Griffin descended the three sandbagged steps and knocked on a piece of ammo crate that shored up one side of the entrance to the bunker.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Sergeant Griffin, Staff Sergeant Whitney. Got a minute?”
“Come on in, Sergeant Griffin,” said Whitney from inside the bunker.
Griffin entered and nodded to the other occupants of the bunker. Sensing that Griffin wanted to speak privately with his platoon sergeant they edged past him and moved out of the bunker. “What can I do for you today, Sergeant?”
Griffin drew a long breath, “About the first shirt, Staff Sergeant. It’s been two weeks now and this bullshit is just getting worse. My people aren’t just tired, they’re pissed. He’s gone too far. He expects them to work sixteen hours a day, then pull watches at night. That’s garrison bullshit. We’ve got more problems than just unpolished boots and wrinkled utilities. Maybe he hasn’t noticed, but we’ve been rocketed almost every night since the navy started shelling hostile areas. Most nights we get some sort of H&I fire and its starting to wear people down. The platoon and the company are demoralized. They feel like the staff NCOs or the platoon commanders ought to say something. They expect something. The first sergeant demoralizes us at every formation. All he ever says is what a bunch of douche bags we are.”
Before Griffin could continue Whitney held up a hand to stop him. “Sergeant Griffin, how long have you been in the Marine Corps?”
“Seven years and some change, Staff Sergeant.”
“Well, I’ve been in almost fourteen. If there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that all first sergeants can be assholes at times. Don’t worry. The company will come out of this. Is that the real problem, or is something else bothering you?’
“A lot of shit is bothering me. I’m not as ready to dismiss the first shirt as quick as you seem to be. The man is demoralizing my squad and my platoon. You tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do and I’ll do it.”
“Look, Sergeant Griffin. We know there’s a problem. Okay? But put yourself in our place. Short of a mutiny, what do you want us to do? You know the system. Everything revolves around chain of command, and the first shirt is at the top of the chain in this company as far as the enlisted personnel are concerned. The best shot we have is the company gunny, and he has already talked to the first shirt, and right now the man just isn’t going to listen. Give it a little more time and it will pass.”
Griffin ran a finger through his close-cropped hair. He wasn’t really satisfied with the staff sergeant’s answers, but he knew better than to press the issue. “Okay, Staff Sergeant Whitney. I see your point. But there is something else on my mind.”
“Shoot,” said the older man.
“Well, it’s the way we’re running our patrols. Last time we got hit we were lucky. Whoever it was that threw that grenade was an amateur. A scared amateur. He didn’t even stick around to see the damage. But it’s different now. They’re getting serious about hurting us. Everybody talks shit about lousy rag-head cannon cockers, but they killed the corporal of the guard in Bravo Company the other night. And that fucking village is a nightmare. Half the time I can’t see the whole squad, and the other half my comm with the company is out. And what’s all this bullshit about ’creating a presence?’ I write that on every patrol report, but what the fuck does that mean? Does anybody know what the hell we are supposed to be trying to accomplish here? Jesus Christ, Staff Sergeant, they don’t even want us to load our fucking rifles on patrol.”
The staff sergeant chuckled. “Well, I haven’t noticed first squad going out unloaded of late.”
“You’re damn right you haven’t,” snapped Griffin. “Let ’em come along and check weapons for themselves if they’re worried about the fucking Rules of Engagement. I’m not going out there unloaded. It’s stupid, and you know it.”
Whitney rose from his cot and edged past Griffin in the narrow bunker. “Grab a seat, and try to calm down a little. It’s too early in the morning to get so pissed off,” he said. He went to his olive drab Val pack and rummaged around inside it. With his back to Griffin he tried to think of something to say. He had come to the platoon some thirteen months before, and since that time Griffin had never spoken to him in this manner. Griffin was an old school Marine. Keep your mouth shut, follow orders, accomplish the mission. For him to speak like this meant there were serious morale problems. Not just with Griffin’s squad, but with Griffin himself, and probably the other squad leaders. Griffin was liked and respected by the platoon. He would have to be careful what he said. Whatever tone Griffin set would be adopted by most of the others, and Griffin’s attitude would be affected by what he was about to say.
“Ah, there it is now,” he said to Griffin, extracting a half-empty bottle of bourbon from the depths of his Val pack. “All of us southern boys damned near cried when they started issuing those plastic canteens. Fucking plastic melts, or holds the smell of the goods. Damn risky carrying a bottle, too. Glass breaks, and you’re shit out of luck. It’s enough to break a man’s heart, seeing good bourbon go to waste. Well, war is hell they say.” He turned in time to see a faint smile from Griffin, and his apprehension eased a bit. He poured a couple of shots into two canteen cups and passed one to Griffin who grimaced as he swallowed a mouthful of the warm liquid. The staff sergeant studied Griffin over the lip of his canteen cup before speaking.
Fourteen years in the Corps, he thought, and this part of it never gets any easier. He had asked the same questions of an older Marine a decade before. The frustrations and anger were the same, only the battlefield was different. And he was different this time around. He had changed in the dozen or so years since he had left Vietnam for the last time. He was less emotional now, less caring about some things, more understanding toward others. He had come away from Vietnam with scars, on his body and in his mind. Those scars had marked the boy and shaped the man. His concept of duty had been altered, and he had lost any semblance of innocence. Now he had begun to realize what mattered in life. It was nothing he could put into words, it was less tangible than even an idea. The Marine Corps mattered to him. The whole of it, with its myriad of regulations and its crushing weight of conformity. But what really mattered were the traditions, and the thought of the others who had gone before him. The ones who had made the legends at places whose names were now an inseparable part of the lore of the Corps. Tripoli, Belleau Wood, Tarawa.
He had known it would come to this since he was a boy. He had readied himself his entire life for the physical challenges, the long marches, the endless cycles of training. He had endured it all, the abuse, the harassment, the discipline. He had naively clung to the belief that somehow the system could really prepare a man for the shock of combat.
Those first few seconds in a nameless firefight in Vietnam had served to erase those beliefs forever. Now he realized that nothing readies a man for war. The overwhelming terror that seizes a boy during his first battle. Or the stark, haunting realization that you aren’t any different from the others and that when your turn comes you will die. It didn’t matter that he had run the mile faster than any boy in the county his junior year in high school, or that a girl back home loved him. One moment in an otherwise ordinary day and his life would be reduced to the memories of a few people who had known him and a name carved into a piece of stone.
He had decided to remain because of some inner calling, an indefinable desire to be a part of something bigger than himself, and to share the company of others with that same sense of duty to the Corps. He had spent his entire adult life in service to the Corps. He had never really known anything else.
It hadn’t come without its price. Two daughters that he barely knew who were now back home with their mother in Kentucky. And a letter in his pocket from a lawyer telling him that his wife wanted a divorce.
Ten years ago he would have thrown the letter away and gotten drunk. He would have had more emotion for her then, more to give, and more to lose. Now she mattered less somehow, and both of them knew it. It was less of a surprise than he might have once imagined. He couldn’t even blame her really. He had been a real bastard, first with the drinking, then with the other women, and now with the months-long deployments.
He had stayed in the Corps even after her father had offered him a job back home. A job with a decent salary. Enough to buy a piece of the mountains they both loved. A chance to raise their girls with family, put down roots in a place they both knew as home. She had tolerated it all. She had done what she could while he destroyed their marriage, first by drinking, then by his silence. He had never been able to tell her about Vietnam, or about the boys he had lost there.
One boy really. One young lieutenant who had died on a nameless battlefield on an otherwise unremarkable day. A battlefield without any particular distinction or glory, except perhaps the distinction of being the place where one more Marine died.
Even now he was unsure why this one death had affected him so deeply. He only knew that it had, and afterward he had known he could never leave the Marine Corps. He had thought about that lieutenant often in the years since Vietnam. He had been a sergeant then, on his second tour. He was acting platoon sergeant and the lieutenant had become his friend over the months spent in the bush. He had shaped the boy, even though he was little more than a boy himself. He had taken a great deal of pride in the fact that he was acting in the tradition of Marine NCOs by helping to form the character of one of the Corps’ young officers.
When they had put him on the medevac bird the lieutenant had pulled him close and said over the noise of the helicopter that he should write his family, and that he hoped he had earned the respect of his Marines. And he had said “Thank you.” He could have forgotten the boy had it not been for the thank you. Not forgotten exactly, just pushed him back into the crevices of his memory where you put the things that are too painful to think of very often.
Griffin reminded him of that lieutenant in an odd sort of way. Maybe it was because he had done what he could to shape both of them. Or maybe it was because they were both so determined to be good Marines. There was some quality they both shared that he could never put a name to. Something fierce and unyielding in their character that had destined them both to be Marines. Good Marines.
And now, a decade later, it was happening all over again. Soon enough the dying would start. He recognized all the signs that he had been too young to know the first time. He glanced at Griffin and wondered if he was getting old, becoming maudlin. Trying to sound as much like a father as he could he plunged ahead, “Look, Sergeant Griffin, we’re Marines. Nobody in Washington, D.C., gives one single flying fuck about us. The only thing that matters back there is votes. Dead Marines, at least lots of dead Marines, means less votes for the guy in office at election time and shitty stories in all the newspapers. Other than that, they’re not real worried about us. So don’t waste a lot of your time worrying about crap like ’creating a presence.’ That’s just a line of bullshit for them to feed to the press. Your mission, and mine, is to get back home with this platoon in one piece. If we’re lucky we’ll pull it off. So let’s concentrate on that for now.”
He shook his head and continued, “As far as the first sergeant, well, fuck me if I know what kind of rock got stuck in his shorts. If it will make you feel any better, I’ll have a talk with the company gunny and see what he thinks.”
The staff sergeant paused and looked at Griffin for a moment, wondering if he was striking the right chord. “But you remember this. We’re Marines, you and me. Neither of us is some wet behind the ears private on his first pump. Both of us have been around. So when you’re out there in Indian country, you run your squad the way you see fit, boy. And you let the politicians in Washington worry about counting votes. Now it’s time for formation, so let’s go out there and get our collective ass chewed like the true professionals we are.” The staff sergeant smiled and slapped Griffin on the shoulder as he left the bunker.