One Bullet Away

Olds moved on to his next victim, and I hesitantly began to piece my life back together, wondering again why I was at OCS. Next to me, Dave caught my eye with a smile and mouthed, “Semper fi.”

2

AT EXACTLY FIVE O’CLOCK each morning, candidates roaming the squad bay on the night’s rotating guard threw the switch on the fluorescent lights. It was like shooting the day from a cannon. The instructors burst out of the office at the head of the long room. We had five seconds to launch from our racks, slide into our black rubber flip-flops (referred to as “shower shoes” in the Marines), and assume the position of attention with our toes along a black line that ran the length of the squad bay. No head starts. No wearing shower shoes in the rack. Don’t yawn, don’t wince, and don’t be late.

Olds was always the loudest. “I’m looking for morning wood. I want to find the candidate who was thinking dirty thoughts about me in his sleep.” He prowled up and down the line, bent at the waist to stare at our crotches. The other two instructors were Staff Sergeant Carpenter and Staff Sergeant Butler. They were the ultimate masked men. In ten weeks, we never learned a thing about them. They dominated our every waking hour, but the interaction was almost purely animal.

A favorite morning ritual of theirs was getting dressed by the numbers. With the candidates toeing the line, we began a screamed, scrambled version of Simon Says. “Put your left sock on now.” We had three seconds to take the shower shoe off and slip on a black boot sock.

“Too slow! Take it off!” Olds howled in cadence, as if to a drumbeat.

We returned to the starting position, holding a sock loosely in each hand. In the corner of my eye, I noticed Candidate Dunkin next to me. I had been cursing the alphabetical arrangement of the racks, since Dunkin had become a lightning rod for hate and discontent. He was overweight and undermotivated. While the rest of the platoon played along with the sergeant instructor, Dunkin was slowly getting dressed on his own. Olds noticed, too.

“We have an individual.” Olds spat the word like it was a synonym for child molester. “Candidate Dunkin, what are you doing?” The drumbeat again.

Dunkin didn’t answer. He removed his socks and returned to the starting position, staring blankly at the wall across the squad bay. Olds levitated two inches in front of his nose, hissing in a whisper only those of us closest to him could hear.

“I got you pegged, boy. But you’re gonna suffer before I send you home.” Dunkin blinked, and Olds inhaled before bellowing at the platoon. “Right sock!” This time, he didn’t even wait to see how quickly we moved. “Too slow!”

After ten repetitions with the socks, we ended up with our boots on our hands, clomping around the squad bay on hands and knees, “marching” to cadence. Olds explained that orders slowly executed meant advantages lost. My OCS fear had subsided, to be replaced by frustration. I didn’t understand the point of the games. It seemed like fraternity hazing, and I expected more from the Marine Corps. I crawled in a circle with my boots on my hands and fantasized about quitting, about going home and spending the rest of the summer as a lifeguard. This wasn’t the warrior rite of passage I was looking for.

When Olds declared the games over, we got dressed and piled outside to form up on the physical training (PT) field.

The centerpiece of the PT field was a red wooden platform. Atop it, silhouetted against the rising sun, stood a British Royal Marine color sergeant. He was on exchange from the U.K. and clearly enjoyed beating platoons of aspiring American officers into shape. “Ah, good morning, candidates. Your steady diet of Big Macs and Jerry Springer has surely prepared you for this morning’s activities. Remember, nothing proves your effort to me like projectile vomiting.”

I already had a history of Corps-induced vomiting. A few weeks after Tom Ricks’s talk, I had walked into the Marine recruiting office in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Above the government-issue metal desk were posters with slogans such as “Superior thinking has always overcome superior force” and “We’re looking for a few good men.” I liked it. The crisp sergeant behind the desk looked me up and down and laughed. Sure, he said, he’d sign me up right now, and I’d be on a bus to Parris Island by the end of the week. But since I was a college student, he thought I’d prefer an officer program, and his office only handled enlisted Marines. I confessed that I barely knew the difference. He handed me a business card and wished me well. Sitting in the car, I looked at the card. Captain Steven Ettien, Officer Selection Office, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.