CSM Chase stood up. He looked at me hard; examining my uniform closely.
"Right Face!", his voice filled the room.
I turn quickly to my right and stood steady.
"Forward March!"
Stepping quickly, I obeyed his command and moved forward.
He continued to give me drill commands, and all of the board members observed me closely as I obeyed them, ensuring that I knew each command and it's execution. They ordered me to take my seat.
Next came the questions; the part that had fooled me last time. I was directed to CSM Brown at the far right of the table. I turned my hard sharply to face him and glared sternly at his forehead; he looked impressed.
"What are the ten principles of leadership as defined by the U.S. army?"
I kept my eyes steady, and recited the principles. After working my way through the several questions that each of the seven CSMs asked, I was directed to proceed to the back of the room. There I found a M-16 rifle. CSM Chase pulled out a stop watch and told me to disassemble my weapon. I began to tear it apart; my hands were confident as I found it's releases and removed it's parts. I placed the last piece on the table and snapped to attention. CSM Chase stopped his watch and informed the of CSMs of the time, "thirty seconds". He ordered me to reassemble the weapon and I did.
CSM Chase came to the table and checked the weapon; everything works, I was lucky. He stepped close to me and examined my chin, ensuring that I had shaved completely. He checked the lines of my hair, and the laces of my boots. Pulling a ruler from his pocket, he measured the distances of my awards on my uniform. Standing in front of me he yelled, "Attention! Dismissed." I turned sharply to the door, and marched out of the room; my squad leader followed behind me and closed the door.
As my body relaxed, a smile filled my face; I had done well. I had known most of the questions and had avoided being yelled at, or thrown out.
When the CSMs came out of the room we all stood at attention and waited for the word. CSM Chase stood in front of me, "Corporal Laverdiere, your the Non-Commissioned Officer of the Year." He put his hand out and I shook it; as our hands unclasped I found that he had left a coin in mine.
Now that coin sits on my desk; with several others that I won while I was in the military. My girlfriend, holding it in her hands, asks me, "what's the big deal with these coins?" My mind flashes back in time, and I tell her, "It's just a coin that I won."
2 comments:
Mark--very nice piece; you put us right in the scene with the CSMs and give us a great sense of what the preparation and anxiety must have been like, and, of course, you handle the flashback very nicely.
That said, it's funny how sometimes what I think will happen does not in fact happen. The time distortions pull the reader in, pull him in hard--instead of distancing! Go figure. If only all my problems were this easy.
I mean: the goal, the goal of distancing, is to somehow involve the reader. If you can involve the reader without the distancing (and you do), then your means may be unorthodox but you reach the right goal anyway and you'll hear no complaints from me.
This piece reminded me very much of this one that a student gave me 25 years ago:
When I got out of the service in 1969, I threw a lot of stuff away. Some were
clothe-s that had no civiliian application. A lot of small personal things I
gave away like my blue and whits china dishes taken from dead North Vietnamese
soldiers. A photo album that would gross out Stephen King, my knife , and my
humble handful of medals were all I kept. I put them all in a box and then pretty
much forgot about them for several years. As time passed, nostalgia crept in and
one day I found myself searching for my old photo album. When I looked through
it I was so depressed that I threw it into the woodstove. "It's time to or.get
all that stuff, " I thought. The knife and the medals remained in the box for
years until one day my wife found them. The knife, a nasty black Gerber, scared her.
The medals intrigued her and she had to know what they meant. There in the box,
more valuable to me than the knife or the medals, were the eagle, globe, and
anchors from my dress uniform. These are not medals I told her It's a lot
deeper than that. Memories came flooding back.
These represent a lot of sweat to me. I told her of the long hours training under
the hot Carolina sun back in '66. I told her of the dropouts who for one reason
or another never earnind the title "Marine." I told her of the puddles of sweat
that formed on the floor of the barracks as we worked out. I told her how our
clothes stuck to us in the jungle and that we all stopped wearing underwear be-
cause of the oppressive heat.
These represent a lot of tears too. Tears for friends who never came home alive.
More friends than I can count on fingers and toes. Sometimes when I see dark
green garbage bags beside the road on trash day, I still think of body bags full
of dead marines. These also represent the tears of a lot of wives and mothers.
That's the reason the photo album went into the stovetoo many tears.
These emblems also represent a lot of blood, I told her. A lot of blood wasted
in a war our congress wouldn't let us win. Blood dripped away in hot , steamy
places with half-forgotten names. I told her of the "Rockpile", Lin Lin, Khe
San, and Hill 865 where we were overrun. I left some of my blood on that hill.
A lot of time had passed since I wore those emblems on my uniform. I've put
on 30 pounds and turned soft as a jelly roll. Scattered around this country are
a lot of my old buddies. I've lost touch with all of othem. I'm sure that
each of them has a box like mine stuck away in a closet or an attic. In that
box are two ssmall brass emblems that represent a lot of his own blood, sweat, and
tears.
Copyright (c) 1999 by A. Fox
That's a very moving piece; thanks for sharing it.
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