The Silence of War

by Terry McGowan

  Active duty began on September 29, 1975. With a growing sense of foreboding, I drove past the downsized memorial of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima that stands just outside the main gate at Marine Corps Base (MCB) Quantico. At that point, I wasn’t so sure I had made the right decision. I didn’t have butterflies in my stomach, I had bats. I drove down street after street of venerable old redbrick buildings that looked like they had been around since the Second World War. As I drove I noticed Marines standing around talking, all of whom looked quite at home.

  It was anything but home-like to me. There was nothing normal about the place in my civilian eyes.

  Although I had begun a physical training regimen months before, when I took a pre-OCS inventory physical fitness test (PFT) not only did I fail it, but I also threw up. Right there in front of God and everybody. A tall, lanky, African-American first lieutenant, wearing government-issue black frame glasses, in studied tones of understatement uttered the obvious:

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Well, I finally passed the PFT—and didn’t throw up—so I thought I was ready for what lay ahead. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was worn-out before the warm-up, called the “Marine Corps Daily Seven,” was finished. And physical training (PT) was only just beginning.

  “O Lord, kill me and be done with it,” I implored my Creator. He replied, “Negative, candidate. You’ll not get off that easily.” I didn’t yet know that God was a Marine.

  To my immense surprise, my body began to respond. If God wasn’t gonna kill me, my lizard brain reasoned, I had better get this brain carrier in shape.

  Before I graduated from OCS I realized that I had never discovered what my real limits were. The drill instructors always demanded more, and I was always able to deliver. Painfully, suffering more than I thought I could stand, I found that I could always run a little longer, march a little farther, ignore the hunger, the thirst, the heat or cold, the exhaustion, for just a little while longer, and continue on.

  The lesson stayed with me throughout my life.

  The OCS experience was pure hell. Although we began with fifty-four in the platoon, only thirty-eight were commissioned. We literally counted the days—every day—until we would be free of it. Near the end, we counted the hours. I suffered like I had never suffered before in my life. But there was an undeniable, palpable change inside me. I had become a different human being. I became a Marine. I never looked for the easy way out of anything for the rest of my life.

  On January 6, 1976, after Christmas leave, it was back to Quantico for training at The Basic School (TBS). TBS was six months long back then, and it was there that officers learned everything the Marine Corps felt they should know about the business of being an officer. OCS had been “basic” training. TBS was “advanced.” It was also the “infantry officer’s course” at that time. There was no separate infantry training for officers with the infantry military occupational specialty (MOS), as there is today. Everybody, even those destined for flight training, went through it. Every Marine officer was expected to be an infantry officer first.

  TBS was its own little world carved out of the sprawling Virginia woods. It was winter when we arrived, and the trees were bare. The skies were usually gray—it was cold and it was damp. In short, it was as gloomy as I felt. Before we left TBS, it would be summer—a hot, humid, tick-infested Virginia summer.

  I was assigned to a room. Each room contained two freshly minted second lieutenants, with two individual gray beds, two gray desks, two gray chairs, and a closet to be shared. That was it for furniture. The floor was gray linoleum, and the walls were the same sickly light green color as had adorned the barracks at OCS. The quarters were barren. Two rooms connected to a “bathroom,” known as a “head” in the Naval Service. Four lieutenants shared it. The head contained two sinks, one toilet, and one shower. As with everything in the Marine Corps, cooperation was essential. We didn’t have to like each other, but we did have to get along. That’s an imperative in the Corps. Married guys had it easier. They got to live somewhere over the horizon with their wives.

  Much later, in Afghanistan, living on top of each other with nothing remotely resembling privacy under environmental conditions that would’ve cracked the pope, the wisdom of Marine Corps training in this regard became apparent.

  We soon realized that TBS was only a marginal improvement over OCS. We were yelled at by captains instead of by sergeants, and it didn’t take us long to figure out that being a student-officer wasn’t quite like being a “real” officer. We coined the term “third lieutenant” to describe our new status. We were a step above “candidates” but not quite real second lieutenants.

  Tactical training had commenced during OCS, but it was basic stuff. TBS was different. Everything was much more “high speed.” We were expected to know what to do under any and all circumstances. And that’s the way we were trained.

  TBS was challenging and difficult. The Cold War was on and we were preparing to face the Soviet juggernaut. The Soviet Union at that time outnumbered the United States two to one in men, two to one in tactical aircraft, five to one in tanks, and ten to one in artillery pieces. To make matters worse, their artillery outranged ours. In an attempt to even the odds, we trained hard.

  Physical endurance was integrated into everything we did. On one occasion we were faced with one of those freak Virginia days where it was winter one minute and hot and humid the next. I began the day wearing my field jacket with liner, but I had stuffed it into my pack before long. We had spent the entire day conducting tactical exercises deep in the thick Virginia woods and were pretty much done in. We were also about a pint low on blood thanks to the ticks. All the same, we had a fifteen-mile forced march back to the barracks ahead of us.

  Unfortunately somebody dropped the ball on a vital substance called “water,” because there was none. Major “Cowboy Roy” led the company off at a conditioning hike’s inhuman pace nonetheless. We were pretty well exhausted and dehydrated when we started; with each passing mile things got worse. Although I had learned by then to carry four canteens instead of the issued two, I was out. I could feel the heat radiating off my face, and my hair felt hot. Marines began to drop like flies from heat exhaustion. I badly wanted to join them, prostrate on the red dirt road. I kept telling myself to keep going, but not to worry for surely I’d pass out soon and there was no dishonor in that.

  Somehow I made it back while still conscious, although I was a tad disappointed to have remained so as I recall. Cowboy Roy was a most unhappy camper. He gazed out upon his badly depleted company and with steam coming out of his ears, addressed us as “real Marines”—as opposed to those nonhackers who got heatstroke, I supposed. After some more pep talk, he stormed off. I don’t remember a word he said. I was completely out of gas.

  But I had learned a lesson I never forgot. Keep going—no matter what.

  As had been the case at OCS, the squad became a tightly knit group. One Saturday night, we all went to an Irish pub in Washington, D.C. There we sang Marine Corps songs that dated back to World War II—“Well, we sent for the army to come to Tulagi, but General MacArthur said no, there wasn’t a reason, this isn’t the season, besides there is no USO”—and there we met a survivor of the Tarawa campaign. For those who may not know, Tarawa was one of the islands Marines had to take by storm in the Pacific. The Japanese commanding officer had bragged that Tarawa couldn’t be taken by a million men in a hundred years. The 2nd Marine Division took it in seventy-two hours. However, they paid a terrible price in blood.

  The elderly gentleman introduced himself almost shyly. When he told us he had been on Tarawa, everybody just moved over and pulled up an extra chair. When he said his good-byes at the end of the night he had tears in his eyes. He said that we had made him feel like he was part of a squad again and we had sung the same songs that his old squad had. I got the impression that few of them, if an
y, had made it off Tarawa. That chance meeting had a profound effect on me.

  For most of us our only duty to Corps and country consisted of standing sentinel ready to stop the Russian hordes—who never came. Some of us had already been to war, and some of us went later. Nothing like Tarawa, of course, but we—all of us—were, are bound by that intangible something. We are Marines. He was part of us and we were part of him—although in truth we felt unworthy to stand in his shadow.

  I was on active duty for thirteen months—in training—before I got orders to the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, California. It was my uncle Bill’s old division. I checked in early in January 1977.

  My first commanding officer was a “mustang”—that is, an officer who had been an enlisted Marine prior to becoming an officer. “Mustangs” were held in high regard by everyone, as they still are. He was a captain—soon to be a major—and I couldn’t have asked for a better “on the job” teacher. When I checked in, Mustang asked me what post I wanted. I replied, “Platoon commander, sir.”

  He replied, “No. It’s way too soon, maybe in six months or so.”

  After being dismissed, I wandered out to where the PFT was being administered. There are three components to the Marine PFT: pull-ups, a three-mile run, and maximum sit-ups in two minutes. We were forced to rely on the honor system when it came to the sit-up count, since half the entire unit held a man’s ankles while the other half did the sit-ups, and then they switched. It was impossible to count everybody’s sit-ups.

  As a cop, I had learned to recognize the “felony look.” It’s an indescribable expression of guilt that crosses someone’s face when they see a cop. It means they either did something wrong, or were about to. As I looked down the long line of Marines about to begin the sit-up phase of the PFT, there it was. I spotted two Marines and the “felony look.” Just a quick glance and I knew. These two would lie. So I averted my gaze and, in my peripheral vision, counted every single sit-up.

  When I went down the line, recording the number of sit-ups, one of the two said, “Eighty, sir.”

  I replied, “Eighty? That’s very good.” (It was the maximum.)

  I looked at the other, who had been holding the first Marine’s ankles, and said, “Wow, did he really do eighty?”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied.

  “Then why did I count fifty-four?” I said. “Go tell the first sergeant you’re on report.” That meant they went before Mustang for punishment; lying to an officer is a violation of military regulations.

  I hadn’t been in the unit an hour yet and I had already run two guys up. They looked at me like I was the Antichrist. They had to be thinking, “Who the hell is this guy?”

  I got the job of platoon commander that day.

  I discovered that being a good leader was sometimes inversely proportional to one’s popularity with those being led. I wasn’t running for office; the Marine Corps is not a democracy. The platoon would have been outstanding wartime Marines. In peacetime, they were a bit rough around the edges.

  Decades later, in Afghanistan, I would tell Marines that they were better than we had been. We had been good at what we were supposed to do—fight a war against the Soviet Union—but they were just plain all-around better than we were. Marines, in 1977–78, would have fought as hard as their fathers and grandfathers before them did. The Marine Corps would have stopped the Soviet Army in its tracks, regardless of the cost, and died where it stood before the Communist behemoth if necessary. But the Marine Corps I served with in Afghanistan in 2008 was qualitatively better.

  We continued to prepare for war—World War III, against the Soviet Union.

  We dug in on the reverse slope of the highest ground around. That way artillery would have to shoot at a very high angle to get us, making it much more difficult for them. It had the added benefit of forcing their artillery to move closer—so we could shoot back. Furthermore, Soviet tanks would have to show us their bellies as they came over the hill. The belly of a tank, like the belly of a turtle, was the best place to strike. We trained hard, and we trained to win despite the odds against us.

  The “official word” was that Marines would be deployed to Norway and the Far East if war with the Soviet Union came. We would protect the strategic flanks of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). None of us believed it. We all believed we’d be thrown straight against an unstoppable Soviet blitzkrieg in the center of Europe, and we would stop it.

  However, the U.S. Marine Corps is a part of the Department of the Navy. Our mission is to project formidable American naval power ashore, whether fighting the Soviets or anybody else. Therefore, we never lost sight of the amphibious nature of the Corps, and much of our training commenced from the sea. In those days two-thirds of the assault force hit the beaches from landing craft. One third went over the side and climbed down nets, just as had been done during World War II. One third came out of the well deck (an opening) in the back of the ship on amphibious tractors, while the remaining third embarked from helicopters and landed behind the beachhead, thereby isolating it.

  The movies don’t show but a small bit of the time and effort it takes to get an amphibious assault going. Moviegoers would be bored to tears watching it in real time. In the movies it all seems to just happen—and quickly. But it takes time—lots of time. So for those of us who were the first in line, whether in amphibious landing craft, or flying off in choppers, it meant literally hours of circling the fleet before we all straightened out and hit the beach together. During one such assault, I was in my chopper for two hours before going in.

  Once ashore, we had the pleasure of busting our butts climbing ever higher into the mountains, hour after hour, day after day. I learned how to carry a heavy load on a never-ending climb. It was there that I developed the frame of mind that if I couldn’t eat it, drink it, or shoot it, I wasn’t carrying it.

  I kept that mind-set in Afghanistan in 2008. I eventually stowed the heavy “bullet-stopping” ceramic plates that came with my tactical-issue vest. They weighed too much. I also discarded everything else I considered unnecessary that had any weight to it. I did, however, carry from eleven to thirteen full rifle magazines, instead of the issue seven. Ammo and water were two things I could never have enough of.

  One day, Mustang called me into his office. It seemed our battalion commander liked to have an ex-cop on his staff. He liked “hip pocket” informal investigations, and he liked the way ex-cops could quickly get to the heart of the matter. He had heard about me—I didn’t dare ask in what capacity—and if I wanted it, the job was mine. I loved the idea.

  I found myself with more collateral duties than I could count. I was privy to staff meetings. I got to see how a battalion was run and was expected to help find solutions to various problems as they arose. Impressively, I was given “by direction” authority. That meant, within set parameters, I would generate orders in the battalion commander’s name. I was lifted out of the “mud and tall grass” and got to see a bigger picture. Working on a battalion staff was a great experience.

  It enabled me to be of greater assistance to 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines (2/7) in preparing for Afghanistan.

  —

  In July 1977, the battalion was part of the 5th Marine Amphibious Brigade, which took part in a joint services exercise conducted at Marine Corps Base Twenty-nine Palms. The base was not so affectionately known as “Twenty-nine Stumps” or simply “The Stumps.” It was Operation Braveshield XVI, and this was a test of America’s ability to fight a war in the desert. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps were all part of Braveshield XVI.

  Inasmuch as “The Stumps” is in the middle of the Mojave Desert, where it gets a tad warm in July, it was the perfect place for a desert operation. It was also the perfect place to learn how to survive in “hell without the flames.” Knowing that none of my family or friends back home could conceive of the heat we experienced, I r
ecommended with tongue in cheek that they set their ovens to 150 degrees and crawl inside for a couple of hours. Fortunately, no one took my suggestion.

  Unlike many forward bases today, there was no air-conditioning anywhere in the field, and no refrigeration of any kind. We learned to cool our water by evaporation using Lister bags made of canvas. Hang one on the mirror of a jeep or truck before taking off and it’s the closest thing to cool water you’d get. We also learned not to touch the metal of a truck or jeep with bare skin or we’d raise a blister immediately.

  I learned a great many little “tricks” about desert living that stayed with me through the intervening years and helped make life more tolerable in Afghanistan. Like stuffing plastic water bottles inside soaked socks and hanging them to dry—a modern-day Lister bag.

  Four Marines died during Operation Braveshield XVI, July, peacetime, 1977: Two infantry Marines had been on a forced march and their hearts were really pumping. When a halt was called they slumped wearily to the ground. Rattlesnakes got them both—at different times and places. One was bitten on the face, the other on the neck. They were both dead before they could be gotten to a hospital. Rattlesnakes at The Stumps are huge.

  Two truck drivers drove off cliffs at night. We didn’t have night-vision goggles back then, and as noted earlier, to train for Soviet artillery, everything was off-road, on the reverse slope of steep terrain. The vehicles drove at night with only very small “slit” lights—just like in World War II. Two of our trucks went over; both drivers died. Americans don’t always die from bullets. And they die in peacetime as well as in war.