Of Morons and Marines

Of Morons and Marines





            I’ve been part of the infamous gun club whose members are commonly referred to as leatherneck, devil dog, teufelhunden, and, my personal favorite, jarhead.  Such descriptive and somewhat precise names for men whose mindset and motto is: if it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight, call us. We like to believe that we’re the manliest bunch of squared jawed, foul mouthed, athletic sons-of-bitches that anyone will ever see.  History has given us the right to think so and, for the most part, we are.  But, with so much testosterone raging through us at all times, there’s always trouble lurking about.

            As a Marine, everything you do has something to do with war.  You run countless miles to keep in top physical condition.  You shoot at paper targets from ridiculous distances.  You train to kill the enemy.  Most of this training is hard.  Real hard.  But, it's during these hard times that the webs of camaraderie and brotherhood are sewn.

            I achieved the rank of Corporal, the first rank that you gain any kind of respect or seniority, at a relatively early time in my enlistment.  With this new rank, came new responsibility.  My new responsibility was to train a squad of seventeen teenage Marines.  I was to turn these supposed ‘hard chargers’ into war machines.  They had to become a tightly knit team of killers.  I knew the importance of my task and the likelihood that these boys would end up in Iraq.  Almost everyone was coming along great with the training methods that I had decided upon, but there’s always that ten percent that won’t cooperate.  In my case, they were Private First Class (PFC) Jonas and Lance Corporal Estrada.

            How these two made it through boot camp is beyond me.  To call them nerds, dorks, or dweebs would do a serious disservice to other nerds, dorks, and dweebs.  These two were just absolutely incapable of fitting in.  Mostly because of their very reaching sense of humor and their conversations were commonly submerged in stories and tales of what their knights or wizards did last night in their dungeons and dragons game.  It was during one of my Monday hangover recovery mornings that I lost my mind.

            “And then I shot this squirrel with my emerald crossbow.  Of course, I thought it was dead. My paladin can do fifty damage points without even trying.  Little did I know that that squirrel was a deity.  And the squirrel came back and bit my armor and…”

            I couldn’t take it for another second.  Battling a rum induced headache is bad enough without having to hear their prattle.

            “Jonas, you have got to be fucking kidding me,” I screamed.

            Jonas looks at Estrada as if I was trying to catch him in a lie and proceeds to try to explain to me that the squirrel really was a deity. I couldn’t help but to interject my thoughts.

            “I would rather mainline ipecac than listen to you speak for another second.”

            The damn thing about these two was that even though they had a common ground that made them converse with each other, they absolutely hated each other.  We would be trying to train and these two would be having a fist fight over the smallest thing.  Frankly, their attitude towards each other was causing a rift in my squad.  We had a common goal and I had to make sure that everyone, these two jack asses included, reached that goal. I wasn’t about to have their deaths on my conscious.

            On a particular day, my squad and I were tasked with a project.  I passed along the orders to them and told them that I would be back in one hour to check on their progress.  Upon my arrival, Jonas and Estrada are bare knuckle boxing and everyone else is standing around cheering and betting on who is going to win.  I, once again, lost my mind.

            “All right, All right, All right! Break it up, assholes,” I screamed as I snatched both of them up by their collars and held them at arm’s length in front of me.

            “You two are abso-fucking-lutely embarrassing.  You can embarrass yourselves, but now you’re embarrassing me.”

            I can feel myself becoming red and I’m starting to shake with anger.

            “Why in the fuck do you even try to hurt each other? You two are so weak, you can’t even fucking hurt each other.”

            Redder still.  They are visibly scared of how mad I am. That makes me feel happy inside.

            “Here’s what’s going to happen to you two ladies. You two are going to be roommates.  Don’t look at me like that, Estrada, or I will definitely, seriously, without a shadow of a doubt, fuck you up.”

            I’m seriously laughing on the inside at this point, but I maintain my bearing.

            “That’s right, girls. Fucking roommates. You will learn to live with one another and I’ll tell you how.  I’m going to give you a common ground.”

            I feel like a genius with this idea. I’m giddy to tell them.

            “You will learn to like each other through your mutual hatred for me.”

            The aphorism of ‘things always get worse before they get better’ couldn’t have been truer.  I had to remind myself of this constantly, because for a couple weeks, they really tried my patience.  Between the midnight fist fights and the fact that they disobeyed my direct order by living with their friends, I was about to, once again, lose my mind.  I decided to kick it up a notch.

            I made it a daily chore to give them extra special treatment.  I would stop by their room at three in the morning and totally annihilate anything and everything that could have been considered clean.  I would make them do relay runs with each other until both of them threw up and after they threw up, we’d run more.  I would make them dig six foot deep holes in the sand just for my general amusement and then have them fill their manmade craters back in.  The only thought that kept me from feeling like a completely horrible person was that my intentions were great.  They had to learn to, at the very least, coexist, because one day, they might be in a combat zone watching each other’s backs.

            At least three months later of these little ‘games’, there was a noticeable change.  I assigned  Jonas and Estrada with fixing the Colonel’s humvee and threatened not-so-nice repercussions if they didn’t do so in a timely manner.  Something made me watch them from a distance and just out of their sight.

            The transformation was amazing to say the least.  Not only did they do the task in an impressive amount of time, but when they finished, they gave each other a high five and something that resembled a chest bump.  I smiled to myself and walked away. The games faded away slowly and my squad was whole.  We were finally a tight knit group of trained killers.

            Iraq came and they went.  I didn’t participate in the invasion because my ex-wife, who is commonly referred to as ‘That Bitch’, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and I had to stay behind. I received regular word that my guys were doing their assignments with a grin and gusto that made most of the high ranking superiors take notice.

            My little society was being torn apart by a petty, intangible difference that no one understood.  I don’t think even Jonas and Estrada ever fully understood why they couldn’t get along with each other.  I knew I had to give them something more in common.  I was, of course, more than happy to oblige.  After all, I could give a damn if two dorks who play dungeons and dragons like me.