Some of the Marine Corps stories in this installment aren’t necessarily relevant to helping me deepen my relationship with Jesus, but the feedback I got from the last episode tells me that most people really enjoy that part, so I think it’s important to share them. Besides – we are all instruments of our experience, and they are a part of my experience. Who is to say which parts deepened my faith and which did not?

The first story is that the first entity I worshiped was not God, but my father. I was born a narcissist, as are all babies. I had parents who loved me, but as a baby my parents had but one role in my life, and that was to provide for my every need.

Jordan Peterson says that our basic personalities are in place by the time we reach four, which by extension means that unless a child’s parents have taught a child not to be a narcissist by the time the child is four, that child will be a narcissist its entire life.

My parents definitely taught me not to be a narcissist. Having two older sisters helped as well.

My father, incidentally, died a few years ago, and his explicit instructions precluded a funeral. Being an atheist (or an atheist-leaning agnostic, as my dad would probably have described himself), my dad did not see the point. His instructions to my mother were to dispose of his body as cheaply as possible, so he was cremated, and my mother, my oldest sister, and I scattered his ashes in the Straights of Mackinac, at a small park at the base of Mackinac Bridge, in Saint Ignace, Michigan.

Since there was no funeral, there was also no eulogy, and part of me will always regret that.

Up to this point in the story my dad has not always been portrayed in the most favorable light. The truth is that I had a loving father, and that while my dad may have made mistakes, he did the best he could and I am grateful to him.

My dad had an equally antagonistic relationship with his father at the same age, but my grandfather (who my father named me after) died when my father was just 18, at 49 years of age. My father never forgave himself for having had a bad relationship with his father at the time of his father’s passing, and I want to be very clear that I had a strong, loving relationship with my dad – just not when I was 17.

My dad grew up a baseball player. How good was he? I once overheard some old-timers at Knollwood Tavern, just off Western Michigan University’s campus, talking about a very young Derek Jeter. They did not know who I was and they were not talking to me. I simply overheard them. One of them said that Derek Jeter was the greatest baseball player to come out of Kalamazoo since Ted Garneau.

My dad and Derek Jeter both played shortstop, but my dad was not a good enough shortstop to play professionally. My dad was, however, a good enough pitcher to play professionally, with a wicked fastball with a lot of late movement across the plate. My dad told me a couple of teams offered him contracts, including the Yankees. My sister tells me the Royals were the only team to offer him a contract. I don’t know how the draft worked back then but I assume he was offered contracts by both teams.

My dad also worked his way through college, and one day he got to a game late, after work. His manager put him in right away – without warming his arm up first – and almost immediately someone hit a soft groundball to short. My dad snapped up the ball and quickly threw it toward first base, but he felt a snap in his elbow and watched in horror as the ball sailed above first base, above the seats behind first base, and out of the stadium. He’d just thrown his arm out.

My dad’s arm healed and his fastball was as fast as ever, but without movement, and though he had some of his best years after the injury, major league teams lost interest.

It does not matter how fast someone can throw a baseball – if it moves in a straight line, it’s batting practice to the pros.

My grandfather had been a college professor raised by French-Canadian parents, and had zero interest in baseball. My grandfather founded Western’s radio station (WMUK – one of Michigan’s first FM radio stations) and had several opportunities to switch schools and teach at The University of Michigan, but stayed loyal to Western. Western even has a dormitory named after him (Garneau Hall).

I can only imagine how hard it must have been for my father to be such a good baseball player as to almost play professionally, with a father who looked at baseball as a waste of time, and who had no time nor interest in my father’s passion. It’s no wonder they had a contentious relationship.

Anyway, some of my first memories are of playing catch with my father at Oak Shores Campground, in Vicksburg, MI. My dad would let me use his old glove. We were throwing the ball back and forth almost before I could walk.

That’s actually literally true – I broke my leg at two in a freak accident jumping a hula-hoop that gave me a spiral fracture from the knee cap all the way up to the hip, and all the way down to the ankle, and after several months in traction and several more in a cast, I had to learn to walk all over again.

I don’t remember breaking my leg. I remember my dad coming home angry (he’d been bowling – my dad was a phenomenal bowler) and trying to make me walk over and over again. He’d pick me up and tell me to walk, saying there was nothing wrong with my god-damned leg, and I’d fall down crying and tell him I could not walk. I really was trying too.

It wasn’t my dad’s fault. He’d called the hospital and described my symptoms (there was no swelling or discoloration) and been told to give me some aspirin for the pain and to call again in the morning if I wasn’t better.

I must have been crying that night. My mom checked in on me and found my leg badly swollen and discolored. It was bad enough that when they got me to the hospital, the hospital staff, afraid of getting sued, refused to look at me until a specialist showed up.

All I remember is my dad trying to make me walk.

I do remember my mother giving me a stuffed animal while I was in traction. I remember it as a teddy bear, but it was actually a stuffed Snoopy. In retrospect, of course it was Snoopy. I carried a stuffed Snoopy around until I was in grade school, including one that had had its head sewn back on several times and had a washcloth for a cheek. This was probably the original snoopy my mother gave me in the hospital that day.

I still adore all things Snoopy!

I also remember being wheeled around the hospital in my bed (not a wheelchair) for Halloween. Tootsie Rolls were my favorite candy, and what a lucky kid I was – everyone gave me a Tootsie Roll!

I later got mad at my mom for telling me I’d eaten all the Tootsie Rolls when I knew I’d not eaten all the Tootsie Rolls.

But that’s it – that’s all I remember about breaking my leg. The actual breaking part – I have no memory of that at all. I don’t remember learning to walk again – I barely remember any of it at all.

When the doctors were setting my leg, they apparently did not know if I’d ever walk again, but they apparently did a good job as I eventually graduated from Marine Corps Boot Camp on that leg.

Did I break the same leg when I was at boot camp? I think so. As vague as my memories of being in traction were, I seem to remember it being my right leg that was in traction, and it was definitely the right leg at boot camp. I can’t be sure though: I was in a half-body cast covering one leg entirely, and the other leg to the knee.

I was diagnosed with a heart murmur at six, and it seemed pretty bad at the time. Whenever I’d run too much I’d get light headed and start to wheeze. It would happen in gym class, while playing AYSO soccer, or whenever I did anything else with too much running around, and I’d have to sit with my head between my knees for a few minutes to catch my breath, lest I pass out.

Our family doctor told my parents I’d never be able to play sports with the other kids again, and my dad’s interest in playing baseball with me changed markedly. We still played catch, but my dad must have had aspirations to mold me into the player he’d hoped to be, and then at six those dreams were dashed.

Except that they had not needed to have been dashed. I spent the next several years pushing myself as hard as I could to try and cause an attack, and would get up and push myself again as soon as the attack ended. The attacks got less severe and less frequent. Eventually they stopped entirely.

My Marine Corps medical paperwork had big red letters saying ‘HEART MURMUR’ on them, but as an adult it was a trivial heart murmur. Between the Marine Corps Reserves and the Army, I served eight years with it. It was never an issue again…

The broken leg and hurt murmur stories are things I’ve always looked at as minor miracles. They have served to deepen my faith, and though I was not yet a Christian when I broke my leg and did not attribute my recovery to God until later, at six I was a Christian, and I attributed my recovery over the next few years to God, even as it occurred. Certainly when I was able to join the Marine Corps I looked back and saw these things as vindications of my faith.

My parents were never able to understand (or perhaps they did not want to understand) the logic behind attributing such things to God, rather than to science, but I do not believe in a separation between science and religion. I view science as the explanation of how God does what God does. My parents always insisted that the simplest explanation is the one that should be assumed (a principle known as Occam’s Razer), and so they would tell me God must be proven before belief could be logical.

I look at the beauty inherent all around me in God’s Creation, the deeply personal luck inherent, not just in existence in general, nor even just in the fact that I personally exist, but in the luck for me to exist at this very moment in time. I’m supposed to believe that random chance accounts for all of that – that I’m just lucky? I’m supposed to believe that a leg broken so badly the doctors did not know if I’d be able to walk again, healed so perfectly that I could serve in the military for eight years? I’m supposed to believe my heart murmur decided to stop holding me back just because I willed it to do so?

Don’t get me wrong – I have a near iron will. But that’s not what made my heart murmur become so trivial as to be a complete non-issue at Boot Camp.

Occam’s Razer demands that the simplest solution be assumed. The simplest solution is the existence of God. And if THAT is not enough, just wait until I get to the birth of my daughter in a future blog post.

What was an issue at Boot Camp was anything anyone received in the mail with anything on the outside of the envelope or box, other than the recruit’s address and the address of the sender. Any extra writing on an envelope or box would earn the recruit receiving the letter or package unwanted attention from a Drill Instructor.

Mail call was always just before Quite Constructive Square Away Time (and bed), so we were all in our skivvies (underwear and t-shirt) when a recruit got a letter with extra writing on the envelope. The Drill Instructor pulled out a Bat Man mask and made the recruit with the letter run around the squad bay, hunched over with his arms behind his back, singing, “na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, BAT MAN” for about an hour. Shortly after the recruit started, someone else had a letter with extra writing on the envelope. The Drill Instructor pulled out a Robin mask and made this second recruit follow Bat Man, doing the same thing.

We’d get packages sometimes too, often with food in them. The Drill Instructors had a special foot locker for food packages, and when the foot locker had enough for the whole platoon to get something they’d open the foot locker and we’d all get treats.

One day, when both Senior Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Treanor and Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Diaz were in the squad bay, someone got a letter with a “Don’t have a cow, dude!” Bart Simpson sticker on it. Staff Sergeant Treanor said, “Don’t have a cow?!? Don’t have a COW?!?”, and then ordered the recruit to tell Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Diaz not to have a cow.

I felt really bad for the poor guy. Here he was, a recruit, being ordered by one Drill Instructor to tell another Drill Instructor not to have a cow. We weren’t even allowed to call Drill Instructors “You,” as a ‘ewe’ is a female sheep. We weren’t allowed to follow a Drill Instructor with our eyes unless we wanted to hear, “Are you eyeballing me, Recruit?!? Do you think I’m pretty?!? Do you want to put your fingers in my pretty pink panties?!?”

There was no way to win such an exchange. Anything the recruit said was going to be wrong.

Staff Sergeant Diaz was yelling at this guy, “DON’T YOU DO IT!!!  DON’T YOU FRIGGIN DO IT!!!” Staff Sergeant Treanor, in the meantime, was yelling at him to do it. Finally Staff Sergeant Treanor said, “Who are you going to listen to, your SENIOR DRILL INSTRUCTOR, or Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Diaz?”

The Recruit looked at Staff Sergeant Diaz and said, “Don’t have a cow, Sir!”

The whole thing had been a setup from the beginning, of course – just as the time with the Bat Man and Robin masks had been. But the Drill Instructors had been to Marine Corps Drill Instructor school and had become very good actors, and Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Diaz was absolutely going to have a cow.

Staff Sergeant Diaz flew into a rage, knocking down bunks, throwing foot and wall lockers, and yelling like a mad man at everything in sight, scaring the bejezus out of the platoon.

Punishment usually involved what was called ‘thrashing.” Drill Instructors would take names during training, and then later, when there were a few extra minutes, in the squad bay or in a pile of very dusty land, the drill instructors would either thrash the whole platoon, or would pull out everyone on their list for thrashing. Sometimes the Drill Instructors would even find a hose so that they could thrash us in the mud.

You did not want to be one of the Drill Instructor’s favorites, as they were ALWAYS on the list. Some guys were even on the list when they were not – I remember one time when a Drill Instructor called out about twenty names, and then added, “No Profit?!? We can’t have a thrashing without Recruit Profit!  Profit – GET UP HERE!”

Poor Profit had done nothing wrong…

Thrashing involved flipping around between running in place (knees up to your waist each time), situps, and pushups. Sometimes we’d spend most of the time flipping between exercises, and other times we’d stay in one exercise for long durations, to inflict pain. The push-up was the favorite exercise used to inflict pain. Sometimes the Drill Instructors would tell us that we were going to push until we pushed the floor right out from under their friggin feet.

And Heaven help anyone whose chest touches the deck…

I was only on the list a couple of times, but it was very common for the whole platoon to get thrashed so I still got my fair share of punishment.

Dear John letters were common, and in fact our Drill Instructors had clever names for common people in the life of a recruit – names that lived long after Boot Camp ended. A recruit’s girlfriend was referred to as ‘Suzy Rottencrotch,’ and though I don’t remember the name of the guy who was supposedly stealing Suzy and ‘her pretty pink panties’ from the recruit (I think it was ‘Joe’ something or other), he had a name too.

The airport was just on the other side of the physical training (PT) field, and we did physical training almost constantly – one actual PT session in the morning, along with very physical activities throughout the day that were not technically PT. And we had our thrashing sessions whenever time permitted.

We had two favorite mountains, between Boot Camp and Advanced Combat Training. The Grim Reaper was the one we marched up at Boot Camp, but we spent about a week encamped at the base of the far larger Mount Mother Fucker, where we learned the Wrong Rock game.

We played the Wrong Rock game whenever we had a little extra time at the base of that mountain.“Go up and get me my rock,” the Drill Instructor would say.

We’d all run up the mountain as fast as we could (and I’ve got to tell you – it was STEEP) and find rocks. We’d then run back down the mountain with our rocks. “Those are the WRONG ROCKS, eleven!” the Drill Instructor would inform us (‘eleven’ being short for platoon 1111), and so we’d all run back up the mountain to get a different rock, carrying the wrong rock back up where we found it.

Some recruits really did think there was a right rock, and that the punishment would end if only we could find it. These recruits were invariably put in positions of authority as the Platoon Guide, or as a Squad Leader. The Drill Instructor would not run up the mountain with us to yell, but the Guide and Squad Leaders would yell on the way up and down.

If the Guide or one of the Squad Leaders decided someone was slacking off, they’d turn the name in to the Drill Instructors for special attention, so when playing a game like the “Wrong Rock game,” it was important to put up enough effort not to make someone’s list.

We played similar games all the time. If we had a little extra time before chow the Drill Instructor would say, “Get on the road for CHOW” and out the door we’d run. Just as the last guy got into formation in front of the barracks the Drill Instructor would say, “Too slow – get back,” and we’d run back into the barracks to come out and try again.

This might happen ten times in a row – Get on the road for Chow!  Too slow – get back!  Get on the road for CHOW!!!  Too slow – get back!  GET ON THE ROAD FOR CHOW!!!!!!

Eventually it really would be time to get on the road for chow, and we’d go to chow.

I said last week that we got dressed ‘by the numbers.’ We actually did a LOT of things by the numbers, and every once in a while a Drill Instructor would give us extra time. If we usually had ten seconds to do something, a Drill Instructor might start once with fifteen seconds, or even twenty. Some recruits would start off more leisurely, but it was a trick. The Drill Instructor would actually give us LESS time than normal, starting off with, say, 20 seconds, but counting like, “Twenty. Nineteen. Drill Instructor Can’t Count! Three. Two. One. Ze-ROW!!!”

And we would all yell, “Freeze, recruit, FREEZE!!!”

Our Second Phase barracks (Edsen Range, Camp Pendleton) were just across the street from the beach. Sometimes at night we’d all have to go across to the beach with brooms, to ‘clean all this sand off my beach,’ as the Drill Instructors would say. We would then spend an hour or two sweeping sand into the ocean.

It was always the same thing – “Look at how dirty my gosh darned beaches are Eleven – sweep this gosh darned sand off my beach!”

Christmas was over the week we spent in the field. On Christmas Eve, after bedtime, Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Blankenship was walking around our tents, saying, “Marry friggin Christmas, Eleven. I’ll be your damned Santa Claus, and ho ho ho – you can’t wait to see what’s in my bag of tricks. I’m the Game Master. When friggin Milton Bradley and friggin Parker Brothers run out of ideas for games, they come to me!”

Staff Sergeant Blankenship kicked down some tents, just for good measure.

The hard part of Christmas Eve for me was that, growing up, my parents always hosted a really big Christmas Eve party. I thought, “Well – next year I’ll be there.” Little did I know that my parents would start spending their winters in Florida the next year. We never had that Christmas Eve party again.

Christmas Day was pleasant. We marched out of the field to watch Platoon in an auditorium and have hot chow before marching back to the field to finish the week.

All of our Drill Instructors had funny accents. I think they must actually teach how to talk funny at Drill Instructor School (and no – I am not saying accents are funny, just the ones Drill Instructors used). Staff Sergeant Diaz also liked to say things three times, such as to drink water from our canteens (which we only did when commanded to do so). He would say, “Uncork the water bot-ELS!  Helloooo, drink drink drink, drink drink drink, drink drink drink.”

Everything was in threes for Staff Sergeant Diaz. Even when saying the same thing three times did not work, Staff Sergeant Diaz would keep his cadence – pushups were, “HELLO front leaning rest position now MOVE!  HELLO, up damned down, up damned down, up damned down.”

At some point in Phase Three, a different Drill Instructor said something three times and a few of us chuckled. I don’t remember which Drill Instructor was on duty, but it was not Diaz. The Drill Instructor asked someone why we laughed and was told it was because Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Diaz says “drink drink drink, drink drink drink, drink drink drink.”

The Drill Instructor did not find this funny and we all got thrashed good and proper.

We only did one forced march at Boot Camp, culminating in the march up The Grim Reaper (some thought the several miles we did along the beach after the Grim Reaper was the hard part).

Right before we were supposed to start our forced march, Recruit Heartman asked permission to make a head call (there were some portapotties nearby). “NO!” was the response from a Drill Instructor. “Sir – Recruit Heartman requests permission to speak,” Heartman said next (you had to ask to speak before you could ask a question). “Speak,” came the reply.

“Sir – Recruit Heartman asks permission to make an EMERGENCY head call, Sir!”

There was no such thing as an ‘emergency head call,’ and the Drill Instructor’s response made that doubly clear. “If you have to pee that gosh darned bad, Heartman, you just pee your gosh darned pants.”

“Yes Sir,” Heartman said, his trousers immediately getting wet from the pee.

The Drill Instructor was impressed by this – Heartman had followed orders. Heartman then changed his trousers and put the wet pair into his rucksack.

On one of the last days of Boot Camp we had an inspection from an officer – captain if I remember correctly. We all studied tremendously.

I’d had a problem with my eyes crusting shut overnight for a few days – maybe a week. When we had that inspection I found out why. After listening to everyone else get asked all of the questions we’d been studying and hoping I’d remember the answer to whatever I was asked (the Drill Instructors were taking a list), all the officer asked me was if I knew I had pink eye. I said, “No Sir!” and was told to get it looked at, which I did in my Dress Blues immediately after graduation the next day.

We only did the one forced march at Boot Camp, but we did a LOT of forced marches at Marine Combat Training (MCT).

We were off on weekends at MCT, but had to show back up Sunday evening for a forced march Monday morning. Each week’s march was longer than the week before, and though I don’t remember how long they were anymore – they were long. Anyone who dropped out gave up their time off (called ‘Liberty’) for the weekend.

We could always spot the mountains we were going to climb on forced marches: anything that had a trail going up it that was too steep for a vehicle to make was going to be on a march, and of course Mount Mother Fucker was one such mountain. At some point before I went to Boot Camp, this mountain was the Boot Camp forced march mountain, but when I went through we marched over it at MCT.

I went through MCT during California’s rainy season, quickly learning that it never rains in California. It pours… It was a very rainy rainy season too. Whenever we’d bivouac for the week, we’d dig trenches around our tents to channel the rain water downhill around our tents. Even with trenches, sometimes people would get washed out from under their tents.

Everything was wet, all week, every week. Other companies (I was in Hotel Company) actually called off training some weeks and had modified training back in the rear, but not Hotel Company. We stayed out in the rain, no matter what.

We all had one waterproof bag (I’m guessing this is where Heartman’s wet trousers went), and if you were a smoker (as I was at the time) you hopefully kept your cigarettes in the waterproof bag. If you did not do so, someone would have cigarettes they’d sell you, but at $20 a pack (they were $4 a CARTON at the commissary).

Every single one of us got trenchfoot. For most of it it was minor and went away in a few days, after we dried out, but some people got it so bad they had to have parts of their feet amputated and ended up with medical discharges. I was one of the lucky ones – I kept my cigarettes and my socks dry (not the ones I was wearing), and so my trenchfoot was minor.

Some nights were so wet that some of us slept in portapotties. I never slept in a portapottie, but then I  was never washed out from under my tent either.

Every week in MCT we hiked to a different location at Edson Range. One of them was called ‘The Shelf.’ It was a large, flat piece of land half-way up a mountain. It rained so bad that particular week that our chow had to be driven up to us in tracked vehicles.

The troop handlers (the Marines who ran MCT platoons – similar to Drill Instructors) were mean. Drill Instructors were hard on us, but there was no sense of it being personal. Our MCT troop handlers seemed to actively dislike us.

On one of the first days of MCT, while we were still in-processing, our primary troop handler (some corporal – I don’t remember his name) brought us to the chow hall for lunch. They were serving spaghetti and we were told we had a light day in the afternoon, so we should eat up. Anyone who has seen Band of Brothers knows what happened next – our troop handlers took us on a long run after lunch until everyone threw up.

Throw-up parties were common in Boot Camp too. Drill Instructors would every once in a while have us drink two full canteens of water. The human stomach is not big enough to hold that much water, so if we all drank two canteens, we’d all throw up. Luckily they never had us do that in the squad bay…

Several of the Marines I’d gone through Boot Camp with were also in my platoon in Combat Training, including Franklin. Franklin was having a very hard time at MCT and one weekend he tried to flee to Canada. He was gone several days, but he turned himself in to the authorities at the border and was returned to finish MCT without any serious repercussions, though he was given quite a bit of special treatment by the troop handlers.

Marines in my day had two kinds of punishment. There is the formal punishment system, called ‘office hours,’ delivered by commissioned officers, and then there was what we called ‘non-judicial punishment,’ delivered by non-commissioned officers.

Formal punishment made it into a Marine’s official record and could have a negative effect on a Marine’s career. Non-judicial punishment could be anything a non-commissioned officer came up with, and resembled the ‘code red’ from the movie, A Few Good Men – though I never heard the phrase ‘code red’ until I saw that movie.

Speaking of movies – yes.. We did have a blanket party at Boot Camp, just like from Full Metal Jacket. I’m guessing every platoon has that one guy that just won’t straighten out until the members of the platoon take it into their own hands. Ours was against my bunkmate, Recruit Arnold, who had been dropped back several times by other platoons for not losing weight fast enough, and who liked to drop out of runs. Arnold did not want to be a Marine and should have been discharged. Instead, one night while two recruits held him down, the rest of the platoon put bars of soap in socks, and used them to beat Arnold. Arnold was my bunkmate and I was not asked to participate, but I also did nothing to stop the rest of the platoon.

I’m not going to pretend that being on the bottom bunk while the guy in the bunk above you gets beaten is anywhere near as bad as being the guy getting beaten, but I will say that laying there watching and hearing the whole things was difficult, and the guilt I feel for not doing anything to stop it is something I will take to the grave. I’ve asked God for forgiveness, and I know the rules, but I think sometimes it is easier for God to forgive us than it is for us to forgive ourselves, and I will carry that blanket party with me for the rest of my life.

The blanket party worked too. Arnold was pretty badly beaten the next day but not bad enough to seek medical attention, and he was never a problem for the platoon again. He even graduated with our platoon instead of getting dropped again.

And I’m in good company: there is a Recruit Arnold in every platoon, and every Recruit Arnold has a bunk mate. So was the blanket party scene accurate? Yes, except that in real life I doubt Joker would have participated.

And I went through in 1990. A lot has changed since then and while I would probably not approve of some of those changes, I hope they’ve gotten rid of the blanket party.

I may have heard the code ‘God, Corps, Country,’ while I served. Whether or not that was a formal ‘code,’ as portrayed in “A Few Good Men,” it certainly represents the Marine Corps ethos, along with honor, discipline, courage – basically everything one would expect from a modern knight. We were warriors, and warriors do have codes of conduct that are recognized and understood, whether strictly formal or not.

Someone may say that there is no honor to a blanket party. I suppose that is true to the uninitiated, but warrior codes exist to serve the warriors and don’t always make sense to civilians. I understand the purpose of the blanket party. I just think it’s too harsh.

Camp Pendleton allowed Marines to drink on base, even if under age (beer and wine anyway – a Marine had to be 21 to drink hard liquor) and some Marines did some pretty stupid things while drunk.

I remember one guy came back to the quonset hut we slept in on weekends (if we did not stay out overnight in town), and passed out on his cot. Sunday Morning found him fully soaked in his urine, which had dripped through the cot and totally soaked all of his clothing and equipment, leaving a big puddle under his bags.

Another Marine was chatting with a couple of MPs (Military Police) in their car when the MPs noticed that he was also peeing on the side of their vehicle. The Marine, obviously, got arrested.

The interesting thing is that while I saw alcohol-related incidents in the Marine Corps, they were generally minor. If a Marine could not perform his duty after drinking the repercussions could be severe, so we did a pretty good job taking care of one another to keep each other out of trouble. The Army was totally dry during deployments (including for training), and more severe alcohol-related events were common. The old adage, ‘treat a boy like a man and he will act like one – treat a man like a boy and he will act like one’ seems to hold true.

The Marine Corps treated us like men. We responded. When I get into my Army time in another post, you’ll see the converse.

Advanced Combat Training was four weeks. There may have been a fifth week of in-processing. I honestly don’t remember.

After combat training I flew across the country to Camp LeJeune to go to the Marine Corps Engineer School (MCES) at Courthouse Bay, where I would be trained on the grater, the scraper, bull dozers, front-end loaders, forklifts, and other pieces of heavy equipment.

I rode a bus in with a number of other Marines, including a guy named Mathey who would end up in my platoon for training. 

We got in for in-processing after hours and were put in an overnight barracks to be taken care of the next day. One of the guys was old enough to drink (Camp LeJeune used state law so those of us under 21 could not drink on base), so while the rest of us headed to the chow hall for dinner, he headed to the bowling alley to drink.

The guy who could drink made it back after we’d all gone to bed. We’d left him the bottom bunk under Mathey, to climb into when he got back. At some point in the night we woke up to hear Mathey screaming at this guy – he’d apparently peed his bunk, and then after cleaning himself up and not wanting to climb back into his pee-soaked bunk, he’d climbed into the bunk above with Mathey and peed that bunk too.

After in-processing the next morning, those of us going through Heavy Equipment Operator’s Course were put on guard duty for a few months while we waited for an open class to start.

Guard duty was interesting. We worked four hours on and then eight hours off, on a twenty-four hour schedule. There were no days off, and after a couple of weeks your sense of time gets all screwed up.

We had a day room with a television, a bunch of movies, and games and things to play, and spent a lot of time between shifts watching Young Guns and other popular movies of the day. The guys in charge would often get us pizza, or rent new movies for us – it was pretty good duty for the most part.

There were six or seven different places to pull guard duty, one of which was a demolition range we called the ‘ghost post’. The ‘ghost post’ was not haunted, but there was an eerie sense of quiet to it, and one night when I was on duty at the ghost post we (there were two of us on each post) were surrounded by hundreds of deer. The whole range was wall-to-wall deer, just milling about. It was hunting season – apparently the deer knew they were safe there. Whatever the case, walking around those deer for four hours, with at least two deer always within an arm’s reach, is something I’ll never forget. It was cold, with just a breath of fog, and the only sound was the sound of the deer moving. The other guy on guard duty and I – we were too afraid of starting a stampede to even speak.

I don’t remember how long Heavy Equipment Operator’s School was. I think it was six months. It might have been four, or it might have been nine, but we were off every night almost like a real job (albeit with a 10:00 PM curfew) and we had weekends completely off.

Room inspections were on Thursday morning, so on Wednesdays we had to stay in and clean our rooms.

Room inspections were easy too. Anything we were not allowed to have (I have a great story about this – but I don’t remember how much is embellished so it isn’t making the book) went into the day-room, and first thing Thursday morning we turned on all the hot water and used generous amounts of Lysol in the sink, in the shower, and on the floor. We’d make the smell of Lysol so strong you almost needed a gas mask to stay in the room such that the class commander would want to be in and out as quickly as possible.

PT was on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, after work in the winter and in the morning during the summer. There was no PT on Tuesdays or Thursdays. We preferred it in the morning – afternoon PT dug into our after work time (though I think we started the day earlier too such that PT did not dig into our after work time as much).

I don’t remember what time PT was in the morning, but it was of course early. It would usually consist of push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups, followed by a run of anywhere from three to twelve miles, and sometimes the whole Heavy Equipment Operator’s school would run as a group.

The trail we’d run on was a straight line dirt track, with different points named after birds, and we got to know how long we were running based on the name of the bird we were running too – Cardinal was our favorite as it was only a mile and a half away (for a three mile run), whereas Blue Bird was six miles away for a twelve mile run. We did not like to hear that we were running to Blue Bird!

A group of us decided to go to Onslow Beach one Sunday – a really nice beach on base where the Forced Recon Marines were stationed. The guy in the room next to mine invited me over for screwdrivers before heading to the beach, and I’d never had a Screwdriver.

The guy did not have orange juice – all he had was orange Tang, so we had Screwdrivers made with Smirnoff Vodka and orange Tang. They tasted so bad we washed them down with straight vodka and got pretty drunk.

By the time we got to the beach I was toast. I got a beer and laid down in the sun, occasionally going to get another beer, and soaking in the sun while turning around just often enough to make sure I had a second-degree burn evenly covering my entire body.

I felt fine when we got back to the barracks, so I drank a quart of Gatorade (we always drank Gatorade before bed when drinking) and went to bed.

I had to get up in the  middle of the night to pee and drink more Gatoraid, and holy smokes but when I climbed out of my rack was it painful to stand. There is, it turns out, nothing more painful than putting weight on your legs with a bad sunburn on the back of your knees.

I made it through the night, but we had PT in the morning and our class commander (one of the instructors – Staff Sergeant Martinez) saw me absolutely glowing in my PT gear. I could barely stand, but was in as close to a position of attention as I could manage.

Staff Sergeant Martinez walked up and down our ranks, giving us an inspection. He took a special interest in me, and while staring in my face he reminded us that if a Marine gets a bad enough sunburn that he cannot perform his duty (such as by falling out of a run), he could get formally charged with destruction of government property (we were government property) – which could be a felony.

Staff Sergeant Martinez then walked to the second rank, and while directly behind me he announced that for PT that day, we would run to Blue Bird.

I wish I could tell you that I was so tough I ran twelve miles in excruciating pain, but the truth is I began falling back almost immediately. It hurt so bad I even threw up. And then something miraculous happened – after a mile or two of excruciating pain, my knees loosened up and the pain went away. I picked up my pace to get back to my original position in line and finished the run.

I was in pain for the next couple of days, but it was not as bad as it had been that first morning, and I did not get office hours for destruction of government property.

I started writing a book while at MCES about a writer researching Atlantis in preparation for a book in which the fictional writer became convinced that Atlantis actually existed and began to actively search for it. The idea was that the Garden of Eden was on Atlantis, and that the expulsion from Eden was also the sinking of Atlantis. The writer, in doing his research for the book would become convinced Atlantis really existed and would have given up his book, deciding to actually search for Atlantis himself – expecting to find the Garden of Eden, submerged beneath the Ocean, still protected by churubim with flaming swords.

At the end of my book, the author would have died, but just as he suffocated from a lack of oxygen (in a tiny sub that had suffered some kind of malfunction), he would see the flaming swords of the Cherubum. He would die within sight of the literal Garden of Eden.

I obviously never finished the book, and the portion of the manuscript I did write has been long since lost, but perhaps one day I’ll try writing it again. I still like the basic plot line.

Life at MCES was pretty routine, but I was struck in the bulldozer pit (a big field of dirt where we learned to dig hull-down tank positions) by how much like some of Jesus’ parables operating a bulldozer is. The bulldozer’s blade is wider than the bulldozer, meaning that the bulldozer drives on the ground it cuts – quite literally reaping what it sows.

This sounds like a trivial detail, but it’s actually very profound as the bulldozer is also continuing to push dirt while driving onto the ground it just cut. This means that if you push the bulldozer blade down a little the bulldozer will continue trying to cut deeper and deeper until you lift the blade back up again, and when you lift the blade up again the bulldozer will let dirt under the blade, making you rise more and more until either you push the blade down again or run out of dirt.

The first thing one learns on a bulldozer is not how to dig hull-down tank positions, but how not to make roller-coasters (the inevitable consequence of over-correcting). My technique was to tap the blade control up and down (or side to side to angle the blade) and to count the taps. If I am moving straight and level and I tap the blade down twice, then once I am digging at my desired depth I need to tap it up twice to resume level movement. If I start running out of dirt, I need to tap down again, but must tap up again by the same amount as the bulldozer drives onto the new ground it is cutting. Similarly, if I start getting stuck I need to tap up, and tap down again.

When exactly to tap is a seat-of-the-pants thing. The operator has to learn to feel the bulldozer, making constant adjustments both to compensate for changes in the ground as well as for moving onto the ground the bulldozer just cut.

Before operating a bulldozer, I’d of course read about reaping what you sow, but on the bulldozer I felt it, making it a lived experience.

Lived experiences are important. We know for example, that our parents don’t know everything at a young age, but we don’t connect emotionally to that until we reach puberty. Once we emotionally connect to the fact that our parents are not infallible, we tend to overreact, rebelling against them. Mark Twain said, “When I was 18 my father didn’t know a damned thing in the world. When I was 22 I couldn’t believe how much he had learned in four years,” reflecting on the same over-reaction problem I’d experienced on the bulldozer, but whereas with parents we are walking on the road our parents cut for us, with the bulldozer we walk on ground we cut ourselves.

I wonder sometimes how many people have emotionally connected to the concept of ‘reaping what you sow,’ but have never built a real, emotional connection to it. I’d imagine such people rebel before God, just as teenagers rebel before their parents.

The whole concept of reaping what we sow has become politically incorrect, so there are a great many people who refuse to even logically relate to it, much less emotionally!

The Persian Gulf War occurred while I was in training. We started bombing Iraq while I was at boot-camp (giving our Drill Instructors cause to tell us that we would be going to war, and some of us would die), and then the ground war occurred over a four-day weekend at Marine Combat Training. The drawdown started while I was at MCES, and then one day everyone on the first floor of all of our barracks were moved to the second or third floors to make room for Army Reserve and National Guard officers, who would be taking the first floor as they returned home.

Marines are trained not to have a lot of respect for the other branches of service. ‘ARMY’ stands for “Ain’t a Real Marine Yet,” and the Navy was looked at as a glorified taxi service based on the notion that whenever we have a war to fight, the Navy is always there to give us a ride. Some Marines even joke about tipping the driver on the way off the boat.

The other branches have jokes about Marines too, but I think the Marine Corps is the only branch that actively teaches its members to think of themselves as being better than members of other branches.

It was about a quarter of a mile from the barracks to the Chow Hall, and the Army officers were fed before us. On the way to the Chow Hall, we would line ourselves up at six pace increments such that the Army officers had to salute each and every one of us, rather than holding a salute as they walked past a group. Some of the officers began to slacken-up on saluting (they were officers and we were privates so what were we going to do?). To us this showed a lack of discipline and made us disdain the Army officers even more.

One day as I was walking somewhere by myself I walked past an Army Second Lieutenant, and saluted, as required, except that instead of rendering my salute from the corner of the brim of my cover (Marine parlance for our military hats), I started the salute with my hand at my privates.

“Good Afternoon Sir!” I said.

At first the lieutenant returned my salute without noticing, and then suddenly he turned around and called out to me, “Private – did you just give me a dick-salute?”

I turned around, but did not say anything. I knew what I’d done, but I did not know there was a name for it.

This lieutenant was angry. He began to yell at me in a way I had not heard since Boot Camp. He wanted my rank (I had none), my ass, and my salary. He was going to turn me into the base commander for blatant disrespect of a superior officer. I was going to get the book thrown at me.

All of a sudden the MCES Sergeant Major (the highest ranking non-commissioned officer at MCES) was approaching us, asking, “Is there a problem here, sir?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major,” the officer began. “This young Marine private just rendered me a dick-salute, and I’m going to see to it that he gets what is coming under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” The officer went into a tirade about everything that was going to happen to me, talking this time to the Sergeant Major.

A lieutenant technically outranks a Sergeant Major, but technical rank is not the only measure of military power. The Sergeant Major has an office next door to the Commanding Officer, and carries a tremendous amount more pull than a mere Army Reserve Second Lieutenant.

“Sir,” the Sergeant Major said, interrupting the lieutenant mid-sentence, “It occurs to me that this young private may have rendered you a dick-salute in response to the fact that you seem to be a bit of a dick.”

This was not the response the lieutenant was looking for. I was shocked myself – I’d thought I really was in a lot of trouble.

The lieutenant and the Sergeant Major shared some words, but the lieutenant knew there was nothing he could do to a Sergeant Major, and eventually the Sergeant Major started screaming at the lieutenant before sending him on his way.

Then the Sergeant Major turned to me. “Young man,” he said – not yelling but with a tremendous amount of command inflection nonetheless, “You need to understand that what you just did was very, very stupid, and that everything that Army Reserve lieutenant said he was going to do to you, it really could have happened to you. You need to understand that you have to show proper respect to officers, even from other branches of service, and even when they are reservists, but more than that you need to understand that the ONLY REASON I am not going to put you in a whole lot of hurt MY SELF is that I thought it was funny. You are getting away with it this time, but don’t let me EVER CATCH YOU doing something that stupid again. Am I understood?”

“Yes Sergeant Major!” I said.

“Good, now move along!” was the reply.

I moved along…

At the end of Heavy Equipment Operator School, I needed to be discharged from Active Duty, into a reserve status. This required a physical. The doctor told me I had flat feet and wanted to discharge me completely, but I did not want to be discharged. To show me just how difficult service would be with flat feet, the doctor made me duck-walk. I duck-walked without incident. Whatever trauma I was supposed to experience from walking like a duck – there was none.

The doctor decided that since I was a reservist and a heavy equipment operator (and not active duty, nor something like infantry), he’d let me stay in, and as luck would have it though my unit was in Iraq, their orders to come home were written one hour before my orders to join them. Had my orders been written earlier, I’d have gone to Iraq just long enough to get a pair of desert cammies.

Instead I had orders to report to the 4th Bridge Company, in Battle Creek, Michigan – just outside Fort Custer.

Note that I later served for four years as a Combat Engineer on active duty in the Army. One might wonder how I ever passed an Army physical with flat feet, and that’s actually an easy question to answer – my Army recruiter told me to wait to get my lower legs inspected until there was a long line for that part of the physical, and then to get in line. I did as instructed, and while in that very long line someone asked if anyone in the line was prior-service. I raised my hand, and that part of the physical was pencil-whipped such that my feet were never even looked at.

Reservists serve one weekend a month, and two weeks every summer. The rest of the time a reservist is essentially a civilian – and just like that, I was going home.