Everyone has a life before the Marine Corps. Some are filled with high school hoopla, youthful accomplishments, and, finally, ascendency into the world's finest fighting force. Others come from less auspicious circumstances, entering the common crucible that transforms the ordinary person into one of the few.

After being asked to leave high school and not return, in my senior year, I took a couple of jobs in my hometown and made zero plans for the future. My parents paid for me to complete my high school education at an adult education facility from which I was awarded a diploma. After that I figured I could hang loose and see what turned up. I was mistaken.

My parents had both retired from their separate jobs at Buick and the local school district. They had developed some property they owned in Florida and left Michigan for good. They told me I could live with my brother for a while, but suggested I get my act together and begin a life as an adult.

Thinking it was the right thing to do I enrolled at the local community college and began classes while working two dead-end jobs. One day I corrected the boss's misbehaving child by kicking him in the butt. I was fired. The same week, I got the security truck stuck in the mud at the bottom of a hill while driving the perimeter during a rain storm. The boss thought that was stupid and fired me. College wasn't working out any better, as my attendance, or lack of, contributed to my essentially failing the semester.

I addressed these problems by drinking at the biergarten (bar) which was conveniently located next door (crawling distance as my father used to say). The law had been changed so that eighteen-year-olds were now the age of majority and could do any evil thing an adult could. One night, as my cousin and I were toasting our inability to get dates, since we had no real money or a place to take them to enjoy their enlightened promiscuous tendencies -- in walked a Marine on leave.

My uncle had been a Marine, and still was, and had been trying to get me to enlist ever since I turned seventeen. He was a recruiter at the time and everyone with a pulse was a potential applicant. At that time I was going to graduate (supposedly), was physically fit (in some ways), and had not been in trouble with the law (yet). He was pretty insistent, but was working in a recruiting station in Ohio, so he couldn't keep the pressure on for more than a few hours when he visited. He was always impressive though, and his physicality and poise were outstanding. If the Marines hadn't seemed like such an out-of-reach idea and mismatch for me, I may have been enticed to join.

Now though, in this tavern, this jarhead was disheveled and droopy, while displaying few remarkable attributes typically assigned to the Few and the Proud. We looked at each other, my cousin and I, and decided that we could do at least as good as this guy. I enlisted the next day (my cousin had apparently rethought his position and declined).

I joined the Marines in 1974. The war in Vietnam was winding down; no one was being shipped there from the Corps anymore. Being in a Field Artillery Group (FAG), we were somewhat of a weird lash-up to exist stateside. The makeshift battalion belonged to the Force Service Support Group (FSSG) which was a combat assemblage of everything needed to go to war. We were an island for broken toys also, as returning veterans of the war were assigned to our unit to await final release from active service. Many were hard to get along with, as the seemingly meaningless drill of barracks life was hard to compare to a war zone. I was unaware at the time that any of this was unusual.

The whole unit consisted of a 105 battery, 155 self-propelled battery, 155 tows, 175's, and 8 inch guns. There was also a tank company, amphibious vehicles company, and the force recon unit. We were designed to ship as a prepackaged death battalion with a central command. We would be super-useful in combat, but an oddball back on the base.

Meteorology was my military occupational specialty (MOS). We sent up sounding balloons to gather atmospheric data used in eliminating air density, pressure, temperature, and wind direction factors so that artillery could achieve a first-round effect on target. It was a lot of plotting and figuring that we delivered every four hours to firing units. Since the major conflict was basically over though, we essentially just trained to train with no real expectations of going anywhere. If the FAG unit were again deployed, it would be for World War III. So, we just blew up real estate in North Carolina and, on occasion, Puerto Rico.

Around 1983, after almost ten years of mind-numbing sameness, interspersed with a stint as a recruiter in Detroit, a year and a half as a civilian looking for work in Fairbanks, Alaska (that's another story) and Reganomics-Recession Michigan, a change of wives (yet another story), and a return to the loving embrace of the United State Marine Corps, I was assigned to Headquarters Battery, 10th Marines, in the 2d Marine Division. My wife feared that I would be deployed a lot, but I assured her, that as a regimental meteorologist, there would need to be a war for my section to embark. I was mistaken.

Charlie Battery, 1st Battalion, 10th Marines had been assigned to NATO forces in Beirut, Lebanon to be a Peacekeeping tool while negotiations went on to get the Israeli occupational forces to leave the country. Some brainiac in command thought the Beirut airport's meteorological equipment could be used to supply the artillery with data to perfect their ability to hit targets accurately. What was lacking was someone to both operate the device and convert data to military usability. That required someone from the regimental level, which turned out to be me, the assistant meteorological chief, and another private.

To make a long story short, we got there, the airport's equipment had been blown to smithereens, and we were forced to run pilot balloon missions (just a balloon and a scope) for four months. During that time the artillery fired only two or three illumination rounds until they fired high explosives (HE) on an invading Syrian battalion. Then, they never used the data, because the battery operations chief didn't know how to enter data from a visual met message into his computer. In fact, he'd never used any data we had sent him.

The fact that our battery fired on the advancing Syrians took us off the Peacekeeper board and placed us in as a target for terrorists. Our Battalion Landing Team (BLT) Headquarters was car-bombed within the week, leveling the five-story building they were housed in and costing over three hundred and seventy Marines and Sailors their lives. We were replaced and left the country a month later.

After a couple years back at 10th Marines I asked to be sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma as a meteorological instructor. Ft. Sill is the mecca of the field artillery and trains soldiers from all over the world. I got the transfer and stayed there until 1990.

Since 1989, the U.S. had been sending all kinds of equipment and personnel over to Saudi Arabia in anticipation of defending it from the Iraqi forces that had invaded Kuwait. I told my wife, who craved security and some degree of stay-put-ness, that since I was at the school and had the option to extend another three years, that I would be the last person to go anywhere. I wasn't anticipating orders, but my friends in D.C. thought it was time for me to rotate to Okinawa, Japan as an artillery operations chief. Wife...displeased.

I got to Okinawa in September. My wife worried that I would be involved in this thing called Desert Shield. I actually wanted to go, because we train for war, and here was one ready to go. I assured her, however, that I was with the 3rd Marine Division now, and that this deal in Kuwait was being handled by 2nd Marine Division out of North Carolina. I would be the last to go. I was mistaken.

10th Marines needed a fifth battalion, so they selected a battery from Hawaii, one from California, one from North Carolina, a reserve battery from Texas, and one battery from Okinawa. Guess who?

I was no longer a meteorologist, but a fire direction control (FDC) operations chief. I knew almost nothing about being an artillery operations chief, so going off to combat made learning that job an overnight necessity.

Desert Storm, as the war with Iraq was called, was essentially over after three days. Without radar, communications, or an actual chain of command, the Iraqis were lost as Tobey's ghost for the duration. We did blow up a lot of machinery and people, but we mostly gave surrendering Iraqi soldiers MREs (Meals, Ready-to- Eat) and directions to the rear lines. It took months to get a surrender signed, but we eventually left and returned to Okinawa. While 2d Marine Division received a heroes' welcome in the states, we returned to Japan where, frankly, we faced disappointed troops who had to watch the war on television, a populace who already disliked Americans, and an extended wait to rotate back to the United States.

Once I was back, I was assigned to Sierra Battery as the Ops Chief. They had just returned from a six month 'float', and were not scheduled to redeploy for three years. I told my wife that this all meant that our unit would be the last to go unless we went to war again. I was mistaken.

The United Nations needed an artillery unit to both train Saudi Arabian forces in country and be a force-in-readiness off the coast of Somalia in case intervention was called for. Since the battery still had their Strategic Operations Capable (SOC) status from float, we were selected. The SOC training went fast and we launched for the Gulf.

We did end up entering Somalia, but not as an artillery unit. We packed as a rifle company (infantry) and ended up chasing warlords all over Mogadishu and Kitsmayu. Before we left, I took a fire team to a spot just inside Ethiopia and surveyed in coordinates for an airstrip to be used for future humanitarian cargo ship landings. We then got back on board the ship and scooted home.

After returning I was informed that I was due for another move. I had a choice of a mortar platoon, an Instructor-Inspection station (I and I) with a reserve unit, or take my chances with an open billet in 10th Marines. I found a non-artillery slot as the Communications Security Officer (ComSec) which would keep me in HQ and make my wife and children happy. I told my wife that I might very well spend the duration of my career here. I was mistaken.

The UN had set up a U.S. Support Group in Haiti and needed a Gunnery Sergeant to act as the Sergeant Major. Since I wasn't an active Ops Chief, I was selected to fill that role and was shipped to Port-o-Prince. I remained there for six months, basically keeping security, intelligence, operations, and logistics under control within this multi-service configuration. I was overtly intimidating, making the control of Air Force, Army, and Navy personnel a bit easier. I had to jack up an Air Force Staff Sergeant and an Army lieutenant in the first week, but never needed to raise my voice afterwards. I almost hated to leave, but I did miss my wife and kids.

Upon returning to 10th Marines I was given yet another choice of assignments. Mortar platoon or I and I duty in Waterloo, Iowa. The mortar platoon assignment was the clincher for promotion to Master Sergeant and assignment as a battalion operations chief after returning to the artillery. It was the usual path taken for advancement as an 0848 (oh 8 4 8, artillery ops chief) to a battalion ops chief. I chose the Iowa post for no other reason other than I would be doing the job I knew, and not having to step backwards to becoming a glorified platoon sergeant again. Iowa was also a stone's throw away from Michigan, my retirement destination. I was eligible to retire in a year anyway, and if that decision was made, Iowa would be a convenient place from which to research our eventual residence in Michigan.

I had passed the retirement milestone and could either retire or stay and go on back to the fleet for another ten years. However, in the next couple of months, I ran my shoulder into the ground chasing a fly ball in center field at a ball game with a local civilian baseball club. The doctor said it was badly torn, and would probably never be as good as it had been again. Then, shortly after that, while we were running as a platoon up and down the gullies around our reserve station, my knee blew out. The meniscus was torn. When the hospital scoped it, the doctor discovered advanced arthritis in the joints. He recommended a knee replacement, although he knew the military wouldn't approve it at my still youthful age of forty-three. Besides which, the Marines couldn't use a man with a fake knee unless he were irreplaceable. So, the die was cast for my retirement.

The Veterans' Administration (VA) awarded me a 20% disability and that paid for my college education. I became a secondary English and History teacher and got a job a couple months after graduation. Teaching high school is a new challenge that calls for tact, discipline, and the ability to be semper flexible. My twenty-two years as a devil dog have paid me back again and again.

Author Notes

Thanks to RandallsArt for the cool graphic.

The scene is Summer in the 21st century. Bill and Kathleen are hanging out in the visitors lounge at the hospital. Bill will be preparing for a total knee replacement.




Kathy:    Why do you keep peeing yourself in the bathroom?



Bill:    My johnson has shrunk; it's like a big clit. When I sit on the throne I have to physically point it to the water or I'll squirt out under the toilet seat.



Kathy:    That might be from your hypertension medicine.



Bill:    Maybe (Aside) if I ever took it.



Kathy:    I wonder if the cholesterol meds do that?



Bill:     Maybe (Aside) if I ever took it.



Kathy: Does your arthritis pill warn about shrinkage?



Bill:    (I take arthritis pills?)



Kathy:    It could be your prostate shrinky stuff.



Bill:    All I know is it looks like I have Mr. Peanut's junk.



Attendant: Mr. Shoot  or Mr. Scott?



Kathy:   Our name is Shot.



Attendant. Well, I'm looking for Mr. Skoat.



Kathy: Maybe he's up your poop chute.



Bill: Kathy; just let him do his job.



End of Scene1 : Act 1

Chapter 4
Events of the Day

By Bill Schott

When I was young, around ten years old, I experienced a brief burst of writing inspiration. Accompanied by a spark of ambition, I began to write profusely. My topics were normally the events of the day or week. I would recount them as if in a diary entry, but I would embellish the facts to a point that reached fiction. The entries were not laden with gifted phrasing or notable alliteration. They were simply the events of the day as I would have liked to have had them happen.

I recall one entry that depicted a fight between my cousin Lloyd and me, which had occurred one afternoon as I was walking home from school. Lloyd had simply asked if I wanted to fight. I had no ill will for Lloyd, I simply figured we would fight. It was then that I discovered that I didn't know the first thing about fighting. I blocked with my nose and led with my chin until our scrap had been reduced to a wrestling match.

What I remember most about the fight was that everyone was cheering for Lloyd. It seemed that the closest person to me whom I could have called a friend was busy rearranging my face.

When it was over, which I mark as the moment my other cousin, Barbara, began kicking me and telling me and my vertical opponent that we were to get out of her yard, I trudged off alone to my home.

My parents were not home yet. My dad worked at Buick and my mother taught school in another town. The comfort that greeted me was to be three of my older siblings, Albert, Robert, and Muriel. I don't know how other brothers and sisters interact, but in my family, the sight of a disheveled boy, beaten black and blue and bleeding from the nose was cause for another beating. Albert pushed me around and laughed at me. He was two years older than me and I looked like his twin. He seemed to consider that a slight against him. Robert, enamored with himself and his reputation as king stud of the village, looked upon my defeat as evidence of genetic fade. Muriel, at that time the pending high school graduate, looked down on me as I imagine one looks at a wounded animal, pondering the worth of a mercy bullet. Their sympathy was not forthcoming.

Feelin very alone I withdrew to my area, behind the big chair, in the den where no one could see me, and I began writing the recap of the day's events. I would begin writing about my day at school.

[ Mrs. Ide liked my work today. She had said that I was her brightest student. Everyone in class enjoyed my paper showing the parts of speech correctly diagrammed and using the names of key students within the sentence. The lunch hall served a belt-straining, culinary feast that probably cost the chefs a night's sleep preparing. Both Rose Mary and Susie are in love with me and it's all I can do to keep Debbie from following me all the way home. At recess today I kicked the red ball over the backstop of the ball diamond. On the way home from school I got in a fight with Lloydy-toidy. I thrashed him to within an inch of his life. I was triumphantly greeted by my parents, as well as my brothers and sister, when I returned home. No homework tonight.]

These revisualized accounts actually helped me deal with problems that I felt I had all through my youth. I never wanted to recount my troubles or the negative aspects of my life. I wanted to escape to a world where I was important and admired, or just--thought about.

It was during this time that I discovered the excellent writing being done in comic books. I would tend to emulate it for writing assignments. This got me into writing dialog and learning all the rules that come with that.

Not to be too consumed with fantasy, I also began reading true-to-life stories about kids in other parts of the U.S. and the world. The Hardy Boys got me deep into fiction at my age level.

Today I take the stories of my life and spin them for general consumption. The flat out lies have been replaced with allusion to truth, and a sense of inferiority finds a home only in characters of fiction.

Chapter 5
Fear of Success

By Bill Schott

My story is one that depicts me searching for a way to avoid a tremendous decision that will change my life. In a dreamlike state I seek escape from what seems like an awful fate. My fate appears to me in the form of a pursuer who seems dangerous and bizarre to me. I find myself in a setting of peaceful, non-stress-inducing people, who enjoy a simpler life that gives them contentment and ease. I want to stay there. All the characters and characteristics of my story are manifestations of my own self-analysis. I am a crying baby, wanting to be changed, but helpless. I am the stalking apparition that is both a terrifying aggressor and a possible savior, hoping to rescue a person who should be powerful, but seems like a weakling. My solution to escape goes from the disorientation of an unknown environment, to the simple act of opening a pantry door to affect an exit. Even when faced with the ultimate end, confronting the relentless stalker, I manage to convert him into a redeemer. I now realize that my fears are entirely a fiction that my subconscious created, and that I must now view as the working-through of my anxiety and trepidation of a future I perceive myself unprepared to enter. I know, however, that I have the fortitude to prevail, like a royal heir from a lineage of glory, and the trust and support of friends, who respect and love me, like a realm of true believers.

Chapter 6
I Remember...Death

By Bill Schott

I remember the day that she died. This was the fourth time that death appeared in front of me, but her passing affected me like none before.

The first person who died before me was an old man who had drowned in our town's lake. He had been out swimming after dark, and after returning from the local tavern, and apparently sucked in a lot of water. He was dragged ashore and was being administered to by several concerned citizens. None of them knew how to help, or what to do. I was ten years old and watched the man choke and gasp until he died, surrounded by helpless witnesses. I was in disbelief that, after it was decided that he was dead, only a couple of people remained to meet the ambulance. The rest had wandered off to their homes, or back to the tavern.

The second person whom I watched die was a Marine in Beirut. We had just exhumed him from the rubble of the Grand Hotel, which had that morning been razed from five stories of granite and concrete to a colossal mountain of tombstones. Most of the victims had been crushed by tons of concrete, or simply blasted apart by the explosion. Some were saved, who had by some miracle either ridden the building down from the roof top, or been dropped into a niche that wasn't then filled with the rest of the building. The marine we pulled free was alive, but badly pummeled. He was barely aware that we were there, though his eyes seemed to follow our movements. We were in the midst of congratulating ourselves at his rescue, when he closed his eyes and simply stopped breathing. There were no facilities at our reach that could be used to resuscitate him. He became one of the other 241 casualties of the truck bombing of the battalion landing team headquarters.

The third person I witnessed pass was my father. He was in the last days of succumbing to lung cancer and only barely aware of my brother and me being present. We were managing his hospice care and had been giving him morphine, freely, the previous twenty-four hours. He was only able to mouth the word 'pain', which I responded to by giving him another small dose of the drug. In the next four to five hours he literally withered before me. It was as if every sinew and tissue were being recalled within his core, leaving a skin-covered skeletal frame lying asleep before us. His shallow breathing finally ceased and I performed a check of his eyelids, which I presumed was proper. His eyes were dry and I needed to physically close the lid as it had remained where I'd opened it. I kissed him on the forehead, something I did for the first and last time that moment.

The fourth 'person' was our family dog. Lacey was a fourteen-year-old, white labrador. We had her since she wandered out of a corn field as a puppy. She had been the size of a softball, but grew into a polar bear. We weren't dog trainers so she just lived and played with our kids. When we had moved to a new house, a new school, and had new jobs, fourteen years ago, Lacey was a part of all of that with us. Our lack of moderation in her feeding made her an over-weight and joint-stressed older dog. We tried to reverse the process, but she was, after many years, crippled and slowed by pain. When she was finally to the stage of crippling arthritis and the inability to control her bowel movements, I knew it was time to let her go. I had told my wife my plans and she and the kids all hugged and kissed their 'sister' good-bye. I waited until my wife and daughter were away for the day until my son and I took Lacey to the veterinarian. I had to lift her onto the table, as no one else could (she was a hundred pounds). She was calm and cooperative all through the process of inserting the I.V. and hooking up the anesthetic. It all seemed routine, as I had brought her to the vet dozens of times in the last decade. Then came the moment when I had to give the word to overdose her with the anesthetic. She was resting comfortably before me, probably pain free for the first time in over a year. Memories flooded my mind of her gnawing through the cord of the new microwave, chewing off the back of my new shoes, chasing my wife around the house with a dead mole in her mouth, knocking the state representative down at my front door, always running the opposite way when we called her, and dozens of other moments where she filled our minds with delight and frustration. I had some wild thought of taking her back home and having her sleep in this pain-free state a while longer. Reality returned, however, and I gave the vet the okay to administer the anesthetic. She did, and a few seconds later pronounced Lacey dead. Lacey was left to be 'disposed of' and we left the room. I began to quiver. The tears streamed from my eyes. I suddenly experienced a huge pang of guilt. My son had to drive us home.

I don't expect to be at war again, nor will I lose my parents a second time. I didn't choose for any of those people to die; I was simply in attendance. There was nothing I could have done to save any of them. Having the ability to choose life or death, even when the decision seems obvious, is a power that can never be understated, or easily disregarded.

Chapter 7
Wymie Ferret

By Bill Schott

It began the same day that Baggy Ponds decided to take a week off and see his folks. He asked the three of us, Abe, Butch, and me, to take care of his ferret. He hadn't known us very long, seeing he was new to the meteorological unit, but we assured him that the little fur-bearin' critter would be in excellent care.

No sooner had his jalopy pickup truck disappeared behind the hill next to our weather station, than work was begun on the launch. Within the hour an MRE case had been transformed into a gondola. We inflated a 100 gram pilot balloon and attached supporting guy lines to the vehicle. Next, we ran out an entire roll of cord (approximately 500 meters) to tether the space craft, so re-entry would be possible. With all systems go the balloon was released and Private Wymie Ferret became the first ferret in space.

Looking over the side of the gondola, paws under his chin as he gazed down at the retreating earth, I can only imagine his terrified rodent thoughts. We allowed more and more cord to unreel until the white balloon was a mere dot in the immense sky. We discussed, as we monitored the controlled launch, whether the ferret would suffer in the cooler atmosphere aloft. This finally turned into sobering concern for the ferret's life. His re-entry was initiated.

As the balloon and vehicle came nearer to the ground, we could see Private Ferret was still very much alive. He must have been overjoyed to see terra firma again, as he attempted to leap from the safety of his elevated box to the ferret-hating gravity that existed outside of it. He had actually leapt three-quarters out of the gondola before his better judgment, which seemed to reside in his left rear foot, caused him to latch onto the hull of his carriage with that appendage. He then dangled, a cartoonish figure hanging from an MRE box, flailing helplessly as his flying apparatus slowly descended to the earth.

He was still too high to safely release his grip from the gondola, but fearlessness or lack of sonar caused him to let go and plummet downward. Abe said he would catch the ferret, but then Butch shouted that he had him. "I got 'im! I got 'im! I - don't got 'im!" he yelled, as the falling ferret whisked past his arms and thudded on the ground.

We gasped, looked at each other, then laughed hysterically at what had just occurred. After a mixture of disbelief in Butch's incredible stupidity, and marvel over our otherwise successful experiment, we scooped up the hapless creature and transported him to our workroom for further analysis.

He was lethargic and quiet for an hour or so, until we placed the makeshift medal around his neck. We could see the sparkle in his bulbous and unbelieving eyes as he, no doubt, reveled in his paper clip and aluminum foil award.

Within a couple of days Wymie was no longer dragging himself around with only his front legs working. He was, as far as we could tell, fully recovered from his ordeal and ready for his next phase of indoctrination. He seemed less than anxious to leap from my arms and into the freezer for cold-weather training. That wasn't the most thrilling experimentation to observe, but it's certain that when Baggy Ponds returned from vacation, he had the most highly trained ferret in the world.

Wymie's training intensified over the next few months. Each time Baggy left him with us, survival training began. He would accompany Abe to scuba school and spend a little time treading water. He also tagged along with Butch to the pistol range where he was saddled with a box of 9 mil rounds to carry from the ammo table to the firing line. Word is he was a trooper and a quick learner.

One day Baggy met Candy (I know, we laughed too). Since they spent a lot of time together, and since Candy had a spread of land, Wymie rarely ended up in our care. Candy wasn't a cerebral giant, as was evidenced when she took Wymie, whom Baggy had bought to eventually breed, into the vet to be neutered. This happened when our team had been sent to run meteorlogical data for the 82nd Airborne.

Shortly after Ponds had acquired Wymie, he built a super deluxe cage for him. It was six feet by four feet, made of two-by-fours and rabbit wire, and weighed a ton (a hyperbole which becomes an irony later). They kept the cage and Wymie at Candy's place. This did eventually lead to what we would later refer to as Wymie's Last Ride.

Baggy was assigned to a six-week duty in Puerto Rico. He had simultaneously broken up with Candy and asked her to deliver Wymie and the cage back to our meteorological station with her pickup truck. She did just that the day after his plane left for the San Juan. The truck arrived with the huge cage in the bed. We jumped up to lift it out and saw that the ferret was not inside. We asked Candy where he was and she claimed that she had tossed him in the back with the cage.

After removing the cage we discovered the lifeless, flattened, carcass of the former Private Wymie Ferret. We ascertained that the bear-rug-looking Wymie had been placed in the truck bed first, then unceremoniously squashed by the super heavy cage which not-so-smart Candy had tossed in afterwards.

Upon Baggy's return we informed him of the events and he took it as well as could be expected. He suggested we launch Wymie's body (which we'd kept wrapped in cellophane in the freezer)with a thousand gram balloon. It would be well over the Atlantic Ocean by the time it eventually popped. We all agreed that it was a brilliant, original, and fitting send off for our fallen ferret friend.

Chapter 8
A Lawnchair on Mars

By Bill Schott

Like the first brush stroke on a pristine canvas - the first form on the painting - whatever was out there was foreign to all the rest. A box, a man, a truck, the shitter - anything. Anything -- framed in sand. Three -dimensional sand. Sand as far as the horizon. Like a sea of beige that stretched to the limits of sight, until the pale cerulean sky allowed a moving cloud, to assure me that time had not stopped there in the endless, empty panorama of the Arabian Desert.

I had been reading Lonesome Dove, a western. I hadn't picked up a western since my Louis L'amour days. The First Fast Draw, and those Sackets. That was fifteen years ago. No one wrote good westerns anymore. There was that perverted, sadistic, formula crap for a while, but you had to be between shock treatments to read that garbage. But this one, Lonesome Dove, it was really good. It wasn't hard for me to picture myself in a west Texas lash-up like McMurtry was describing. The desert was quite accommodating in that regard.

Between the book and the occasional stroll around the perimeter, I had been working on another letter to my wife. This would be the Fifty-five-page Letter now (65 if the mail didn't go out again today). I had been telling her all about me. We had been married for four years and she had asked me many questions about my past. She had asked me about Okinawa. What had Korea been like? What happened in Beirut? What happened with Karen, with Mary Ann, with Yvonne? Why didn't I ever talk about any of it? Now I did. It would all be in this - tome. The encyclopedia of Billy. My last letter.

I was looking out through the windshield of the humvee (high-velocity, multi-wheeled vehicle [HvMwV] ) as Corporal Holcolm was walking out to take a dump. Modesty, and the relentless quest for hygiene, required that one walk far from the compound in order to defecate. Unlike the mountains, or swamps or frozen tundra, there was no hill to go below or tree to squat behind. You just had to keep walking straight out until you were relatively certain that you were as small to any onlooker as they were to you. Once a five-ton truck looked like a Cracker Jack prize, it was a safe bet that no one would be gawking at you. The 'shitter', which one carried with him to the eventual deposit area, was just an ammo crate with both ends knocked out. It was big enough to take a load off while you fed the flies and the dung beetles. The quest for hygiene normally subsided after the sun went down, and the men would only walk out as far as it would take to not have to see their masterpieces in the light of the following day.

This day hadn't been too hot. It was about a hundred, most likely. Most everyone had peeled off their clothes and applied their sun block. Sunglasses, sun block, lip balm, baby wipes, Jolly Ranchers, and a couple of bottles of Arabia's Finest aqua pura were the main items in the desert warrior's kit bag.

Someone from the battalion had entered the compound and had set up a situation map towards the center, near the XO's vehicle. The battery gunny had us all form a horseshoe around that area so that our visitor from the Puzzle Palace could bring us up to date on the Desert Storm Operation.

I wish we hadn't seen the briefing map. The plan was rather complex, so the marines only received a quick scenario from the S-2. They showed us the big picture. There was Kuwait; there was Iraq; there was Saudi Arabia. As the others knelt to listen, I pulled up my portable lawn chair and sat down. It fit in my sea bag so I brought it. Warriors need to know how to kill and be comfortable. I noticed, off to my left, that a dung beetle had carved his treasure out of someone's pile of pooh and was rolling it merrily northward. That would take him to the briefing map. Beyond that, if he kept going, he would end up in Kuwait. Dung beetles use their long forelegs to shape large hunks of dung into balls. Then they roll them home. Their whole world was in a little ball of dung - a little world of shit.

"We are in a world of shit!" was Corporal Holcolm's comment, as the Intel lieutenant pointed to the strongholds of the Iraqi Army. The young officer had colored the Iraqi forces in red and our forces in blue. As I looked at the map, which was a topo map, depicting the actual operational area as it really looked, I saw a large, beige square. The large beige square, the map, was eight feet across and eight feet high. The upper half of the eight feet was almost completely red. The right half of the lower portion of the map was also quite red. What I would compare to the size of the Great Salt Lake, as seen from a lawn chair on Mars, was a tiny blue inkblot that represented -- us.

After the briefing, I briefed the men in my platoon. I first assured them that we had the finest flak gear, the most proficient chemical masks, the top laser deflectors, the thickest sandbags, and the best training in the world. The world, I thought. A little ball rolling north.

That night I finished Lonesome Dove. By flashlight I scribbled down things about Karen, Mary Ann, and Yvonne. I wrote about Ms. Pok in Yunjago, and Inga, the German girl at the Hotel Lawtonia. There was a red-head, a drive-in movie, and a car chase. There was Diane-somebody, somebody's cousin, and there was the widow and how we spent the night of the wake. Then there was the sea. The weeks at sea. Puerto Rico, Japan, Korea. I wrote it all down as fast and as much as I could. The fifty-five page letter was getting to be the seventy-five page letter. I wanted her to know about the armory and the suicide, the homicide, and the Root. I shared with her the explosion, the digging, the bodies - the pieces of bodies. The bags of parts, parts waiting to be pulled from the bag and put into a bag with the rest of its body. The face in the sand. The "mask" that the private had been reaching for that was suddenly recognized as a face without a head. The face that will forever be at our feet, hoping that someone will put it in a bag. I wrote it all down and finished the ninety-five page letter. She would know me now.

The water truck arrived the next morning. Our forklift unloaded the sixty or so pallets of bottled water and the truck driver collected all the mail going south. My phonebook-sized correspondence was off to Camp 15, and then America. As much as I didn't want to die, I felt that it was going to happen anyway. I felt that whatever I had said or done before I got here was how it would be. Whoever I smiled at would remember my smiling face. Above all, whoever read that last letter, would know that I was in love with her and that she was the high-water mark of my life.

As it turned out, we carpet bombed the hell out of the Iraqi positions until the remaining soldiers left the instant graveyards and took their chances with the devil spawns of the United States. Those that remained in their positions did so out a sense of being quite dead. FAI (fuel air ignition) bombs had crushed vehicles and equipment by sending thousands of pounds of pressure downward from the air explosion above an enemy position. DPICM (dual-purpose improved conventional munitions) artillery shells, deployed at regimental strength, obliterated enemy artillery units.

As quickly as they died, the desert would begin absorbing them. Sand, like an unsleeping artist, grain by grain, would reclaim the auburn earth; cover the last form on the tragic painting, and opaque the crimson brush strokes, leaving a new pristine canvas.

The Iraqi peasants that survived, those impressed into service to be fodder on the front lines, surrendered to anyone and everyone. They surrendered to news correspondents; they surrendered to an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft the size of a go-cart; they even surrendered to each other. They were all starved and frightened and each was anxious to receive a nice warm bullet in the head. Unfortunately they had to settle for food, a short confinement, and a trip back home to 'Fagdad'.

After Kuwait it was GO WAIT for the rest of us. We sat in the desert for another six weeks. Corporal Holcolm, who had shaved his head prior to our entering Kuwait, was now happy that he had this time to grow it back. He wasn't one for the 'high and tight'. He just figured he'd look better in a coffin with one. Now that he would be heading back home, the James Dean look would again be developed.

We finally received some of those Red Cross packages that we had heard the HQ poags were bogarting back in the rear. The First Sergeant scarfed up all the cigarettes to allow for an even distribution among the afflicted. There were playing cards and magazines, but what I found, on the bottom of one of the boxes, was a collapsible metal easel, an oil paint set, and a fourteen by twelve inch mounted canvas. I hadn't painted for years. I recalled how relaxing and time-consuming it could be; just what I needed.

I had only the one canvas. Whatever I placed on it would be my statement. I set up the easel and dabbed out some colors on a pallet. I had only begun when the sandstorm came. They were always a little ominous as they would rise up on the horizon like a tidal wave, then move forward like the dust of a giant, invisible cavalry. I had hurried to get into the humvee, forgetting that the easel was still standing out alone as the wind and sand drove through. Trapped inside the vehicle, I opened an MRE (meal, ready-to-eat) and withdrew a freeze-dried pouch of pears. After a half an hour or so I must have fallen asleep, and remained that way through the night. The next morning I saw that the sand had practically buried the standing vehicles and equipment that had blocked the path of the particle rock. I looked for the canvas and easel in the general area, and found only the canvas, a few paces away from where the easel had stood. I found it with an anonymous artist's "masterpiece," having been dropped from a squatting rectum, standing as if it were a brilliant sculpture, in the center of a taut, cloth rectangle. I could also see that a dung beetle had assessed a portion of the artwork and wheeled it off to his own private gallery.

Then, of course, the word came. "C-S-M-O!" was the shout from the First Sergeant. We quickly began gathering up our belongings that had somehow managed to sprawl from our vehicle to encompass a four-hundred-square-foot area. It now had to be snatched up and rammed into our humvee. Within ten minutes we were packed into the vehicle and headed south. We remained busy and moving for the next three days as we drove back down the length of Saudi Arabia to Camp 15 and then Riyadh.

We would be leaving all the vehicles in Saudi. Uncle Sam had sold them all to King Fahd, along with a few Harriers, a few howitzers, and a lifetime supply of chap-stick. All we needed to carry out was our ALICE packs, sea bags, and weapons. The canvas and easel would not have fit in with what we could take out anyway. I couldn't have carried it with me. I would leave it all there.

I left that desert. It became a story in my mind that I seldom tell. The time I spent in the middle of that cinnamon sea improved me. I learned more about value, and I learned a lot more about perspective. I shared my life with a woman who was 12,000 miles away, in a way that I might never have dared.

If I ever paint this scene, it would have to begin with a small blue dab, or a soft cinnamon circle; the perspectives of that world as I had seen it then. The Great Salt Lake - pushing north into the Red Sea. The dung beetle ball - a world shaped by what you are given, and kept in motion until you get back home.
 

Chapter 9
Level Seven in Somalia

By Bill Schott

Image from Google









Walking the parapet on the top of our headquarters, an abandoned hotel in downtown Mogadishu, was like taking a summer stroll on a cloud after the apocalypse.

The night smelled of urine and the scene was a flattened city. Thirty blocks in any direction looked like World War III had come and gone. The only electrical power was generated by United Nations' engineers in three corners of the former Somalian tourist destination.

As Officer of the Day (OOD), in charge of the perimeter guards and the general security of the area, I began my first of six nightly patrols. I walked the concertina-wired barriers to check on the guards that were posted.

There were five positions and each had two guards. The current threat was low, so one guard could sleep on the post while the other stood watch. The first four stops were routine. The guard on duty gave a report and I advised of any updates to our situation. The fifth post was the furthest from the building and covered a wide view of leveled area. This position provided eyes on the ground of a quarter of our perimeter.

Reaching the post, I was not stopped and asked to identify myself. That was my first clue that something was wrong. Coming up to the front of the entrenched and sandbagged post, I found the guard sitting, earphones on, playing with a Gameboy. He was totally unaware that I was standing in front of him.

I looked around and found a loose brick. There were hundreds to choose from. I tossed it into the post, hitting the guard on his helmet. Startled, he shot up and shouted, "Stop! Who goes there?!"

"Wake up your relief! Post him! Then get up here with your gear and that toy!"

The marine moved like a little tornado to get up his replacement and leap out to present himself in front of me.

"Tell me, Private --"

"I'm a Lance Corporal, Gunny."

"I assure you, marine, you're not. What's your second general order?"

"To walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert and observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing."

"This is a war zone, marine. Your brothers are depending on you to protect them while they're sleeping. Are you?"

"I was -- no, Gunny."

"Give me that piece of crap!"

The guard handed over the Gameboy.

"Get back on post and guard us. While you're doing that, pray to God I don't have you confined to quarters and referred for a court martial."

After leaving the post with the computer game, I returned to the guard office to update the OOD journal. Once I finished, leaving a line open for the 'incident', depending on how the rest of the night went, I posted the Sergeant of the Guard and went to take a nap.

I didn't get much sleep, but I crushed level seven on Mario World.



 

Chapter 10
Christmas in Korea

By Bill Schott

In December of 1978, my company was training in the DMZ in South Korea.

It was sad to be deployed and as far from Christmas as a butt hole from the heart.

Trying to raise the mood, I chopped down a five-foot cedar tree and decorated it with empty soda cans and hemp twine. The general funk dissipated.

Soon though, a liaison from headquarters appeared to inform us that the trees in this area had been planted by the government; all were numbered and protected. A thousand-dollar fine was collected from the unit by the commanding officer. The funk returned.

 

Author Notes

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