(This story has come up in conversation so often that I thought it needed to be recorded. Everything is true. The timeline, facts, and dialogue have not been altered. The names have been changed, mainly because I’m not sure of the statute of limitations for those still in the service.)
It started with a dare. I stood shivering in the ranks in a misty pre-dawn drizzle, waiting for the Master Gunnery Sergeant to march out of the barracks and conduct the morning formation. It was Wednesday, three days before the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. For young Marines, far from home, the Ball takes the place of Christmas. It’s a time of celebration with your surrogate family, a time to laugh, feast, hear outrageous stories, and party with your brother Marines and guests. The festivities stretch through the week, with each fire team and platoon conducting its own small celebration of pranks and stunts, often committed at the expense of other fire teams or platoons.
Despite the cold, it was hard not to smile in the drizzling rain. My own fire team of four marines had spent the previous night harassing the fire team across the hall from our barracks rooms, breaking into rooms, moving furniture around, smearing boot polish, and doing anything else we thought might annoy our comrades. Any thought that our cleverness had been undetected ended at about four-thirty in the morning, when I woke to use the restroom and left my barracks door unlocked. I returned to my room, slipped into my bunk and closed my eyes. Then I realized I wasn’t alone in the room. Opening one eye, I scanned the dark and saw a black mass in the gloom, perched like a gargoyle on my wardrobe. A snicker sounded the alarm and I hurled back my sheets and twisted to the floor, meeting the lunge of the assailant jumping off my furniture. Too slow. An unseen Marine bashed my head from behind and I was down, pummeled under the blows of four friends from another squad. When it ended, I was outside in the rain, lying in the muddy grass below the barracks entrance.
Ninety minutes later, I was showered, dressed and standing in formation, waiting for the Master Guns.
“Feeling okay there, Balboni?” I heard a voice from the rank behind me. “I heard that you took to practicing your low crawl in the mud last night.” Low laughs echoed in the rain. “I swear, it’s motivating to see young Privates practicing their art in the early hours.”
“Go to hell,” I replied over my shoulder.
“Knock it off!” our sergeant shouted from the front. And then, half a second later, “Stand by!” The Master Guns had arrived.
“Atten….tion!” came the order, and a hundred and fifty pairs of boots slammed together as one.
“Gentlemen,” the MasterGuns began by way of greeting. “Three items today.” He raised a finger into the air. “First, the barracks is unsat. Second, because of item one, you’ll spend tonight on field day until every room clears the Squad Leaders inspection.” The formation remained silent in the rain, knowing that the slightest groan of discontent would amplify the punishment.
“Lastly,” the MasterGuns continued, “you’ll knock off the silly shit. Tossing rooms and throwing your fellow Marines out in the dirt doesn’t impress me with your esprit de Corps.” I felt my ears burn and the eyes of the ranks behind me drilling into the back of my head. I almost missed the MasterGuns closing sentence. I almost wish I had missed his final words. Had I failed to hear those words, the next 30 days of my life would have been much, much easier. “You want to impress me, then do something that requires brains as well as brawn…like stealing a guidon from a unit in formation.” A rumble of laughter rippled through the ranks. A guidon is the small flag carried by each military unit of company or larger size. In formation, the guidon is held by a sergeant, the Guide, at the front, right corner of a formation. To reach the guidon, you would have to approach the unit in open view of every person in formation. Even if you succeeded in wrestling the guidon from the unit’s Guide, you would be standing before a hundred or more angry and insulted warriors and be lucky to escape unharmed. And, if you did somehow manage to escape, every member of the offended unit would have clearly seen your identity. Looking back, it seemed that everyone knew the MasterGuns was joking. Everyone but me.
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