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[ Excerpt from Spindrift ]
"The Green Machine" was what Marines called it in later years. In my time, 1956, we called it "The Crotch." All the name-calling disguised an unreasonable and deep seated affection for the Corps. We hated to admit to this affinity. An oft times expressed saying, "Eat the apple, f-- k the Corps," further hid our feelings.
Young men will always be lured into the Marine Corps. The Corps is like Circe, calling out to passing sailors, luring them onto the rocky shoals of life. Many a mariner has answered the Corps' siren call and been transformed into a swine like Odysseus' men.
It isn't the posters or the John Wayne movies. It's probably a defect in the psyche. We were all carrying some excess baggage when we volunteered. Perhaps young men need to prove something to themselves and like an middle-aged man in need of validation, acquire a new mistress — The Corps.
The Corps has crept into my ruminations often through the years. We were lovers back then, sharing many a moment of heightened awareness. One of those moments, a vivid memory of the Corps, is of a rainy day at Parris Island.
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It was a light rain - a mist really. Enough so that the green fatigues became black with mixed sweat and rain. The darkness caused by the storm clouds scudding in off the Atlantic belied the mid-day hour. There was always a faint background sound, as constant and subliminal as your heartbeat, the distant drumming of boots: the boots of strutting recruits. More faintly heard was the drone of the cadence, counted by some crusty drill instructor: "hurmp, hup, aree, hore." And the air held a scent of sweat, gun oil, leather, linseed and the sea.
The mind picture was of one of the recruit platoons. They were a compact, relaxed unit, jogging along that country road at a rhythmic, mile-eating pace. The DI, keeping pace to the left, had become bored with counting cadence. The guidon bearer was giving voice to a favorite marching tune about a girl named Sue. Ninety male voices were singing the chorus with gusto, to the cadence of drumming boots.
The greens and browns of the land mixed with the skins of the jogging marines. Black, white, brown, yellow and red; just as surely the bounty of America as wheat and corn.
They were moving along the country road which curved; rising before them like destiny. The Corps; going in harms way.
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[ About Spindrift ] |
On that rainy day, I had been sent to the Post administration building on some errand. That was how I happened upon the chanting platoon. I was returning to the company area; running along that same country road, jogging to their cadence, keeping pace with the them, a hundred feet back.
The platoon had just left the post exchange. They had been given a rare opportunity to go in to the exchange to buy a toothbrush, or towel. As was understandable, the boots hit the candy counter hard. The DI running alongside the platoon was warning all, stridently, "be advised, when we reached the company area, every piss ant will be search for pogie Bait'".
Then, as in a dream, as the pounding boots evoked thunder, the platoon rained pogie bait. And the road ahead of me was suddenly littered with Hersey bars; at first, a trickle, then a deluge: hundreds of them. These I picked up as fast as I could, stuffing them into my blouse, until my fatigues was stretched to the limit. Then, because I looked like a clown, I left the road and raced through the woods to Platoon 356's quonset huts.
A quick look for the DIs and into the hut I went. Without a word, I dumped my loot on the concrete floor.
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