Loon - Jack McLean [8]
They needed fresh bodies to meet their ballooning war quotas.
I decided to take Sergeant Miller’s advice. I spent my final day of spring break walking through the surreal world of the pre-induction physical. Five of us met at the Custom House at eight A.M. and were driven to the Boston army base, the location at which all military physicals for the Boston region were administered. There were hundreds of men in their underpants wandering from one station to the next throughout the cavernous old pier. This was not the protected world of Andover. This was the real world. I felt curiously comfortable as I was herded from station to station. This surprised me. I knew my life was about to change. Even though I had not as yet enlisted, the exciting prospect of actually being a United States Marine was beginning to ferment inside of me.
Late that afternoon, as evening began to fall, the five of us were stuffed back into Sergeant Miller’s automobile for the return trip to the Custom House. We’d all passed.
The sergeant first looked to the kid next to him sitting in the middle of the front seat, tousling the boy’s hair with his hand as he spoke.
“Waddya say, Murphy?”
“I’m there, Sarge. When does the train leave for Parris Island?”
“Eight o’clock tonight, South Station.”
“Any place I can get something to eat before I go?”
What?
My heart stopped.
I felt suddenly light-headed. I wanted to throw up. Murphy was going to Parris Island tonight? Parris Island—the notorious Marine Corps boot camp? This boy with whom I had spent the day strolling from station to station was on his way there? Tonight? What would he tell his mother?
Boy by boy, my new comrades fell to the solicitous Sergeant Miller. One was to go the next day, one after graduation, one after his sister’s wedding. Finally Miller got to me.
“What about it, McLean?”
Four sets of eyes craned to look at me. Sergeant Miller kept his eyes forward as he navigated through the Boston rush hour traffic.
Too stunned to answer, I remained silent.
“McLean?”
Decisions, decisions. What was I to do?
Unlike five different colleges, the United States Marine Corps actually wanted me.
It was a most agreeable feeling.
The United States Marine Corps.
The eagle, globe, and anchor.
The hymn.
Tarawa.
Iwo Jima.
Me.
I had already decided not to attend college right away. There was a draft. I was healthy, and I didn’t want to try to get out of it. It would be an honor to serve my country. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. Two years? I could stand on my head for two years.
I can’t recall a time in my life before or since when a looming decision seemed more obvious.
I did think about Vietnam.
The prospect of war provided brief flashes of tingling excitement. I was, after all, an eighteen-year-old boy. My whole young life had been filled with endless television shows and movies of cowboys killing Indians, and Americans killing Germans and Japanese. Now it was my turn. Probably, though, my fate would be in a supply center someplace, or perhaps embassy duty. Like the recruiting posters, I would wear the distinguished Marine Corps dress blue uniform.
The prospect seemed manageable.
Vietnam would probably be over in six months, a year at most. The only war of my generation would be concluded before I had the chance to go.
Minutes later, I said, “I do,” and began a clock ticking that would end one hundred twenty days later when I too would report to South Station for the long ride to Parris Island, South Carolina.
5
THE FOLLOWING DAY, TO THE STUNNED DISBELIEF OF faculty and students, I returned to school with my news.
“You did what?”
“Come on. You’re kidding, right?”
“Jack, you can’t be serious?”
I was eagerly looking for some