A Rumor of War Read Online Free Page A

Their vision of my future did not include uniforms and drums, but consisted of my finding a respectable job after school, marrying a respectable girl, and then settling down in a respectable suburb.
    For my part, I was elated the moment I signed up and swore to defend the United States “against all enemies foreign and domestic.” I had done something important on my own; that it was something which opposed my parents’ wishes made it all the more savory. And I was excited by the idea that I would be sailing off to dangerous and exotic places after college instead of riding the 7:45 to some office. It is odd when I look back on it. Most of my friends at school thought of joining the army as the most conformist thing anyone could do, and of the service itself as a form of slavery. But for me, enlisting was an act of rebellion, and the Marine Corps symbolized an opportunity for personal freedom and independence.
    Officer Candidate School was at Quantico, a vast reservation in the piny Virginia woods near Fredericksburg, where the Army of the Potomac had been futilely slaughtered a century before. There, in the summer of 1961, along with several hundred other aspiring lieutenants, I was introduced to military life and began training for war. We ranged in age from nineteen to twenty-one, and those of us who survived OCS would lead the first American troops sent to Vietnam four years later. Of course, we did not know that at the time: we hardly knew where Vietnam was.
    The first six weeks, roughly the equivalent of enlisted boot camp, were spent at Camp Upshur, a cluster of quonset huts and tin-walled buildings set deep in the woods. The monastic isolation was appropriate because the Marine Corps, as we quickly learned, was more than a branch of the armed services. It was a society unto itself, demanding total commitment to its doctrines and values, rather like one of those quasi-religious military orders of ancient times, the Teutonic Knights or the Theban Band. We were novitiates, and the rigorous training, administered by high priests called drill instructors, was to be our ordeal of initiation.
    And ordeal it was, physically and psychologically. From four in the morning until nine at night we were marched and drilled, sent sprawling over obstacle courses and put through punishing conditioning hikes in ninety-degree heat. We were shouted at, kicked, humiliated and harassed constantly. We were no longer known by our names, but called “shitbird,” “scumbag,” or “numbnuts” by the DIs. In my platoon, they were a corporal, a small man who was cruel in the way only small men can be, and a sergeant, a nervously energetic black named McClellan, whose muscles looked as hard and wiry as underground telephone cables.
    What I recall most vividly is close-order drill: the hours we spent marching in a sun so hot it turned the asphalt field into a viscous mass that stuck to our boots; the endless hours of being driven and scourged by McClellan’s voice— relentless, compelling obedience, a voice that embedded itself in our minds until we could not walk anywhere without hearing it, counting a rhythmic cadence.

    Wan-tup-threep-fo, threep-fo-your-lef, lef-rye-lef, hada-lef-rye-lef, your-lef… your-lef… your-lef.
    Dress it up dress it up keep your interval.
    Thirty-inches-back-to-breast-forty-inches-shoulder-to-shoulder.
    Lef-rye-lef.
    TothereAH MARCH… reAH HARCH… bydalef-flankHARCH!
    Dress it up keep your dress DRESS IT UP SCUMBAGS.
    Lef-rye-lef. Dig those heels in dig ‘em in.
    Pick-‘em-up-and-put-’em-down DIG ‘EM IN threep-fo-your-lef.
    DIG ‘EM IN LET’S HEAR IT DIG ’EM IN.
    Threep-fo-your-lef, lef-rye-lef.
    Square those pieces away SQUARE ‘EM AWAY GIRLS. YOU, SHITHEAD FOURTH MAN IN THE FRONT RANK I SAID SQUARE THAT FUCKIN’ PIECE, SQUARE IT AWAY Wan-tup-threep-fo.
    YOU DON’T SQUARE THAT PIECE I GONNA MALTREAT YOU BOY KNOCK UP UP THE SIDE O‘ THE HEAD threep-fo-your-lef SQUARE THAT PIECE! YOU FUCKIN