by Jack McLean
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
Stay focused on the ear, Jack.
“How do you like your drill instructors, Private?”
Huh? Was he kidding?
No, he appeared serious, but I knew better than to speak the truth.
Again, what was the right answer?
“Sir, the private likes his drill instructors okay, sir.”
“They can be pretty tough sometimes, though, can’t they?”
I was now becoming uncomfortable about the direction of the questions.
I slowly nodded silently.
“Private McLean, I’m going to ask you an important question and it is important that you give me a truthful answer. Do you understand me, son?”
“Sir. Yes, sir,” I replied, barely above a whisper.
“Private McLean, have you ever been struck by a drill instructor during your time here at Parris Island?”
Shit.
“Sir, the private doesn’t understand the question, sir.”
What a stupid response. I understood the question perfectly, but I needed time to gather myself.
“Fairly simple question, Private. Have you ever been hit by a drill instructor? You know, hit, like with a fist?”
No matter what happened here, these officers would be gone from my life shortly. I would, however, still have to sleep with Staff Sergeant Hilton.
So I lied.
“Sir. No, sir.”
“No? Again, Private, it’s important that you tell us the truth. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to you. Please tell me the truth now. Have you ever been hit by a drill instructor or seen anyone else in the platoon hit by a drill instructor?”
All eyes were focused on me.
“Sir. No, sir.”
Now I was living the lie. It was getting easier.
“Okay. I believe you, son. Now, have you ever written a letter home telling anyone that you’ve ever been beaten?”
Let’s see. Think. I told one or two friends. I may have written something to Mr. Richards, one of my teachers at Andover. I couldn’t think of anyone else. Did they read your mail here? How could I have been so stupid?
“Sir. No, sir.”
“Private McLean, does the name Jack Richards mean anything to you?”
Fuck. I’m fucked.
“Private?”
The air had escaped from my lungs. All blood had left my face. I had to sit. I was sitting. I had to lie down. I felt shame. I was cornered. Caught. I remembered the letter now. I had told him about the rifle incident with Staff Sergeant Hilton in great detail. He must have said something to somebody. Good intentions, perhaps, since Parris Island was not that many years removed from the infamous night when an out-of-control drill instructor had marched several in his platoon to their death in the surrounding swamps.
They had the letter; there was no way out.
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
“And did you write a letter telling him that you’d been hit by a drill instructor here on Parris Island?”
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
“So Private McLean, either you lied in the letter or you are lying to us. Which is it, son?”
No right answer either way, but I still had six more weeks with Platoon 3076.
“The letter, sir.”
The inquisition was over in another ten minutes, during which time it was made clear that I was in fact a liar and that there was no place in the United States Marine Corps for dishonesty.
Did I understand?
Did I really understand?
I was told to immediately write a letter to Richards acknowledging that I had lied so that he could then inform the individual who had issued the complaint, thereby exonerating the United States Marine Corps of any culpability in this unfortunate episode.
As I marched back across the parade deck, it occurred to me that there probably wasn’t an officer in that room who had actually believed that I had not been hit, but I felt deep shame for my participation in the entire incident nonetheless.
Staff Sergeant Hilton was waiting as I reentered the barracks.
Who was in the room?
What did they have on their collars?
What did they ask?
What did you say?
Are you sure?
Tell me again.
After an exhaustive recounting, a very relieved Staff Sergeant Hilton ordered me back to my rack area to join the others in the daily domestic rituals of rifle cleaning and shoe spit-shining. I was frightened and relieved beyond all imagination. Any hope that I had had of remaining anonymous at Parris Island disappeared that day.
Not coincidentally, so did any chance that Staff Sergeant Hilton, or any other drill instructor, would ever touch me again.
“The Marine Corps Builds Men.”
For a generation, that powerful slogan attracted young boys like me to the United States Marine Corps. We all were eager to look like the mighty marine on the recruiting poster in the dress blue uniform, of whom family, community, and country would be proud. The marines were masters at the exterior part—twelve weeks of boot camp turned out an admirable physical specimen indeed. But the true measure of a man lies within. Colonel Aplington, in his letter to me months before, had said that “a man must make or break himself.” Which had I done? I wasn’t certain. The letter had been the truth. I’m certain that all involved knew that. My subsequent lies about it were shameful. It would be decades before I was able to reconcile the two.
8
DURING THE LAST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER, WE CAREFULLY folded and stowed all of our gear into seabags that were loaded onto a waiting truck. Equipped with our rifles and field marching packs, we fell into formation and with a resounding “Platoon 3076, FO’ARD HUUUH,” bid farewell to the 3rd Battalion area for the first time, and headed, double-time, several miles to the rifle range. I was excited. Certainly the toughest part of boot camp was over. Now would come the serious and sober business of the rifle.
As we left the area, the envious eyes of the newer recruits focused on us as we marched past the parade deck, obstacle course, and physical training fields. We were on our way to the range. We stood tall. We were proud. We were becoming marines. The drill instructor sang what would be our unending cadence for the next two weeks:
We don’t want no Maggie’s drawers.
All we want is fives and fours.
Left-right-left.
Left-right-left…
Fives and fours were the highest scores for each target. Maggie’s drawers, on the other hand, represented a total miss of the target. On such occasions, the spotter would wave a red flag on a long stick from beneath the target bunker.
As it turned out, I was completely wrong about the rifle range. The new tone set upon arrival was all too familiar. We moved into the barracks, removed our gear from the seabags, stowed it in footlockers, and were immediately informed by Staff Sergeant Hilton that we had five minutes to prepare for a “junk on the bunk” inspection. This hideous drill involved laying all of our gear on the bunk in a perfectly predetermined order with no margin for error.
Each bunk would be identically laid out, as we had exactly the same gear—not a toothbrush more, not a pair of socks less. The slightest wrinkle on a uniform, the tiniest flaw on a spit-shined shoe, the smallest corner of unpolished brass, were all cause for unimagined castigation. One flaw with one person’s gear, and we all would suffer. That was the way it worked.
It was, of course, a setup.
One hundred ten mostly teenage boys had been given five minutes to take everything they owned from a footlocker, stuff it into a seabag, and throw it onto a truck. At the other end, we’d been given five minutes to find our seabag, unload it into a footlocker, make up the new bunk, and then, upon it, display perfectly all that we owned. Someone would be missing a facecloth or a shoelace. Someone, God forbid, would have a piece of contraband—perhaps a stick of chewing gum sent by a girlfriend, or a cigarette, or a small box of cereal purloined from the me
ss hall.
Staff Sergeant Hilton slowly strutted down the squad bay, uniform perfectly creased, beady eyes perfectly focused, Smokey the Bear hat perfectly tipped forward.
We were fucked.
He randomly stopped in front of Private Darnell’s bunk. Nothing. Then Garcia’s. Nothing. He turned toward me, and my heart leapt into my throat. He walked over and saw something on the bunk next to mine. I have no recollection what it might have been, but Staff Sergeant Hilton went nuts. He tipped the entire bunk over, threw the mattress out the open second-floor window, and then picked up the footlocker and threw it down the squad bay. He mirrored the same exercise with three other displays before he began to regain his composure. His final insult was to empty several cans of talcum powder over all in sight.
“This place looks like a shit hole, you maggots.”
He was pissed.
“Get this dump squared away. Sanchez, you’d better get that fuckin’ mattress back up here before the captain sees it or you’ll really be in a world of shit.”
So began our fortnight at the rifle range.
The following morning we had PT and drilled just as though we were back at battalion. We then attended our first class—we called it Snapping-In 101. Before we could shoot the rifle, we had to learn how to hold the rifle. Preparation was everything. This preparation was called snapping-in. We began with the standing position. We’d stand at the ready, create a hasty sling around the left arm, and spread our feet to a comfortable distance apart. We’d then place the rifle against the right shoulder, with the left arm under the rifle supporting it in the most balanced position. Finally, we’d grip the stock with the right hand while holding the right elbow in line with or above the shoulder. Above all, it was important to keep the body erect. To be certain that we understood this, we were ordered to hold the position without moving a hair for one hour.
We could then take a sip of water, and repeat the process.
The following days brought more new positions to be mastered. First was the sitting position, which included a new set of contortions that bore little resemblance to those of the day before, other than the pain involved. The closer to the ground, the steadier the shot. Every few minutes, the drill instructor’s right foot would bear down on your back to be certain you understood what “closer to the ground” meant. Don’t move a hair for one hour.
Take a sip of water.
Repeat.
The kneeling position was mastered on day three and the prone position on day four. On days five and six we snapped-in, drilled, did PT, and attended classes that taught us what to expect the following week when the actual shooting began.
At the beginning of the second week, we went to the shooting range for the first time. After hours of sight adjustment, we snapped-in at the one-hundred-yard line and fired several rounds of live ammunition. With each early awkward round fired, an instructor would lean down and whisper our new mantra into our ringing ears, “Breathe, relax, aim, slack, and squeeze, motherfucker.” He might then continue for emphasis, “You better hit that target, shit head, or you are never getting off this island.”
Qualification, two days later, was all business. We woke up early, skipped PT and drilling, had a light breakfast, and were on the range by six A.M. There were smoking smudge pots along the firing line. We each carefully applied the soot to the top of our cheeks so that our sweat would not reflect the sun back into our eyes. We then awaited our turn to shoot at the targets. At two hundred yards, we were to fire from the standing and kneeling positions. At three hundred yards, we’d use the kneeling and sitting positions. At five hundred yards, we’d fire from the prone position.
By the end of the day, all but two of us had qualified. We were mostly satisfied and enormously relieved. The two non-qualifiers did not go directly to hell, as Staff Sergeant Hilton had promised, but they were quietly removed from Platoon 3076 and placed in a special platoon to become “motivated.”
Our mastery of the rifle complete, we proudly made the return march to the 3rd Battalion area. The endless new facts and skills that we had mastered over the previous two weeks brought a smile to my face as I recalled my Andover roommate Spike Tolman. Spike was so knowledgeable about early rock and roll music that he could, when prompted with only the time of a song on the B side of a 45 rpm record, instantly come up with the title of the A-side hit.
“Spike, two minutes, fifty-two seconds?”
“‘Great Balls of Fire.’ Jerry Lee Lewis. Sun Records,” he would reply without so much as drawing a breath. Two minutes, fifty-two seconds was the time of the little known (except to Spike) flip side titled, appropriately, “You Win Again.” Spike could do this over and over through dozens of records until the asker became bored.
So it became with a United States Marine and his M14 rifle. There are facts about the M14 rifle that most marines will remember long after they’ve forgotten their own names—such was the rigor of Marine Corps rifle training.
“PRIVATE McLEAN.”
“SIR. YES, SIR.”
“11.09.”
“SIR. The weight of my 7.62 mm gas operated, magazine fed, air cooled shoulder weapon, with sling, with magazine, with cleaning gear, and with twenty rounds of NATO 7.62 caliber ammo. SIR.”
The only unknown element that had existed when we’d arrived on the range had to do not with the weapon but with the marine who fired it. It did not remain that way for long.
Several years ago, a sniper terrorized the greater Washington, D.C., area for months. News outlets speculated that the shooter might be a highly trained ex-military sniper and, thereby, simple to locate. In fact, any marine who ever graduated from boot camp is capable of hitting and killing a human target at five hundred yards without a telescopic scope. Every time.
That’s five football fields.
It never leaves you.
On the afternoon prior to our graduation, Staff Sergeant Hilton gathered us in the barracks for a chilling peek at the reality that would exist for us outside the isolated confines of Parris Island. As we rustled into place around him, he held the orders for our permanent assignments over his head for us all to see. There was an MOS (Military Occupation Specialty) number and duty location for each of the remaining one hundred eight members of Platoon 3076. He began, as he always did, at the beginning of the alphabet with Private Thomas Jefferson Agbisit.
“AGBISIT.” Long pause. “0311, WESTPAC. Well, shit-for-brains, looks like the commandant wants you to go kill some fuckin’ gooks! OUTSTANDING.”
The names continued.
“ANDERSON.” Long pause. “0311, WESTPAC.”
“BERRINGTON.” Long pause. “0311, WESTPAC.”
“You lucky shits, you’re going to go see some ACTION. I hope like hell you worthless fucks paid attention here.”
After several names, there emerged a chilling recognition of the ultimate purpose for which we had been trained. Most of Platoon 3076 was going to war. The numbers 03 meant infantry. The 11 indicated a rifleman. WESTPAC was short for Western Pacific. For nearly all, that meant Vietnam. By the time he reached the L’s, my nostrils began to clear, and my senses heightened. I felt dizzy. Obviously the situation in Vietnam had changed dramatically during the brief period that we had been isolated in boot camp.
“McLEAN.” Long pause. “3042.” Long pause. “SUPPLY SCHOOL.” Long pause. “CAMP LEJEUNE.”
Huh? I was not sure what I had heard, but I did know what I had not heard. The number 30 meant supply, and the 42, I later found out, was a subset that meant mechanized. Mechanized supply.
“McLEAN—you DUMB motherfucker, you IGNORANT son of a bitch, you USELESS piece of shit, you … you … you … MAGGOT.” Staff Sergeant Hilton enjoyed editorializing about each marine’s new assignment. “Those assholes up in Washington have decided to teach you computers—whatever the fuck they are! Sounds like you’re not GOOD enough to go kill those little gook bastards.”
Then, no kidding, he actually smiled.
One minute earlier, I had been frightened.
Vietnam.
War.
Now I was disappointed. The United States Marine Corps was about war. There was a war going on, and most of my platoon mates were shipping out. But I wasn’t. It was a most disorienting feeling. I had difficulty identifying its source.
Supply school?
What a waste of all I’d been through.
There never was a time, from the moment of my enlistment, when I had actually given serious thought to going to Vietnam. I had pondered the idea, certainly, and had had many “what if” discussions with family and friends, but I had assumed that, were I to go, the choice would be mine. Years later, friends would ask how I could have been so naive, and perhaps they were right.
Now I wanted to go. And, supply school or not, eventually I would be going. We would all be going. The war was escalating rapidly. Most of my platoon had just been assigned to combat units and would be in Vietnam in a matter of weeks. Every one of us and thousands more would be needed to feed the burgeoning war. I knew that I had just dodged a bullet, yet deep down, below my unease, I knew that I had been given only a reprieve, for soon I too would be going to Vietnam to fight side by side with my Parris Island brothers. I felt a bubbling tingle of excitement, fear, and pride knowing that I would serve.
Really serve.
But yes.
Supply school first.
Graduation was the proudest day of my life. Mom, Dad, and Barby came down from Boston, and were rendered nearly speechless by the whole scene. Nothing in their lives or experience could possibly have prepared them for this. Throughout Parris Island, thousands of identically clad boys, of all backgrounds, heights, and colors were marching in unison, now components of tightly disciplined units. There was the omnipresent cadence of boots on pavement and hands on rifles. The platoons moved forward and then sideways and then to the rear while moving their weapons from one shoulder to the other. The precision was mesmerizing.
My mother loved the poetic swagger of the drill instructors, and was most admiring as she’d watched the drilling recruit platoons pass by. She particularly enjoyed the singing cadence. The drill instructor would sing out a line to the cadence, each beat synchronized with the left-right-left of the boots striking the parade deck. We would then respond in unison: