Samples - One Marine

One Marine
Originally published in the Toledo Blade, April 2003

I don’t really know him all that well.

The first time I saw him, he was a scrawny kid just about to start high school, all arms and legs and elbows and knees, standing on the dock with his water ski. He was wearing a pair of swim trunks clearly made for a much larger person. Or maybe several much larger persons. He was waiting his turn to ski behind my boat, and when it came his turn to ski he sliced the water with an unexpected explosion of power and athleticism. And when he was done, he thanked me politely for the ride.

Over the years I watched him grow. He learned to ride shoe skis, and to barefoot, and to wakeboard, and all the other variations of getting dragged behind a boat we use to challenge our summers. I skied in pyramids next to him, and drove for him, and occasionally coached him.

On a couple of occasions I listened to him puzzling over how to understand girls, not yet aware that there is no possible way to understand girls. Once he asked my "professional advice" on a writing assignment. One winter night I went to watch his hockey team wrap up a district title. And he grew. By his high school graduation, he towered over me and nearly everyone else. Still polite. Still scrawny.

Then I didn’t see him much for a couple of years. He wasn’t ready for college, so he went to live at a water ski school owned by a friend of mine in Florida, trying to figure out how to make a living on the water. Trying to figure out just exactly what he wanted to do with his life. We heard that he tried some wild living with the other young guys down there. Later we heard that he’d had a religious conversion.

Then we heard that he’d joined the Marines.

The next time I saw him, he was hard to recognize. His hair was Marine cropped, and his body was filled out and rock hard. His voice was the same, and still polite, but he had picked up that tell-tale military cadence, as if at the end of every sentence he had to choke down the urge to add, "… Sir!" He spoke a whole new language, peppered with military acronyms and abbreviations and rhyming barracks euphemisms. He described his training, and the assignment he hoped to get, and the woman he’d met in Basic Training who was at least as tough as any of the guys, and every bit a Marine.

And he radiated a steady confidence, born partly of the feelings of personal immortality natural to a young man, but mostly of the serene knowledge that he was as physically fit and combat trained as it is possible for a human to be. He had become a warrior.

Then he was gone, back to the Marines, to train and drill and polish any remaining imperfections from the gleaming sword of retribution he had forged himself into, and to wait for his leaders to put him to use. I haven’t heard from him in many months.

Not long ago the clock radio woke me up with the news that the first US combat casualty in our invasion of Iraq was a Marine killed by enemy fire, near Basra. It was hours before we learned the name of the soldier who fell, and during those hours I knew that the odds were slim that it was my young friend. As I prayed that it was not, I knew that he would chide me for doing so. He would have told me that his job was to fight, and if necessary, to die, and that he would have been willing to give his life to save that of one of his comrades.

Our leaders who ordered this war express regret over the loss of each soldier’s life, and relief that more lives weren’t lost. We all agree, and give thanks if our sons and daughters and friends are spared. And we all express our grief and our pride in their courage and sacrifice if they are not. But it is certain that each fallen warrior was somebody’s young friend. That each one grew from an awkward adolescent. That each one threw his body and his spirit into one sport or another as he grew. That each one puzzled over the mysteries of girls and writing assignments and spirituality.

And about what to do with his life.

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