Another One Bites The Dust

"FALLOUT!"

With that latest order from the First Sergeant, there was a mad rush to abandon ship. Marines were hurtling themselves through hatches, climbing over racks, all but diving offa the ship, and preparing themselves to run over anyone of a lesser rank than they were.

There was liberty to be had.

Me, I figgured that I would avoid the rush. Me and my liberty party (group of guys that agree to hang together during libo in a foreign port) had already decided on this, and agreed that 20 or 30 minutes would definitely not kill us on a three day pass. None of us had any duty until the evening of the second day, so there was plenty of time to go out and have a good time without battling the human waves fleeing the ship.

I leisurely walked down to the heads, took a shower, and slowly got dressed. By the time I finished, most of the platoon was already gone, save for the poor bastards that had to stand some type of watch. I gathered my libo crew up and as we were going through the motions of signing out, tried to decide what we were going to do. A couple of the guys were married, others needed to call significant others, so we decided to hit the phone center.

Most all ports that I was in had several things in common.

Once you were past the long-faced sulky Marines standing watch, once you had signed out under the glare of the Corporal of the Guard, you left the ship. More or less immediately off of the ship, you had to contest with the local taxi drivers, guides, and prostitutes. All were quite eager to get any business that could be had. There were usually a number of nearby shops selling mementos, munchies, and maps. The shops were what we were looking for, because around the shops were usually banks to exchange money and phone banks to call home.

*brrring.... brrring*

MY LOVE: Hello?

ME: Howdy.

MY LOVE: *insert high pitched squeal here*

ME: [ears bleeding]

[Insert several minutes of disgustingly romantic drivel the likes I swore that I'd never be caught dead uttering, mushy comments of love, loneliness, and other... stuff.]

Calling home is one of the true high lights... especially when it's to one's One True Love. Yup, ole Murf was turning in his bachelor status, and as evidenced by phone records, his man card as well. Phone calls were rare, due to my working schedule, but very important, 'cause we were planning a wedding.

I'll let that sink in for a moment... we were planning a wedding... while I was on deployment.

Now, if I can continue amidst the wild cheering from those guys that figgure I had it made in the shade, lemme 'splain something. Guys, as good as it sounds to miss out on plans, reservations, fittings (uniform), phone calls, tastings, etc etc (and for good measure, etc), and I admit, it's does sound good, there's a down side to all of that. Don't believe me?

Heh, heh, heh.

ME: So, babe, how goes the plans?

MY LOVE: *Squeal* Glad you asked! I've gotten a lot of stuff done.... let's see here, I reserved the restaurant, the hall, gotten the plates decided on....

ME: Hold on, hold on, just a sec... how much was the reservation for [the following occurred for each category; restaurant, dress(es), food, booze, gratuities, and... pretty much all of 'em]?

MY LOVE: Oh it's perfect! It's lovely! It's...

ME: Great, baby, it's your 'big day' after all, but how much was it?

MY LOVE: ... it's exactly what I was looking for!...

[insert ominous music here]

ME: So it was...

MY LOVE: ... such a deal! My sister's friend's cousin's old high school teacher's hairdresser's baby-daddy's college buddy knew of this guy who'd heard of this new shop....

ME: [making sign of the cross]

MY LOVE: ... and we got it on sale, too!...

ME: [Hail Mary, fulla grace. Blessed art Thou amongst...] On sale for...

MY LOVE: ... a good thing too, as we're paying for it, aren't you happy?

ME: [Praying to any and all deities now, real and imagined] 'Course I'm happy baby, I'm just wondering how-

MY LOVE: *Squeal!* I'm so happy!

ME: [gritting teeth]

Yeah, I kinda think her Mom had it all figured out. When asked by My Lovely if she would ante up for... let's take food, for example, she'd respond along the lines of, 'sure, guess we can have weenies and beans in the back yard or something...' Bingo. Murf's got the tab for the grub.



Wedding's are expensive, y'all. Nice, but expensive.

Uniformity, Down Time on Ship, and Shorty Shorts

We got the word during our work up that all hands needed to go run down and buy a couple of pairs of those UDT shorts, made popular by Navy SEALs... and Lt. Dangle. One thing that might not be known is that those things tend to be kinda short, and tend to run kind of on the small side. Made for some interesting pt formations, that's for sure.

They were almost instantly christened, 'catch me / fuck me's'.

I know, I know, but that's what we called 'em.

It started out as part of the pt uniform, probably because the non-slip surface of the boat's 'flight deck' would tear our regular pt shorts, aka 'silkies' to shreds during our regular pt sessions. This way, the surface would only tear us to shreds. Awesome.

One we got closer to the equator, and (naturally) the ship's ac died, the pt uni (green skivvy shirt and catch me/fuck me's) became the uniform of the day. The navy boys weren't to keen on this, probably cause the poor bastards still had to go to work in the engine room in their coveralls. And we were pretty damn sexy, if I do say so myself.

Suckers.

It was only a couple of days later that we were told that it was deemed unhygienic for us to be in the chow hall in our pt gear, what with everybody sweating buckets. The word was that we could continue to wear the catch me/fuck me's, but we would have to put on the cammie blouse to go to chow.

Yay.

The thing is, those cammie blouses are designed to have a little bit of extra fabric than your regular civilian shirt, so when the guys would throw on the blouse to go to chow, it looked like a platoon fulla guys wearing cammie tops, boots, and... not much else. Screw that, I would toss on the trousers as well. I figured I was sweating like a pig anyways, the trousers weren't gonna kill me. "No one ever drowned in their own sweat", right? Until me, anyways...

Oh yeah, another thing about the shorts,

The 'flight deck' on the boat was only nominally for flight ops. I think it could muster the space for a (one) helicopter... barely. It was also where we would keep some of the vehicles, because there wasn't enough space down in the well deck. It was up around and in those vehicles that I would go to hang out and watch the waters, do some crossword puzzles, or just enjoy the sweet, sweet smell of non man-stanked air.

One day I was hanging out at the vehicles, trying to think of something like a 17 letter word for 'feline', and it wasn't looking good. It appeared that the 3rd through 9th letters were all 'm'.

I didn't say that I was particularly good at crosswords, but I do like to do them.

One of the other Corporals came up to where I had put my stool in the shade of the hummer. Placing one of his boots on the doorless frame of the vehicle, he inquired as to what I was doing. I looked at the front of my book, right were it said 'Crossword Puzzles', sighed, and responded, "Solving world hunger. How about yourself?" That's when I made the mistake of looking up at him.

See, the UDT shorts that we were all wearing were, as mentioned, really, really short. Pretty much provided a direct line-of-sight to the free balln' Corporal's giggle berries. Not a pretty sight.

Momentos & Things that Make You Go... WTF?

The Military Academy in Columbia that we went to was an interesting place. The training was great, but it was the first time for most of the Marines to truly see how lucky we were to be in the United States Marine Corps. Yeah, we might piss and moan about training, chow, lack of sleep time, some of the officers, and just about everything else, but there we got to see a whole different world.

The first interesting moment came when our Staff Sergeant came back from the initial tour of the campus and told us to get ready for chow. He explained that we would each take an MRE and 'field strip' it. This was to say, open the bad boy up, take out what you want to eat, trade what you can, and toss the rest.

We were bringing MREs to breakfast. Okay...

He went on to explain that we were not to eat the MREs during breakfast, or make any, ANY comments at all about the food that we got.

One thing about many of the infantry forces in South America. Just like infantry anywhere, a few guys are worthless, some are studs, and most fall in between (hopefully closer to the 'stud' rating). Some could sneak up on an insomniac ninja juiced up on 3 gallons of coffee, and some guys couldn't find their ass with a map. And help. That being said, the overwhelming majority of them are tiny compared to the average U.S. Marine. That's not to say that we are for the most part huge and hulking beasts, neither. I'm talking about 5ft 5in & 140 lbs, in that neighborhood. Friggin' wee li'l tiny guys, they were. It helped out when running through the jungle, those guys could haul ass when needed. But that's another story.

We got to chow, met up with our counterparts, and entered the building. Chow consisted of one 4 oz cup of coffee and a small piece of toast with half a slice of bologna (no second servings). The Staff Sergeant's advice to pack the extra chow was much appreciated. The worst part about it for me was the coffee. Not only was it woefully undersized, but true to military form, it wasn't even that good. It was Colombian, dammit!

There were only a few mumbles and grumbles when the Staff Sergeant told us that the other meals were going to be quite small-sized (from our perspective) as well. For the most part, the Marines were great about going out of their way to avoid insulting our hosts.

Bathrooms, on the base tested their patience, though.

I got a few funny looks when I told the guys to save the paper from the MREs (they think of everything, don't they?). 'But we're on a military base', they said. 'We'll just find a crapper with paper', others replied.

Amateurs.

I saved all the paper I could find, because 1) I remember the times when almost nobody in the platoon had any sleeves for their t-shirts, and 2) I have been to a South American toilet before.

So, after a long day of traipsing through the jungle, we returned to the base, got assigned some empty junior officers quarters, and turned to on a few hours of free time. The base had some cerveza at the corner store, so that motivated a bunch of the guys. The hat was passed, and Pvts were voluntold to run down to the store and buy as much beer as they could. The rest of us passed the time smoking and joking with a few of the Colombian enlisted guys. This was about the time when Cpl. Grog decided to use the throne. Armed with (some of my extra) paper he went in to do his business.

That was when he found out that the toilets didn't flush.

Easy enough of a situation to resolve, but he had never heard of using a bucket to flush a toilet before. I don't know if it is a water pressure thing, pipe size, or what, but for y'alls future reference, you can fill a bucket of water and 'dump' (Har!), but not pour the bucket into the commode. This will essentially kick start the flush and make the toilet do what it's supposed to do. It does take a little bit of aim (with the bucket, guys... that too, I guess) in the right area, but it can be done.

Before anyone tries it out here in the states, I might mention that I've never had to do this anywhere but in South America. Proceed at your own risk.

Having resolved the 'shitty' situation, we went outside to the courtyard to find that the Privates had returned with the refreshments. We smoked cheap cigarettes, drank some decent beer (the two beer (pack) limit was loosely obeyed, and swapped some war stories with the Colombians.

A few hours and more than a few beers later, and I noticed that one of my Lance Corporals was going around collecting the bags of water. He was enthralled with the clear plastic bags of water, and thought that they were just the coolest thing he had ever seen. I wandered around and into the room that he was staying in to find that he was carefully placing the bags into his pack.

"Uh, what are you doing?" I asked. "You do know that we are going to be here for another week or so, there's plenty of water around, and you are carrying alot of crap in your bag anyways, right?"

He responded, "Thish is sooo cool, I gonna take 'em home, n' ssshow the folks".

Allrighty then. Carry on.

We all had a chuckle the next day when, fighting a massive hangover, he slung his pack onto his back, tightened down the shoulder straps, and tossed his mortar component on his back, bursting all of the bags of water inside. His pack was immediately soaked, and we hadn't even started the day.

Ole.

Crossing the Line

There are quite a few solemn, honorable, and noteworthy traditions in the Naval Services. This is not one of them...

I don't know exactly when it started, but the crossing of the equator has somehow developed into quite the party, those days. Actually, from what I understand, it is a lot more restrained due to 'sensitive' types, and no, I'm not referring to the ladies here. This is kind of how it went down...

A few days before we were scheduled to cross, the rumors started. A number of the ships crew were voluntold to venture down into the Marines' quarters and find out who amongst us had already earned their honors. Those that had already crossed the equator (Shellbacks) would be the ones bestowing this trips honors on the newbies (Pollywogs). Not too many of our party had previously crossed.

We also started to get some information. A traditional rite-of-passage, there would probably be some light hazing, followed by some sort of party afterwards. We were always up for a good party, so 'game on!'.

I seem to remember it starting in the morning, and lasting all friggin' day. The first thing that happened was the few Shellback Marines that had already earned their stripes got us out of the racks and started to good naturedly thrash us. In our berthing area. You know, the room where you have to rub asses together if you want to pass someone by between the racks. It made for an interesting session. It was made all the more interesting that those who had already gone through this shit were dressed like (butt) pirates. Eye-patches, cut offs, and plenty of 'Arrrgh, mateys' were flying everywhere.

Next thing that we had to do was get down to the well deck.

The well deck on our ship was located in the center and the rear of the ship. This type of ship is actually designed to slightly lower the ass-end into the ocean to ease the departure of the landing craft. The ass hatches would swing open, the ship would tilt, and the Marines would be off. That was always when I suspected that they finally broke out the good chow and coffee.

Of course, we couldn't just haul ass down to the well deck, no. We had to lie down in the passageway and pass each Marine, hand over hand, to the end of the passageway closer to the well deck. Think crowd surfing, at a height of arms-length. Once one guy had traversed the group, the guy at the end of the line would get up, and leap onto the crowd. Kind of fun, actually.

When we finally got down to the well deck, we were met by one of the Chiefs. He had a fire-hose and an eye with a twitch. This was where I thought it would get interesting.

"GET DOWN ON YER FACES, YOU PUKES!!! DROP AND GIVE ME TEN!!!!"



ten? sheesh.



Glancing around, you would be able to see the majority of the boats crew getting 'thrashed' and hosed down by a small number of 'pirates'. The water was cold, but I have been thrashed better by a fat man in a donut shop.

Towards the end of the festivities, there was a fat bastard representing King Neptune. He was holding attendance at the end of the well deck, seated in his throne and accepting gifts and pledges of service from the higher ranking officers. Since none of us had any gifts to speak of, he had a gift for a few of the guys. He had, securely lodged in his navel, an olive. The honored supplicant was instructed to accept and remove this great honor... with his teeth.

Mmmm, chow time.

Ugh.

I forget exactly when, but one of the passing Shellbacks asked us what we had planned to do for our skit later on that night.

Skit? WTF, over?

Apparently we had missed that memo.

Turns out all of the platoons had to come up with a skit to entertain 'King Neptune' and his distinguished guests at the evening party on the flight deck. In just a few hours, we managed to come up with a pretty good one, if I do say so myself.


A little background, first.

Upon every movement of the ship, either going out to sea or pulling into port, a song would play over the ship's PA. Our song was S'weepea, an oldies tune.

"Oh, S'weapea,
come on and dance with me.

Come on, come on, come on
and dance with meeeee-ee."

Anyways, the song was kind of amusing the first 1500 times we heard it, but it kind of got old after that. I can only imagine that it got much cooler after the Marines were finally off the old boat for good...

The skit that we were required to perform was to include the captain's own musical wonder. The only caution was that it had to be somewhat clean, because we did have 4 female sailors on board. Any excessive cussing or questionable activity would result in the Master Chief tooting the air horn, and that particular platoon being disqualified from the skit competition.

The other platoons did some amusing skits, making fun of each other, the Navy, foreign services, and the like.


We did a strip tease.


Before any of yous guys think that I spent a little too much time on ship, lemme 'splain.

We had a medium sized platoon, notable for a number of things of which only one was the amount of trouble that we could get into, at every port. When it came time for our skit you could say that we already had a few strikes against us. As the song began introducing our skit, there was a collective chuckle & groan and a general thought of 'what the hell are these guys up to now?'

Heh, heh.

The introduction of our short-lived burlesque was six Marines dressed to the nines in makeshift togas, combat boots, and not much else, clomping out to the center of the flight deck in front of the assembled Marines and ships crew. King Neptune and his court were in the position of honor, and at his table sat three of the females (all officers) present on ship. Master Chief was giving us the old evil-eye with a ready finger on the air horn.

The six Marines supported a stretcher graciously 'donated' from sickbay. Standing on the stretcher was Mascot, also dressed in a toga. He was posed in a great profile, fists on his hips, looking off into the distance, ready to perform for all hands.

The music started.

By this time on the deployment, Mascot had endeared himself to the entirety of the ship. The Marines were naturally protective of one of their own, and even the sailors would look out for him on liberty. He wasn't the smartest guy, or the fastest, or fittest, or best looking, or etc, but he was one of the more amusing of God's little creatures.

Everyone applauded for Mascot as he danced (up to this point chastely) to the tune of Sweet Pea. Upon the start of one of the drum solos, Mascot, dancing ever closer to Neptune's table ripped off his toga to reveal...



...his short, stubby, bulbous-in-all-the-wrong-places body clad only in a hot red butt-floss g-string bikini bottom that one of our more nefarious members had collected from a Colombian hooker. Scrawled in black camouflage paint across his ass-cheeks were the initials for our Weapons Platoon (Wpns), 'WP' on one cheek and 'NS' on the other.


Nipple twistage, groin thrusting, and horrible groaning were in full effect.


The assembled crowd roared and went wild.


Master Chief probably had (another) aneurysm as he ground the air horn into dust.

Tattoos

Tattoos are everywhere in the Corps. Well, perhaps not so much these days, but when I was in, there was a bit more in the way of making your own choices. Marines were free for the most part to get what they wanted where they wanted. And there was variety, let me tell ya.

The first tattoos usually started right after boot camp and schools immediately after, when most felt compelled to run out and get their 'oorah tat'. This was the near obligatory tattoo that had something to do with the Marine Corps and certain MOSs.

I remember once, immediately after a hump, hearing about a Marine that had asked for the doc. One would expect complaints dealing with the blisters, sprained ankles, or cramps, something like that. When he complained about his shoulders, well, that kind of threw the doc for a loop. A short investigation revealed that the Marine had felt sufficiently motivated to get a rather large tattoo, the word 'FREEDOM', in two inch high letters, across his shoulders. Right before heading out to the field.

Nice.

It actually was pretty nice, a really intricate design, and the 'O' was actually the symbol of the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, representing the Corps. Problem was, if you get a tat, you generally want to keep it clean for a while after you get it. Going out to the field for a couple of weeks for training is not a good way to maintain the utmost in personal cleanliness. That hump must have been really interesting, to tote a pack right on top of a fresh tat!

Meat tags also became somewhat popular, at one time. These are the tats that are usually located somewhere on the torso, more or less on the ribs (to make the experience more... interesting). The tattoo itself is about the size of dog tags, and has more or less the same info. I wasn't ever really sure why one would get this stuff, because Marines have just about everything else marked with ink or actual dog tags, but hey, whatever floats yer boat, I suppose.

I especially liked the liberty tats. These are the ones that usually involve several days of liberty and a few choice beverages. On occasion, the virtue of a certain lady back home was involved. This would be where one would generally expect to see cartoon characters like Speedy Gonzales, Mighty Mouse, or Goofy. Skulls and snakes were regularly popular, as were fire-breathing dragons. Ladies in varying levels of dress were also popular, but they were available in too many other formats to make the inked version too popular, at least for me. As long as we're talking moi, guess I should say that 'present', instead of 'available.' Available makes it sound like I had some measure of success, or something... Sheesh.


One guy had such a fascination with spiders and webs that he got both elbows and a good portion of his arms covered in webs. I kind of thought that was a prison thing...

Another guy got a Bud Light label-lookin' tattoo. On his ass. Long night, that one...

My favorite, however, was a variation of the 'Freedom' tattoo, except with the unusual spelling of 'Fredome'. Thus the lesson was learned, either get the work done in the states, or be really sure of your spelling abilities.

Whoops.

Up a Creek...

When the ship came into port into Ecuador, I was informed that my mortar team would be attached to one of the rifle platoons for some riverine ops.

Sweet.

At the leaders meeting, I got to meet or reacquaint myself with some of the guys. They all seemed to be solid guys, or that is to say the type that is uniquely suited to running all over god's green earth blowing shit up and raising hell. I was looking forward to the training until their Platoon Leader showed up.

To say that the man had his limitations would be understating it, but he was making the most of it. To those that might think that there is not really all that much to taking a platoon of riflemen plus a few crew-served weapons and attached personnel to a foreign country and conduction a ten day training evolution, consider this;

In training, it is considered some what Bad Form to kill your own guys.

In training, it is likewise considered Not Good to kill host-country servicemen.

Now add into the mix that you have direct and indirect weapons systems and next to no firing restrictions. This means that you are actually able to fire mortars over your riflemens' heads, to keep the 'enemy' in place with their heads down until that pre-arranged moment that the bayonets of your riflemen are nostril deep in the bad guys faces. Good training, but a somewhat increased potential for a Charlie Foxtrot (and I ain't talking 'bout a dance here).

You are also conducting this training evolution in two languages.

The air assets available are civilian helos jerry-riggged to include one machine gun.

You are about 4 hours aways by river boat from any kind of medical assistance.

The ship that dropped you off is now in another port, 100 more miles away.



I was willing to cut the PL some slack.


This sentiment was really put to the test when he exposed his lack of knowledge in regard to anything mortar related when he asked me, "So, Corporal, can you fire those mortars off of the zodiacs?"

[insert mental smack of my own forehead here]

Zodiacs are those black, inflatable, small boats that you sometimes see those hard-charging special ops dudes paddling, faces cammie-painted, as they silently and stealthily advance through the jungle.

Mortars are a weapons system that needs at least two guys on a solid platform (terra-firma), that sometimes is known to bury the base plate inches to feet into the ground, depending on the number of charges and rounds fired.

My answer was not the maniacal laughter that some infantrymen might expect, but the more diplomatic response of "Uh Sir, that is something that you might be able to do.... ah... once." I will give the man credit, he didn't know something but instead of playing it off, he swallowed his pride and asked. I would much rather have that than he come up to one of my PFCs, ordered him to fire and then we get to find our how good our swim qualification really is in the piranha infested waters of the jungle's rivers.

Loading up the boats, we realized that we had a hell of a lot of extra food and water. This was because as a show of good will, anything that we were not going to use ourselves would be left first for the host country servicemen, and then for any locals that might be hanging around.

Before I get any further, let me say this; Ecuador is a relatively poor country. There are many places in the world that will make you appreciate so much what we have in this country, and I am merely talking about things like heat, clean water, and basic medicine. Where we were at, the locals had just about nada.

On the other hand, Ecuador had one of the more kick-ass militaries. It became very apparent after attending one of their mission briefs that they had copied and translated word for word some of the same things that we do in mission preparation. They then built off of it, adding their own improvements and details. Everyone knew the plan, their place in it, and what to do when things went to shit (this is what the Ecuadorians know of as 'muy importante'). I was very impressed with their esprit-de-corps, and the fact that while there was quite a bit that they did teach us about jungle/riverine warfare, there was a very honest hunger of knowledge that they had for fighting in all aspects.

The 'outpost' that we were assigned to was a collection of about 6 buildings in the middle of the jungle. The post was situated right next to a small shrimping village of about 30-40 shacks. Their commander apologized for the spartan conditions, and informed us that we had the use of one whole building for ourselves. As this building would only fit about 10 Marines, the PL decided that all team leaders would sleep here to allow easy access for his planning, and the rest of the platoon would sleep outside.

As sun-set was rapidly approaching, setting up the bivouac site was a priority. There really wasn't enough space in the camp to sleep the 30 or so other Marines, but we managed to scout out a field to the rear of the camp, across a small stream. It was decided that this field would serve as the tent area, as well as a potential emergency medivac site. Guard schedule was decided, the Marines were bedded down, and some of us gathered in our building to work on the training evolution of the next few days.

At the butt-crack of dawn the next morning, we filed out of the building into the courtyard to await the rest of the Marines for a joint unit formation. As we were hanging out with some of their NCOs, we noticed that while the majority of the Ecuadorian men were present, ours were nowhere to be found. Eventually, I went to see what was taking our guys so long.

Remember that stream that was just to the rear of the camp? It had rained the previous night and the stream had flooded. It had flooded just about the entirety of the field. Most of the tents had water in them, and the Marines were hastily attempting to dry-out all of there gear, moving it to higher ground. I attempted to cross the stream, hopping from a rock to a piece of wood, when I slipped and fell in, water level up to my knees.


Crap.



No really, crap.



I'm serious, little brown pieces of poo that waved and said 'Hiiiidey Ho!'



See, just to the north was the 'ass' end of the shrimping village, and what was not visible in the evening light of the previous night was clear to see in the morning. Many, many makeshift outhouses were set up the length of the village, with all 'deposits' free to float down the river, right down to were the Marines had set up. The river flooded it's tiny banks, soaking all the gear in muddy water and... extra mud.



I feel somewhat poetic. (indigestion, perhaps?)

Standing in the softly flowing stream of the early morn',
I dream of my part in future Infantry Lore.
A turd floats into my left boot
Another beautiful day in my beloved Corps...

Libo, Booze, and a Hasty Field Day

Navy ships can be awesome weapons, capable of projecting massive amounts of firepower incredible distances to basically lay waste and sow huge amounts of pain and hate. And then there was the PoS that I was on. Built in the early 70s, I believe that it has now finally been de-commissioned. In one of its last cruises before being put out of its misery, it got assigned to carry a bunch of Marines around the coast of South America. I am only half-way joking here when I say that quite a few of the engine bunnies actually had a poll going on when (not if) the engines would die on us. By a couple of countries into the float, so did we.

The berthing room that housed the mortars platoon was a comfy little nook, positioned directly above the engine room and next to the heads. After the a/c broke down about 2 weeks into the float, we were hard pressed to decide what was worse, the heat and fumes from the engines, or the reeking shitters next door. I spent a lot of time at the gym, in the library, the smoker's deck, hell, anywhere but in that room of man-reek of epic proportions. Liberty was a godsend, and another opportunity to see what kind of mischief we could get into. Said mischief was not limited to the time that were actually fuschnukered and out on the town...

One night just as liberty expired, in stumbled the last of my wayward Marines. My guys were a great group, we were just one way or the other getting into some sort of trouble. They worked hard, and partied harder. Perhaps a little too hard. Back to the story, the last Marine in was our platoon mascot of sorts ('Mascot' of course, his name for the purposes of this little blog), being not too bright, pretty short, very stocky with an abnormally amount of junk in his trunk, and usually spotted with a cig in one corner, the largest dip of cope you have ever seen in the whole other cheek, and if at all possible the cheapest and largest beer can in one of his paws. He kind of resembled that axe-wielding troll guy from the Lord of the Rings movie.

Anyways, he stumbled in, reeking of cheap hookers, dried beer and cigar smoke, and crawled into the rack. Not the freshest smelling of fellows on a normal day, we started to make noises in his general direction re taking a shower. After a good 20 minutes of laying in his rack and drunkenly slurring to us to "Shut up, bishes, 'fore I stick my c@ck in yer...", and in an un-precedented display of speed and coordination for a definitely un-coordinated guy, he leaped out of the rack. Not to obey our request, no. He was puking like it was going out of style.

Ever see in the movies how you have to go ass-hole to belly button to pass someone in the passage way? That's how it was in our quarters. Picture if you can, 30 Marines crammed into a small room, some still in their garish Hawaiian shirt-style libo attire, others drunkenly attempting to display their prowess on the x-box, and a few actually attempting to prep their gear for the next training evolution.

Into this picture place a short, stubby, puking Marine. Despite moving with all haste, he threw up about 5 times before he made it to the shitters. He spewed on Marines, laptops, down the ladder-well to the engine compartment, field gear, other Marines, himself, at least two racks, and for good measure, a sailor that was passing through (poor lil' guy). His awesome display of projection was the trigger for two others to display what fine-dining establishment they had attended that night.

The room was stunned silent. There was puke dripping from cots, Marines, and the walls. Heck, I think there was some on the ceiling. A sailor came up the ladder well from the engine room to inquire WTF?!! and if it was safe to pass.

Mascot returned from the head. As he entered the room, we could see that he had managed to puke all down his front side, back side, and general everywhere. With a 1000 beer stare, he trudged through the room, around Marines, and crawled into his rack.

The room was still stunned silent. There was still puke dripping from the cots, Marines, and the walls. There was definitely puke on the ceiling. A gathering of sailors and Marines grouped, not inside our berthing, but at the hatch that wasn't covered in tossed cookies. Mascot laid down, sighed, and prepared to rack out.

It was almost mutiny. We were hard pressed (the Corporals) from keeping everyone else from slaughtering the guy. Kind of like family, we would have stood up for him to anybody else, for just about anything, just because of the platoon thing, but here, in our berthing, like this?

Oh. Hell. No.

Drunk or no, he was going to clean up himself and his impromptu interior decor. After enough threats we got Mascot up and out of the rack, got him hosed down, and made sure that he had ample opportunity to clean up the room. He looked so miserable, still 3 sheets to the wind and swabbing the deck with the broken off, bottom-half of an old, old mop that despite the carnage and the smell, I just had to chuckle.

Ahh, the end of another successful liberty pass...

Chow Time

... they say that in the Marine Corps, the chow is mighty fine...

...the chicken jumped off the table, and started marking time...

-Marine Corps cadence

1200 hrs, and a whole lotta nuthin' was going on in the mortar teams' berthing compartment. Living la vida loca on the high seas was already getting old, and we hadn't been on ship for that long. I had gotten into the habit of going to the ship's small gym early in the mornings, and this particular morning I had inadvertently worked out through the breakfast hours. Not that I was missing much, it was the same old stuff that they always had. I could probably stand to lose a few pounds anyways.

Heeding the call of my empty belly, I shimmied out of my rack (the one almost all the way in the corner, roughly 2 inches off the deck), threw on a pair of boots, cursed, took off those boots, located my boots and put them on. (When you cram about 25 Marines and all their crap into the space of a household master bedroom, things tend to get mixed up and wander around.) Winding my way through the racks stacked 4 high, I exited our quarters, thankfully without smacking my head or shins on the hatches. Those things were definitely not designed with taller people in mind.

Strolling through the ship, I picked a stairway that appeared to be a likely candidate for the general vicinity of the mess deck, climbed the stairs, and exited right into the line. As the entrance to the chow hall was on the other side of the ship, this told me that the wait was going to be quite long. Again. Turning sideways to make my way past the sailors and Marines already waiting, I took my place at the end of the line, and pulled out my crossword puzzle book. Those things were a life-saver as far as I was concerned, when it came to killing time.

I killed time for about an hour and a half. Still wasn't there, yet.

Approaching the entrance to the chow hall, I could hear some cussing from up ahead. I figured that it was due to the food selection.

I was partially right.

See, due to the fact that the ship would be pulling into port in the days ahead, some well-meaning person had decided that the entryway for the chow hall would be a good place to post information for the crew. Pretty good idea, right? Well yeah, stuff like the current exchange rate, cafeteria hours of operation when the ship was at port, and the like was helpful. What was informative and at the same time disgusting was the stuff on STDs. Yup, that's right. That same well meaning individual had posted several, full-sized and in living color, examples of anything that can go wrong with 'Mr. (or Mrs.) Happy'. If it dripped, leaked, puffed, rashed, caused pain or discomfort, lost color, gained a rainbow of colors, bled, or anything out of the ordinary, there was an example of it, for all the ships little boys and girls. I was scarred for life.


Eeew does not begin to sum it up.


Attempting to shake my mind of the nastiness I had just witnessed, I entered the serving line.


ME: Hey Cookie, whatcha got?

COOKIE: Sides are first. Broccoli?

uh, not this time.

COOKIE: Cauliflower?

Er, ah...nu-uh.

COOKIE: Red apple sauce?

Blurf. Is everything going to remind me of those friggin' pictures?

ME: Think I'll pass on those, thanks.

COOKIE: Moving right along, then. What do you want for main dish? Chilli-dog weenies?

Ungh. Is this for real?

COOKIE: Roast Beef sandwiches?

What the hell?!?

ME: You know, I think I'll just stick with a salad today, thanks.

COOKIE: Hmm, popular choice.



... they say that in the Navy, the chow is mighty fine...

... gonna triple-wrap my junk, before I wine and dine...

Sea Service

I was lucky enough to participate in a deployment once to various countries in and around South America. In getting some information about the training, liberty, and expected conditions of the deployment, I was pretty pumped. The ship that was planned was a huge new uber-ship, the liberty was well known by most to be a good time, and everything looked great.

One of the first things that went off track with the deployment was with the ship.

Apparently, Lord Murphy has some distant relatives that decided to enlist and proudly serve in the navel forces (not a typo). Got our nice, new ship either broken and/or re-assigned. Never fear, another boat was on standby, and it turned out to be a doozy. Commissioned in the late 60's, this old girl had been there / done that, got the t-shirt, bumper-sticker, and the free koozie.

Let me put it this way, the sailors on the boat with a more than passing knowledge of the girl's capabilities had a pool going on when (not if) the ship would break down and the deployment would be scrapped.

Not a good sign.

First time on board I think that it only took me about 15 minutes to get completely lost, and it wasn't that big of a boat (LSD-37). Also, I must have alternately scraped my shins and hit my head about 10 times on those funny little hatches. That were at the entrance to each room. And hallway. Every 10 feet. Made general quarters drill quite...interesting, but I am getting ahead of myself. Of course, immediately following the goat rope of classic proportions in our feeble attempts at boarding all of our gear, bodies, and weapons, not too mention all of the stuff that the Navy side was trying to do, the Platoon Commander called a leader's meeting. Following that, I attempted to make my way to my berthing area (living quarters).

20 minutes after starting out, I finally got to 'my' room. Bonking my head once again on the narrow door, I looked inside. I don't remember the measurements for my room, but I do remember this; We had just about the entire mortar section in one room. Racks about 4 high, lined up on the walls, and with a few more stacks in the middle, for good measure. If you were in between racks and wanted to pass someone standing in the space between the racks, about your only option was to decide which side of your body you wanted to be rubbing up against the other guy as you attempted to negotiate the narrow passageway. We were situated directly above one of the engine rooms, down the hallway from the shitters and showers, and the room right next to some machine gooners.

Hmm...

I noted that the only available rack in the room was the one tucked into the far corner, two inches above the floor. This space, directly above the engines had an actually somewhat pleasant constant muffled drone, that did actually help me get to sleep quite rapidly. The light was blocked out, also aiding in sleep. The (or should I say 'One') problem with this bed was that it was two inches off the floor, or about the height of a normal guys foot when he is walking along. I got kicked more than a few times as people were walking by, climbing in and out of racks, and just shooting the breeze. I could kinda schootch over to the other side of the bed, but then I would be getting way to familiar with the Marine in the next rack, and that wasn't an option. I hadn't been on ship for anywhere near long enough for that.


There is a routine for just about everything, and anyone who has moved around a bit or spent some time on ship can go into excruciating detail about routines on ship. I believe that the Platoon Sergeant was trying to avoid some of the less productive routines when he announced on the flight deck our Plan of Action. The 'plan' called for time on ship to be spent productively. Every morning we would leap out of the rack at Oh-my-God-Dark-Thirty, and commence to at least an hour in the gym and 30 minutes running in small little circles on the flight deck. We would then break for morning chow, and continue on to weapons, history, and culture classes. An admirable goal, but one that didn't turn out as planned.

First of all, the main purpose of our deployment was to cross-train with the various foreign forces that we visited. Secondly, the Navy never seemed to want to co-operate with our platoon schedule. Jeez, flight ops, general quarters drills, and fire alarms can really cut into the hours of the day, you know?

Fast forward a month....

In the mortars room, lights are out. If you listen closely over the hum of the engines, all you can hear are various Marines snoring, and the occasional passage of a sailor or Marine in the main passageway. An alarm goes off. Several people groan. With a few choice words, one Marine cuts off the alarm and asks, "Anybody going to lunch? I'm starving, somebody grab me a biscuit."

Lost in Translation

In Columbia for a training exercise, we had a few hours worth of a tour through a military academy. Little kids were hanging around, practicing their English and trying to see what kind of goodies they could beg, borrow, or steal. As we were showing them the wonder that is the modern MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat), some of them decided to impress Joker with a song. I believe it was some sort of school song, with pride of the school, state, and nation. Joker was listening to the song, and dutifully clapped at the end. One of the kids struck up a conversation with him, but due to the child's poor English and Joker's nearly complete lack of Spanish, they quickly came to a frustrating stand-still.

Catching sight of me eating nearby, Joker got my attention and asked me how did one say the word 'American' in Spanish. For those not in the know, it is a fairly easy translation, just add the letter 'o' to the end. What I told him was similar, but not exactly the same."It's easy, Joker. 'American' is a word nearly the same in Spanish as it is in English." The resulting translational error was unintended, but nonetheless hilarious.

I continued to chow down on a particularly heinous MRE, the dreaded jambalaya, while Joker started to sound out the sentence that he was trying to get across.


"Yo...soy...um...amer...no...can...er..maricon. Hmm, I think that's it! (Turning back to the kiddos) Yo soy maricon!"


At this statement, I snorted a mouthful of MRE about 10 ft, and all of the children began laughing, pointing, and waving their 'Jazz' hands about.



'Maricon' is one way to say 'homosexual'.



'Jazz hands' there is roughly the equivalent of the limp-wrist pose, here in the states.



Joker had roughly, and erroneously, proclaimed his personal proclivity for hot man love.



Joker didn't understand what was so funny at first, I guess he thought that the children were celebrating his beginner attempts at conversing in their language. He also missed the fact that I was attempting to quietly chortle in the background, tears rolling down my face, my food forgotten. I realized that he had figured it out when a half-eaten pound cake slice went flying past my head with the accompanying, "Murphy, you're an ass-hole!"

Panama

Panama was one of the places where the US used to send people to get some good jungle warfare training. As soon as the door of the plane opened up, you knew that you were in a jungle environment. Soon after getting all of the gear off of the plane you would find yourself drenched with sweat, and feeling completely wiped out. The first order of business was actually getting to the base, and that was an interesting experience all of itself.

The airport that we came in on was on one end of Panama, and the base we were heading to was on the other. In between was the Panama Canal. We loaded up all of our gear onto a circa 1980 school bus that had definitely seen better days, and were off to the base. Our driver, 'Pablo' looked to be about 15 years old. Driving across one of the many small bridges, one Marine noticed that he was looking straight down to the water, about 20 feet below. Getting up, he crossed to the other side of the bus and looked out that window. Nothing but water. Half a platoon full of Marines, all of our weapons and gear were on a 20 year old (at that time) bus, driven by a fifteen year-old, across a tiny bridge.

We made it to the base eventually, and began to settle in for the night. We were put up in a huge barracks, with about 150 racks to a floor. There was no air conditioning there, and just lying down in the middle of the night, you would be sweating profusely. The main job of the fire watch that night was to steal the solitary fan from the other platoons in the squad bay, and bring it over to our area without getting caught by the other platoons' guard.

The first class that we got from the soldiers stationed there was a booby-trapping class. It was very interesting, if only to re-emphasize that bombs can be made out of just about anything, with a lot more ease than I would have suspected.


As an aside, I remember one IED class that we got from a particular staff NCO. He was in the middle of his class, describing all of the various ways that he could construct something to make sure that you had a Very Bad Day. Pausing in his lecture, he asked if anyone had any dip for the poor old Gunny. The first can that he got was a can of Skoal. 'Not this crap, does anyone have any REAL dip, Copenhagen?' Of course, in a platoon full of Marines, there is always a wide assortment of smokes and dip, so he was able to 'feed the need'. After packing the tobacco, and taking a Gunny-sized dip, he placed it into his lip and with the practiced motions of long habit, placed the can into his cargo-pocket.

A few Marines chuckled, and reminded the Gunny that the dip wasn't his. He apologizes, and returned the can to the Marine. He then continued his class. Towards the end of the class, he had just finished emphasizing that we should never assume anything, when he pointed at the Marine with the Copenhagen. 'Did I return your can to you earlier?', he asked. When assured in the affirmative, he instructed the Marines to open his can of 'dip'. Neatly packed into the interior of the can was an IED. Not enough to do a lot of damage of course, but probably enough to let you know that you had assumed something, and we all knew what happened when you assumed...

The other classes were equally as entertaining, and they covered a lot of material. Just about anything there can kill you, or make you wish that it had. Finally it was about time for the practical application of our classes, the patrol and range fires.

Stepping off on our first patrol, we heard what sounded like a pissed-off gorilla at a distance of about 15 feet. That thing was loud, with plenty of bass. Made me kind of wish that I had something other than magazines full of blanks and a K-Bar to do any damage if I had too. As the beast was not actively tearing us limb from limb, we carried on with one eye on the patrols, and one eye looking out for him.

When you hear the phrase 'triple-canopy', they aren't kidding. When you are a mortar man, and you can barely see any blue sky to shoot into, this makes for some interesting live-fires. At one security halt, the Platoon Sergeant had a sneaking suspicion that we would be called on to fire soon. Looking around, he saw that only 2 of his mortar teams would be able to fire. Better than nothing, but still not very good. He noticed that there was one branch stretching across an opening. If he could just knock down that branch, he might be able to get another team ready to fire.... He attached a saw-blade to some 550 cord, tied it off, and threw the blade up into the branches.

Meanwhile, directly below sat two Marines, me and this Corporal. According to the SOP that we had at the time, I was on guard and he had a few moments to grab some chow. He had just dug into the jambalaya, I believe it was, when the Platoon Sergeant began sawing on the offending tree limb. After one drag of the blade, the old limb snapped off at the hilt, and fell straight down...

Right onto the Corporal's helmeted head. He was pushed down by the weight and speed of the limb, and rolled down a small hill. The Platoon Sergeant later confessed that he thought that he had killed one of his Marines and that he saw his whole Marine Corps career flashing before his eyes. Thankfully, the Corporal had somewhat of a hard head, and was none the worse for the wear. The MRE didn't fare as well, but that can hardly be considered a loss of any great significance.

After a couple of days, we kind of got into the swing of things, and got to where we could patrol, execute live fires, and return without too much difficulty. I still don't know how great of an idea it is to do it with 81mm mortars, but I suppose that you have to train for every eventuality.

Then came the competitive hump.

The hump was a race between all of the mortar platoons training there. It involved a treacherous hump, timed, along a set course. Platoons had the option of going with flack jackets and Kevlar helmets. A live fire was conducted at the end, and that figured into your 'score'. After the requisite trash talking between Marines, it was time to start. In the interest of not actually losing anybody in the jungle, the platoons were stagger started. This meant that there were no more than two platoons actually conducting the hump at any one time. This cut down on the number of moving parts, and allowed the instructors to adequately keep an eye on their charges.

The platoons that went before us did not fare too well. One platoon finished the course, but with an incredibly looong time. They were unable to get it together to fire accurately at the end of the hump. The next two platoons that went through had a 50%+ heat casualty rate, so the hump and live fire was canceled for them. Perhaps this should have been a clue as to the difficulty of the hump, but we were hard core, we were not troubled. (Sheesh)

This was without a doubt, one of the hardest humps that I have done. With my long legs, growing up playing soccer and swimming, humps have never been too difficult. This was way different. First of all the humidity just sucked all of the energy right out of you. There had been some recent rains so the terrain was about 90% mud, and you would invariably find yourself crawling through the unrelenting vegetation on the up-hill, and sliding down the down-hill, soon to be joined by the rest of your gear and the Marine behind you, falling on top of you. In addition to this, the Platoon Sergeant had such confidence in our manliness that he had decided that we would go ahead and do the hump with flacks, Kevlars, and mortar rounds already issued and stored in our packs.

This kicked my ass, I am unafraid to say.

It kicked my ass enough that I was the last Marine to cross the finish line, and when I did so I celebrated by just leaning over to the starboard side and damn near passed out. As I was unashamedly displaying what I had eaten for breakfast, the instructor complimented us on our 100% completion rate, and commented that he had never actually seen anyone do the speed hump with their flack and Kevlars. After about 10 minutes of shade and copious amounts of luke-warm water, I recovered enough to contribute to the team in the live fire, which we actually did not too bad in.

Traipsing back through the jungle towards the end of the training evolution, we came to a clearing on the edge of the foliage. On a tree stump about 30 feet away from us was this tiny little monkey, watching our progress. Most of the platoon had actually exited the jungle when this little guy opened his mouth, and what should come out but the sound of the Gorilla that we had heard earlier.