT ATTENTION! READDDDDY...WHIZZZZ..."
We whiz.
Sergeant Gerheim grabs the back of Leonard's neck and forces Leonard to
his knees, pushes his head down into the yellow pool. Leonard struggles.
Bubbles. Panic gives Leonard strength; Sergeant Gerheim holds him down.
After we're sure that Leonard has drowned, Sergeant Gerheim flushes the
toilet. When the water stops flowing, Sergeant Gerheim releases his hold on
Leonard's neck.
Sergeant Gerheim's imagination is both cruel and comprehensive, but
nothing works. Leonard continues to fuck up. Now, whenever Leonard makes a
mistake, Sergeant Gerheim does not punish Leonard. He punishes the whole
platoon. He excludes Leonard from the punishment. While Leonard rests, we do
squat-thrusts and side-straddle hops, many, many of them.
Leonard touches my arm as we move through the chow line with our metal
trays. "I just can't do nothing right. I need some help. I don't want you
boys to be in trouble. I--"
I move away.
The first night of our seventh week of training the platoon gives
Leonard a blanket party.
Midnight.
The fire watch stands by. Private Philips, the House Mouse, Sergeant
Gerheim's "go-fer," pads barefoot down the squad bay to watch for Sergeant
Gerheim.
In the dark, one hundred recruits walk to Leonard's rack.
Leonard is grinning, even in his sleep.
The squad leaders hold towels and bars of soap.
Four recruits throw a blanket over Leonard. They grip the corners of
the blanket so that Leonard can't sit up and so that his screams will be
muffled.
I hear the hard breathing of a hundred sweating bodies and I hear the
fump and thud as Cowboy and Private Barnard beat Leonard with bars of soap
slung in towels.
Leonard's screams are like the braying of a sick mule, heard far away.
He struggles.
The eyes of the platoon are on me. Eyes are aimed at me in the dark,
eyes like rubies.
Leonard stops screaming.
I hesitate. The eyes are on me. I step back.
Cowboy punches me in the chest with his towel and a bar of soap.
I sling the towel, drop in the soap, and then I beat Leonard, who has
stopped moving. He lies in silence, stunned, gagging for air. I beat him
harder and harder and when I feel tears being flung from my eyes, I beat him
harder for it.
The next day, on the parade deck, Leonard does not grin.
When Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim asks, "What do we do for a living,
ladies?" and we reply, "KILL! KILL! KILL!," Leonard remains silent. When our
junior drill instructor asks, "Do we love the Crotch, ladies? Do we love our
beloved Corps?" and the platoon responds with one voice, "GUNG HO! GUNG HO!
GUNG HO!." Leonard is silent.
On the third day of our seventh week we move to the rifle range and
shoot holes in paper targets. Sergeant Gerheim brags about the marksmanship
of ex-Marines Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald.
By the end of our seventh week Leonard has become a model recruit. We
decide that Leonard's silence is a result of his new intense concentration.
Day by day, Leonard is more motivated, more squared away. His manual of arms
is flawless now, but his eyes are milk glass. Leonard cleans his weapon more
than any recruit in the platoon. Every night after chow Leonard caresses the
scarred oak stock with linseed oil the way hundreds of earlier recruits have
caressed the same piece of wood. Leonard improves at everything, but remains
silent. He does what he is told, but he is no longer part of the platoon.
We can see that Sergeant Gerheim resents Leonard's attitude. He reminds
Leonard that the motto of the Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis--"Always
Faithful." Sergeant Gerheim reminds Leonard that "Gung ho" is Chinese for
"working together."
It is a Marine Corps tradition, Sergeant Gerheim says, that Marines
never abandon their dead or wounded. Sergeant Gerheim is careful not to come
down too hard on Leonard as long as Leonard remains squared away. We have
already lost seven recruits on Section Eight discharges. A Kentucky boy
named Perkins stepped to the center of the squad bay and slashed his wrists
with his bayonet. Sergeant Gerheim was not happy to see a recruit bleeding
upon his nice clean squad bay. The recruit was ordered to police the area,
mop up the blood, and replace the bayonet in its sheath. While Perkins
mopped up the blood, Sergeant Gerheim called a school circle and poo-pooed
the recruit's shallow slash across his wrists with a bayonet. The
U.S.M.C.--approved method of recruit suicide is to get alone and take a
razor blade and slash deep and vertical, from wrist to elbow, Sergeant
Gerheim said. Then he allowed Perkins to double-time to sick bay.
Sergeant Gerheim leaves Leonard alone and concentrates on the rest of
us.
Sunday.
Magic show. Religious services in the faith of your choice--and you
will have a choice--because religious services are specified in the
beautiful full-color brochures the Crotch distributes to Mom and Dad back in
hometown America, even though Sergeant Gerheim assures us that the Marine
Corps was here before God. "You can give your heart to Jesus but your ass
belongs to the Corps."
After the "magic show" we eat chow. The squad leaders read grace from
cards set in holders on the tables. Then: "SEATS!"
We spread butter on slices of bread and then sprinkle sugar on the
butter. We smuggle sandwiches out of the mess hall, risking a beating for
the novelty of unscheduled chow. We don't give a shit; we're salty. Now,
when Sergeant Gerheim and his junior drill instructors stomp us we tell them
that we love it and to do it some more. When Sergeant Gerheim commands:
"Okay, ladies, give me fifty squat-thrusts. And some side-straddle hops.
Many, many of them," we laugh and then do them.
The drill instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their
control. The Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants
killers. The Marine Corps wants to build indestructible men, men without
fear. Civilians may choose to submit or to fight back. The drill instructors
leave recruits no choice. Marines fight back or they do not survive. There
it is. No slack.
Graduation is only a few days away and the salty recruits of Platoon
30-92 are ready to eat their own guts and then ask for seconds. The moment
the Commandant of the Marine Corps gives us the word, we will grab the Viet
Cong guerrillas and the battle-hardened North Vietnamese regulars by their
scrawny throats and we'll punch their fucking heads off.
Sunday afternoon in the sun. We scrub our little green garments on a
long concrete table.
For the hundredth time, I tell Cowboy that I want to slip my tube steak
into his sister so what will he take in trade?
For the hundredth time, Cowboy replies, "What do you have?"
Sergeant Gerheim struts around the table. He is trying not to limp. He
criticizes our utilization of the Marine Corps scrub brush.
We don't care; we're too salty.
Sergeant Gerheim won the Navy Cross on Iwo Jima, he says. He got it for
teaching young Marines how to bleed, he says. Marines are supposed to bleed
in tidy little pools because Marines are disciplined. Civilians and members
of the lesser services bleed all over the place like bed wetters.
We don't listen. We swap scuttlebutt. Laundry day is the only time we
are allowed to talk to each other.
Philips--Sergeant Gerheim's black, silver-tongued House Mouse--is
telling everybody about the one thousand cherries he has busted.
I say, "Leonard talks to his rifle."
A dozen recruits look up. They hesitate. Some look sick. Others look
scared. And some look shocked and angry, as though I'd just slapped a
cripple.
I force myself to speak: "Leonard talks to his rifle." Nobody moves.
Nobody says anything. "I don't think Leonard can hack it anymore. I think
Leonard is a Section Eight."
Now guys all along the table are listening. They look confused. Their
eyes seem fixed on some distant object as though they are trying to remember
a bad dream.
Private Barnard nods. "I've been having this nightmare. My...rifle
talks to me." He hesitates. "And I've been talking back to it..."
"There it is," says Philips. "Yeah. It's cold. It's a cold voice. I
thought I was going plain fucking crazy. My rifle said--"
Sergeant Gerheim's big fist drives Philip's next word down his throat
and out of his asshole. Philips is nailed to the deck. He's on his back. His
lips are crushed. He groans.
The platoon freezes.
Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. His eyes glare out from
under the brim of his Smokey the Bear campaign cover like the barrels of a
shotgun. "Private Pyle is a Section Eight. You hear me? If Private Pyle
talks to his piece it is because he's plain fucking crazy. You maggots will
belay all this scuttlebutt. Don't let Private Joker play with your
imaginations. I don't want to hear another word. Do you hear me? Not one
word."
Night at Parris Island. We stand by until Sergeant Gerheim snaps out
his last order of the day: "Prepare to mount....Readdy...MOUNT!" Then we're
lying on our backs in our skivvies, at attention, our weapons held at port
arms.
We say our prayers:
I am a United States Marine Corps recruit. I serve in the forces which
guard my country and my way of
life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense, so help me
God...GUNG HO! GUNG HO! GUNG HO!
Then the Rifleman's Creed, by Marine Corps Major General W.H. Rupertus:
This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle
is my best friend. It is my life. I
must master it as I master my life.
My rifle, without me, is useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must
shoot straighter than my enemy who
is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me.
I will.
Leonard is speaking for the first time in weeks. His voice booms louder
and louder. Heads turn. Bodies shift. The platoon voice fades. Leonard is
about to explode. His words are being coughed up from some deep, ugly place.
Sergeant Gerheim has the night duty. He struts to Leonard's rack and
stands by, fists on hips.
Leonard doesn't see Sergeant Gerheim. The veins in Leonard's neck are
bulging as he bellows:
IT AS A
BROTHER. I WILL LEARN ITS ACCESSORIES, ITS SIGHTS, ITS BARREL.
WILL
BECOME PART OF EACH OTHER.
OUR
ENEMY. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY LIFE.
SO BE IT, UNTIL VICTORY IS AMERICA'S AND THERE IS NO ENEMY BUT PEACE!
Sergeant Gerheim kicks Leonard's rack. "Hey--you--Private Pyle..."
"What? Yes? YES, SIR!" Leonard snaps to attention in his rack.
"AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"What's that weapon's name, maggot?"
"SIR, THE PRIVATE'S WEAPON'S NAME IS CHARLENE, SIR!"
"At ease, maggot." Sergeant Gerheim grins. "You are becoming one sharp
recruit, Private Pyle. Most motivated prive in my herd. Why, I may even
allow you to serve as a rifleman in my beloved Corps. I had you figured as a
shitbird, but you'll make a good grunt."
"AYE-AYE, SIR!"
I look at the rifle on my rack. It's a beautiful instrument, gracefully
designed, solid and symmetrical. My rifle is clean, oiled, and works
perfectly. It's a fine tool. I touch it.
Sergeant Gerheim marches down the length of the squad bay. "THE REST OF
YOU ANIMALS COULD TAKE LESSONS FROM PRIVATE PYLE. He's squared away. You are
all squared away. Tomorrow you will be Marines. READDDY...SLEEP!"
Graduation day. A thousand new Marines stand tall on the parade deck,
lean and tan in immaculate khaki, their clean weapons held at port arms.
Leonard is selected as the outstanding recruit from Platoon 30-92. He
is awarded a free set of dress blues and is allowed to wear the colorful
uniform when the graduating platoons pass in review. The Commandant General
of Parris Island shakes Leonard's hand and gives him a "Well done." Our
series commander pins a RIFLE EXPERT badge on Leonard's chest and our
company commander awards Leonard a citation for shooting the highest score
in the training battalion.
Because of a special commendation submitted by Sergeant Gerheim, I'm
promoted to Private First Class. After our series commander pins on my
EXPERT'S badge, Sergeant Gerheim presents me with two red and green chevrons
and explains that they're his old PFC stripes.
When we pass in review, I walk right guide, tall and proud.
Cowboy receives an EXPERT'S badge and is selected to carry the platoon
guidon.
The Commanding General of Parris Island speaks into a microphone: "Have
you seen the light? The white light? The great light? The guiding light? Do
you have the vision?"
And we cheer, happy beyond belief.
The Commanding General sings. We sing too:
Hey, Marine, have you heard?
Hey, Marine...
L.B.J. has passed the word.
Hey, Marine...
Say good-bye to Dad and Mom.
Hey, Marine...
You're gonna die in Viet Nam.
Hey, Marine, yeah!
After the graduation ceremony our orders are distributed. Cowboy,
Leonard, Private Barnard, Philips, and most of the other Marines in Platoon
30-92 are ordered to ITR--the Infantry Training Regiment--to be trained as
grunts, infantrymen.
My orders instruct me to report to the Basic Military Journalism School
at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, after I graduate from ITR. Sergeant
Gerheim is disgusted by the fact that I am to be a combat correspondent and
not a grunt. He calls me a poge, an office pinky. He says that shitbirds get
all the slack.
Standing at ease on the parade deck, beneath the monument to the Iwo
Jima flag raising, Sergeant Gerheim says, "The smoking lamp is lit. You
people are no longer maggots. Today you are Marines. Once a Marine, always a
Marine..."
Leonard laughs out loud.
Our last night on the island.
I draw fire watch.
I stand by in utility trousers, skivvy shirt, spit-shined combat boots,
and a helmet liner which has been painted silver.
Sergeant Gerheim gives me his wristwatch and a flashlight. "Good night,
Marine."
I march up and down the squad bay between two perfectly aligned rows of
racks.
One hundred young Marines breathe peacefully as they sleep--one hundred
survivors from our original hundred and twenty.
Tomorrow at dawn we'll all board cattle-car buses for the ride to Camp
Geiger in North Carolina. There, ITR--the infantry training regiment. All
Marines are grunts, even though some of us will learn additional military
skills. After advanced infantry training we'll be allowed pogey bait at the
slop chute and we'll be given weekend liberty off the base and then we'll
receive assignments to our permanent duty stations.
The squad bay is as quiet as a funeral parlor at midnight. The silence
is disturbed only by the soft creak-creak of bedsprings and an occasional
cough.
It's almost time for me to wake my relief when I hear a voice. Some
recruit is talking in his sleep.
I stop. I listen. A second voice. Two guys must be swapping
scuttlebutt. If Sergeant Gerheim hears them it'll be my ass. I hurry toward
the sound.
It's Leonard. Leonard is talking to his rifle. But there is also
another voice. A whisper. A cold, seductive moan. It's the voice of a woman.
Leonard's rifle is not slung on his rack. He's holding his rifle,
hugging it. "Okay, okay. I love you!" Very softly: "I've given you the best
months of my life. And now you--" I snap on my flashlight. Leonard ignores
me. "I LOVE YOU! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? I CAN DO IT. I'LL DO ANYTHING!"
Leonard's words reverberate down the squad bay. Racks squeak. Someone
rolls over. One recruit sits up, rubs his eyes.
I watch the far end of the squad bay. I wait for the light to go on
inside Sergeant Gerheim's palace.
I touch Leonard's shoulder. "Hey, shut your mouth, Leonard. Sergeant
Gerheim will break my back."
Leonard sits up. He looks at me. He strips off his skivvy shirt and
ties it around his face to blindfold himself. He begins to field-strips his
weapon. "This is the first time I've ever seen her naked." He pulls off the
blindfold. His fingers continue to break down the rifle into components.
Then, gently, he fondles each piece. "Just look at that pretty trigger
guard. Have you ever seen a more beautiful piece of metal?" He starts
snapping the steel components back together. "Her connector assembly is so
beautiful..."
Leonard continues to babble as his trained fingers reassemble the black
metal hardware.
I think about Vanessa, my girl back home. We're on a river bank,
wrapped in an old sleeping bag, and I'm fucking her eyes out. But my
favorite fantasy has gone stale. Thinking about Vanessa's thighs, her dark
nipples, her fully lips doesn't give me a hard-on anymore. I guess it must
be the saltpeter in our food, like they say.
Leonard reaches under his pillow and comes out with a loaded magazine.
Gently, he inserts the metal magazine into his weapon, into Charlene.
"Leonard...where did you get those live rounds?"
Now a lot of guys are sitting up, whispering, "What's happening?" to
each other.
Sergeant Gerheim's light floods the far end of the squad bay.
"OKAY, LEONARD, LET'S GO." I'm determined to save my own ass if I can,
certain that Leonard's is forfeit in any case. The last time Sergeant
Gerheim caught a recruit with a live round--just one round--he ordered the
recruit to dig a grave ten feet long and ten feet deep. The whole platoon
had to fall out for the "funeral." I say, "You're in a world of shit now,
Leonard."
The overhead lights explode. The squad bay is washed with light.
"WHAT'S THIS MICKEY MOUSE SHIT? JUST WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESUS H. CHRIST ARE
YOU ANIMALS DOING IN MY SQUAD BAY?"
Sergeant Gerheim comes at me like a mad dog. His voice cuts the squad
bay in half: "MY BEAUTY SLEEP HAS BEEN INTERRUPTED, LADIES. YOU KNOW WHAT
THAT MEANS. YOU HEAR ME, HERD? IT MEANS THAT ONE RECRUIT HAS VOLUNTEERED HIS
YOUNG HEART FOR A GODDAMN HUMAN SACRIFICE!'
Leonard pounces from his rack, confronts Sergeant Gerheim.
Now the whole platoon is awake. We all wait to see what Sergeant
Gerheim will do, confident that it will be worth watching.
"Private Joker. You shitbird. Front and center."
I move my ass. "AYE-AYE, SIR!"
"Okay, you little maggot, speak. Why is Private Pyle out of his rack
after lights out? Why is Private Pyle holding that weapon? Why ain't you
stomping Private Pyle's guts out?"
"SIR, it is the Private's duty to report to the drill instructor that
Private...Pyle...has a full magazine and has locked and loaded, SIR."
Sergeant Gerheim looks at Leonard and nods. He sighs. Gunnery Sergeant
Gerheim looks more than a little ridiculous in his pure white skivvies and
red rubber flip-flop shower shoes and hairy legs and tattooed forearms and a
beer gut and a face the color of raw beef, and, on his bald head, the green
and brown Smokey the Bear campaign cover.
Our senior drill instructor focuses all of his considerable powers of
intimidation into his best John-Wayne-on Suribachi voice: "Listen to me,
Private Pyle. You will place your weapon on your rack and--"
"NO! YOU CAN'T HAVE HER! SHE'S MINE! YOU HEAR ME? SHE'S MINE! I LOVE
HER!"
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim can't control himself any longer. "NOW YOU
LISTEN TO ME, YOU FUCKING WORTHLESS LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT. YOU WILL GIVE ME
THAT WEAPON OR I'M GOING TO TEAR YOUR BALLS OFF AND STUFF THEM DOWN YOUR
SCRAWNY LITTLE THROAT! YOU HEAR ME, MARINE? I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOUR FUCKING
HEART OUT!"
Leonard aims the weapon at Sergeant Gerheim's heart, caresses the
trigger guard, then caresses the trigger...
Sergeant Gerheim is suddenly calm. His eyes, his manner are those of a
wanderer who has found his home. He is a man in complete control of himself
and of the world he lives in. His face is cold and beautiful as the dark
side surfaces. He smiles. It is not a friendly smile, but an evil smile, as
though Sergeant Gerheim were a werewolf baring its fangs. "Private Pyle, I'm
proud--"
Bang.
The steel buttplate slams into Leonard's shoulder.
One 7.62-millimeter high-velocity copper-jacketed bullet punches
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim back.
He falls.
We all stare at Sergeant Gerheim. Nobody moves.
Sergeant Gerheim sits up as though nothing has happened. For one
second, we relax. Leonard has missed. Then dark blood squirts from a little
hole in Sergeant Gerheim's chest. The red blood blossoms into his white
skivvy shirt like a beautiful flower. Sergeant Gerheim's bug eyes are
focused upon the blood rose on his chest, fascinated. He looks up at
Leonard. He squints. Then he relaxes. The werewolf smile is frozen on his
lips.
My menial position of authority as the fire watch on duty forces me to
act. "Now, uh, Leonard, we're all your bros, man, your brothers. I'm your
bunkmate, right? I--"
"Sure," says Cowboy. "Go easy, Leonard. We don't want to hurt you."
"Affirmative," says Private Barnard.
Leonard doesn't hear. "Did you see the way he looked at her? Did you? I
knew what he was thinking. I knew. That fag pig and his dirty--"
"Leonard..."
"We can kill you. You know that." Leonard caresses his rifle. "Don't
you know that Charlene and I can kill you all?"
Leonard aims his rifle at my face.
I don't look at the rifle. I look into Leonard's eyes.
I know that Leonard is too weak to control his instrument of death. It
is a hard heart that kills, not the weapon. Leonard is a defective
instrument for the power that is flowing through him. Sergeant Gerheim's
mistake was in not seeing that Leonard was like a glass rifle which would
shatter when fired. Leonard is not hard enough to harness the power of an
interior explosion to propel the cold black bullet of his will.
Leonard is grinning at us, the final grin that is on the face of death,
the terrible grin of the skull.
The grin changes to a look of surprise and then to confusion and then
to terror as Leonard's weapon moves up and back and then Leonard takes the
black metal barrel into his mouth. "NO! Not--"
Bang.
Leonard is dead on the deck. His head is now an awful lump of blood and
facial bones and sinus fluids and uprooted teeth and jagged, torn flesh. The
skin looks plastic and unreal.
The civilians will demand yet another investigation, of course. But
during the investigation the recruits of Platoon 30-92 will testify that
Private Pratt, while highly motivated, was a ten percenter who did not pack
the gear to be a Marine in our beloved Corps.
Sergeant Gerheim is still smiling. He was a fine drill instructor.
Dying, that's what we're here for, he would have said--blood makes the grass
grow. If he could speak, Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim would explain to Leonard
why the guns that we love don't love back. And he would say, "Well done."
I turn off the overhead lights.
I say, "Prepare to mount." Then: "MOUNT!"
The platoon falls into a hundred racks.
I feel cold and alone. I am not alone. All over Parris Island there are
thousands and thousands of us. And, all around the world, hundreds of
thousands.
I try to sleep...
In my rack, I pull my rifle into my arms. She talks to me. Words come
out of the wood and metal and flow into my hands. She tells me what to do.
My rifle is a solid instrument of death. My rifle is black steel. Our
human bodies are bags of blood, easy to puncture and quick to drain, but our
hard tools of death cannot be broken.
I hold by weapon at port arms, gently, as though she were a holy relic,
a magic wand wrought with interlocking pieces of silver and iron, with a
teakwood stock, golden bullets, a crystal bolt, jewels to sight with. My
weapon obeys me. I'll hold Vanessa, my rifle. I'll hold her. I'll just hold
her for a little while. I will hide in this dark dream for as long as I can.
Blood pours out of the barrel of my rifle and flows up on to my hands.
The blood moves. The blood breaks up into living fragments. Each fragment is
a spider. Millions and millions of tiny red spiders of blood are crawling up
my arms, across my face, into my mouth...
Silence. In the dark, a hundred men are breaking in unison.
I look at Cowboy, then at Private Barnard. They understand. Cold grins
of death are frozen on their faces. They nod.
The newly minted Marines in my platoon stand to attention, horizontal
in their racks, their weapons at port arms.
The Marines wait, a hundred young werewolves with guns in their hands.
I lead:
This is my rifle.
There are many like it, but this one is mine...
Body Count
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked...
--Allen Ginsberg, Howl
A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.
--William S. Burroughs
Tet: The Year of the Monkey.
Rafter Man and I spend the Vietnamese lunar New Year's Eve, 1968, at