coming up on the calendar?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
He replied that the company would spend the next four months on conventional infantry skills such as shooting and patrolling. Then in February, the battalion would be attached to the Fifteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) as its ground combat element. A MEU (SOC), I knew from TBS, is a seaborne task force of two thousand Marines built around an infantry battalion and a helicopter squadron. At any given time, one is deployed from the West Coast and one from the East Coast. We would hone our MEU skills for six months, mostly raids in the boats. Then in August 2001, the Fifteenth MEU would sail from San Diego to cruise the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf for six months, training with foreign forces and acting as first responders in case of a crisis.
Every few minutes, Marines came into the office to update Patrick on the count of his platoon’s weapons, the status of missing equipment, or the progress of paperwork for people’s promotions and other training exercises. He bantered with me and gave them instructions without even pausing. I was surprised to learn he’d been at 1/1 for only two months.
He talked fast, describing the battalion and its key personalities, and starting with what I most wanted to hear: “Captain Whitmer’s fucking solid — best CO in the battalion.” He then assured me that “the LPA gets together for beer and tacos every Thursday night up near San Juan Capistrano.” I knew about this venerable tradition: every unit has an informal Lieutenants’ Protective Association. “Some guys,” Patrick confided, referring to the battalion’s other platoon commanders, “have to lean on each other since they have weak platoon sergeants. I don’t have that problem, and you won’t either.”
Every young lieutenant remembers meeting his platoon sergeant. The relationship between a fresh officer and his salty second-in-command is almost as mythic as boot camp. Patrick and I were still talking when Staff Sergeant Keith Marine walked into the office. The first thing I noticed about him were his ears, sticking out from his regulation haircut like fins on a fish. The second thing I noticed was his remarkable name. I didn’t comment on it, figuring he’d heard too much already on that score.
Marine quickly dispelled any mythic overtones our first encounter might have had: “Sir, you’re sitting in my chair.” He insisted we go out for coffee — “it’s a tradition for officers to buy” — to talk about tactics and training plans for the platoon. We traded autobiographies on the walk across the parade deck to the chow hall.
Staff Sergeant Marine had grown up in the coal country of West Virginia. Even without his name, Marine’s background seemed to destine him for the Corps. His grandfather had served as a Marine in the bloody campaigns of Bougainville, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. His grandfather’s brother had been killed at Leyte Gulf, where my grandfather had fought. Marine had already served ten years in the infantry. Before that, he had been stalking deer with a rifle while I had been playing with blocks. He had spent the last year working for the gunner, the battalion’s weapons expert, and knew every detail of every infantry weapon in most of the world’s militaries.
“So,” I asked, “how do you think the M-16 stacks up?” Most Marine grunts carry M-16s. The Corps instills in a young Marine an intense, almost obsessive attachment to his rifle.
“I don’t know what dickhead designed the M-16, but it shoots a varmint round. You don’t want a fucking squirrel gun in your hands in a firefight.”
I paid for our coffee, and we slid into a booth near the window. Marine took a can of Copenhagen tobacco from his pocket and snapped it between his thumb and forefinger. After cramming a wad inside his lower lip, he offered the can to me. “Dip, sir?”
“No, thanks.”
“I won’t hold it against you.” Marine sounded as if it was a major concession. “At least you’re drinking coffee. Your illustrious predecessor didn’t even do that. He was a shitbird.” Marine paused, lost in thought, and shook his head. “The road to hell is paved with the bleached bones of second lieutenants who didn’t listen to their staff NCOs. The one before him got shot in a porta-shitter out at the rifle range. So at least you got small boots to fill.”
Sipping my coffee, I asked Marine to tell me about the platoon. I expected a continuation of his earlier sarcasm, but he turned serious. Instead of talking about the Marines’ performance, he focused on their personalities, families, and interests.
“You gotta care about ’em for real, sir. If the Marines trust you, you can order ’em to yank Satan off his throne by the balls. Almost anybody can do this job. You want to make the Marines care enough to do it well.”
I sat quietly, happy to listen as long as Marine cared to talk. He must have sensed it because he paused, sizing me up, and asked bluntly how I saw my role in the platoon. For a second, I was taken aback. I hadn’t expected a quiz on my command technique, and I certainly wouldn’t have asked the same question of Captain Whitmer earlier. But his directness impressed me. I thought for a moment and told Marine I didn’t want to roll in like the new sheriff in town, changing the rules before I knew how things worked. I told him I tended to give people the benefit of the doubt and then nail them to the wall if they took advantage of me. Without using Captain Novack’s words, I tried to promise him competence, courage, consistency, and compassion.
In return, I expected that Marine would back me up in front of the troops. We would disagree behind closed doors. He nodded. Marine was a new staff noncommissioned officer (NCO), but I sensed from the start that he was of the old school and knew that seasoning me was a primary, if unspoken, part of his job. As if to affirm this, Marine told me about Chris Hadsall, his platoon commander in 1/1’s Charlie Company two years before. Hadsall had apparently become the yardstick by which he judged officers. “We’ll get you up to speed like Lieutenant Hadsall in no time, sir,” he assured me.
By the time we’d finished our third cup of coffee, Marine and I had staked out our respective roles in the platoon. My greatest fear had been clashing with a platoon sergeant I didn’t like or couldn’t trust. But I liked Marine, and I trusted him instinctively. Most platoon sergeants, I suspected, feared an overeager and domineering young lieutenant. I pledged to be neither. On our way to the door, Marine said the words I’d been waiting to hear since OCS: “Time for you to meet the platoon.”
I thought I’d be nervous. The new lieutenant meeting his first command was supposed to be like first love or losing your virginity. Staff Sergeant Marine called the platoon from the armory, where they were cleaning weapons after the field exercise. I watched them walking in groups of two or three across the parade deck, hands blackened with carbon, wearing green T-shirts and camouflage trousers. This was my platoon. I would train them, deploy with them, and maybe even go to war with them. Their performance would directly reflect my leadership. I wasn’t nervous at all.
The forty-five Marines fell into a formation of three ranks, one for each section. They were so young. Half of them looked under twenty. I was only twenty-three, but that small gap cast me in the role of coach or big brother. So the authority came naturally. Staff Sergeant Marine stood six paces from the center of the front rank. He took reports from each of the section leaders and about-faced toward me.
He saluted and called out, “Good afternoon, sir. Weapons platoon, all present.”
I stood at attention in front of him and returned his salute. Marine stepped off smartly, leaving me alone in front of the men.
The last thing they needed was a Pattonesque monologue from a newborn lieutenant, so I introduced myself and said I was happy to be the newest member of the platoon. I told them I wanted to meet with each man individually over the coming week and asked if they had any questions for me. There were none. Staff Sergeant Marine dismissed them, and they headed back to the armory. I thought I heard approval in his voice as we walked back to the office. “No bullshit, sir. Marines appreciate that.”
The next ten months were a graduate seminar in infantry tactics, our last chance to learn before doing it for real. Captain Whitmer was the professor, and his style was unlike anything I’d seen at Quantico. Many of my buddies in 1/1’s other companies complained that their commanders kept a thumb on them. They shunned boldness for fear of making an attention-grabbing mistake. The prevailing culture of 1/1, at least among the officers and senior NCOs, was careerist: laugh at the colonel’s jokes, don’t get anyone hurt, and stay under the radar.
Not Captain Whitmer. The standard Marine Corps brief before live-fire training began with the words “Safety is paramount.”
“If safety were paramount,” Whitmer declared, “we’d stay in the barracks and play pickup basketball. Good training is paramount.” Whitmer’s idea of good training reminded me of something I’d read about the Roman
