“Abattalion run? Are you serious?”
I sat up in bed and eyed Stephenson skeptically. He’d just come back to our hut from the daily meeting, and dabbed a trickle of sweat that ran down his temple with the fabric of his hat.
“We have to. We wouldn’t want to ruin our rapport with the Marines. Anyhow, I don’t think we really have a choice.”
A “motivational run,” as the Marines called it, was how they intended to celebrate the Fourth of July. I lay back in bed and sighed in resignation to the fact there would be no escaping it. It was sure to be less than motivational in temperatures north of one hundred degrees, and they hadn’t mentioned how long it would be. If the battalion runs I remembered from Fort Bragg were any indication, we could look forward to at least a few miles of knee-jarring shuffle-stomp, all the while singing cadence calls to keep the rhythm of our step.
I wonder if their cadences are very different from ours. They are probably going to sing army-bashing ones. And what about fireworks? Are the insurgents going to salute us with a nice volley of mortars while we are all running in formation?
On the morning of the Fourth, Josh, Stephenson, and I walked toward the parking lot in front of battalion headquarters dressed in our battle uniforms. In garrison we usually only wore pistols, but in the interest of uniformity and mutual suffering we carried our M4 rifles since the Marines would run with their M16s. As more Marines arrived, each of the companies formed neat lines of men behind their guidons, red flags emblazoned with the golden anchor, globe, and eagle of the Marine corps.
“I guess we fall in with Headquarters Company,” Stephenson said.
The formation stood four ranks deep and stretched the entire length of the parking lot. Centered and facing us stood the battalion’s command sergeant major, who as a man of short stature was barely visible above the rows of helmeted heads.
“Bat-alyun! Ten-hyuh!” he screamed.
All of us stood to attention as one entity, with an audible snap. I chuckled to myself that he’d abbreviated the command in such a stereotypically Marine fashion.
“Rye, fay!”
We pivoted ninety degrees to the right.
“Port, harms!”
I brought my rifle up from beside my right leg and held it in front of my chest with both hands.
“For-ward, hmah! Dou-ble tiiime!”
On the final command we each stepped forward, jogging in short and choppy steps to avoid stepping on the heels of the men in front.
The formation smelled as one might expect of a group of men with no one to impress, ripening in the sun. Powdery sand stirred by our feet clung to every sweaty patch of exposed skin. My rifle grew hot and slippery in my hands. With each stride my armor bounced up and landed on my shoulders. The chin strap of my helmet felt scratchy and grew looser as my jaw moved, making the Kevlar pot pound the top of my head. We chanted:
One mile,
No sweat,
Two miles,
Better yet,
Three miles,
You can’t take it,
Four miles,
You won’t make it.
Our column snaked around the Cobra helicopters on their pads, down dirt trails, and back up the hill to the start point, where tables loaded with hot dogs and boxes of potato chips awaited. A few representatives of the battalion leadership stood behind smoking barbeque grills, sipping nonalcoholic beers.
Colonel Dooney ascended a raised wooden platform and addressed his troops, raising his voice above their exhausted panting. The air was heavy with the scent of dusty, sweaty bodies and grilled meat.
You Marines are the reason the folks back home can celebrate this holiday today in honor of our nation’s independence and enjoy freedoms unparalleled anywhere else on the face of the planet. Each one of you made a conscious choice to join the finest fighting force in the history of armed conflict. You have each left your own nation, your own families, so that another country might know freedom. Your commitment to your country and the sacrifices you make do not go unnoticed. The American people are proud of the job you are doing, and I am proud of you and humbled and honored to serve with you.
The colonel’s patriotic words were said sincerely, and the personal sacrifices of his men could not be denied, but to my ear, the speech rang hollow.
President Eisenhower once warned of the unwarranted influence of an expanding military-industrial complex, that the citizenry of the United States should be alert and knowledgeable enough to prevent corporations from dictating foreign policy. I couldn’t help but wonder at the paradox of me, a citizen of a country that won its independence from British occupation through violence, stood celebrating the occasion on the soil of a country that the British had created and we ourselves now occupied. How prophetic had been our former president to foresee that the nation’s military would one day become guardians of a New Utopia of corporate-military collusion that enriched corporations like Halliburton, Blackwater, and General Dynamics more than it ensured domestic tranquility or foreign freedoms.
If only they knew.
I lamented the state of what I imagined to be my countrymen’s lack of awareness that permitted their collective conscience to embrace a war that no longer even pretended to be fought under the initial pretext of uncovering weapons of mass destruction, or at least allowed them enough comfort to ignore it.
If only they could come here and see for themselves how many dead children a half-trillion dollar defense budget buys.
If they did come, they would have also seen that the money bought plenty of nonalcoholic beers and burnt hot dogs, and we pawns were happy for it, at least for an hour or two.
One more holiday away from home. One day closer to getting back.