Shot Glass
Jun. 22nd, 2014 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
barefoot_bardTitle: Shot Glass
Rating: M (Suitable for ages 16 and above)
Disclaimers: Names given in this story are fictional and any relation to an actual person, living or dead, is purely incidental.
Summary: A US Marine remembers a fallen comrade. Arlington National Cemetery, May 2012.
Author's Note: This is not an Age of Sail fic. Any errors or mistakes contained herein are mine and I duly apologise for them.
Late afternoon sunlight, filtering through the full-leafed trees lining the visitors' road, casts long, dancing shadows across the well-tended lawn. The neat, perfect rows of white marble headstones stretch away almost endlessly. Names and dates from any number of conflicts since the Civil War, each of them an immortal memorial to somebody. The dappled sunlight plays across the top of the spotless white barracks cover fitted atop my head and warms the dark fabric of my coat. I haven't worn my Blue Dress in months, actually almost a year. Certainly not since getting out. But now it's the only thing I own that's really fitting for this visit.
My gleaming black shoes make no sound on the short grass as I make my way slowly down the row of headstones. The white marble markers with their black-lettered engravings pass by without me really seeing them. Names and ranks. Branches of service. Dates. The conflict that had claimed the person whose name was etched indelibly into stone. Several headstones are adorned with small flags that flutter lightly in the whisper of breeze. Other than the faint swish of my trouser legs, it's remarkably quiet here. The calm, unruffled sense of peace here is strangely calming.
I've come here to visit one headstone in particular. There are a few others I could stop by at but today, I'm here with a purpose. It's not the first time I've been here but it is the first since I left the Marine Corps. Coming to a place like this is hard, whatever the circumstances. I was here for the funeral. Actually, I was a pallbearer. I owed that to my Marine and that's why I'm here again now. I owe it to him. That solid white slab of marble just ahead is the only permanent physical remainder of a guy I trained. It's why I've come.
My shoes cease their forward movement, pause, then scrape flatly over the ground. The rubber soles thump inaudibly together, my feet automatically angling outward to forty-five degrees. Another pause. Then left heel and right toe come up, ever so slightly, and I pivot smoothly in place. My left foot moves silently, smartly, forward to mirror the position and angle of my right. All motion stills here for a moment, save for the natural quiver of breathing. With a single, fluid movement, I relax from my rigid stance and sink down to one knee. I've come down within easy arm's reach of the headstone. It's almost like being face to face with him again. My hand drifts forward and I brush my fingers over the engraved lettering in the flawless marble.
The engraving is simple and to the point. Edward J. Gutierrez, Corporal, US Marine Corps. February 6, 2007. I know everything on the headstone by heart. How could I forget? I'd been right next to Eddie Goot when he died. Every moment of that day is burned forever into my memory. Every sound, every smell, every thought. Certainly every shouted order and call of encouragement. The sorts of things you never forget. It had been just another day in the beginning. One more patrol like countless others we had done. Nothing special. Certainly none of us had thought it'd be otherwise as we headed out.
Complacency was not overt, for every Marine knew better, but somehow it had seeped into us enough to be a threat. With two weeks to go until our pump was over, the guys had been thinking of home more than was wise. I was one of them. My responsibility as a platoon sergeant was greater than theirs but even I had been looking forward to getting back to the States. Naturally, Goot had been the loudest of the bunch, going on about the partying he intended to do as soon as we were back in North Carolina, about how he was going to take the whole company out to the Hamptons for a week. Just how he'd pay for such an outing defied understanding but his talk was pretty typical of the rest of the platoon. All the guys wanted to do was get home, get drunk, and be rowdy.
All such thoughts were set aside when going on patrol. For the most part. It was impossible to completely shake off that 'I'm fucking outta here soon' feeling. It danced around in the back of your mind like a constant teasing tickle. Admittedly, I had been counting the days off, if only mentally. That patrol fell on the day precisely two weeks from the date the company would pack up and pop smoke for home. Maybe that was why it had happened. Maybe not. I'll never know for sure. Truthfully, I don't want to. It probably doesn't even matter in the long run. What did matter was the telltale, ominous lack of activity in the streets as our platoon rolled out. Our Humvess rumbled along in an outspread column, every vehicle keeping enough distance between each other to avoid more than one getting hit if anything went boom.
Try as I might, I can never recall who had said it first, but the words "Somethin' ain't fuckin' right here, man" had come no more than a minute before something did indeed go boom. The explosion struck the second Humvee in the column, lifting it clear off the ground a good six feet before batting it aside as if the heavy vehicle was no more than a toy. Fire erupted immediately from the Humvee's undercarriage as it lurched over onto its side, one tire and part of the axle blown cleanly off. Private Herman, my driver, started swearing and cranked hard at the wheel, stamping down mightily on the brake in the same instant, which sent the Humvee into a wild, screeching fishtail in an admirable attempt to stop before we drove straight into the crater in the middle of the road.
Ahead and behind, the rest of the platoon's vehicles were stopping, every driver immediately swinging his Humvee into a defensive position. Marines were dismounting in a hurry, weapons at the high ready, safeties off. The radio was bursting with voices, some attempting to give orders, others demanding to know what was happening. I ignored all of the chatter as I kicked open my door and tumbled gracelessly out in a near-tangle of rifle, kit, and limbs. I don't really remember my first words to Herman, who was still swearing, but my first general order to the platoon is impossible to forget. "Get those fuckers out of there!" As if I was the only one with brains enough to want to save those guys. Shit. I ran to the burning Humvee myself, ahead of the others, slinging my rifle so that both my hands were free.
That'd been when all hell had broken loose. Haji had been waiting for just that moment. AK fire began crackling from seemingly all around and rounds whizzed and zipped dangerously close to the cluster of Marines struggling to drag their screaming comrades free of the burning vehicle. The guys responded out of pure instinct. Those not directly part of the rescue scattered and began returning fire. Eddie Goot had been the first to follow me into the open and was in fact helping me haul the wounded gunner from the topside hatch when he was hit. I didn't realize that until after we'd dragged Lance Corporal Craig back to the comparative safety of our Humvee. Goot had taken two rounds but had never uttered a sound, nor had he faltered. Only after we'd carefully laid Craig onto the ground did Goot go down to a knee.
"Well shit," was all he'd said, after pressing a gloved hand against his side. The hand came away soaked in blood. When you see something like that, you know it's bad. I hollered for our corpsman at once. Poor Doc Winslow. He had a fucking nightmare mess on his hands and he was doing his best. But he couldn't get to us. Haji's barrage of fire had us cut off from the others. It was a small mercy that Doc was up front with the other guys who'd been pulled from the wrecked Humvee. So it was down to me. Fortunately I knew what to do and I did it. There wasn't much I could do for Craig, whose left arm was obviously broken and whose legs were a burned-up mess. He got a shot of morphine, then I moved on. Getting Goot's IBA off was out of the question but I got some QuikClot and a couple trauma dressings on him. For all the good that quickly proved. Goot wavered, then collapsed. He'd never been a big guy to begin with and with two AK rounds in him, severe blood loss was inevitable.
My attention was divided by necessity, for I had to command the platoon first and tend to the two casualties in front of me second. It sucks. It really does. When you've got guys down and hurt, you want to concentrate on them first, but you can't. Not when there are thirty other guys who aren't wounded who need direction from you. I split my breath between organising a defence and giving Goot shit for being such a slow-ass that he got shot. If I could get his mind off it, I thought it would help. Maybe it did. I don't know. He didn't have the strength to get up to his knees, so he rolled himself over into the prone, pulled his rifle into his shoulder, and got back to work.
The kid was just that fucking tough. He knew his job and even wounded, he had the moxie to get back into the fight. That's the part I will never forget. The pair of us tucked hard up near our Humvee, me kneeling and Goot in the prone, both of us putting rounds down to try to give Doc and the others cover so they could pull back to us. Rounds were pinging off the Humvee behind us and kicking up spurts of sand and dirt well in front of us, but obviously Haji couldn't fucking shoot. The bullets that had gotten Goot must have been unlucky shots. He was bleeding around the trauma dressings, the spreading stain turning his cammies and the ground under him an ugly dark scarlet.
"C'mon, Corporal!" I yelled at him when he was slow changing magazines. I couldn't let him think about his wounds or the fact that he was in real danger of bleeding out. Focusing on the job at hand would get him through it. I hoped. "You ain't a fuckin' boot. Get some fire on those assholes!"
Goot managed a laugh as he worked the charging handle on his weapon. "Oorah, Sarge. This is fuckin' awesome!" A second later he was firing again, doing his best to aim each shot. His spark seemed to be back, because he started yelling abuse at the unseen raghead fuckers who were trying to shoot us up. Somebody from a Humvee behind us began letting rip with his M203. Fucking finally. The .50 cal gunners had been hammering away as best they could all along but it was about damn time explosive rounds were brought into it.
I didn't see the precise moment when Goot died. It's probably better that way. What I do remember is suddenly realising that he wasn't shouting anymore, when it seemed a split second before he had been talking a good piece of shit about Haji's mothers and goats. It was strange how clearly that struck me, when there was so much other noise bursting all around me. I looked over and saw why he'd gone quiet. Goot was gone, his head slumped forward over his rifle, his finger still around the trigger. It's stupid but for a heartbeat all I could think was that his positioning was perfect. His elbow was planted so firmly that the barrel of his weapon didn't so much as dip toward the dirt.
"Corpsman!" It came out more of a scream than I wanted but I didn't care. I stopped firing immediately and all but jumped toward Goot. It's hard to feel for a pulse when you're basically flailing at somebody's neck. There wasn't one, even after I calmed myself enough to do the check properly. All the same, I grabbed the back of Goot's IBA and rolled him over onto his back so I could slap down another trauma dressing, before snapping my weapon back up to fire a few rounds toward the enemy. All I wanted to do was put some 5.56 milimeter rounds into each of their faces. They just needed to pop up where I could see them and that's exactly what they were gonna fucking get.
The guys from the rescue party were regrouping on me by now, providing a steady cover. Doc was there but even he knew it was too late. Goot was gone and Craig would follow if we didn't get him out of here fast. I knew that, maybe better than anyone, but it was hard to fight back the desire to waste every last motherfucker who thought it'd be a good idea to shoot at us.
"Nine-line's been sent, we're clear to Casevac outta here," Doc shouted at me. "Four guys down but loaded up. Let's fuckin' bail!"
Herman and his buddy Turner had Goot on a folding litter and were hustling him back to the Humvee just behind mine. Craig had already been loaded up. I had no idea how bad off the other wounded Marines were but honestly, I didn't care right then. I had no idea where Lieutenant Slocumb was, which meant that as far as I was concerned, he was a non-entity. This was my show and I was going to fucking run it. I grabbed Goot's weapon and shouted, "Mount up, we're fuckin' outta here!"
And we were. The wrecked Humvee was left to burn itself out. No sense wasting lives to protect a vehicle that was basically denying itself to the enemy. Our withdrawal was done under fire. Every gunner in the patrol was going through rounds like nobody's business. Guys were shooting from their windows. I was on the radio, trying to get company staff to shut the fuck up and get our medical crew ready, because we were coming back in hard. It was the ride from Hell.
Goot went home the following day. I wanted to be the one to escort him back but got told no. Some desk-jockey fuck went instead. It was a piece of bureaucratic bullshit that pissed off me and the platoon pretty badly. It should have been one of us to take him home, not some pansy asshole who didn't even know him. The only good thing was that we got back in time for the funeral. The whole platoon turned out for it, every man shined, starched, and spotless. Six of us NCOs were pallbearers. Lance Corporal Craig was even there, his left arm in a sling and a discreet bandage on his neck. The bandages on his legs were well-hidden by his trousers. That ballsy fucker had gone UA from Bethesda to be with us.
Military funerals rip your guts out and roll them in the dirt. I've been to more than my share of them over the years and they never get any easier. Goot's was probably the worst because down deep, I think I could have saved him, instead of concentrating on laying down suppressing fire. There were thirty other Marines in the platoon. I could have put the effort in to slap trauma dressings on, to apply direct pressure. To do something. But I didn't and the price of that was settling Goot's casket onto the frame above his grave. The price of that was standing back exactly five paces during the rifle salute, through Taps, right until his casket was ready for lowering into the ground. Me and the other pallbearers took charge of that and we stood back in one rank until the last molecule of dirt had been scraped in to fill the hole.
That was then. This is now. I trace my gloved fingers over the dark engraved letters and have to blink at least twice to keep my eyes clear. Fuck. Goot was a good kid and a good Marine. A damned good Marine. The platoon was never the same without him. I think they recognised that up at battalion, because the platoon was gradually broken up. Guys were reassigned to other platoons or companies, or sent off to join detachments afloat. Even I was given orders to move. Actually was an offer - volunteer to be a drill instructor or get dumped into a desk job. I'm no fucking pencil pusher so I volunteered. It was really just more bureaucratic bullshit.
I left the Corps after my three-year tour at Parris Island was over. I'd been told there was no way I'd get to go back to a rifle company. That meant not going back to where I belonged, no more being plain old Staff Sergeant William Foxcroft. So I got out. I'm a fighting Marine. A grunt. Training Marine recruits is not the life for somebody like me. I have to be around guys like Goot, who had no fear or quit in them, who lived and died for the guys on either side of him. To me, that's everything a United States Marine should be.
I have to blink again, then I dip a hand into my pocket and draw out a shot glass. It's unadorned except for the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor. I set this atop the slightly-curved top of the headstone and regard it thoughtfully for a moment. Eddie Goot had been, perhaps, the only Marine to ever match me shot for shot. Any time, anywhere. God that kid could drink. He always said an empty shot glass was a waste and he very rarely had an empty one in front of him. This one is different, though. This is a promise of endless shots on the other side, when it gets to be my turn to tip my hat to Saint Peter.
"Happy birthday, Devil Dog," I say.
Rating: M (Suitable for ages 16 and above)
Disclaimers: Names given in this story are fictional and any relation to an actual person, living or dead, is purely incidental.
Summary: A US Marine remembers a fallen comrade. Arlington National Cemetery, May 2012.
Author's Note: This is not an Age of Sail fic. Any errors or mistakes contained herein are mine and I duly apologise for them.
Late afternoon sunlight, filtering through the full-leafed trees lining the visitors' road, casts long, dancing shadows across the well-tended lawn. The neat, perfect rows of white marble headstones stretch away almost endlessly. Names and dates from any number of conflicts since the Civil War, each of them an immortal memorial to somebody. The dappled sunlight plays across the top of the spotless white barracks cover fitted atop my head and warms the dark fabric of my coat. I haven't worn my Blue Dress in months, actually almost a year. Certainly not since getting out. But now it's the only thing I own that's really fitting for this visit.
My gleaming black shoes make no sound on the short grass as I make my way slowly down the row of headstones. The white marble markers with their black-lettered engravings pass by without me really seeing them. Names and ranks. Branches of service. Dates. The conflict that had claimed the person whose name was etched indelibly into stone. Several headstones are adorned with small flags that flutter lightly in the whisper of breeze. Other than the faint swish of my trouser legs, it's remarkably quiet here. The calm, unruffled sense of peace here is strangely calming.
I've come here to visit one headstone in particular. There are a few others I could stop by at but today, I'm here with a purpose. It's not the first time I've been here but it is the first since I left the Marine Corps. Coming to a place like this is hard, whatever the circumstances. I was here for the funeral. Actually, I was a pallbearer. I owed that to my Marine and that's why I'm here again now. I owe it to him. That solid white slab of marble just ahead is the only permanent physical remainder of a guy I trained. It's why I've come.
My shoes cease their forward movement, pause, then scrape flatly over the ground. The rubber soles thump inaudibly together, my feet automatically angling outward to forty-five degrees. Another pause. Then left heel and right toe come up, ever so slightly, and I pivot smoothly in place. My left foot moves silently, smartly, forward to mirror the position and angle of my right. All motion stills here for a moment, save for the natural quiver of breathing. With a single, fluid movement, I relax from my rigid stance and sink down to one knee. I've come down within easy arm's reach of the headstone. It's almost like being face to face with him again. My hand drifts forward and I brush my fingers over the engraved lettering in the flawless marble.
The engraving is simple and to the point. Edward J. Gutierrez, Corporal, US Marine Corps. February 6, 2007. I know everything on the headstone by heart. How could I forget? I'd been right next to Eddie Goot when he died. Every moment of that day is burned forever into my memory. Every sound, every smell, every thought. Certainly every shouted order and call of encouragement. The sorts of things you never forget. It had been just another day in the beginning. One more patrol like countless others we had done. Nothing special. Certainly none of us had thought it'd be otherwise as we headed out.
Complacency was not overt, for every Marine knew better, but somehow it had seeped into us enough to be a threat. With two weeks to go until our pump was over, the guys had been thinking of home more than was wise. I was one of them. My responsibility as a platoon sergeant was greater than theirs but even I had been looking forward to getting back to the States. Naturally, Goot had been the loudest of the bunch, going on about the partying he intended to do as soon as we were back in North Carolina, about how he was going to take the whole company out to the Hamptons for a week. Just how he'd pay for such an outing defied understanding but his talk was pretty typical of the rest of the platoon. All the guys wanted to do was get home, get drunk, and be rowdy.
All such thoughts were set aside when going on patrol. For the most part. It was impossible to completely shake off that 'I'm fucking outta here soon' feeling. It danced around in the back of your mind like a constant teasing tickle. Admittedly, I had been counting the days off, if only mentally. That patrol fell on the day precisely two weeks from the date the company would pack up and pop smoke for home. Maybe that was why it had happened. Maybe not. I'll never know for sure. Truthfully, I don't want to. It probably doesn't even matter in the long run. What did matter was the telltale, ominous lack of activity in the streets as our platoon rolled out. Our Humvess rumbled along in an outspread column, every vehicle keeping enough distance between each other to avoid more than one getting hit if anything went boom.
Try as I might, I can never recall who had said it first, but the words "Somethin' ain't fuckin' right here, man" had come no more than a minute before something did indeed go boom. The explosion struck the second Humvee in the column, lifting it clear off the ground a good six feet before batting it aside as if the heavy vehicle was no more than a toy. Fire erupted immediately from the Humvee's undercarriage as it lurched over onto its side, one tire and part of the axle blown cleanly off. Private Herman, my driver, started swearing and cranked hard at the wheel, stamping down mightily on the brake in the same instant, which sent the Humvee into a wild, screeching fishtail in an admirable attempt to stop before we drove straight into the crater in the middle of the road.
Ahead and behind, the rest of the platoon's vehicles were stopping, every driver immediately swinging his Humvee into a defensive position. Marines were dismounting in a hurry, weapons at the high ready, safeties off. The radio was bursting with voices, some attempting to give orders, others demanding to know what was happening. I ignored all of the chatter as I kicked open my door and tumbled gracelessly out in a near-tangle of rifle, kit, and limbs. I don't really remember my first words to Herman, who was still swearing, but my first general order to the platoon is impossible to forget. "Get those fuckers out of there!" As if I was the only one with brains enough to want to save those guys. Shit. I ran to the burning Humvee myself, ahead of the others, slinging my rifle so that both my hands were free.
That'd been when all hell had broken loose. Haji had been waiting for just that moment. AK fire began crackling from seemingly all around and rounds whizzed and zipped dangerously close to the cluster of Marines struggling to drag their screaming comrades free of the burning vehicle. The guys responded out of pure instinct. Those not directly part of the rescue scattered and began returning fire. Eddie Goot had been the first to follow me into the open and was in fact helping me haul the wounded gunner from the topside hatch when he was hit. I didn't realize that until after we'd dragged Lance Corporal Craig back to the comparative safety of our Humvee. Goot had taken two rounds but had never uttered a sound, nor had he faltered. Only after we'd carefully laid Craig onto the ground did Goot go down to a knee.
"Well shit," was all he'd said, after pressing a gloved hand against his side. The hand came away soaked in blood. When you see something like that, you know it's bad. I hollered for our corpsman at once. Poor Doc Winslow. He had a fucking nightmare mess on his hands and he was doing his best. But he couldn't get to us. Haji's barrage of fire had us cut off from the others. It was a small mercy that Doc was up front with the other guys who'd been pulled from the wrecked Humvee. So it was down to me. Fortunately I knew what to do and I did it. There wasn't much I could do for Craig, whose left arm was obviously broken and whose legs were a burned-up mess. He got a shot of morphine, then I moved on. Getting Goot's IBA off was out of the question but I got some QuikClot and a couple trauma dressings on him. For all the good that quickly proved. Goot wavered, then collapsed. He'd never been a big guy to begin with and with two AK rounds in him, severe blood loss was inevitable.
My attention was divided by necessity, for I had to command the platoon first and tend to the two casualties in front of me second. It sucks. It really does. When you've got guys down and hurt, you want to concentrate on them first, but you can't. Not when there are thirty other guys who aren't wounded who need direction from you. I split my breath between organising a defence and giving Goot shit for being such a slow-ass that he got shot. If I could get his mind off it, I thought it would help. Maybe it did. I don't know. He didn't have the strength to get up to his knees, so he rolled himself over into the prone, pulled his rifle into his shoulder, and got back to work.
The kid was just that fucking tough. He knew his job and even wounded, he had the moxie to get back into the fight. That's the part I will never forget. The pair of us tucked hard up near our Humvee, me kneeling and Goot in the prone, both of us putting rounds down to try to give Doc and the others cover so they could pull back to us. Rounds were pinging off the Humvee behind us and kicking up spurts of sand and dirt well in front of us, but obviously Haji couldn't fucking shoot. The bullets that had gotten Goot must have been unlucky shots. He was bleeding around the trauma dressings, the spreading stain turning his cammies and the ground under him an ugly dark scarlet.
"C'mon, Corporal!" I yelled at him when he was slow changing magazines. I couldn't let him think about his wounds or the fact that he was in real danger of bleeding out. Focusing on the job at hand would get him through it. I hoped. "You ain't a fuckin' boot. Get some fire on those assholes!"
Goot managed a laugh as he worked the charging handle on his weapon. "Oorah, Sarge. This is fuckin' awesome!" A second later he was firing again, doing his best to aim each shot. His spark seemed to be back, because he started yelling abuse at the unseen raghead fuckers who were trying to shoot us up. Somebody from a Humvee behind us began letting rip with his M203. Fucking finally. The .50 cal gunners had been hammering away as best they could all along but it was about damn time explosive rounds were brought into it.
I didn't see the precise moment when Goot died. It's probably better that way. What I do remember is suddenly realising that he wasn't shouting anymore, when it seemed a split second before he had been talking a good piece of shit about Haji's mothers and goats. It was strange how clearly that struck me, when there was so much other noise bursting all around me. I looked over and saw why he'd gone quiet. Goot was gone, his head slumped forward over his rifle, his finger still around the trigger. It's stupid but for a heartbeat all I could think was that his positioning was perfect. His elbow was planted so firmly that the barrel of his weapon didn't so much as dip toward the dirt.
"Corpsman!" It came out more of a scream than I wanted but I didn't care. I stopped firing immediately and all but jumped toward Goot. It's hard to feel for a pulse when you're basically flailing at somebody's neck. There wasn't one, even after I calmed myself enough to do the check properly. All the same, I grabbed the back of Goot's IBA and rolled him over onto his back so I could slap down another trauma dressing, before snapping my weapon back up to fire a few rounds toward the enemy. All I wanted to do was put some 5.56 milimeter rounds into each of their faces. They just needed to pop up where I could see them and that's exactly what they were gonna fucking get.
The guys from the rescue party were regrouping on me by now, providing a steady cover. Doc was there but even he knew it was too late. Goot was gone and Craig would follow if we didn't get him out of here fast. I knew that, maybe better than anyone, but it was hard to fight back the desire to waste every last motherfucker who thought it'd be a good idea to shoot at us.
"Nine-line's been sent, we're clear to Casevac outta here," Doc shouted at me. "Four guys down but loaded up. Let's fuckin' bail!"
Herman and his buddy Turner had Goot on a folding litter and were hustling him back to the Humvee just behind mine. Craig had already been loaded up. I had no idea how bad off the other wounded Marines were but honestly, I didn't care right then. I had no idea where Lieutenant Slocumb was, which meant that as far as I was concerned, he was a non-entity. This was my show and I was going to fucking run it. I grabbed Goot's weapon and shouted, "Mount up, we're fuckin' outta here!"
And we were. The wrecked Humvee was left to burn itself out. No sense wasting lives to protect a vehicle that was basically denying itself to the enemy. Our withdrawal was done under fire. Every gunner in the patrol was going through rounds like nobody's business. Guys were shooting from their windows. I was on the radio, trying to get company staff to shut the fuck up and get our medical crew ready, because we were coming back in hard. It was the ride from Hell.
Goot went home the following day. I wanted to be the one to escort him back but got told no. Some desk-jockey fuck went instead. It was a piece of bureaucratic bullshit that pissed off me and the platoon pretty badly. It should have been one of us to take him home, not some pansy asshole who didn't even know him. The only good thing was that we got back in time for the funeral. The whole platoon turned out for it, every man shined, starched, and spotless. Six of us NCOs were pallbearers. Lance Corporal Craig was even there, his left arm in a sling and a discreet bandage on his neck. The bandages on his legs were well-hidden by his trousers. That ballsy fucker had gone UA from Bethesda to be with us.
Military funerals rip your guts out and roll them in the dirt. I've been to more than my share of them over the years and they never get any easier. Goot's was probably the worst because down deep, I think I could have saved him, instead of concentrating on laying down suppressing fire. There were thirty other Marines in the platoon. I could have put the effort in to slap trauma dressings on, to apply direct pressure. To do something. But I didn't and the price of that was settling Goot's casket onto the frame above his grave. The price of that was standing back exactly five paces during the rifle salute, through Taps, right until his casket was ready for lowering into the ground. Me and the other pallbearers took charge of that and we stood back in one rank until the last molecule of dirt had been scraped in to fill the hole.
That was then. This is now. I trace my gloved fingers over the dark engraved letters and have to blink at least twice to keep my eyes clear. Fuck. Goot was a good kid and a good Marine. A damned good Marine. The platoon was never the same without him. I think they recognised that up at battalion, because the platoon was gradually broken up. Guys were reassigned to other platoons or companies, or sent off to join detachments afloat. Even I was given orders to move. Actually was an offer - volunteer to be a drill instructor or get dumped into a desk job. I'm no fucking pencil pusher so I volunteered. It was really just more bureaucratic bullshit.
I left the Corps after my three-year tour at Parris Island was over. I'd been told there was no way I'd get to go back to a rifle company. That meant not going back to where I belonged, no more being plain old Staff Sergeant William Foxcroft. So I got out. I'm a fighting Marine. A grunt. Training Marine recruits is not the life for somebody like me. I have to be around guys like Goot, who had no fear or quit in them, who lived and died for the guys on either side of him. To me, that's everything a United States Marine should be.
I have to blink again, then I dip a hand into my pocket and draw out a shot glass. It's unadorned except for the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor. I set this atop the slightly-curved top of the headstone and regard it thoughtfully for a moment. Eddie Goot had been, perhaps, the only Marine to ever match me shot for shot. Any time, anywhere. God that kid could drink. He always said an empty shot glass was a waste and he very rarely had an empty one in front of him. This one is different, though. This is a promise of endless shots on the other side, when it gets to be my turn to tip my hat to Saint Peter.
"Happy birthday, Devil Dog," I say.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-23 06:56 pm (UTC)That's one awesome piece of writing, you. I could see that contact go down.
Attagirl!
no subject
Date: 2014-06-24 03:32 pm (UTC)