I had dreamed of putting a helmet on since I was young, only to find that when I finally did, the helmet was an uncomfortable hunk of shit that dug into my scalp so I would find any reason to take it off. We debarked a commercial airliner in Honolulu and were funneled into a white school bus in our dress green uniforms. Something about the island seemed surreal and almost spiritual, a strange sort of vibe that made me think about the many Marines who had gone through this process before me. The bus chugged along until we reached Marine Corps Base Hawaii. We got out of the buses and received our room assignments, my orders were to join four other new Marines assigned to Alpha Company third platoon and my roommate would be a fellow teenager I had never met before, Jose Moracruz. We had heard the horror stories and were clear that hazing would probably be in our near future.
I did not know if a crew of bloodthirsty seasoned senior Marines were waiting for us and my new roommate looked at me in horror as we stood on a freshly mowed lawn a little before midnight. “Hey, help me fix this.” Moracruz said to me, referring to his shooting badge on his uniform which had somehow broken a link and was hanging awkwardly. Such a thing seemed a good excuse for a senior Marine to catch and commence hazing. I struggled with the cheap piece of metal and was able to jerry-rig something that resembled normalcy. A black sergeant appeared in front of us and let us know that many of our senior Marines were participating in something called super-squad and would not be present to fuck us up for a couple of weeks. The others were asleep and would guide us to pick up our gear and fill out paperwork in the morning. I thought it was a trick, but we were set free to our rooms and told to set out alarms for five thirty in the morning. I feared the morning's alarm and when it sounded, I awoke to my first day as a real infantry Marine.
Routine becomes the life of a Marine and Moracruz and I were forced into the life and became good friends. In the early Hawaii days we would watch movies every night on a television I had purchased and a video game machine he had bought, we would fall asleep to them and I would wake early in the mornings to the looped sound of the DVD's menu screen. We would usually order a pizza and a two liter of soda, only to burn the calories off the next day or in the Hawaii jungle. When the senior Marines who had been gone finally showed up I begged them to haze me. I explained to them that I had made it through boot-camp and the school of infantry without having my ass kicked and felt that I had been cheated.
The senior Marines were surprised and the word spread quickly the first day, I told them to show up at eight p.m. and informed them that I would be ready. One of the senior Marines pulled me aside to inform me that they could not kick my ass until they trusted me, so I continued to taunt them. Moracruz was horrified and not happy with my request because as my roommate the chances were good that he would be hazed as well, but he stayed with me even though he did not have to. At seven thirty I told Moracruz that I would be dressing in my "war suit" for the upcoming battle. Moracruz shook his head and said, “You are fucking crazy Anderson.” I had it all planned out and dressed in my "war suit" which consisted of; a reflective yellow glow belt around my waist, my boots with olive drab socks, a gas mask, and nothing else. I was mostly nude and ready for anything. At the strike of eight there was a knock at my door. I threw it open and howled inside my gas mask, jumping out of the threshold and shaking my genitals at those senior Marines who had showed up. They all laughed and left Moracruz and I alone, we had earned some valuable cool points.
I was waiting to board a commercial airliner today from Atlanta back to my home in Portland. I listened to a couple of Army Privates in uniform who could not have been older than nineteen and they reminded me of myself and Moracruz eight years ago. The two Privates were fresh out of training and comparing stories about how difficult and fun it had been. They are always convinced that they will deploy soon and talk about it unrealistically, idealistic about an upcoming mission that they had not yet received orders for. It made me smile, they were still innocent and baby faced. When the plane landed the stewardess requested that uniformed members aboard the airliner be allowed to be the first off and the passengers applauded as I watched the Privates leave.
When we were young there were two Marines who made it their business to give Moracruz a hard time. One was Big Mississippi and the other Big Texas. They would predict him a coward and crack jokes at him because they could. On November 12, 2004 we were in the Battle of Fallujah and the squad I was traveling with found itself ambushed by thirty terrorists. I was in the house next door to the ambush house and Big Mississippi was one of the first people to fall back to my house. He had always worked out for fun and was a gigantic meathead, his complex was not complex and I remember him looking at me with wide eyes full of fear, he simply froze and did not prove combat effective. As soon as the ambush began Big Texas ran as fast as he could away from the enemy gunfire. He ended up shot and many speculated this was because he had run into a friendly machine gun position. When he was tackled down the street by one of our Navy medics he was said to have exclaimed, “They are all dead, drop a bomb on the house!” All of us were very alive. I remember watching Moracruz walk into the house and as he did so he dumped a couple hundred rounds out of his machine gun toward the enemy position. He was bleeding from the calves from where he had been shot, he only collapsed after his job was done.
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