Chapter 22

Getting up, we went about our morning routine, and as we made our way into the classroom, I noticed the table had a sheet over it.

Once everyone was seated, Gunny Harrell stepped up to the podium.

“This is going to be a hands-on experience. You’re going to learn the three main methods of breaching this week which are mechanical, ballistic and explosive. Today we are going to go over mechanical breaching. This morning will be the instruction period, then this afternoon we’ll go out to a range to practice.”

He pulled the towel off of the table and there were three things that stood out. The first was the tool that you always saw Firefighters carrying called a Halligan. It was named after the New York Deputy Fire Chief Hugh Halligan.

It was actually three tools in one. There was a claw at the bottom and the top was a combination of an Adz and a pick. The Halligan that we’d be using was designed to be more portable at twenty-four inches long and about ten pounds. This was mainly for opening doors with the help of the next tool, a twenty-four inch six-pound sledgehammer. The final thing that stuck out was the set of bolt cutters. These were also twenty-four inches like the Halligan and the sledgehammer.

There were some other tools, but the likelihood of using them wasn’t as great, as they were all rather big and bulky. The one I associated most with breaching was the handheld battering ram.

We spent the morning learning all the ins and outs of the various implements, and there didn’t seem to be anything especially difficult in using the tools. The big thing that was being stressed at all times was speed. You needed to be on the money the first time as all these tools were loud and took time to use. We got released to lunch and were told to form up when we were finished.

As we formed up, the conversation went to what we’d be doing.

“Well, at least we get to break some stuff today.”

“I’d rather be blowing stuff up. I guess it’ll be better than nothing.” Pothier just nodded in agreement.

We marched out to a range we’d never been to before. It was laid out into three large range bays, and we were moved into the first bay.

There was a four-part mock up that was about eight feet high by about eighty feet long. Each of the four sections had two doors a piece for a total of eight doors. We’d be doing all of our breaching training today on these.

We were informed that we wouldn’t be using the second bay which was a mock up of windows. The third bay would be used when we started practicing explosive breaching. That bay had four eight by eight concrete wall sections.

As we stood in the first bay, the order of the training was explained to us. Three groups of two would go at a time. There would be both inward and outward swinging doors to attack. When the breach was accomplished, the doorknob insert was swapped out and the next two guys would switch positions and do it again till the group was finished.

We were shown how to force the doors with both the forks and the Adz of the Halligan. There were a couple of different ways to do it, though some things were the same no matter how you breached the door. The first thing we were taught was to check the doorknob, you would look like an idiot breaching an unlocked door.

Using the Halligan, you needed to make sure you used the side that had the curve so it would slide around the door jamb easier. There was a notch on the claw and Adz showed how deep to set the tool into the door jamb to get maximum leverage.

The doors were attacked in two-man teams with one wielding the Halligan and the other the sledgehammer.

Pothier and I were in the first group that went. It wasn’t that hard, but I could see that you’d get a better feel the more you did it. I was impressed at how the mock up had been designed. There was a piece with the knob and one on the jamb. These pieces were replaced after every breach.

We spent the latter part of the day breaking into and replacing door pieces. We also used the breaching ram as well. Like I thought, it was fun, but I wanted to blow something up. We then had to clean everything up, with all the destroyed parts thrown into a pile, then we cleaned the area and did a Police Call.

It was back to the barracks and to the Mess Hall for chow. After getting cleaned up, I sat down and read the letter from Miriam. It seemed my finances weren’t that bad. There was about a hundred thousand left out of everything, and she had an idea that would get me a better interest rate than what I was currently getting.

Miriam wanted to put thirty thousand into a five-year CD (Certificate of Deposit) and twenty thousand into a sixteen-month CD. She informed me that the interest rate on the five year was 6.75% and the sixteen month was 4.95%. I wrote her back saying that I thought it was a great idea and she’d have to get with Bob as he had power of attorney until I got to my first duty station, as I wanted this to be done now.

We got up and started our day. There was a three-mile run added to our normal PT routine.

As we filed into the classroom, there was a sheet on the table again. I had an idea of what was under there, but I wasn’t completely sure. Cpl. Graves was standing at the podium.

“Sit down and shut your traps.”

When we were all seated, he began our period of instruction.

“Today we’ll be going over ballistic breaching.”

He pulled off the towel, and there were two shotguns sitting on the table. I could tell that one of them was a Mossberg 500 and didn’t recognize the other one.

“There are two types of shotguns you might use. The first is the Mossberg 500A2 and the second is the Remington M870. Both are twelve-gauge shotguns with a fourteen-inch barrel. These shotguns will hold five rounds each.”

We were then told how breaching with the shotgun was to be done. The breacher carried the shotgun in a dry husk condition, no round within the chamber for the weapon to fire. Once you approached the door, you then waited for the number one man in the stack for the nod to go, then loaded the shotgun.

Cpl Graves had an odd manner in explaining how to setup for the shot.

“So, the door has the latch bolt, which is the male end, and the door jamb has the hole in the striker plate which is the female part of the door. You want to place the muzzle between the doorknob and the door jamb at the top edge of the doorknob. The shotgun should be at a forty-five-degree downward and forty-five-degree angle toward the door jamb. The muzzle should be at least two inches from the door.”

The outward facing door was a bit different. You attacked the visible hinges and then the knob, using what was left of the knob to push the door out of place, the rest was the same. We spent the afternoon taking turns blowing out doors and then cleaned up.

When we got back to the barracks, Sgt Sulong was waiting for us.

“So, you guys need to get a lot of rest tonight. Tomorrow is your 20K road march, so when you get back from lunch, get geared up and form up outside. You need to make sure that you beat the time limit. This is a pass/fail event, you’ll be recycled back to the next class if you don’t.”

He left it at that and walked off. There was an undercurrent of dread and excitement going through the Squad Bay. There was then a mad scramble at least with my fire team. I had informed them that they needed to make sure that their packs were right where they needed to be weight wise.

We hit PT and then spent the morning reviewing the past two days and what we’d be doing on Thursday. You could feel an undercurrent of concern and worry running through the platoon as the morning progressed.

Sgt Castillo was standing at the front hatch as we came in from the Mess Hall to get our gear.

I was right, as everyone was making their way out to form up, where there was a weigh station. Sgt Castillo had a bathroom scale that he was using to weigh everyone’s packs.

Your ruck was required to weigh a minimum of sixty pounds. Lots of guys had to go back and add more weight. I was within two pounds of where I needed to be. So, with our weapon and the rest of our gear we were about ninety pounds above body weight. When everyone was formed up on the Parade Deck, one last curve was thrown at us.

“So, we’re going to make this as realistic of a march as we can.”

As soon as he said this, all the MOS instructors came out of the classroom building. This didn’t seem like a good thing by any stretch of the imagination.

“So, if you are in the Machine gun section, head back into the Squad Bay, rack your weapons and form back up outside.”

When everyone was back in formation, they let us in on the surprise.

We followed the Gunny around the barracks to a deuce and a half waiting on us. We were then issued the launcher portion of the SMAW.

Well, that just added another twenty pounds to our load. We were now well over a hundred-pound load. I’d put a bit of weight back on since boot camp, and although I hadn’t weighed myself, I figured that with the gear I was probably going to ruck about three hundred and thirty pounds. This was going to be brutal.

When we formed up, I noticed that the Machine Gun section were now all carrying M240B machine guns. The Mortar section had guys carrying the mortar pieces. They were the ones that had the lightest weight addition at less than twenty pounds in additional weight.

We were given our instructions. The road march was twenty kilometers or just over twelve miles and we had just over four hours to complete the march. That meant we had to maintain about a twenty minute per mile pace. I knew it was doable, though it was going to hurt during and after.

As was to be expected that when the whistle blew to start there were a few different reactions. You had a group that took off like a rocket, setting an unsustainable pace. There was also a group that took off like it was a Sunday stroll.

The three members of my fire team fell in with me as I set a reasonable pace. I figured it was fast enough that we could keep this pace and still make it in time. Though, we would still leave a little in the tank if we needed to pick up the pace.

About an hour in, I noticed that our group had picked up two guys from the Mortar section that had started with the slower group and there started a friendly banter between the sections. My feet were holding up at that point, though I didn’t think this would be the case in the end.

Things were going fine as we were making good time and were starting to pass up a couple people here and there. Encouragement was given as we passed them up. More people joined the group as we were passing guys.

I was starting to feel my feet and back, so I looked at my watch. There was still about an hour left if our pace was right. For about another twenty minutes or so we kept that pace, then I decided to ramp the pace up a bit. As I started to quicken the pace, I checked to make sure the guys were keeping up.

All of a sudden there was a soundtrack playing in my head. This time it was 80’s music, it started with Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. The soundtrack was rounded out with a Kenny Loggin’s tune. The last song was one I couldn’t remember who did it or where I’d heard it before. You’re The Best would play in my head between the other two songs. I couldn’t remember it, but it was playing constantly in my head.

As the music was playing in my head, I looked around me. There were now ten Marines from all three sections in our group. I moved to the side of the road and waved them forward. I let them slide past me and then moved into the back of the group and picked up our faster pace.

Anytime someone slowed down, I used a mixture of encouragement and browbeating to keep the whole group moving at the increased pace.

After about fifteen minutes of this pace, the grumbling and bitching began to drown out the music in my head. Shit, I was fucking hurting as well, my dogs weren’t barking at this point, they were growling. It was a moment later that I heard a voice yell from the front of the group.

“Let’s go. I see the finish line.”

That seemed to give everyone a jolt to keep moving forward. A new song suddenly started playing in my head, The Final Countdown by Europe. We made our way to the finish line with about ten minutes to spare. I had no doubt my feet were going to be fucked up with how they felt.

I was getting my rucksack off when it finally hit me. The song that kept playing over and over in my head, I knew where I’d heard it. It was from the first Karate Kid movie.

There were only two guys from the Mortar section who failed to finish within the time limit. They’d be gone by the time we hit the rack tonight.

We all got trucked back to the barracks where our first order of business was to return our MOS specific weapons.

I could see that everyone had been beat to hell this afternoon. Most were either hobbling or limping around. I was shuffling around to keep my feet from hurting too much more than they did. Dumping my rucksack onto my rack, I fought off the urge to sit down.

It was only after I got my rucksack unloaded that I finally sat down. Unlacing my boots, there was a big surprise waiting for me. My left sock kinda felt wet as I pulled my foot free. It wasn’t from sweat, and as I put my foot on the deck, blood oozed from the sock.

As I pulled the socks off, my feet were wrinkly and white like a dead fish. There were a couple of blisters on my right foot, while the left looked like a zombie from a movie. Skin had peeled off from a couple of places. The worst was an area on my heel. There was a patch of skin missing about three inches wide by about five inches tall.

Everyone spent the time until chow taking care of their feet. One of the Corpsman came in to monitor what everyone was doing and to check our feet. I along with most everyone in the Squad Bay was bandaging up our feet where we’d lost a chunk of skin. The Corpsman was handing out bandaging material and Neosporin. We were reminded to keep it clean as possible.

We were all hobbling and hurting as we made our way to chow. It was unusually quiet as everyone ate. I grabbed every bit of food as I could. I was hurting as I made my way back to the Squad Bay, definitely no trip to the gym tonight. I grabbed my change so I could give Kiku a call.

Everything below my ears was sore and hurting as I made my way to the phone bank. No going over to the Credit Union tonight. I had to wait about twenty minutes for a phone to open up. Kiku actually answered within three rings.

“Hello.”

“Well, hello my sexy vixen.”

“Barnim, I’ve been waiting for your call.”

“I’ve been looking forward to hearing your voice, though I’d rather see you. So, how is school going?”

“Is that what you really want to talk about?”

“Yeah, I want to know how you are doing and school is a major part of that.”

“Well, this semester I’m starting my degree requirement classes. I’m taking a core Econ (economics) and Field Econ class. I decided to get a minor in Japanese, it’ll help with my GPA and shouldn’t be that difficult.”

Well, I could only hope that she wouldn’t think of me as her idiot boyfriend. I had realized that I’d never be anywhere near her intelligence level.

“Your grades are good?”

“You’re starting to sound like my parents Barnim. I want to hear how you are going to fuck me senseless this weekend.”

“That sounds like a plan. Now we just have to figure out somewhere to stay so I can call Friday to set it up.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head. I took care of that last week after we talked. We’ve got the same room as last time.”

“Well, let me know how much it is so I can get you the money.”

“Stop Barnim. I don’t want to hear that question again. We’re in this relationship together, and I’ll have no argument from you.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Don’t you sass me.”

I then explained how Liberty works. Kiku was disappointed we couldn’t spend all weekend together.

“I have an idea about Saturday though. We’ll talk about it when I see you.”

“OK. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

As I hung up, it dawned on me what had just been said. I didn’t even realize it as it came out. I guess my heart knew something my head didn’t. Hopefully it wouldn’t get ripped out and stomped on.

I found a letter from Erin in the mail tray. We’d been writing weekly and just talking about things in general. She told me how her Polish lessons were coming along. I wrote back how my training was going and about my new friends. I decided to also write Grandfather. I inquired about how Erin’s lesson was going from his point of view. The other thing I wanted to know was if Grandmother’s family in Hawaii knew of somewhere to learn Japanese on Oahu. I called it a night after slathering on a bunch of Tiger Balm.

You could hear the grunts, groans and a few whimpers as boots were getting put on. It was the zombie march as everyone made their way to the Mess Hall. It was the exact same shuffle as we filed into the classroom. Gunny Harrell had a huge grin on his face.

“You idiots are going to need to toughen up real damn quick. Marches like that are going to come back-to-back when you get into the fleet. Just wait until you have to move a hundred clicks in three days. Some of you chuckleheads are going to die.”

I’d need to toughen my feet before that happens.

“So, I have decided to take pity on you chuckleheads. We will be staying in the classroom and practice creating breaching charges.”

A cardboard box was then hoisted onto the table. He pulled out what looked like the explosive charges we’d been introduced to although there was something different, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“You Marines are going to use the material here to create breaching charges. This is not the explosive charges you’ll be using next week. These are identical in shape and size but are made out of modeling clay. So, let’s get into it.”

We spent the morning being shown how to construct and employ door and wall breaching charges. Nobody got a block of clay to the head for not paying attention before we shuffled off to chow.

When we got back, there were piles of modeling clay along with fake fuses and Det Cord. We were tasked with mocking up two wall breaching charges. One was rectangular in shape and the other was circular. We had to do a complete setup including the initiator.

Once those were inspected, we then set up the methods of setting off M118 explosive charges with Det Cord. These were also inspected and critiqued, with my charges seeming to pass muster. Everyone took the tasks seriously and with some respect as if they were real explosives. Gunny Harrell wasn’t yelling or screaming, which was a welcome respite.

The conversation at dinner was about the little tips and tricks that everyone was coming up with. That and bitching about their feet and how jacked up they were. Everyone was taking care of their feet. I took off my bandage so that the area got some air, and for once I went to sleep on my stomach so that I could leave the wound open.

Once we got up, we did a light PT session and then headed to chow. We probably looked like a bunch of uncoordinated idiots.

We spent the morning going over the previous day’s instruction. The last part before lunch was instruction on how to deploy the charges. The one realization was that we were going to be using a lot of double-sided tape.

Lunch was pretty good today, with everybody at the table having Rueben sandwiches as the fish they had just looked so sad. There was some sort of orange cake that turned out to be barely edible. The conversation turned to the topic of Liberty. Andric surprised us.

“So, are we going to go fishing again this weekend? I had so much fun last weekend.”

“That’s up to you guys. My girlfriend is coming down tonight. So, we’re going to spend the time together this weekend.”

When I looked over at Andric, it was like I’d just kicked his puppy. They’d just have to fend for themselves this weekend.

“Y’all are big boys. I’m supremely confident that y’all can figure out something to do. Just try to stay out of trouble.”

They were bummed out a bit, but it couldn’t be helped. Then they started giving me a hard time about doing whatever my girlfriend wanted. It was good natured, so I just ignored it.

As soon as we made it into the classroom, we were told to form up outside where we were loaded into deuce and a half. They drove us out to the demolition range where we spent the rest of the day making dummy charges and setting them up.

We were shown how to create noose-breaching charges which was for if you were out of breaching charges though had Det Cord. It was wrapped around the doorknob to blow the door out. Then there was a new hand signal shown. Closed fist, tapping the top of your helmet was the signal for breacher up.

As we were getting out of the trucks in front of the barracks, I had to keep from laughing at Gunny Harrell. He was prowling around the back of the trucks as we dismounted. He was browbeating us.

“I don’t hear anyone thanking Gunny Harrell for not making us walk out to the range. You’re not going to get smoked today as I’ve got a twelve-pack calling my name at home. Come Monday, I’m going to run all of you into the ground.”

I got as much of my laundry done after chow, so I didn’t have to worry about it on Sunday. I left my heel unbandaged again.

Waking up, there was only one priority. Get Field Day over with as quickly as possible as I had told Kiku to meet me at the main gate at 1200.

We got chow then attacked the cleaning. The Head was our area of responsibility and as soon as we got that done, we all went out to help everyone else.

We got with everything and got the nod that it was all good just shy of 1100. It was going to be a race to get to the main gate by 1200. I got cleaned up and had Sgt Castillo check my bag so I could get onto the bus.

The guys were wondering what they were going to do for the next two days. When the bus pulled into the parking lot, I saw Kiku’s car. There was an immediate twitch in my cock.

No sooner than I rounded the back of the bus than I heard it.

“BARNIM!!”

Kiku was across the parking lot in a streak. Even though I’d braced myself, I got pushed back a few feet when she jumped on me. Then she was trying to suck my tonsils out through my mouth. I finally got her settled down a bit and back on her feet.