The sergeant major raised his clipboard and called out the names of three corporals. “Pack up your gear and report back to your unit immediately!”
Seventy-seven heads scanned the room as one, searching for the three men he had just named. On everyone’s mind was the same question: What in hell had those guys done to get thrown out of NCO School one day short of graduation?
But nobody said a word. In the Marine Corps, you never asked why, you only reacted. We could only look with pity at the three bewildered faces as the three Marines packed their gear. NCO School wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Each of our parent units expected us to graduate from the program. I couldn’t imagine reporting back to my tank unit and having to tell SSgt. Robert Embesi, my platoon sergeant, that I had flunked out! I would find myself assigned, suddenly and forever, to wherever a body was needed for some shit detail. And every other corporal in that room, no matter what kind of unit he came from, had a Staff Sergeant Embesi to answer to.
The unlucky three weren’t moving fast enough for the sergeant major’s liking.
“Move it, Marines!” he boomed. “You’ve got five minutes to pack all your gear—and you won’t be coming back! I will see you in my office in six minutes! Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir!” they replied in unison, not realizing the slip they had just uttered by addressing him as “sir.” A sergeant major’s presence was often so commanding that “sir” often seemed the natural reply, albeit the wrong one.
“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ goddammit!” he shouted. “I work for a living! Now, you ladies only have five minutes. Move it!”
He stood, hands and clipboard on hips, glaring, until the trio hurriedly exited the room. From the looks on their faces, it was painfully obvious they had no idea what sin they had committed. The remainder of us could only guess what they had done. They were all from the same unit—after all, the sergeant major had said, “Return to your unit” not “units.” We could only guess that, probably, they had celebrated their pending graduation from NCO School a little too early, gotten drunk, and caused a ruckus. Their rapid departure became a catalyst for the many rumors about to follow as our classmates exited the room.
“Sergeant Lewis, resume your class,” the sergeant major commanded.
Staff Sergeant Lewis cleared his throat and resumed his role as instructor. It was obvious that even he didn’t know what had just occurred. He was as wide-eyed as the rest of us. But only for a second. He tried to pick up where he had left off on Marine Corps history.
No one was listening. Seventy-seven minds were conjuring up what in hell had just happened.
The sergeant had just started in on World War II. Somewhere between the Marines’ heroic defense on Wake Island and the first offensive of the war at Guadalcanal, a process, imperceptible at first, began to grow insidiously until it became an avalanche, impossible to stop—except with the truth: “Pssst! What unit were those guys from?”
“Motor-T,” whispered back a corporal who sat next to me. By the time Staff Sergeant Lewis reached 1943, the entire class knew that our three departed classmates were from a motor transport outfit. In fact, they were truck drivers—an important clue that went unnoticed at first.
No sooner had we shared this vital information than the door banged open again. The sergeant major strutted up the aisle, ever-ready clipboard in one hand.
Once again he took over the class and called off eight more names from his board. “Pack up your gear,” he ordered them, “and report back to your unit on the double!”
There it was again—not “units” plural, but that singular “unit”; and the second time that a specific group was told to report back to its regular unit. Something was unfolding: Why were the parent units calling their people back? We had no idea.
The sergeant major also had to tell this second group to move it. Not even Superman could move fast enough for a sergeant major. There were suddenly eight fewer NCOs than a moment before, eliminated.
On every military base, regardless of the branch of service, the rumor mill can take on enormous proportions. Life had just been breathed into the mill at Las Pulgas, and for all we knew, into all of Camp Pendleton as well.
“What the fuck is going on?” we whispered under our breath. Each of us in the room scanned the faces of the others, looking for the slightest indication that someone knew something—anything. All we saw were our own dumbfounded expressions mirrored back.
Staff Sergeant Lewis, equally perplexed by the morning’s events, tried to drag us back to a history lesson about Tarawa—as if, all by himself, he could impede the grindings of the rumor mill.
“As I was saying, most of the Second Marine Division had to wade in water chest-high to reach a shore five hundred meters away….”
For all we cared, he might as well have left the planet. No one was listening.
That same question—“Pssst! What unit were they from?”—raced around the room. Seconds later, back came the answer: “Thirteenth Marines.”
That’s really strange, I thought to myself. The 13th Marines was an artillery regiment made up of men we called “cannon cockers.” No sooner had we swallowed this latest crumb than the door slammed open once again. As if given a command in close-order drill, the entire class turned in their seats in unison. In strutted the now all-too-familiar sergeant major.
“Excuse me, Sergeant Lewis,” he said, once more telling, more than asking, our instructor to stand down. Up came his clipboard once again, and he began reading off names again—too many, on a list I thought was never going to end. No need to ask what unit these men were from. They had to be infantry.
“Report back to your units immediately,” he ordered. “Move out, Marines!” There was that word again, but this time it was plural. Whatever was going on, clearly it involved all the infantry units of the 5th Marine Division.
The classroom became a lot noisier, as forty people began to gather their personal belongings. With each man’s hasty exit, the little room seemed to grow that much larger.
That latest list of names had liberally oiled the rumor mill. Up until then, we had been oblivious to noise outside the building, but now suddenly it magnified in volume. Our classroom was near the main road that circumnavigated the entire base. As people left, opening and closing the door like a camera’s shutter, we glimpsed snapshots of trucks and more trucks as they roared by, each one laden with troops.
Those of us not on the sergeant major’s list could only look at one another in bewilderment. The departure of half the class so disrupted the rest of us that the befuddled Staff Sergeant Lewis told us to take a fifteen-minute break. We bolted for the door.
Filing outside, we lit up cigarettes and watched the departure of our ex-classmates, each with his sea bag on one shoulder, heading for the main road to catch the base bus. Then the buzz began.
“What the hell is going on?” we asked one another.
Following a short lull in the road traffic, another convoy of trucks roared by, most towing howitzers behind them. Something was definitely in the wind. “Whatever it is, the cannon cockers are involved too,” said one corporal as he pointed to the artillery pieces in tow behind the trucks.
We all knew that the Marine Corps didn’t move artillery pieces around on a whim, but we were clueless as to why. The tension among us rose, and with each passing truck, we grew more apprehensive. You could feel the electric anticipation in the air. Who would be called out next?
Then one of our classmates observed the first piece of solid information. “Hey!” The corporal next to me pointed at the umpteenth truck full of Marines as it disappeared around the bend in the road, “I know that guy. He’s with the Twenty-seventh Marines.”