Twice was enough for me. The first time I went the rifle bounced off my shoulder because I didn’t hold the butt firmly enough, and so the bullet hit a light. The second time, I was bitten by a dog, and Pa had to take me to hospital.
In the military, I shot badly, and was very slow at assembling and disassembling the Colt M4A1 automatic, and so regularly collected punishments from Hornet and threats to send me ‘hunting for a dollar’.
Meanwhile, our guys in Iraq had already taken Baghdad, but Saddam went on the run and his soldiers adopted guerrilla tactics. Our training came to an end. One day I saw a civilian car on the parade ground in front of headquarters – the same car as that Mr. Jenkins who gave a ride to me and spoke about heroism on a bench in the park. The occupant went inside and Master Sergeant Westerhausen was called so urgently he practically ran across the parade-ground.
We were cleaning weapons under the canopy, next to headquarters, and we had a clear view of the goings on. The guys began to speculate at once what the civilian cone was doing here and why our Devil-Hornet needed him.
I stood up to see better if it was the Baseball player or not, but Sergeant Gross, whose breath stank like an old drain, shouted that he would drive a ramrod up my ass if I didn’t get back to the table and clean my gun at once.
So I didn’t learn who it was for certain. Soon the unexpected guest left, and the sergeant returned and for some reason looked at me as if I had become a dead man then recovered and lunged to strangle him.
The day ended without further incident. We were driven up the hill. There was training with inflatable landing boats, then dinner, an hour of hand-to-hand combat which I successfully shirked, having gone to clean car racks, then a further hour of personal time, then lights out.
But we weren’t going to get any sleep that night. At one fifteen, Hornet and other sergeants roused us sharply. The task was simple: going through the Big Jack obstacle course in full gear.
What does that mean? Only that you put on all your ammunition, a bullet-proof vest, harness, a helmet, loaded weapons, means of chemical protection, and a machine gun – and then you run through ditches filled with dirt and stinking water, along booms and bars, climb the Destroyed Ladder, the Serpent and the Monkey ladder, you clamber over stone and wooden walls of various heights, you slither under an electric wire, you jump over ditches with shit in the bottom, you go down tunnels, you shoot at targets, you run through dirt, you fall down on command, you stand up, you put on a gas mask, you run again, and all this under fire of military weapons, in flame and smoke.
At the end of Big Jack, you’re sweating madly, your boots are squelching, your hands and legs are quivering, and your heart is beating over one hundred and twenty beats per minute. But nobody will let you rest because you need to clean your weapon, get your ammunition in shape, and get ready for the morning parade.
To say that we didn’t love Big Jack means to say nothing. We didn’t even hate it. If there was a word for a stronger emotion, maybe, but I don’t know it.
And so they kicked us out of the barracks, mustered us and sent us running to the strip. There was already a sheer hell of burning, smoking and blowing up.
Master Sergeant Hornet raised a hand and shouted:
‘Get on with it, you bastards! Faster. Faster! Remember: slackers will envy the dead!’
And we ran…
Somewhere in the Serpent, only a third way through Big Jack, I realized I had no strength left any more. It felt as if my boots were lead, and I had a couple of twenty-kilogram pancakes on my back.
I crept under the wire on my last legs. But I couldn’t jump off in the tunnel, and fell down like a limp sack. There, in the dark, I got my breath back, but the guys following me were already banging their soles on the steel crown of my helmet and I had to twist like a worm in the wet cement pipe to get out upward, then shoot, pull myself on to the Horizontal Rope and take the Destroyed Ladder with a running start to jump in a ditch and get away up the slippery cliff.
The Swing came next. It is something like the Destroyed Ladder, only all the beams are at one height and suspended on chains. In principle, the Swing wasn’t thought of as a difficult element. The main thing here was that your leg didn’t slide off – and if it did, you had to grasp the beam to avoid a fall on to the concrete blocks piled below. They were only four feet down, but they are not heaps of sand, like under the Destroyed Ladder, so no one wanted to fall from the Swing.
I jumped onto the first ‘swing’ and found to my surprise that my weakness had gone. My legs and body seemed to obey me, and the ringing in my ears was not mind-numbing fatigue, but the thunderclaps of explosions.
I remember thinking that this was the notorious ‘second wind’, and I began to scamper along the beams like a squirrel, rejoicing that at last I was becoming a real marine.
Whether in euphoria, or through congenital carelessness, I noticed Sergeant Hornet too late. He emerged from the smoky haze like a demon of evil punishing the ‘sleep of reason’. He glared at me and stuck out a bamboo pole towards the beam on which I was going to land in a fraction of a second. The beam swayed aside, the chains rung out and as though from the outside, I saw my right boot with its ribbed sock sliding from the beam and falling into emptiness. Then afterwards, waving his hands ridiculously, all the rest of private-recruit Joshua Kold followed…
I fell very badly. It is hard to imagine a worse fall. The height I fell from was just enough to ensure I twisted in the air so that I fell at a sharp angle onto the filthy concrete slab. My helmeted head struck first, then my left shoulder, then my hand and then all the rest. Finally, my legs jerked to the lowest point of fall and my shins twisted above my boots in the wrong order on the slab.
Wild pain lashed me like a bicycle chain. My mouth went dry, and my eyes darkened. I became deaf and went blind, lost orientation in space and, like a dying animal, began to twitch desperately. I tried to get up. The doctor in the hospital told me that was a big mistake and seriously worsened my condition.
The pain that shot through me at this attempt was so intense I fainted from shock and only came round in the military hospital in Charleston.
The diagnosis was unfavourable: fracture of both legs with an offset. In the first day several officers from our unit led by the chaplain visited me. They were accompanied by two lawyers.
I was told that it was an accident, and that I should sign a paper agreeing that I had no claims on the powers that be. I was assured that I would receive an insurance payment to cover all expenses for transportation by helicopter and for treatment. I would get compensation and everything would be great.
I hadn’t recovered fully from the effect of the anaesthetics and the comforting medicines I was being drip-fed so I was not really thinking clearly. I managed to mumble something about a pole in the hands of the Sergeant Westerhausen, but no more than that. In reply, the chaplain assured me that it was standard procedure when passing the Swing and that the Master Sergeant fulfilled his duty and naturally, without malice – especially as I had never had any conflict with him during service.
The last argument finished me off. It was airtight, and so I signed their devil’s papers and dropped off. When I woke up next morning, it became clear that in addition I had signed the official report with a request to resign for health reasons.
Lying in the hospital with broken legs, I had suddenly turned from a gallant marine into a helpless being with a urine bag. I thought a great deal about those guys I’d trained with who were now off to Iraq without me.