War Lessons: How I Fought to Be a Hero and Learned That War Is Terror

From Chapter 1: Learning to Be a SoldierA severe three-day storm hit our troop ship as we departed Long Beach, California, leaving most of us weak with seasickness. At the storm’s end, the clear Pacific air and salt spray cooled us. Crowded onto a ship with more than a thousand other men, I sought out a quiet place to read and found a hidden spot in the bow of the ship, where I spent my free time reading Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Every Marine in our detachment had a shipboard job. I was a member of the guard unit. We met each morning and were assigned to stand watch over supply and control rooms around the ship. Unable to find me for a special assignment one day, my team leader reported me to his superior as having missed guard duty. In the Marines, there is no gray—only black and white. You’re either present or absent; if you’re absent, you’re AWOL (absent without leave). When found, I was brought before the major commanding our detachment. After a few brief questions, he sentenced me to three days’ solitary confinement in the ship’s brig on bread and water. My only reading material was a Bible. Angry at the injustice of my treatment, I was determined not to let the punishment overwhelm me emotionally. Instead, I tried to view three days of reading and solitude as a respite from the military routine. I also spent several hours each day doing a hard physical workout. The Marine guarding my cell, peering through the small opening in my door to see what I was doing, began to fear for my sanity. Against orders, he began speaking to me and even offered me a candy bar, a kindness for which he could have been punished.“Hey man, how you doing?” he asked.“I’m okay,” I answered.“Here, take this Milky Way.”“I’m okay, really.”“You just got to ask.”At the end of my time in the brig, I felt a strange confidence that I might be able to withstand the hardships that were ahead of me. But this confidence was tinged with fear that my solitary nature could just as easily become my undoing. I couldn’t survive combat alone; I would have to connect with other people. I also realized that my desire to do things my own way could all too easily cross the military’s limits. Finding a quiet place to read was more than a personal preference; in an infantry platoon, it was an act of defiance. To stay out of trouble, I would need to set aside a part of my consciousness as a scout to navigate a path between the world of my imagination and the life of my group…