JINOTEGA, NICARAGUA 1983: SANDINISTA VETERAN AND USMC VETERAN TALK OVER COFFEE

     I walked into the Sandinista press office in the Hotel Intercontinental [Managua], again hoping to speed up processing of my request to travel in the area of the fighting [NORTHERN NICARAGUA, A HALF HOUR'S WALK FROM THE HONDURAN BORDER] between the contras and the Ejército Popular Sandinista, the Sandinista People's Army. I entered a room where business as usual had given way to faces that reminded me of Öle Ostergaard's when I'd shown him the  human vertebra, with an added charge. A group of Nicaraguan and other Latin American journalists were huddled around a low circular table, each with one ear leaned, in what had to be spine-wrenching positions, toward the small short-wave radio broadcasting news in Spanish from the center of the table. One journalist glanced up at me, at first in the offhand way that anyone glances up when another person enters the room. Then his face changed, a current passed among them, they all looked up at me, and on each face I saw the same pure, concentrated hatred that I had seen only once before in my life: on the face of the old man I was guarding at bayonet-point, along with a group of screaming women and children, at the well in the burning Vietnamese village of Tho An in April, 1966. [I WOULD SEE THE SAME LOOK IN 1991, ON THE FACES OF HIGHLY EDUCATED PALESTINIANS IN A REFUGEE CAMP IN JORDAN, WHEN THEY LEARNED I WAS AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST.]

     The short-wave radio was broadcasting the first news of the United States invasion of Grenada.

     Jinotega, in a mountain valley between Managua and Nicaragua's northern border with Honduras, was a relief from the chaos and steamy heat of the capital. Contra raids had already penetrated that far south; I stayed there a couple of days talking to local people about the situation and petitioning the regional Sandinista comandante for permission to travel farther north, to the area near the Honduran border.

     Operating within my typically thin freelancer's budget, I found a stall where I could get a cheap plate of what I lived on most of my time in the country: rice, beans, and salty beef. At one of the plank tables, I got to talking with a young man about my age. He said he worked in construction, and when I said I did too, we swapped stories for a while. He bought me a cup of coffee. He said he'd served a hitch as a draftee in the Sandinista army. I told him I'd been in the Marines in Vietnam, quickly adding that I thought that war was a stupid mistake. His eyebrows raised; we swapped more stories. 

     When he told me his name was Juan Antonio Altamirano, I asked if he was related to Pedro Altamirano, the guerrilla leader who carried on the fight against the dictator Anastasio Somoza after Somoza had the nationalist hero Augusto César Sandino killed. Juan smiled, pleased that I recognized the name. “Era un tío mío: he was one of my uncles," he replied.

     I asked Juan what he thought of the contra situation. He took a deep breath, let it out in a deeper sigh. He patted the head of his young son and looked off at the surrounding mountains - mountains where Sandino had fought, where his uncle had fought, where Marines like Smedley Butler and Chesty Puller had fought as their names became legends that would be invoked to and by recruits like me, where Juan himself had fought. In those days, I usually had to take notes to remember the wording of something said to me in Spanish. But Juan's words slipped intact into my brain: “Si el ejército norteamericano viene aquí, habrá muchos ríos de sangre.”: "If the North American Army comes here, there will be many rivers of blood." 

     Juan didn't speak like an ideologue. He was a Nicaraguan, a nephew of a revered patriot. He loved his country. But he spoke now as a tired soldier, older than his years, the way my friends and I speak about Vietnam. He was already as weary of Sandinista bombast as others of his countrymen were becoming. But he was Nica, and told me he would fight again if it came to that; told me that there had been just too many yanquis coming here with rifles to have their way and to league up with dictators like the Somoza clan. He said that every Nicaraguan man, woman, and child would fight: with rifles if they had them; with sticks and rocks and Molotov cocktails otherwise. And not only Nicaraguans would fight. People would come from all over Latin America. This would be it, the great, long-awaited NO as people came from Venezuela, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, El Salvador... muchos ríos de sangre.

(Excerpt from the chapter "Sandinistas," of my memoir RATTLESNAKE DREAMS)

STARTING TO LEARN...

     The dress blue uniform of United States Marines is iconic, and not just in our country. US embassies around the world present themselves to passersby from host countries, and to international visitors, with a Marine in dress blues at the main entrance: polite, formal, resplendent in blue and yellow and crimson with metallic glints from the wearer’s shooting medals.

     And oh so formidable…

     

Dress Blues 1

     Bill took me to a gun shop in Klamath Falls. We couldn't afford anything, not even a used rifle. We went there to dream. Maybe they'll give me some overtime, Bill said. And we'll pick spuds together on weekends when they come ripe. Maybe we can get a good used .30‑30, not this year, but in time for next deer season. We could sure use the meat, save on groceries. Gotta tell your ma that, or she won't let us spend money on a rifle. .30‑30's not the best gun for this country, though. Good brush gun, but short range. Need somethin' that'll reach out farther in this open country, .300 Savage maybe. That's a real nice rifle, got a good long barrel, you get a peep sight on the back, with that long distance between sights, you can be real accurate. Bill liked peep sights. He'd gotten used to them during World War II, when he'd fired the Springfield 1903 .30‑06, and later, the M-1 Garand. Ought six's a good caliber, he said. You could get a lot of different loads for it, and you could buy ammo anywhere.

     We were talking like that, and the store owner, who knew we didn't have any money, was letting me handle a used .300 Savage off the rack. He wasn't busy. "Boy handles a rifle real nice," he said, knowing that'd puff me up, which it did. Puffed Bill up a little too, because he'd taught me.

     The little bell over the door jingled, and a man walked in. Instantly, the three of us were breathing different air. The man wore a striking blue uniform, topped by ‑ of all things in a dusty logging and cattle town ‑ an immaculate white cap with a brown leather brim and a shiny brass emblem. He removed the cap and tucked it under his left arm as he entered. The dark blue uniform tunic had brass buttons and a funny high collar that closed at the throat, and red piping at the sleeves and pockets. There were medals ‑ some shiny silver, some multicolored cloth ‑ on his left breast. The silver medals seemed to represent rifles and pistols. There was a broad crimson stripe down each leg of the blue trousers.

     The man knew the gun shop owner; they greeted each other. I could sense a subtle change in Bill, even though he was behind me, looking over my shoulder at the man in the strange uniform.

     The man in the uniform was watching me ‑ with approval, it seemed ‑ handle the .300 Savage with all the aplomb a skinny kid with glasses could muster. He nodded over my shoulder at Bill. "There's a young man I'll be talkin' to one of these days," he said to all of us. Then, to me: "Ever hear of the Marines, son?" He smiled. I was thirteen or fourteen. I knew nothing of him or his world.         

     I did know that both Bill and the gun shop owner had changed when he walked in.

     "No," I said.

     The man might have said something else. I don’t know. I just remember how he looked, and the feeling he brought into the room. And Bill saying with a testy voice, "He's a little young for that."

     The man in the glittering blue, white and red uniform did his business and left. I could feel the air in the room return to something like it had been before he came in, though a part of his presence remained.

     I looked at Bill's face with my question. Part of his answer was already in his face; it contained some mixture of awe and disapproval, with a hint of myth or mystery. "Marine recruiter, I guess," Bill said, looking at the gun shop owner, who nodded as he leaned on the counter. I asked who Marines were, lobbing the question for both of them to catch. The store owner said something that confirmed the awe in Bill's face, about Marines being the best fighters. There was more awe in his reply than I saw in Bill's face, with none of the disapproval.

     I was surprised at the anger in Bill's voice. He said something like, Sure, Marines have a lot of guts, but they don't care, they do all this crazy stuff, just stand up and fix bayonets and walk right into it instead of trying to do the job with less casualties. They get a lot of guys slaughtered just to prove how brave they are.

     As we walked back to the Studebaker Bill said, very pointedly, that when my time came, I should join any branch of service but the Marines.

     I never forgot Bill's admonition. But the man in blue had done his work.

Dress Blues 2

     We were back at San Diego after three weeks at the rifle range. It was near the end of boot camp. Those who would wash out were gone; those remaining would graduate soon. We would be Marines. They were nearly through carving and shaping us. The fat ones were gaunt memories of their high‑school selves; the skinny ones had been exercised and force‑fed like feed-lot beeves until, in some cases, they had gained as many pounds as the fat kids had lost. I was one of the latter. I'd come to boot camp at 145 pounds, and left it at 165, still with a 29-inch waist.

     They began fitting us for uniforms. We reveled: dress greens, tropicals, khakis, trademark Marine brown dress shoes that Robert McNamara, in his budgetary wisdom (soon to be monumentally eclipsed by his military stupidity) would order us to trade for black shoes so all U.S. military personnel could be shod from the same supply system. And real Marine utilities. Not those ugly, box‑pocketed fatigues worn by dogfaces and zoomies, but button‑sleeved utility jackets with the built‑in grenade pouch inside the left chest, and with our eagle, globe and anchor stenciled on the left pocket along with the letters that would resonate for the rest of our lives: USMC. (And the permutations: Uncle Sam's Misguided Children, United States Marnie Crotch - or just "the Crotch" for short. Even SCUM. That latter, of course, could be said by none but us; outsiders who tossed it out as a joke must immediately have the shit pounded out of them.)

     Everything but the utilities was tailored: two or three fittings per garment per man. We had to look sharp, and would. After all, they said, we were our country's best.

     Speaking of looks, what about dress blues? Now, more than two months into boot camp, we'd been abused and disabused. Cynicism was beginning to replace romance. Still, in our heads danced recruiting‑poster visions of the high‑collared blue tunics with red and gold trim, the lighter blue trousers with ‑ once you reached the rank of corporal or higher ‑ the bold red stripe down the outer seams. "Women and swabbies wear pants; Marines wear trousers," they said. But the tone was dropped when it was explained that our dress green and blue jackets were properly called "blouses". When some confused private asked why, when it was so important to call what we wore on our bottom halves "trousers" instead of "pants" to avoid connection with anything feminine, Marines were to refer to the jacket of our winter uniform with the even more feminine "blouse", the drill instructor's flustered response was a shrug and an admonition to beat the shit out of any non‑Marine who dared ask such a question.

     Dress blues weren't issued to privates. Out of each seventy‑odd man platoon, only the platoon honor man would get a set. For platoon 164, that was Johnny Vermalen; it would be tailored around his now less‑stocky frame, and his new PFC stripe ‑ gold with a red border ‑ would already be sewn onto both shoulders when he marched as our platoon's guidon bearer in the graduation ceremony in early December.

     The rest of us didn't get dress blues, unless we wanted to order them and pay for them ourselves, which none of us could afford on our pay of $76 a month. We'd have our pictures taken in them, though, for the "yearbook" each of us would receive as a memento of our training to show off to families and friends.

     The day for pictures came. We had been doing something urgent, like running or marching or bayonet training, and, as always, there was a great hurry to get back to it. So there were lines of us crowded onto a hot sidewalk between two quonset huts that bounced the midday sun back and forth at each other and, it seemed, through us. We were packed "asshole to belly button." And it was Move it, Move it, Move it...next! C'mon, goddamn it, move it, Privates, we ain't got awl fucking day for this happy horse shit, we got things to do...."

     So the picture‑taking amounted to seconds apiece. At the end of the line where it approached the photograper's lights that out‑glared even the sun between the metal quonset huts, several recent graduates of boot camp ‑ they were already Marines, so they could order us about at will ‑ would spin us around, slap a dress blue tunic with the back cut out of it on the front of each of us, pin the high collar in back to save time, and tighten the crude straps that had been added around the shoulders and chest. It was like a cut‑out doll costume from a cereal box, with no tabs showing from the front.

     And they shoved us through: snap, Next...c'mon, goddamn it!...snap, Next! No high‑school yearbook smiles, just rows and rows of manchildren behind false‑front dress blue blouses, boys with eyes at once dazed and fierce, eyes that already knew something terrible, something of which none had had an inkling three months before, something about the violence we would discover in the world and in ourselves.

     On this yearbook page are 25 of us in false dress blues: five rows across, five rows down. Key, Krejci, Kroft; Pizel, Powers, Preciado...and Metcalf, fourth row down on the left, only the glasses and skin color and facial structure and my name off to the side distinguishing me from any of the others, or any of them from one another; our false‑front dress blues all the same, our eyes and faces all exactly the same mixture of shock and weariness and newly tempered ferocity and thirst for something grander than ourselves and knowledge that what we find out there will have something of the false front about it, like the dress blue blouses we wear for these few seconds, then have ripped from us as we're shoved on our way.

     In the chronology of my life – and of this book – those two stories occur about 5 years apart. But though the second story finds me still in boot camp with two years of overseas duty, and Vietnam, still ahead of me, there is already visible some movement from shiny legend (or myth) to a hard, harsh, disillusioned reality. As usual for me, the learning process was painfully slow… 

Dress Blues 1

Bill took me to a gun shop in Klamath Falls. We couldn't afford anything, not even a used rifle. We went there to dream. Maybe they'll give me some overtime, Bill said. And we'll pick spuds together on weekends when they come ripe. Maybe we can get a good used .30 30, not this year, but in time for next deer season. We could sure use the meat, save on groceries. Gotta tell your ma that, or she won't let us spend money on a rifle. .30 30's not the best gun for this country, though. Good brush gun, but short range. Need somethin' that'll reach out farther in this open country, .300 Savage maybe. That's a real nice rifle, got a good long barrel, you get a peep sight on the back, with that long distance between sights, you can be real accurate. Bill liked peep sights. He'd gotten used to them during World War II, when he'd fired the Springfield 1903 .30 06, and later, the M-1 rifle. Ought six's a good caliber, he said. You could get a lot of different loads for it, and you could buy ammo anywhere.
We were talking like that, and the store owner, who knew we didn't have any money, was letting me handle a used .300 Savage off the rack. He wasn't busy. "Boy handles a rifle real nice," he said, knowing that'd puff me up, which it did. Puffed Bill up a little too, because he'd taught me.

The little bell over the door jingled, and a man walked in. Instantly, the three of us were breathing different air. The man wore a striking blue uniform, topped by of all things in a dusty logging and cattle town an immaculate white cap with a brown leather brim and a shiny brass emblem. He removed the cap and tucked it under his left arm as he entered. The dark blue uniform tunic had brass buttons and a funny high collar that closed at the throat, and red piping at the sleeves and pockets. There were medals some shiny silver, some multicolored cloth on his left breast. The silver medals seemed to represent rifles and pistols. There was a broad crimson stripe down each leg of the blue trousers.
The man knew the gun shop owner; they greeted each other. I could sense a subtle change in Bill, even though he was behind me, looking over my shoulder at the man in the strange uniform.
The man in the uniform was watching me with approval, it seemed handle the .300 Savage with all the aplomb a skinny kid with glasses could muster. He nodded over my shoulder at Bill. "There's a young man I'll be talkin' to one of these days," he said to all of us. Then, to me: "Ever hear of the Marines, son?" He smiled. I was thirteen or fourteen. I knew nothing of him or his world.
I did know that both Bill and the gun shop owner had changed when he walked in.
"No," I said.
The man might have said something else. I don’t know. I just remember how he looked. And Bill saying with a testy voice, "He's a little young for that."
The man in the glittering blue, white and red uniform did his business and left. I could feel the air in the room return to something like it had been before he came in, though a part of his presence remained.
I looked at Bill's face with my question. Part of his answer was already in his face; it contained some mixture of awe and disapproval, with a hint of myth or mystery.

"Marine recruiter, I guess," Bill said, looking at the gun shop owner, who nodded as he leaned on the counter. I asked who Marines were, lobbing the question for both of them to catch. The store owner said something that confirmed the awe in Bill's face, about Marines being the best fighters. There was more awe in his reply than I saw in Bill's face, with none of the disapproval.
I was surprised at the anger in Bill's voice. He said something like, Sure, Marines have a lot of guts, but they don't care, they do all this crazy stuff, just stand up and fix bayonets and walk right into it instead of trying to do the job with less casualties. They get a lot of guys slaughtered just to prove how brave they are.
As we walked back to the Studebaker Bill said, very pointedly, that when my time came, I should join any branch of service but the Marines.
I never forgot Bill's admonition. But the man in blue had done his work.