Fog

Fog always reminds me of Camp Pendleton. I spent four weeks there in the winter of '59, in Charlie Company, 2nd Infantry Training Regiment--ITR for short--learning the basic infantry skills that all Marines know. Every Marine, regardless of his or her job, whether it be mess cook, office pinky, wing wiper, or embassy guard, is trained first to be an infantry rifleman. The Corps demands that all Marines be ready and qualified to man the front line in times of crisis. ITR is every Marine's first stop out of boot camp, and it is where they first begin calling you "Marine", rather than boot, or screw, or maggot, or shit coolie, or any of a dozen other colorful pet names the Corps uses to keep its initiates properly humiliated and humble.

Now, after nearly four decades, images from that time still appear, but always, it seems, out of the fog.

Once, when I was flanking a firewatch post around the company perimeter in the lonely hours before dawn, a ghostly platoon of recon Marines came double-timing out of the thick fog on their customary morning run. They were the Corp's version of the Army's Green Berets and the Navy's Seals. They trained constantly to drop behind enemy lines or to go ashore on an enemy coast undetected to gather information and do mischief. I stood beside the road and watched in awe as they passed, for we had all heard tales of these clandestine warriors and their exploits. Looking neither right nor left, they padded past me into the mist, chanting their macabre anthem in cadence, "RE-con, RE-con, KILL, KILL, KILL."

The foggy dampness seemed to penetrate my field jacket, and I suppressed a sudden shiver as, for the first time it came home to me that we were not just a bunch of grown boys playing John Wayne fantasy war games. This was deadly serious business we were about.

Another time, on a particularly foggy morning, Staff Sergeant Tucker, our head training NCO, called us out onto the company street for roll-call and morning chow formation. Our mess hall was about a mile down the road from our barracks, and we and all the other training companies in the command had to march to and from chow in formation each morning before the day's training started.

After the roll call was completed, Sergeant Tucker called me to the front of the formation. I was right guide for the second platoon, which meant I was a sort of junior platoon leader. I did a quick mental check of recent events to try and anticipate why I was being singled out. I couldn't think of anything I had done that warranted an ass-chewing, but I had been in the Corps long enough to be worried and wary. I double-timed up to him and snapped to quivering attention, as any good boot should.

Sergeant Tucker was Marine to the core. He was a wiry little mule of a man, a Korean War veteran with a raspy voice and a thick, slow, Tennessee drawl that made everything he said sound extremely important.

"Right guide," he said, "Take charge of the formation and march the company to chow. Have them back here ready to go to work by 0730."

I was barely able to blurt out, "Aye, aye, sir". It was unheard of for a trainee to be put in charge of a company. I had marched smaller formations--work details, fire teams, squads, even the platoon a couple of times--and I knew how to call cadence and give the proper commands as well as any DI, but an entire company! And in the fog to boot! Standing at the customary spot at the center of the formation, I could not see the lead platoon on the left nor the last platoon on the right.

I knew that one moment of indecision, or a command issued in error or at the wrong time, could turn a well-drilled, 250-man company into an aimless, meandering mob in the fog. But, by shuttling forward and back along the formation, and always thinking ahead to the next command and maneuver, I managed to get the company to and from chow in good order.

Somewhere within me there is still pride in that nineteen year old kid, not long out of the Ozark mountains of Missouri, barely four months a Marine, and in charge of a 500-legged creature that disappeared into the fog fore and aft and responded to his commands like a finely tuned machine. The fog-muffled crump, crump, crump of 250 boot heels striking the pavement in unison comes back to me now whenever I see fog, and it is heady stuff.