“Each of you will have the chance to earn this uniform,” I continued, “if you choose to attend my boot camp.”
Tavon spoke up again. “And what if we don’t?”
“The other choice is ditto work in your classroom,” I explained.
“Ms. Veselich has been kind enough to give up her planning period for you.”
As I turned to walk away, Tavon realized I was for real. “You givin’ out uniforms, though, right?”
“I’m not giving away anything, Tavon,” I said, fighting back the urge to smile. “If you want the uniform, then you’ll have to earn it.”
Tavon’s sidekick, Rodell, looked at him curiously. “You goin’?”
“When you come to boot camp, Tavon,” I said, not waiting for his response, “have the others stand on the yellow footprints in the hall outside the gym doors.”
For the remainder of the school year every student in Tavon’s class, the most challenging students in the school, chose to attend my boot camp. For ten weeks they marched, exercised, and memo-rized basic Marine Corps facts and the rank structure. They spent a lot of time digging on my quarterdeck, and with the brim of my cover against their noses, and they loved every minute of it. No one quit, was referred out of class, or was even close to a discipline problem (at least in my class). The program took the school by storm, and soon the gym was flooded with teachers, social workers, and psychologists—all trying to figure out why boot camp was working.
The teachers talked about the developmental progression of learning. The social workers attributed the success to the group process, and bonding. The psychologists saw it as a behavioral 272
B u z z W i l l i a m s
model based on a unique marriage of positive reinforcement and punishment.
One thing everyone agreed about, though, was that it worked—
and that the school needed more of it, whatever it was. It would take me years to figure that out.
APRIL 1993
The word was the postwar budget was tight, which is why it took us ten drills to get our LAVs onto the firing range. It was about time. Our ATD was scheduled for July, and we had little time with the LAVs to prepare. As the only LAV veteran in the platoon I was appointed Sgt. Fields’s gunner and would be tasked with platoon gunnery training. Teaching others was exactly what I wanted to do, so the drill promised to be one of the best since our return from the Gulf.
Things didn’t turn out quite like I planned.
Friday night we prepped the vehicles and mounted up for the hour-long trip to the range. Once off road, Capt. Downes, our new company commander, ordered all vehicle lights off. Driving under blackout conditions, with night sights, was important for drivers.
Knowing it was necessary didn’t make it any easier for me to cope.
It was the first time I had been in a LAV, at night, without being the driver . . . without being in control. Standing on the gunner’s seat, exposed from the waist up, I strained my eyes forward. The dirt road was a patchwork of craters and mounds, pitching the LAV
from side to side. Each tilt sent me down inside the turret, holding on for life, sure that we were rolling over.
“What’re you doing, Williams?”
Sgt. Fields didn’t know and I wasn’t telling. There were a thousand excuses. My comm was down . . . my sights needed adjustment . . .
my foot slipped . . . everything but the truth. Inside the turret my legs were locked under my seat, hands gripping anything solid to keep me in place. Scared out of my mind, and embarrassed, I wanted more than anything to tell the driver to turn on the headlights. Another S P A R E P A R T S
273
pitch to the side. Another drop inside . . . legs locked . . . death grip.
Finally, we arrived. The darkness hid my ashen face, trembling hands, and sweat-soaked uniform. Boots on dirt never felt better.
The early morning light showed all nine LAVs on the firing line atop the ridge, barrels extending over the canyon below; thousands of meters of open space littered with an assortment of trucks, armored vehicles, and tanks. Behind the LAVs was a mountain of ammunition boxes. The ammunition should have been expended before lunch on Saturday under normal firing conditions.
But our day on the range was anything but normal. Few of the guns were operational, none of the crews were proficient, and worst of all there was no firing plan. The only central authority on the range was the safety officer, tasked with ensuring rules were followed. The rules on the LAV range were as asinine as those at the rifle range. Once a LAV gun jammed, it remained on the firing line.
Firing continued if the crew cleared the jam. Most of the time the crews required veteran gunners to come aboard and fix their malfunctions. Range rules required a cease-fire for Marines to enter and exit vehicles on the firing line. No sooner than one jam was cleared, another weapon would lock, and firing would cease again.
By lunch there was barely a dent in the mountain of ammunition, and the officers were anxious. We were only authorized to use the range until 2100 hours. Furthermore, the rounds had to be expended before the range closed because ordnance policy required all issued rounds be fired, not returned. Given our current rate of fire that was improbable.
As the clock ticked, the range safety officer relaxed the policy of shutting down the firing line every time a gun jammed. Instead, a brief cease-fire was called until the “down vehicle” moved to the end of the firing line, where Marines could enter and exit safely. By sunset all but one LAV was down. With more than a thousand rounds left the CO decided to use the lone LAV to simply blow rounds downrange. Sgt. Krause and Cpl. Ryder sat in the turret. I remained in the back of the hull, linking rounds and feeding them forward into the ready box. The main gun was able to fire two hundred rounds per minute when operated by a well-trained crew.
274
B u z z W i l l i a m s
Dozens of Marines lay in the shadows along the wood line, eating and drinking, smoking and joking, watching and waiting . . .
some even sleeping. I didn’t blame them. Some of them were officers, but not LAV officers. Few, if any, knew how to start the engine, let alone operate the main gun. There were sergeants and staff sergeants among them too. But even the well intentioned offered little help with the complexities of LAV gunnery. The majority lying in the shadows were new-joins, sucked into the Corps by the glory of Desert Storm hype. At twenty-five years old I already felt like an old man compared to those starry-eyed kids. For them this was just drill . . . reserve training at its best.
Sitting, exhausted and angry, amid the pile of empty ammo boxes, I sorted through my thoughts and feelings. I was again growing to hate being a reservist. Most of my time now was spent on the Ramp, washing hulls already cleaned, checking fluids already filled, and counting the same parts over and over again. The few times we had left the Ramp were disasters for me. Hallucinations on the rifle range . . . panic attacks in the vehicle . . . and now even gunnery was a joke.
What we needed were Marines like Capt. Ricks at Lejeune or Staff Sgt. Rodriguez in Saudi. We needed Marines who had complete mastery of their field; leaders to mold the new kids; instructors to teach them what they need to know when they’re called to war.
I was reaching another crossroads. I couldn’t imagine another deployment with reserve-business-as-usual. More than half the veterans from the Gulf had already bailed for that reason. The alternative was to find the leaders and teachers we needed. My search started as soon as we returned to Upshur that Sunday morning.
Capt. Downes understood our needs. He had served with us as the TOW Platoon commander during the Gulf War, and replaced Capt. Cruz when his tour ended. Capt. Downes deserved the promotion. He understood reservists and, more importantly LAVs.
Like Capt. Cruz he believed in realistic training in the field. The problem was there weren’t enough skilled Marines in the line platoons. Capt. Downes agreed with my concerns about training—
particularly gunnery training. He explai
ned his vision for future S P A R E P A R T S
275
training, which involved a reserve master gunner that paralleled the I & I master gunner. I didn’t even know there was an I & I master gunner.
I made it my business to meet him.
Later that day I stood outside Staff Sgt. Nicholson’s door. It was my first time in the training office, usually off limits to reservists. I & I Marines didn’t mix with reservists, a tribal dynamic I never fully understood. My education began with the knock.
“What.”
I stepped through the hatch and faced his desk, “Good morning, Staff Sergeant.”
Looking up from a pile of papers, he called, “What!”
“I’m Lance Corporal Williams. I want to be considered for the reserve master gunner position.”
“The reserve what? Master gunner?”
“The CO told me we were starting a new position called reserve master gunner . . . someone to learn under you . . . and teach the reservists gunnery.”
He hadn’t heard about it. “Who told you this?”
“Capt. Downes.”
He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, feet on the desk. “Oh. That explains it. He’s your CO, not mine. Until my CO
tells me otherwise, there ain’t no such beast as a reserve master gunner.”
Appalled by his arrogance, I stepped up to his desk. “If you’re responsible for our gunnery, then you should know about the cluster-fuck on the range yesterday.”
Now I had his attention.
“Most of the gunners don’t know how to assemble the main gun, time it, or install the chutes.” I continued, “Few know which end of the ammo belt to feed into the chutes, how to crank the rounds into the receiver, or how to cycle the ghost round. And after they make their best guesses the gun probably won’t fire . . . and if it does it’ll jam . . . and only a couple of us know how to unfuck it once it does.”
Staff Sgt. Nicholson was unimpressed. “I’m busy now, Williams.
Come back tomorrow and we can talk.” Then came the conde-276
B u z z W i l l i a m s
scending sarcasm I had come to expect from I & I Marines. “Oh . . .
I forgot. You’ll be off until next month. Too bad . . . I have the whole day open.”
His laugh was the last thing I heard on my way out.
My knock was the first thing he heard when he arrived for work Monday morning. The three-hour drive was worth the look on his face when I walked into his office.
“Still have the whole day open, Staff Sergeant?”
He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I have an appointment with you to talk about the reserve master gunner billet, remember?”
Staff Sgt. Nicholson, like Sgt. Jackson in maintenance, was more bark than bite. He kept his word and spent the whole morning with me, showing me his job as company master gunner. He knew gunnery, bragging he was the best gunner in the Corps. Serving with 2nd LAI, his was the active-duty company that deployed from Lejeune just before we had arrived before the war. We spent hours swapping stories. In between I learned about the gunnery curriculum, competency tests, qualification standards, and training aids.
Everything we needed. I also got an inside look at the mountain of paperwork that kept Staff Sgt. Nicholson behind his desk, instead of in the field where we needed him.
Staff Sgt. Nicholson introduced me to his CO and we talked about the reserve master gunner idea. A reserve Marine was to be trained as master gunner at Twentynine Palms during the July ATD. It came as no surprise to me that Sgt. Krause had arranged for his gunner, Cpl. Ryder, to get the job. Cpl. Ryder was a shit-hot gunner, and a veteran, but he was planning on getting out after ATD.
The news wasn’t hard to spin in my favor.
“Train me and Cpl. Ryder during ATD . . . I’m his replacement.”
Staff Sgt. Nicholson laughed, “Says who?”
“Says me. I’m the second-best gunner in the Corps.”
Staff Sgt. Nicholson had clout. During Friday formation next drill, Sgt. Fields congratulated me on my promotion to master gunner, along with Cpl. Ryder, and transferred me into Headquarters S P A R E P A R T S
277
Platoon. The surprised look on Sgt. Krause’s face that day was priceless.
JULY 1993
The days leading up to the July ATD were particularly stressful.
Gina and I were married 20 June, which gave us only a few days to honeymoon before my departure for two weeks of active duty in Twentynine Palms, California. Although Gina was understanding about my Marine obligation, as she had been since we met, I was becoming increasingly annoyed by it. Not even my wedding or my honeymoon could take my mind completely away from the anxiety I felt about going back into the desert, which in my mind would be reliving my combat experience. That was the kind of interference with my life that kept me on the verge of joining the exodus.
On the verge, that is, until I started working with Staff Sgt.
Nicholson.
Staff Sgt. Nicholson was the reason I didn’t quit the reserves. He was the real deal in gunnery—hard core. Finally, I had found a mentor who was willing and able to help me realize my potential as a Marine. Under his supervision I would become the Marine I had always wanted to be—a trusted and respected leader, capable of making a difference in the company’s combat readiness.
Once in the desert of Twentynine Palms, Cpl. Ryder and I stayed glued to Staff Sgt. Nicholson’s side. We were segregated from the line platoons, and worked as a three-man team immersed in the world of gunnery. Without the constraints of safety rules and bu-reaucratic regulations, the staff sergeant was able to teach us the way he had learned in the fleet—rugged . . . raw . . . and rogue.
Cpl. Ryder and I waited impatiently for our first day of firing with the staff sergeant. He opened the rear hatches of the LAV, the hull filled with ammo boxes, and smiled.
“Go for it, boys, let’s see what you can do!”
Cpl. Ryder and I looked at each other stupidly, then back at the staff sergeant.
278
B u z z W i l l i a m s
“Go ahead. We got the range all day.”
Not since the Gulf had we been presented with boxes of ammo and the order to make our guns ready. Back then we winged it, never really knowing if what we were doing was correct, praying the gun would fire every time we pulled the trigger.
Staff Sgt. Nicholson stayed silent while we opened the ammo boxes and fed the belts into the ready box. He stayed silent while we failed to boresight the barrel, forgot to calibrate the sights, miscon-nected the links, neglected to check for grease, and skipped timing the receiver.
Nothing escaped him, though. He had a plan.
Cpl. Ryder took the driver’s position and fired the engines while I powered up the turret and cycled the ghost round.
Staff Sgt. Nicholson dropped into the VC seat and called over the intercom. “You good to go?”
“Check!”
“Identify targets on your own and fire at will.”
“Aye-Aye . . . On the way!”
The only thing on the way, however, was the misfire from hell.
Fucking great! A jam.
“Piece of shit gun!” I said.
Staff Sgt. Nicholson called for Cpl. Ryder to shut off the engines and motioned me to the back of the LAV. Then he welcomed me to fleet-style training, slapping my helmet from my head.
“Don’t you ever talk shit about that weapon system!”
Shocked and embarrassed, I looked to Cpl. Ryder for support, his eyes as big as mine. The staff sergeant continued.
“The only thing wrong with that weapon is you! That’s how you prep for fire? And you two shit birds are the best in the company.
No fucking wonder we can’t get rounds downrange!”
Too late to maintain composure, I acquiesced. “I’m not sure what you want me to do.”
“Climb
up there and unfuck that gun!”
Cpl. Ryder joined me in the turret. Within minutes our uniforms were sweat soaked, and knuckles bloody. We tried every trick we S P A R E P A R T S
279
knew to disassemble the gun, but nothing worked. After a half hour the staff sergeant took pity on us.
Looking down into the turret from above he called in, “There wasn’t any grease on the bolt track. I dried it early this morning.”
Like an engine operated without oil the gun’s components were locked up.
Embarrassed again, I looked up through the hatch and con-fessed. “I don’t know what to do.”
The remedy was not pretty. It was downright dangerous. But I went along with it, rationalizing it as deserved punishment. Cpl. Ryder and I lifted the entire weapon out of the vehicle, without taking it apart, and laid it on the tarp to protect it from the sand. Who knew it could even be done? Then I inserted the long steel rod backward into the barrel until it stopped. Staff Sgt. Nicholson made the diagnosis by the length of rod left over.
“You got a round stuck in the barrel. Otherwise the rod would slide in up to this point.”
Then came the crazy part.
“Use the sledgehammer to drive the rod down the barrel,” he said. “It’ll push the round backward until the receiver can grab it.”
I was skeptical. “How do we know we’re not driving the round back into the firing pin?”
“We don’t. You should have thought about that before you fired my weapon dry.”
He wasn’t bullshitting, and took cover behind the vehicle while I pounded the high explosive round backward. With every strike I ducked, expecting the rod to blast outward. After several blows the round was back in the receiver and I hand-cranked it out. It was a character-building experience, and a lesson I’d never forget.
“How’d you learn that, Staff Sergeant?”
He pulled my cover over my eyes in a fatherly manner, “Same way you did. . . . Nicely done.”
That’s the way Staff Sgt. Nicholson taught us everything about the gun. With each passing day our repertoire grew, along with our confidence. We became ammunition specialists, prepping and aligning 280
Spare Parts Page 31