Chapter 17

Getting up on Monday morning, we were directed to the PT field. Once we go out there, we found the other two platoons out there as well as the company First Sergeant. It seemed today was a company PT and run.

After we completed our fun with the Company First Sergeant, we were informed today would be a pass/fail test of what had learned the week before.

Once everyone had changed and got their gear ready, we made our way over to the grenade range. Everybody ran through throwing a grenade where you had to have the grenade land in a circle that was ten feet in diameter around the target. They weren’t super strict about it, as long as you made it within a few feet of the circle. As the saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Our next event in the testing was infantry rockets. We had to demonstrate the ability to employ both rockets on dummy launchers. It was during this process that I had sort of a flashback to eleven years earlier.

*It was late spring of 1984. JJ, Stosh and I were in the car with Grandfather on our way to baseball practice after school. We had Grandfather’s favorite snack before leaving - peanut butter, jelly and banana. His view was that it was the perfect fuel for physical activity.

We were at the stop sign going out of our neighborhood into a major surface street. Traffic was heavy, so we’d been sitting there for a minute. I was sitting in the front seat, and it looked like there was an opening in the flow of traffic to my seven-year-old mind. That’s when the fateful sentence came out of my mouth.

“Burn rubber Grandpa and win a bazooka.”

JJ and Stosh in the backseat thought it was hilarious. Grandfather wasn’t amused, or at least he didn’t show it. Needless to say, he didn’t punch it or win the bazooka.

I think I’d always had a love of infantry rockets, the bazooka and things that go boom since I was a kid. It all stemmed from watching World War II movies with Grandfather. From Kelly’s Heroes, The Longest Day to A Bridge Too Far. A Bridge Too Far was always my favorite. It showed those Polish Airborne troops fighting to free their country. It let me daydream of being one.*

We then had to fire five training/marking rounds from the M136 and had to maintain at least 80%, or four out of five shots. I was able to hit five out of five, though the first one barely hit the bottom of the tank hull. We had a bunch of guys that couldn’t meet the 80% mark, and they’d have a chance later in the course to rectify it.

We took care of the hand/arm signals while on the move to the land navigation course. Everyone seemed to do fine on this test.

Stepping into the flat area that was the starting point for the next test, we were handed the directions and maps. We had to make it to three checkpoints in an hour and a half. When we arrived at the final destination, we were to grab a Claymore training satchel and set out a mine in a specific placement.

I took a look at the supplied map. This was going to be a pain in the ass as there was no compromise route. It was either going to be an elevation nightmare, or it was double the distance. If you took the longer route, I figured that you’d have to be at almost a flat out sprint the whole way.

We got the signal to go, and I took off at a trot after getting my initial azimuth. The whole course was an up and down, going over steep hills.

As I hit the second checkpoint a quick glance at my watch showed me, I needed to pick up the pace. By the time I got to the final checkpoint, I was exhausted. All of my leg muscles were on fire and screaming at me. I made it with seconds to spare, I would need to work on my stamina.

I grabbed the Claymore satchel, got everything prepped and moved doing the low crawl at a snail’s pace. One of the Corporals who was observing and grading started yelling at me.

“Get your ass moving Lance Corporal. I’m hoping you’ll be done before the new millennium.”

“Aye, Aye Corporal.”

It was painful pushing myself with my legs. I got the mine placed and gained a passing grade. There was a bunch of guys that missed the time limit. And like those who missed on earlier tests, they would have a chance later in the course to make up the score.

The rest of the day was uncomfortable as my legs were dead. After evening chow, I actually hit the gym. Even though I was hurting, I needed to keep working as I didn’t want to take a step back. I needed to keep improving, though I kept it super light, a lot of stretching and lifting light weights and made it a short session. Then it was a long hot shower and tons of Tiger Balm.

We got up and went through our morning routine before heading to the Mess Hall with our rifles and 782 gear. I knew it was going to be a long day, so I got as much food as they’d give me.

I was still sore from the day before as we marched out to a rifle range and as we got there, I could see five individual firing lanes. Each lane had about fifteen of the same green plastic man shaped targets (torso and a head) from the grenade range that were at various points and distances around the firing lane.

The targets were on a system that would raise and lower the targets, and were set up with sandbags, so you only saw the target when it popped up. Guess they had enough of the raising mechanisms getting shot up.

We moved over to a short range to verify our BZOs and spent an hour or so on this, as a few guys had messed up their BZO. I needed to get with my study group guys to see if they wanted to use the White Out method of maintaining it.

Once this was done, we got our briefing as to what we’d be doing. We were going to have three magazines with five rounds each. The targets would pop up every ten to fifteen seconds.

We got into lines by firing lanes and began to go through a quick safety brief. As we were waiting, the ammunition was passed out. I stood watching others firing as I loaded magazines and placed them in the pouches.

When I got my turn, I laid down resting the rifle on the sandbags in front of me. The whistle went off and the first target popped up, it was about halfway down the range. The rifle fired and you could hear a twang, and the target went back down. It seemed that the metal plate lets the operator working the target to know it’d been hit.

My first try wasn’t bad, though not as good as I would have liked. Twelve out of fifteen, so I had to shoot three of them twice. There was only one person in my shooting group that did better. A guy from the mortar section hit fourteen out of fifteen. That was unacceptable and there was no way I could let that stand.

The turns kept rolling. I focused myself and visualized what needed to be done. I loaded my mags again and took a few deep breaths before getting into position. As soon as the whistle blew, I flicked off the safety. I took as much time with each shot as I felt that I could. Fifteen out of fifteen, I couldn’t have been happier.

We had lunch and then went over to the range where we had done our grenade training. SSgt Sulong actually gave us a backhanded compliment.

“Well, the last time, with only a little instruction, you idiots managed not to thoroughly fuck it up. So now we’re going to give you more instruction and hope you can manage not to fuck it up this time again.”

We spent about two hours going over bounding and covering fire. We were doing this in fire teams and squads. We were using live ammunition under the watchful eyes of a total of eight instructors. Things went great for a while, then in an instant it all went to hell in a hand basket.

There were a couple of instances where guys were flagging other Marines. Then one idiot veered off in his line of advancement, drifting into the line of fire. All hell broke loose as we were told to safe our weapons and unload them. We were moved to the flat area at the entrance to the range. Sgt Castillo then laid into us.

“You idiots were doing so good. Then you had to fuck it up in an instant. You morons could have been seriously injured or God forbid killed someone. I’m going to have fun as I make you suffer pain for as long as I want you to. Maybe this will teach you to pay attention to what you’re doing.”

We got formed up in a kind of a U shape by MOS. The machine gunners and mortar men were on the sides while the Infantry Assault men were at the base. Directly across from us was SSgt Sulong and Sgt Castillo while the other instructors were running around yelling and screaming at us.

We were subjected to rifle IT from boot camp. I lost track of how long we’d been at it as we did every one of the movements from Boot camp. Finally, we were doing the last one, holding the front sight post and then pulling the charging handle all the way out. You had to hold the bolt back compressing the buffer spring as it tried to push the bolt back into battery. You were only able to use your thumb and pointer finger.

In addition to my legs still bothering me, my arms and shoulders were now throbbing and on fire. Then the whole thing took a turn for the worse. I heard SSgt Sulong yelling behind me.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me. I should have figured it would be you. Get your fucking ass in front of the formation. That way everyone can see who is fucking up their day of training.”

I personally was not surprised when it was Crummey that moved to where the instructors were standing as it fit with his personality. I knew there would be a beat down for Crummey fucking up, and as much as I felt it was justified, they were going to go about it in the wrong manner. I could just feel it and couldn’t blame them, hell I had the same initial thought. I’d have to monitor what was going on.

We spent another hour or go getting thrashed for Crummey’s fuck up. Then it was back to our Combat Marksmanship training. We were there all the way to just before sunset.

By the time we made it to the Mess Hall, it was just the leftovers from dinner service. We were back at our footlockers cleaning rifles, when all of a sudden had a bunch of guys around my footlocker. I guess when you’re eating peanut butter out of the jar with a plastic spoon in a room full of hungry teenagers, you’re going to attract attention. It took the threat of breaking some fingers to get rid of them.

When I put up my rifle it was time to deal with the Crummey situation. As I approached his rack, he had a look of pure disgust on his face.

“I don’t need anything from you heathen.”

“Oh, but you do Crummey. So, humor me and let’s take a walk.”

I turned so that I could see the Squad Bay.

“HEY!! Listen up, Crummey and I are going to have a conversation. He’s off limits for the time being,”

There was a lot of grumbling.

“I mean it.”

I grabbed Crummey by the arm and drug him outside.

“So now your lackeys are going to come out and catch me where the instructors can’t see.”

“No Crummey, that’s not what this is. The ones who are going to enact retribution will wait until tonight and throw you a blanket party. At least that’s my gut feeling, and as long as there’s no permanent damage, my guess is the instructors will turn a blind eye to the whole matter. That’s how much you’ve endeared yourself to everyone around here.”

“And you’ll be the ringleader on the whole thing.”

I just shook my head looking at him.

“That’s where you’re wrong. If I’m going to fuck you up, you’ll see me coming. I don’t slink around Crummey, I’ll look you dead in the eyes.” There was nothing else to say, now it was time to deal with the coming beat down.

As we walked into the Squad Bay, there were hushed threats to Crummey as he walked by. I needed to reduce this whole thing to a low simmer.

“Hey! I need all the fire team leaders up on the Quarterdeck.”

There were threats out in the open to Crummey and me at this point. I grabbed the nearest fire team leader.

“Look, get the other fire team leaders to come up on the Quarterdeck, unless you want the instructors to come handle this, and you know that’ll involve everyone getting thrashed again.”

“Fine.”

When they all made it to the Quarterdeck I started.

“Look, y’all are seriously pissed off and I get it. I’m pissed as well. The thing is we need to go about this the right way though. We all know that Crummey is an idiot and an asshole. With that being said, messing him up right now is not the right move. That’ll only push him farther. Let me talk to him one more time to see if I can make some headway. You want to fuck Crummey, be a man and have the balls to do it face to face. I’ll take offense if y’all decide to throw a blanket party.”

The other Lance Corporal from the Assault section chimed up.

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Well, Reudas, I’m guessing that you seem to think I’m going to back down if you guys stand together on throwing a blanket party. I’m not that bright, so I’ll stop it if I can, then I’ll catch each and everyone involved in the blanket party one at a time. Though you’ll see me coming.”

I could tell he was shocked by my response, I looked around at everyone there.

“Are we good?”

One of the PFCs from the Mortar section spoke up after they all looked at each other.

“We’re good, for now. You better get that idiot to understand really quickly. As for you, just know that we’re going to keep an eye on you.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be keeping tabs on y’all as well.”

Looking at my watch, I realized there wasn’t going to be time to have another conversation with Crummey tonight. I got cleaned up and stopped by his rack.

“You and I are going to have a conversation in the morning, so I don’t want to hear any of your bullshit. I’m keeping you from getting your ass beat right now. So, you’ll give me that courtesy.”

I walked off and hit the rack.

When I got up, I made my way to the head and stopped at Crummey’s rack. I pushed his mattress a couple of times.

“Get the fuck up! We need to have our talk. Let’s go.”

After I got dressed, I went back over to Crummey’s rack.

“Get the fuck up asshole. If you want any chance of not getting fucked up every night, get your ass out of the rack. I’ll be outside for five minutes, if you don’t come out, I’ll get out of their way.”