People who haven’t gone through intensive military training sometimes look quizzically at those who have. The more intensive the training – Marine Corps boot camp, for example – the wider the chasm between us and “regular folks.”
Here’s a glance inside, at how “The Brotherhood” is formed; and how we become separated from the rest of society, even as we become an important element of that society.
Each one of us who has gone through this training and gone on to “serve,” has stories like this to tell.
After a war like Vietnam, some of us now question exactly what was served. And some of us, myself included, are beginning to insist that we – that is, all citizens, all people – consider a new definition of “service.” This, even as we continue to recount our stories of living through a war that was terrible and unjust for nearly all of the millions of people who lived through it… or didn’t.
B. Semper Fidelis
Gunny Rogers 1: Mama's boy
We were in formation on the platoon "street," the narrow asphalt strip between the Quonset huts that were our billets at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. Gunnery Sergeant David J. Rogers was the Duty Drill Instructor. He was strict about boot camp's spit‑and‑polish regimen, though not as strict as the others. You could see that he pushed it more for the sake of discipline than of "military appearance," a phrase we heard a lot. Gunny was a combat man. He was said to carry a bayonet scar across his chest from the First Marine Division's great battle at the "frozen Chosin," Korea's Chosin Reservoir. Some of the guys in the platoon said they'd seen it one day when they'd been in the Duty Hut on cleanup duty, and "Guns" had his shirt off.
His older brother had been killed in one of the first tanks to make it to the beach at Tarawa, a name that resonated among us like Mecca does among Muslims or Calvary among Christians. So he'd enlisted in the Marines as soon as he was seventeen, and sure enough volunteered for tanks. I didn't get the impression that he did it out of a desire for revenge so much as just wanting to continue the bloodline, but revenge was probably in there too. Japs had killed his brother, and there would probably be more gooks to fight before he retired, if he made it that far.
I had done something wrong. Wrong, or at least inadequate, according to the Gunny's way of thinking. He was squared off in front of me. How could he make me feel so small, when he was several inches shorter than me?
But he did. I can't even remember what I did, or didn't do. Gunny had decided it was time to get in my face because he had sensed some weakness in me, some hesitation about our common enterprise that could cause me to fail in combat, and he was just using some excuse to get his personal welding torch inside my machinery and plug the leak before it was too late. "You're weak." His voice growled from beneath his Smokey Bear hatbrim, that icon of Marineness. The brim nearly touched my nose. His force field was overpowering. I had to struggle just to keep standing at attention, which of course was the point.
I was a mama's boy, he said. He couldn't figure how I'd made it this far; he'd had me figured for one of the washouts. He said I was one of those pussies who write complaints about mean ol' Drill Instructors home to their mommies, and their mommies write letters to their congressmen, and their congressmen send some civilian puke out here to fuck with My Marine Corps.
"Do YEW write letters like that back home to YER mommy?" Gunny Rogers sneered into my face.
"No sir."
"I can't hear you."
"NO, SIR."
"Are yew SURE?"
"NO SIR!"
"You're not sure?"
"Sir, I mean YES SIR!"
His left hand came up and cuffed me on the right side of the head, knocking my glasses askew.
"So, you been writin' letters home to your mommy, sayin' bad things 'bout My Marine Corps?"
"SIR, NO SIR, I HAVE NOT WRITTEN ANY BAD THINGS HOME ABOUT THE MARINE CORPS, SIR."
I hadn't, either.
"Will yew ever in the future write such letters home to yer mommy, like for instance telling her that mean ol' sonofabitch Gunnery Sergeant Rogers hit her precious little puke of a son?"
"SIR, NO SIR, I WILL NOT WRITE ANY LETTERS LIKE THAT, SIR."
The Gunny kept at it a while longer. He went to great lengths to let me know, and in the process let the whole platoon know, that mothers, and mamas' boys, were the biggest problem the Marine Corps and, for that matter, the whole goddamn country, had. He said that if the Marine Corps wasn't allowed to operate in its own good goddamn time‑honored, battle‑tested fashion, the country might just as well forget about defending itself.
The real point he was making, of course, was that if I could stand up to him, I might be able to stand up in combat. After a while, he seemed satisfied that he’d gotten his welding done, and moved on down the line.
Gunny Rogers 2: The Most Powerful Weapon
We were on the platoon street between the tents that were our billets at Camp Matthews, sitting on our upended buckets cleaning rifles. Each of us had a towel which had been designated part of our rifle‑cleaning gear spread out between his feet in front of the bucket. M14 rifle parts were laid out on the towels. Toothbrushes scraped blued steel. Hoppe's #9 solvent crowded other smells from the air.
Gunny Rogers was supervising. He stood quietly, looking us over. Of our five drill instructors, he was the one who really took it upon himself to disabuse us of the romance so often tagged onto war stories, to forge us into warriors. One phrase we heard from him often was "Ours is not to reason why; ours is but to do or die." That was what we were here for, he said. Kill or die. And since some of the people we'd be going up against were very good killers on their own, and wanted to stay alive at least as much as we did, we had to be better at killing than they were, or each of us ‑ or, what would be worse, the comrades who depended on us ‑ could die. And that would be against Marine Corps regulations. Sometimes he would paraphrase General Patton, who was the only Army general who was ever worth a shit, as far as Marines were concerned: Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to make that other poor sonofabitch die for his country.
"Listen up," Gunny said. Buckets and boots scraped; rifle bolts and operating rods clinked onto towels. Silence.
He waited a long time to speak, looking up and down the rows of us, letting us look at him. That was his signal that what he was about to say was important, real Marine Corps "straight scoop" rather than "petty shit," and we had goddamned well better pay attention. He didn't raise his voice. Once in a while he would bellow, but more often he would let his medals and scars and combat record and personal charisma ‑ the whole totemic package of his stature as a warrior among warriors ‑ speak for him. At such times he would speak softly, and we would lean forward and scoop up his words like a dying man just arrived at a desert oasis scoops water, which was what he intended.
It came as a question. "What is the most powerful weapon in the world?" he asked softly. It was repeated in urgent whispers to recruits at the ends of the formation who hadn't heard. Necks craned; glances danced.
It was always better to avoid answering a question unless you were sure of the answer. These were the times when abuse and extra duty were handed out if you guessed wrong. But this was an easy one; the answer was obvious. A recruit raised his hand. "Yes, Private," the Gunny recognized him. The kid stood to attention. "Sir! The most powerful weapon in the world is the atomic bomb, sir!"
Gunny waited another of his long pauses, paced slowly, shaking his Smokey the Bear campaign‑hatted head in an expression that was intended to come across to us as a mixture of profound disappointment and disgust. How could they ever expect him to make Marines of such imbeciles, his body language said.
He turned and faced us. His face would have made the four on Mount Rushmore look like a bunch of wimps: car salesmen, or the like.
"B‑u‑l‑l‑s‑h‑i‑t." The word rolled out like far-off thunder. We looked at each other in puzzlement. My mind flipped through everything I knew, looking for the answer he wanted. One of two guys in the platoon with some college behind me, I had actually read quite a few books. Aha, I thought. He must mean the hydrogen bomb. I was about to raise my hand when Gunny gave the correct answer, parsing out his words: "The most powerful... weapon...in the world...is a Marine...and his rifle."
Pause.
"Think about it. Carry on, Privates."
Each of us, squatted there on his bucket, bore a look on his face of perfect astonishment. We looked at one another, whispered. "Gaww-awwd damn!" Delighted grins appeared as we went back to cleaning our rifles.
Gunny Rogers 3
I was on watch in my radio jeep at Chu Lai, listening for traffic from Landshark, our main outfit in Danang. The radio was a powerful Single Side Band set, with a transmitting range of several thousand miles. I was told that, with the right relay connections, it would be possible to communicate all the way back to the States.
That reach also meant that we could sometimes hear very distant stations. The traffic we had with Landshark was usually just routine equipment checks and gossip about who had brought the clap back from R&R. So sometimes I'd tune around and try to pick up music from the world outside Vietnam. I had the best luck with "Rydio Austrylia," which was the first place I ever heard Nancy Sinatra sing "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'".
I was set up at the edge of the motor pool next to the tank park, a few feet away from the nearest tank, sitting there listening to the music through my earphones and trying not to wiggle or tap my feet. The combined noise of the jeep's engine, which always had to be running to power the radio, and the radio set's cooling fans, made it necessary to always wear the earphones anyway. So if I could keep my body still, usually no one was the wiser.
A Marine was walking by. He'd had to come right next to my jeep to get between it and the tank. I'd have known that rolling bear-like walk anywhere. Of course. Tanks.
"Gunny Rogers!" I yelled. He was startled; he jumped, searched warily until he saw me grinning at him. With the music blaring in my ears, I'd shouted louder than was necessary. He walked over as I turned down the volume and stripped off the heavy, cushioned earphones. He looked at me quizzically. I stuck out my hand: "Dean Metcalf, Gunny. You were my DI at Dago, back in '62. Platoon 164? We were Regimental Honor Platoon."
"Oh yeah," he nodded, smiling slightly. He seemed to remember me. We chatted awkwardly for a minute, neither really having much to say. He glanced at the black metal chevrons on my shirt collar. "I see you made corporal."
I wanted him to say more. And I wanted to say more. I wanted to say, Look Gunny, I'm here. With you. You know. Tarawa. Chosin Reservoir. Chu Lai. Here's my rifle. Here's my bayonet. I'm ready, Guns. Tell me what to do. Let's go win this fuckin' war.
All I said was, "Oh, yeah, I got goin' on two years in grade. I guess I'm eligible for sergeant now." I was pretty proud of that; most guys didn't even make corporal on their first hitch.
Gunny was in a hurry. "Well, good to see ya," he said. We shook hands again and he turned to walk away.
"Hey, Gunny...." He paused, looked over his shoulder.
"Thanks for the training."
He nodded, walked on.
Later I realized that the startled look in his face as he turned, generated by the unintended sharpness of my call to him, may have come from fear of fragging, though not much of that was yet happening in the Marine Corps as early as 1966. He damn sure wouldn't have been the first ex‑DI to die that way, or the first Gunnery Sergeant either. Men like him always have somebody who hates them. But I never hated the Gunny.
