Loon - Jack McLean [23]
We reveled in the observation by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt twenty-five years before,
The marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!
One year after my graduation from Parris Island, I was in Vietnam, fighting side by side with my marine brothers, when I was shot at with live ammo for the first time. During the ensuing battle and the others that followed, I was confused, disoriented, and scared to death—every time—but I was never alone. There was always another marine nearby. He also was confused, disoriented, scared to death—but he had me nearby. That was the way it worked in the Marine Corps. Together we’d figure something out. As long as there was another marine, we were a unit. It was taught from the moment that we arrived on Parris Island. It continues to exist in me and the others to this day. There is no challenge too great, no night so dark that the presence of another marine—past or present—fails to give me the courage and faith that together we are capable of anything.
Camp Geiger is part of Camp Lejeune, the sprawling Marine Corps base located on the North Carolina coast near the town of Jacksonville. All marine recruits east of the Mississippi who have completed their basic training at Parris Island go there directly by bus the morning after graduation to complete a six-week infantry training course. Those in the West attend boot camp in San Diego and infantry training at Camp Pendleton, Lejeune’s enormous counterpart on the Southern California coast.
At Parris Island we drilled, shot, and exercised by rote. The only way was the Marine Corps way. At Camp Geiger, we became creative. We were taught to think like marines by mastering the principles of infantry combat as well as squad and platoon tactics. We were trained on every individual and crew-served weapon in the Marine Corps arsenal, and were presented with situations for their use. The mission was to convert us from disciplined boot camp graduates into self-confident and thinking marines capable of immediately joining a combat-ready infantry fire team.
For many of us, that moment was now short weeks away.
The strain caused by the continuing buildup in Vietnam was apparent everywhere. New brick barracks were under construction to augment the tent cities that were popping up. There were sporadic shortages of rifles, uniforms, and general military supplies. An escalating urgency permeated our every activity. Drills that used to begin with “If this happens …” had changed to “When this happens …”
Actual combat was now a certainty for every one of us.
For the first time, several of our instructors were Vietnam veterans. To them, our education was not theory—it was real. They had been shot at. They had seen people get killed. They had been wounded.
All knew the value of training and how critical it would become when we ourselves were under fire.
9
I COMPLETED MY INFANTRY TRAINING ON NOVEMBER 10, 1966, the 191st birthday of the United States Marine Corps, and returned home to Brookline for three weeks of leave. My homecoming was disorienting. Civilian life seemed chaotic and unstructured. I felt naked without the rifle that had been with me since the second week of boot camp. I wasn’t sure what to do with my new body. I was twenty pounds heavier than when I’d left. None of my old clothes fit.
I wondered at my muscled strength. My shoulders were broad, my thighs were like granite, and my general appearance was, well, mean. My every stance was awkward. Making sentences out of words became a thoughtful struggle. As my mother noted, it was palpable the degree to which things had changed in my life during those long weeks at Parris Island, while little at home seemed to have