Joker One (6 page)

Hearing the news, Flowers shook his head and sighed. Less familiar with the Ox than he, the rest of us didn’t fully understand the horror that this dictate implied, so we were cautiously enthusiastic about the exercise—after all, it would be our first real test drive with our new Marines, and the training seemed straightforward enough. Armed with weapons and firing blanks, one platoon would man the trenches cut into the side of the hill while another assaulted the position as it saw fit. Leading up to the hillside was a broad, flat plain covered with a fairly complex system of obstacles, the heart of which was three rows of double-stranded concertina wire, the military version of barbed wire in which the barbs are replaced with double-sided straight razors. It’s nasty stuff that rips up anyone who tries to move through it. Were the training a real-life assault, that wire meant that anyone conducting a frontal attack on the hillside without serious artillery/air support and a heavy smoke screen would have been cut to ribbons by the defenders. Of course, the wooded hills of California were nothing like the urban jungles of Iraq’s cities or the desolate moonscapes of Iraq’s deserts, so conformity to real life didn’t have a high priority in the Ox’s training scenario.

My platoon had gotten to the training area first, so we were allowed to conduct the first attack. I had no desire to shred my Marines in uselessly breaching row after row of wire, so, rather than assaulting frontally, we moved through the thick forest bordering the plain, breached a single strand of wire using an entrenching tool and some rope, and assaulted the trench line from its side, running quickly down its length while pretending to throw
grenades and saying hello to our third-platoon friends who were playing the bad guys. When our “attack” finished, we took third platoon’s places in the trench line.

Up on the hill, I thought that the exercise had gone reasonably well, but down at its base, the Ox was livid. He had wanted all platoons to attack the way he would have done it, which would have been an all-out frontal assault through the wire. Furthermore, he wanted everyone to practice breaching concertina wire again and again, never mind the fact that none of us had breach kits, ladders, or even sheets of plywood to lay on top of the razors. Without those, the quickest way to cross the wire is to have one Marine who is geared up in his Kevlar vest and helmet take a running leap and launch himself on top of the razors in a technique known as “the Flying Squirrel.” The rest of his platoon would then run across his back, using the Marine as a bridge over the wire and lacerating his legs in the process. The delightful prospect of multiple Flying Squirrels greatly excited the Ox, and first platoon had disappointed him.

So an enraged Ox commanded Hes, Quist, and Flowers to assault the obstacles frontally. Being new, Hes and Quist complied, and my men and I watched in astonishment as Marine after Marine performed the Flying Squirrel and then limped painfully off the mock battlefield once the rest of their platoon had laid railroad tracks across their backs. The new Marines were wide-eyed; for all they knew this kind of absurdity was standard. Carrying the radio for me, Yebra leaned over and asked, even more softly than usual, “Sir, why are they doing that? We would have just shot them all in the first minute anyway, sir.”

“Yebra, I have no idea, but I’m sure there’s a reason that second and third are assaulting frontally. If nothing else, it’s good obstacle-breaching practice,” I replied somewhat lamely.

My RO didn’t say anything else after that.

Fortunately for his men, Flowers flatly refused a head-on assault, and the afternoon concluded much more pleasantly. The exercise highlighted the Ox’s greatest strength—his unthinking, unhesitating aggressiveness—and his greatest weakness—his unthinking, unhesitating aggressiveness. When the situation called for a frontal assault on a well-fortified enemy position, the Ox would attack fiercely. Similarly, when the situation called for diplomacy or the restrained use of force, he would attack fiercely. And when the
situation called for patience or for a measured retreat, never fear, he would attack fiercely. Like Hes, Quist, and Flowers, I treated the Ox’s lack of tactical sense mostly as a joking matter; a few days after the training event, we first reversed the letters of his XO title, giving him the sobriquet by which he would be known from that day forward.

E
ven in those earliest days, though, platoon leadership wasn’t all tactics and training and “follow-me-let’s-get-’em”-type exercises in the hills and forests of Camp Pendleton. Good leadership, it seemed, entailed spending quite a bit of time on administrative details that I never dreamed would have been the responsibility of an infantry platoon commander. Teague, Bowen, Leza, and I spent countless hours determining the shoe and trouser sizes of each new man, taking counts of how many pairs of military-issue glasses we needed to order (it could take up to two months to get them from the procurement system), making certain that everyone’s pay was going to the proper bank accounts, scanning personnel files to see who had what relatives, and doing various and sundry other nontactical things to ensure that our new men were being taken care of off the battlefield as well as on it. Most of this work, though, was simple diligence and detail, and it wasn’t until a week after the hillside assault that our first major leadership head ache cropped up. One of my brand-new Marines, Lance Corporal Mahardy, was accused of underage drinking.

Any offense involving the use of alcohol is considered a deadly and often unforgivable sin in the American military—the peacetime, zero-defects leaders of the 1990s entirely eliminated the drinking culture that has been a proud part of military heritage worldwide since the days of Herodotus. Having grown up in the ‘90s military, Colonel Kennedy and Captain Bronzi were both determined to make examples out of alcohol offenders, and they planned on throwing the book at Mahardy. As he was ultimately my responsibility, I decided to call my Marine into the company office to hear his account firsthand before I took the official logbook’s word for it. So, late one afternoon, a relatively tall (six-foot), extremely skinny (160-pound), twenty-year-old Marine with pale skin, sandy-blond hair, and light freckles across his cheeks and arms stood at parade rest and explained his side of the story to me. He had been on his way to do his laundry and had stopped by another
Marine’s room to say hello. He found a group of Marines passing around a case of beer, but he hadn’t actually drunk any of it. After hearing Mahardy’s explanation, and observing his demeanor as he gave it, I believed that my man was guilty of nothing more than wandering into the wrong room. I didn’t believe that he deserved harsh punishment, or any punishment at all, for that matter. But by the rules of the Corps, which prohibited his very presence in a barracks room containing alcohol, he was guilty as charged.

As I pondered what to do about Mahardy, I ran into another of the constant tensions faced by young officers: the tension between justice and mercy, and, to some extent, between respect and love. Respect from your Marines is founded on a number of different leadership traits, but foremost among them are competence and justice, and justice hinges on leadership applying an even, consistent system of punishments and rewards. A uniform set of standards across the Marine Corps outlines the criteria for both, and the Marines can always reference those standards if they have any questions surrounding what they can reasonably expect to result from their actions or the lack thereof. They anticipate, then, rewards for outstanding achievement, and they justifiably fear reprisals, often severe, for misdeeds or laziness.

To my surprise, I later found out that my Marines could accept even the harshest punishment with equanimity provided that 1) they understood the rules well in advance of the infringement, 2) they felt that the mandated sentence was appropriate for the misdeed, and 3) they were confident that you, as the punishment’s administrator, would have doled out the same penalty to anyone else in their situation. The Marines should absolutely fear what their lieutenant, company commander, or NCOs can do to them, but they should never, ever believe that those appointed over them either apply punishment out of a rush of emotion or occasionally suspend deserved sentences for reasons unknown. Failing to administer justice, or at least to push for justice to be done, is one of the absolute best ways of cutting your legs out from under yourself as a young leader.

My first thought, then, was simply to let the CO determine the correct punishment. This would have been the easiest course of action, and nobody, including Mahardy, would have held it against me, but it didn’t sit well with me because I believed that Mahardy hadn’t been drinking. Furthermore,
even in my inexperience, I had some intimation that in spite of the need for consistency, there are moments when simply following the letter of the law is a cop-out, and ultimately hinders your efforts to pull the best out of your men. In my opinion, the latter requires a love founded on humility, self-sacrifice, and, in some cases, mercy. Sometimes a punishment may be warranted because the letter of the law was violated, but you believe that the sentence should be suspended because of mitigating circumstances surrounding that violation. Or you might believe that the offender rates by law a specific punishment but that the offense was committed out of ignorance rather than malice. Maybe your Marine is a good kid who has potential that would be crushed by such treatment, or maybe they, in your best judgment, simply deserve a second chance.

I wasn’t sure exactly which of these situations applied to Mahardy’s case, but I believed that at least one or two of them did. If I abided solely by the letter of the law, I worried that I might come across as an automaton in my men’s eyes. But it was important not to signal a willingness to defer justice on a regular basis; though this might make the Marines like me more, I needed to be their leader, not their friend, and maintaining this boundary at all times is crucial. What, then, should a young officer do to navigate the delicate tension between justice and fear, between mercy and love?

I certainly don’t have all the answers to this age-old question, but I have found one way that a lieutenant can resolve this tension, and I applied it as best I could to Mahardy’s case. This thing can’t be done every time that you might like to, and even when you can do it, it is often extremely personally unpleasant. The way to satisfy both justice and mercy is, quite simply, to take the hit for your men, to divert whatever punishment they may rate onto your own head if you believe that mercy is warranted. This trade-off is just because as the lieutenant, you are held accountable for everything that your men achieve or fail to achieve, for everything that they do or that is done to them. While you may not be directly responsible for the deeds and misdeeds of your men, you are certainly qualified to interpose yourself between them and justice, should you so choose.

This concept of an acceptable proxy goes much further than merely the dispensation of justice and mercy—ultimately it translates into the lieutenant’s greatest and sometimes final responsibility: to lay down his life for his Marines in combat, if such an action is necessitated by circumstances.

The idea is very, very simple and clear. If you wear the bars on your shoulders, then it is your job to consistently practice the greater-love principle. If you didn’t want that job, then you shouldn’t have accepted the commission.

In this case I couldn’t directly take the hit for Mahardy, so I tried the next best thing: I stuck my neck out for him with the CO. After sending Mahardy away and mulling over our conversation, I went into the CO’s office, where I related to him the story as Mahardy had related it to me. The CO looked extremely skeptical throughout. When I tentatively broached the idea of deferring punishment, the CO cut me off and proceeded to explain to me that I was young and didn’t realize yet that enlisted Marines often couldn’t be trusted. Marines in general, he explained, were extremely “fucking sneaky,” and they often relied upon the naïveté and bad judgment of inexperienced lieutenants to get away with heinous crimes. That wasn’t going to happen on his watch, he told me.

We held the formal punishment ceremony a few days later. Colonel Kennedy sat at a desk, while those accused and their leaders stood at attention off to the side. When Mahardy’s time came, I publicly stood at attention and voiced my opinion that my lance corporal should be spared. He wasn’t, but he was given a lighter punishment than the CO had originally threatened, and a few hours later I pulled Mahardy aside to talk to him, to explain that he had a choice to make going forward. He could either sulk at the injustice and retreat within himself, which, since we were going to war, would probably only get people killed, or he could work doubly hard going forward to prove everyone wrong, to prove that he wasn’t the Marine they had judged him to be.

Standing at parade rest, with his hands behind his back and his blue-gray eyes locked on mine, Mahardy nodded throughout my short pep talk, and when I finished, he responded simply, “Sir, don’t you worry. I know what I’ve got to do. I’m gonna prove to you and everyone that I belong here in the infantry. Don’t worry, sir.”

M
ahardy would not be my only leadership challenge in those early days. One day after training, Leza approached me and told me that one of our new Marines, a lance corporal by the name of Feldmeir, had been falling asleep everywhere he went, and at all times. It seemed that we had a genuine
narcoleptic in our ranks. Unfortunately, Feldmeir didn’t offset this weakness with other strengths. He wasn’t big or particularly fit; in fact, Feldmeir was on the smaller side of the curve, standing a wiry five feet, eight inches tall. With a completely shaved head and ears that stuck out at an almost perfectly perpendicular angle from his scalp, Feldmeir looked like the children’s book character Curious George. It wasn’t exactly an image guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of enemies. His shooting was average, his hiking was average, and his reaction time to most stimuli was slightly slower than average. I have no idea how Feldmeir made it through basic and infantry training, but make it he did, and it quickly became apparent that if the narcolepsy didn’t improve, he might jeopardize the safety of his fellow Marines on the battlefield.