By Peter Lucier (Best Defense
Council of the Former Enlisted)
To my ex-lover:
It’s not you, USMC, it’s me.
No, that’s not true. After so much
dishonesty, and talking around each other, I have to be honest. It’s you. But
it isn’t that I don’t or can’t love you anymore. It’s that as a young man, I
took you on as a lover. But I don’t think a lover is what you need right now.
I’ll always cherish our time
together. You didn’t just help me find myself, you showed me a new way to be.
The violence you taught me wasn’t just about destruction, although the two of
us were pretty good at that. It was about a fierceness of purpose. We attacked
problems together, in an unspoken agreement of trust to the point of killing or
dying for those next to us. In you, these two halves of myself, purpose and
brotherhood, found balance and meaning
I remember when we first met. I was
nervous, but isn’t that always the way? At boot camp I wasn’t sure if you knew
that I existed. Back then I thought you were brash, crass, arrogant and rude.
But you told such incredible stories, stories about Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, the
Chosin Reservoir, Hue City, and Fallujah. I fell under the mystical spell of
your charisma, your unbroken string of victories, reaching far back into the
past, your warrior spirit.
I remember the day I knew I loved
you, the day I gave into your insane demands. We were running a LFAM, at SOI. I
saw each part of you moving perfectly. Your strong geometries of fire, the
clean lines cut by your left and right lateral limits, the perfect grace of
your coordinated movements. We live fired together that day, and again that
night, and for many months after we shot and moved together, lovers drunk on
our own youth and excellence.
It was not an easy life. You
demanded austerity, strict discipline, total commitment. You told me frankly
I’d be putting myself in danger, and would be expected to perform in dangerous
situations, without excuse. But like so many young men before me, going back to
the Spartan agoge
and before, having been thoroughly instilled with love of Corps and country, I
accepted the sword that you offered, and I took up the heavy burden.
You taught me about “Message to
Garcia.” Your stories had that distinctly American flavor of Protestantism, of
cynicism and idealism clashing at high speed; man as a fallen, depraved
creature, but through relentless hard work, he could redeem himself. And if
work could redeem, maybe, just maybe, all mankind could be redeem. Maybe if we
worked hard enough, we could remake the whole world in our image. Maybe there
was nothing we couldn’t do. We were beasts, but we might be gods.
We went to war together. We were
challenged. The enemy pushed back against us. They offered us lessons. The land
was not new. Its valleys and mountain contained stories older than ours. There
was knowledge and wisdom in that very old place, where empires across the ages
had been buried, but the people lived on.
A great leader in our brotherhood
arose, and challenged us. He told us we had to engage our minds, before we
engaged our triggers. He said it wasn’t enough to have a juvenile sense of
invulnerability, we had to also have an adult sense of responsibility. It
wasn’t enough to celebrate our seemingly unbroken string of victories, our
tradition and heritage. We had to learn, to adapt. But we didn’t listen. In our
hubris, perhaps we believed the myths that had sprung up around us. We went on
as we always had, running faster and faster, our arms outstretched, running to
the stories of our past.
We lost.
When we came home, I felt like my
blindness had fallen away. War had given lie to the stories you told. They had
been tested in fire and found wanting. But you still talked as you always had,
before the war. You fell right back into your old habits. We ran the same
ranges together, but our shooting and moving, seemed empty now.
So you see why I had to leave. I
think you are in trouble, Marine Corps. I think you have hard times ahead of
you. It kills me to leave you now, when I see you drowning. But I can’t help
you, not as a lover. So I’m leaving. I will study the ways of the enemy. I will
learn the lessons he tried to teach us. And when I know what I need to know,
I’ll return.
I’ll come with a new story. It will
be a painful one. Young boys will always come to you, looking to test
themselves as I did. And they’ll fall in love with you, just like I did. But I
will leave a warning for them. A warning called Afghanistan. The new ones who
come to find you will be forced to face our failure, yours and mine. Even more
than your victories and glories, they will shout our shame as they march, and
drill, and train, when they wait in line for chow, as they clean their rifles,
and before they get into their racks at night. This will be our new story.
Love, always love. But caution. Temperance. In place of redemption, we will
strive for wisdom. We will teach them to value efficacy as much as we valued
effort.
I don’t expect you to change. I am
not sure anyone ever really changes, and you are too beautiful the way you are.
You won’t become something new. But you will become something better. Then,
when you are strong and whole, maybe we can shoot and move together, as lovers
again.
Peter Lucier was a Marine infantry rifleman (2008-2013) who
deployed to Afghanistan in 2011. He
currently is a student at St. Louis University.
No comments:
Post a Comment