[ Excerpt from Spindrift ]

His first recollection of Him was of one fall day in 1945. There was a knock at the door and Peter opened the door to find a big, lean, tan, stranger standing there; unsmiling, wearing a Naval officer's uniform.

When the 6 year-old asked what the stranger wanted, the man pushed past him and walked in as though he owned the house, which he did. Pete's mom was equally unsmiling. It had been three years, sufficient time to wound the marriage, just as surely as enemy fire damages and destroys.

Peter didn't know what to do about this stranger. The boy felt an instinctive need to protect his Mom. He just didn't know what to do. The stranger walked about the house like a time bomb ready to go off, a bomb that Peter wanted to go off somewhere else.

They were difficult times for the whole family. Peter took the brunt of the discipline. His younger brother was too young to feel the impatience, the anger; to suffer the injustice. Peter sat in his room licking his wounds often. His mom was no longer that haven in times of stress. She had her own to deal with. And after three savage years in the South Pacific, the stranger had rendered gentlemanly manners.

One day, sitting in the 5-inch gun tub aboard the aircraft carrier Wasp, Don Colyer told me of the manic life style of the stranger, the war veteran. Each morning, Peter had to fall out for inspection at six a.m., his child's body rebelling. Peter would be ordered to stand at attention next to his bunk, tummy sucked in, chin tucked.

Peter lived in fear of the officer, the alpha male. His fear fostered a deep need to seek the officer's approval. Peter tried his best to gain that approval, but it was elusive: rare.

With the passage of time; the slow turning of the clock that children suffer, the mother and father reached some sort of accommodation. The thawing was slow, but eventually there was reproachment. The father, who was called Don by his fellow veterans eventually began to talk to the 6 year old; common everyday conversations.

And from time to time the veterans would gather to sit and tell sea stories in low voices, as if validating their recollections. The story telling was generally stimulated by a few drinks. There was one sea story that the six year old never forgot.

That sea story took place on an unnamed atoll. The Officer's small ship was attacked by Japanese planes and sunk. The surviving crew managed to float towards the atoll, grouped together for protection.

As the group neared shore, one man jerked and groaned, then slipped under in a swirl of blood -stained sea water. The group then heard a distant shot, and then another crew member was killed and another.

There was a hulk of a destroyed landing craft laying in the surf nearby, and the remaining crew struggled through the sea frantically seeking shelter in the twisted, burned steel of the hulk. The crew clung to the hulk all afternoon, floating in a suddenly cold sea as the Japanese sniper moved invisibly to new positions, seeking out exposed crew and killing them.

And behind the survivors, the frenzied thrashing of the feeding sharks would be embedded in their memories until Eternity.

The officer hung on doggedly as his crew slowly were executed around him, wondering when night would come to hide them from their executioner; wondering if the survivors should try to go ashore in the night, and which direction along the beach would lead to freedom and which would lead to death.

Sitting there in the five-inch gun tub, Don Colyer's voice was barely a whisper as he told the story. I imagined 6 year old Peter, sitting cross-legged at his father's feet, mouth open, eyes wide with fright.

[ About Spindrift ]

The Marine's canvas leggings were missing, their sandy fatigues slapping their legs, their distinctive cloth-covered helmets were jouncing about. The three Marines came with their M-1s at port arms as if out for an evening run. There was no fear in the those Marines-- none. The Marines, who were only in their teens, had seen far too much death to fear it any longer. And besides, they had lost so many brothers that they lived with an all-consuming rage that overshadowed fear itself.

Unlike the cowering survivors, they came on like Judgement Day, jogging along three abreast, all business. Only in their business, they dealt in lead.

There was a presence about the Marines that said there would be no quarter. The Marines would take no prisoners. The trio jogged along the beach, willing the sniper to take a shot, just one— and he did.

Perhaps the sniper felt the presence of death himself, because he missed. It was to be his last shot. The three Marines rushed like grim reapers into the jungle where the thick green growth masked the dull thuds as the three M-1s sought out the sniper and killed him.

For some time Peter had felt an overwhelming need to gain his father's respect. In that moment of the telling of the sea story, it was apparent to the boy that though his father respected little, he respected those Marines.

And so it was, that the little boy sitting at his father's feet made a vow. When he grew up, he'd change his name to Don, and that one day he'd be a Marine.