Beginnings And Endings

Forty years ago today — was it really so long ago? — I took one of the significant steps in my life. I had been thinking and researching for some time when not driving a forklift and swinging a hammer on the shipping dock of a local factory, and I had reached a decision. The decision was hastened along by the mental suffocation and lack of prospects in my home town; it was a time of youthful necessity.

I walked in the cold stillness of the bare-treed day downtown, down past the local newspaper where an old editor with eyebrows the size of ferrets had laughed in my face when I’d asked him if I could work for him as a cub reporter, down past the railroad tracks where my friends and I had squished many a penny and once a .22 cartridge, down past the wide streets and sidewalks penning the bungalows and cottages that made up most of the town in the days before the criminal invaders came and turned the lovely town into a squatter’s war zone. I walked in the muffled air of February, when the toes go numb inside tennis shoes and the thin jacket covering the thin body flaps when the wind sweeps across its fabric. I walked in the hushed lanes during the hours when people are at work or at school; I walked when I was at neither.

I reached the storefront I’d been aware of for weeks, a series of offices where shoe stores and five-and-dime stores and ladies’ apparel shops had once been situated, and I found the door I was looking for and went inside. The staff sergeant listened to me, nodding once, then stood up and gathered some brochures. I was transfixed by the red stripe down the seams of the blue trousers he wore, and by the razor creases in the tan shirt, but especially by the chestful of ribbons and badges on the shirt. He caught me looking and grinned. “Fruit salad,” he said.

The Marine recruiter launched into a spiel, and in a rare moment of assertiveness to an authority figure, I interrupted him. “I’m already sold, sir,” I said. “I’ve been reading and finding out what I needed to know. I just want to sign up.”

He smiled at me, a genuine smile. “Determined to get your ass in a crack, aren’t you?” he said. “Roger that. Let me get you to fill out some forms…”

An hour later, the recruiter gave me a ride home and promised to pick me up the next morning for the drive to the federal building so that I could take a battery of tests and then do some more paperwork. Over the next few days, I took all the tests and the physicals, answered all the questions, asked a lot of my own, and then agreed to accompany the recruiter the following Monday to the state capitol for the final official bit.

And so, the day came and the recruiter came to pick me up, and he had a bag of donuts and bottles of cold milk and cups of hot coffee in the government car, and we drove north to the capitol and ended up in an office where I got my first glimpse of a large group of Marines at work. Efficient, serious, hard-faced, reeking of discipline and purpose. And these were just administrative workers and clerks. I was ushered in to see a young captain, who interviewed me and made sure I was fully informed about what I was about to do. Satisfied with my answers, he rose and escorted me to a room where several other young men about my age were waiting. In time, another officer entered and asked us to stand.

And so, on the 22nd of February, in the year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Seventy Nine, I raised my right hand and took the oath, promising to support and defend certain things, but really and truly promising to fulfill my need to seek and find adventure and purpose and yes, even danger. The officer who swore us in congratulated us, posed for a photo with us, then presented us with certificates of enlistment.

My enlistment was entered upon what was then called the Delayed Entry Program, meaning that while I had sworn in on that day, I didn’t leave for recruit training until a date roughly preselected by me (depending on the schedule for the schools I would be attending after boot camp, among other factors). I had deliberately taken a long delay, in order to put things in order and have some quiet time before I entered what I knew would be an intense ordeal. I had until the end of February to enjoy my life as a citizen. And as a boy.

I returned home that afternoon and performed an act I had been postponing for some time. I told my mother that I had enlisted in the Marine Corps. She said little, but I could tell she was deeply upset. “Never thought you’d do something like this,” she said later in the evening. “But you have to live your own life.”

I sat on our back steps that night and wondered what it would feel like to wear a uniform, and to live in the pressurized environment for which I had volunteered. I wondered if I would get to go to war. You’ll note that I did not say have to go to war. I sat and thought my thoughts and listened to the night sounds. The light was spilling out of the kitchen onto the winter grass below the back steps. I watched the light go out when my mother left the kitchen and went to watch television in the living room. I sat and thought and watched.

I blinked my eyes, and six years had gone past, all those cycles of the sun coming up in front of me and falling away behind me, and it was six years, and I was in my barracks room, staring at myself in the mirror, memorizing how I looked and how I felt. I was about to leave it all.

I went outside and breathed in the air, and put my cover on, and walked quickly over to the regimental headquarters building, saluting a brigadier general I passed on the sidewalk. Last time I’ll ever do that, I thought. Inside the building, I walked a gauntlet of Marines I knew, all of whom knew I was being discharged that day, most of whom were catcalling me about being a lucky SOB and insulting me for not packing the gear to stay in for twenty. I laughed and shook a lot of hands, and then went in to see my company commander and the regimental commander.

The colonel waved me in, patted me on the shoulder and told me to give the civilians hell, then left us alone. The skipper chatted with me for a while, asked me about where I was headed and what I might be planning to do. Then he took out a folder and had me sign some papers, then made copies for me. He produced the famous DD214, the official government form proving that I had served honorably as a United States Marine and entitling me to veterans’ benefits. And then he took out the ornate parchment I had been daydreaming about for weeks. It was my Honorable Discharge. The skipper pretended to drop it in the shredder, then barked a laugh and put the document on his desk, signed it, made a copy of it, and handed me the original. “Well, Sergeant Orr, that’s it. You’re no longer on active duty. But you’ll always be a Marine. You earned the title. Never forget that.” He shook my hand, and I walked out of the office and shook a few other hands on my way to the door.

Back in my room, I took off my uniform for the last time and packed it away in my suitcase with care. I took a last look around at the spartan quarters, then shouldered my seabag and took it out to my car. I returned for my suitcase and garment bag and a box of personal things. Once everything was stowed in the car, I stood outside on the fine morning and looked around. So this is what it feels like to be a mister instead of a sergeant of Marines, I  thought.

I drove to the main gate and slowed as I approached it. Sure enough, the MPs were waiting for me. These young men, with whom I had worked so many times, were awaiting their opportunity to take part in a time-honored tradition — the Corps is as replete with ritual as the Roman Catholic Church. One of the MPs waved me to a stop. I did, grinning at them. They surrounded my car, saluted me, and then began hammering on the hood and trunk and sides of the car, hooting and yelling like Pickett’s men charging across a Gettysburg field. Passing motorists smiled and waved and honked, recognizing that I had just been discharged and wishing me well in their own glancing way.

When the MPs were done with their part, I did my part. I saluted them back, drove slowly out the main gate, and threw a pair of my combat boots out the window at the large sign at the entrance to the base. I looked at my former comrades in the rearview mirror, honked and waved, and drove away from the Corps forever. It was the 22nd of February, in the year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five.

I didn’t know it then, but I would come to realize in time that I would never again know a group of men with whom I fit so well. I didn’t know it then, but I would not be comfortable with my peer group in civilian life. I didn’t know it then, but I had a gleaming military heart, and I would carry that heart inside me for the rest of my time here in this world. Funny how the time passes. The beginnings and the endings…they are all roped together, and they run together, and they come up together over a hill in front of you and surprise you.

I was looking right at the years of my life as they passed during my time as a United States Marine, but you know something? I never saw them passing. They came and went, and only the scars remain, the scars that are the map of my life. I can point to them and say, “Here I am, and here’s where I came from.”

I cannot, however point to where I’m going. I’m looking right at the future, but I don’t see it approaching. Even with my military heart and my blue civilian eyes, I don’t see it approaching. And isn’t that something?

~ S.K. Orr