The New Platoon?

In nineteen eighty-seven Platoon assaulted the box offices and opened the doors for follow-on successes Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill and several other Vietnam movies. It was the high water mark of cinematic achievement for the Vietnam generation that they had waited for since the fall of Saigon twelve years earlier. A smattering of earlier attempts at the genre had been made, the most notable of which was Purple Hearts that featured a scorching hot young Cheryl Ladd, but none were very good. Platoon burst the dam and the next year Dana Delaney’s China Beach was one of the top rated TV series along with Tour of Duty.

“Jesus,” I said when my father and I saw the first preview of Tour of Duty. “When are we going to get something else besides Vietnam shows?” I could feel my two-combat-tour father tense up and the insects in the room suddenly run away like they do before a hurricane.

“The only thing better than a gunsmoke and horseshit spaghetti western is a Vietnam flick. It’s about time we fucking paid some attention to it. What the hell do you want? Cops and doctors?”

Now twenty-two years later his sage quip is coming true. There’s not one TV drama about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. The insanely stupid Over There about a unit of the Third Infantry Division (Rock of the Marne!) was too wildly out of context for anyone to believe and therefore short lived. Army Wives currently airs on the Lifetime Channel, which my Army scoffs at as the ruminations of some serious ass clownery. It’s lame.

Instead we have an endless barrage of police procedural dramas, confusing courtroom capers, and depressing medical mysteries. There are currently four separate Law and Order series, three CSI’s, two NCIS’s, JAG, Bones, House, Dexter, The Mentalist, and all the soul-crushingly sad hospital dramas that always end up with my wife sobbing uncontrollably long before Grey’s Anatomy ends.

It’s not completely surprising. Hollywood has a history of lamenting combat and painting it in the most depressing light possible because the overwhelming majority of entertainers are liberals and pacifists. It’s de rigeur to demonize the military or make us look like exploited simpletons, ut it’s completely taboo to ground a show in a purely military theme with even the hint of a positive message. Instead we get David Carusso, Hugh Laurie, and Mark Harmon plodding their way through another gruesome murder.

When will it change? When will we have our Platoon? Ten more years. At least that’s the current line on the big screen. You see I’ve got a little inside info on this topic. When I’m not ranting on the Rhino Den, writing for Fight magazine, or penning books, I write screenplays and have had a couple of agents represent me. Their advice-“your script about your buddies in Iraq is moving and poignant, but no one will touch it until 2020.”

Just like Vietnam, which had to wait twelve years for true Hollywood recognition, Iraq and Afghanistan will be shelved by the people who don’t have the intestinal fortitude to develop an uplifting or remotely positive TV show or movie based on our brave troops for many years. Hollywood has chosen the historically liberal strategy of becoming ostriches – shoving their heads in the sand and ignoring the issue like it doesn’t exist.
It’s therefore somewhat gratifying (for us conservatives at least) that every movie about the war that cast the cause as evil and the troops as victims, has bombed. Stop Loss, Redacted, Grace is Gone, Lions for Lambs, and A Mighty Heart completely tanked. Despite being written by Academy Award winner Paul Haggis, In the Valley of Elah sucked ass at the box office.

While we wait for big screen success, the independent screen is doing the profession of arms justice. Many shoestring budget films are being made and showcased at the GI Film Festival in Washington DC every May. These brave filmmakers have artistic freedom because there’s no big studio looking over their shoulders, so their work is many times heartrendering and even uplifting. A good example is The Hurt Locker, a movie about an EOD Sergeant in Iraq that is both moving and realistic. But it’s not the equivalent of Platoon, which paved the way for Coming Home, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, Good Morning Vietnam, and Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War. It could be this generation’s Purple Hearts, which preceded Platoon by two years, but probably not.

When the big studios finally pay attention to the war and make quality films, I’ll be standing there with my scripts in hand. And my son, who will be eighteen at the time, will lament the flood of GWOT movies out loud. I can’t wait.

We’d like to introduce you all to Big Tobacco, a vet currently deployed in Iraq, and one of the best writers we’ve found in the blog-o-sphere. As luck would have it, he was willing to write for RU and we’re happy to have him.

2) There are no front lines anymore.

by

Big Tobacco

I did not smoke while composing this.

“Tobacco,” my first sergeant says.

“Yes, first sergeant?” I answer.

“I’m going to give you the class of pogues. That includes the females. Do you think you can handle that?”

“Roger, first sergeant. But, um…Why can’t I take the combat arms kids?”

My first sergeant gestures to one of the other platoon sergeants in the room: “Because Sergeant Baar is a Ranger and I think he has more to offer.”

My training unit was divvying up the next class for my state’s recruit sustainment battalion. My particular company was handling the split-op kids; soldiers who went to basic training during their summer break between their junior and senior years of high school. I was about to spend the next nine months babysitting these kids until they were sent to their MOS schools.

“But Top, I don’t know anything about driving trucks or fixing radios.” I protest.

“You know what, Tobacco?” he responds. “I think everybody in this room would agree that you are the least qualified to teach anything. That’s why you are going to teach the kids who matter the least.”

“Roger, Top.”

I think about these kids as I drive home that day. How could I boil infantry soldiering down to the basics for kids whose jobs would range from plumbers to mechanics?

What are the basic rules of soldering?

I spent that night scribbling on a piece of paper as my wife lay slumbering beside me. By midnight, I was ready to face the new class.

I’m standing in front of my brand new class of trainees. As the other instructors and drill sergeants hover around their platoons shouting and berating their soldiers, I take my platoon of wide-eyed teenagers outside and sit them down in the grass far from the commotion of the drill floor.

“Listen up,” I say to the platoon. “I know that you are not permitted to smoke in AIT. Who here are smokers?”

Half of the class raises their hands. I pull out a small cigar and stick it in my mouth.

“Good. I don’t want to see anybody not smoking. Listen to me. My name is Staff Sergeant Tobacco. I am your platoon sergeant. I’ve been in for about twelve years now, all of that time spent as infantry. I hope to G-d I can teach you something that might keep you alive when our state is called up again to go to Iraq.

“I guarantee you that I am the easiest man in the world to get along with. You just have to follow three rules:

#1. Always have a pen, a notepad and a watch. One day, you will be in combat. You will be tired, cold and hungry. You will be told things, but your fatigue will make you forget those things if you don’t write them down first. You need a watch because then you will always be where you are supposed to be at the right time.

#2. Do whatever you are told to do unless it is unlawful or dangerous, and in combat forget about dangerous. If someone tells you to do something that is fucked up, do it, as long as it is not unlawful or dangerous, and then go tell your chain of command.

#3. Don’t get in trouble to the point where it can’t be taken care of at platoon level. I’m a big believer in going out, getting drunk, getting in fights and doing stupid stuff. But don’t do stupid stuff to the point where your platoon leadership can’t help you if you get caught.

These three rules are the basic tenets of soldiering. They are all of my years of experience distilled down to three central points. One day, you will be in Iraq or Afghanistan. You will face your moment of truth. Remembering one of these rules may be the difference between coming home with your buddies or coming home in a box.

That being said, we have a Power Point on the schedule today. But I don’t think there is an extension cord long enough to reach out here. So FRAGO. We got rubber ducks in the supply room. Maybe I can teach you kids something. Let’s go play in the woods.”

Leaders Make All the Difference

Time passes.

It’s the summer. Most of my class has gone to their AIT schools. I get a call one day from a former trainee, who along with three others, is at Fort Jackson learning how to be a truck driver.

“Yo! Sarn’t,” says the voice on the phone.

“Good to hear from you again!” I say. “How’s Fort Jackson?”

“Easy, sarn’t. Easy. You know how you said to always have a pen, paper and a watch?”

“Yeah.”

“Well us four from Jersey always have it. We’re always on time and we never get in trouble. The drill sergeants call us ‘NJ Squared Away.’”

“Well, I’m glad that something sank in because you were pretty fucked up when you left.”

More time passes. I am sent back to my infantry unit to deploy to Iraq. I see a trainee of mine when I am in Kuwait, a girl who always seemed a little too friendly for her own good.

“Sergeant!” She explodes as she hugs me.

I look to see a newly minted specialist: “Congratulations on your promotion, specialist.”

“Thanks!” She grins. “You know how you always said not to get in trouble?”

“Yeah. Why? What happened? Are you in trouble?”

“Well, you know how, like, guys are always after me because of these?” She says as she pushes out her ample chest.

I resist the urge to tell her that she’s overweight, not buxom: “Yeah.”

“Well, like almost every girl at AIT got an Article 15 for fraternization. I didn’t get a single one!”

“Cause you didn’t get caught,” I say.

“No! I didn’t have sex even once!”

Oddly, I am proud. I’ll take my victories where I can get them.

A few more months go by. I’m in Iraq. It’s my birthday. I wallow in self-pity as I watch a convoy move north, knowing that I will never join them. My place is at a radio and computer in the TOC. I log into my email and see a message from a trainee. I click on the message.

“I wanted to let you know that I got blasted, but I’m ok. They found parts of the truck lying 200 meters away. I would have been dead, but I was wearing my gunner’s strap. Cause you know. Do what you are told to do, right?”

Right.

As I write this essay, sixty of my former trainees are deployed to Iraq. Some are guarding convoys. Some are pushing paper. Some are fixing radios.

All of them are still alive.

Maybe it is due to my rules, maybe not.

But I’d like to think it didn’t hurt.

BT

Copyright of Big Tobacco

by

Nick and Will

Many of you have read the trials and tribulations of our friend Will from one of our first stories, What are Friends For? In that saga, we chronicle Will’s time at Ranger School…after we sent him a bunch of explicit pictures and sex toys.

At that point, many people wrote in and said things like, “Ok, you need to leave that guy alone now – he’s had enough!” And for a little while, we were on board with that. After all, shortly after Will graduated, he deployed to Iraq where he is currently leading soldiers in combat…we shouldn’t be giving him crap, right?

Why social networking sites will destroy you…

I don’t like Myspace or Facebook or any of these sites very much, but everyone else seems to, so I have pages on all of them. I don’t go out of my way to “friend” people, yet I have something like 400 friends on each. I am not sure I have ever met 400 people…but I digress.

The funny thing about these sites is that people will post very personal pictures or stories for all of their “friends” to see, thinking that these things will somehow remain private…

No shit, there I was…

Minding my own business on a Saturday morning when all of a sudden I notice that Will uploaded some new pictures. I click over, and lo and behold, Will is half-naked in all of these pictures with an attractive young lady wrapped around his waist. I then realize he is in tights and that I am looking at pictures from some sort of ballet that Will is involved in (he would later stand up for himself by saying it was not ballet, but a dance troupe – nice work Will). Immediately, I affix the following note to the picture:

Will, I have no choice but to print this out hundreds of times and send it to all of your guys…

Shortly thereafter, Will deployed to the sandbox. Brad, Dave and I decided to send his guys some shirts. Will, a big fan of Ranger Up, loved all of our shirts except for the Kerry one, which he always felt was too political. As such, we included several of those and taped dozens of copies of the photo inside each one, so the pictures could only be found by the guy who was going to try it on.

Now some people might think that embarrassing a new platoon leader in front of his soldiers during a deployment is a bad thing, and those people are probably right, but they have to admit it is funny as shit. (That rhymed!)

We’ll let Will take it from here…

Will’s Perspective

So the semi-lovable dickheads at Ranger Up have struck again…

Before we delve into their second attempt at sabotaging my military career, I want to clarify a few things. I’m not a ballerina (or “ballerino,” or whatever the masculine form of ‘ballerina’ is, if there is such a thing) nor have I ever been a ballerina. I used to date a chick who danced in this salsa group at school. The salsa group, I’ll be honest, was really hot (the chicks and the moves). I got really jealous and I wanted to learn how to do it. (Editor’s Note: That’s what she said!) So I took a few dance lessons and tried out for the group and miraculously made the ‘team.’ Anyhow, the chick was now history at this point and the salsa skills were definitely proving very handy. I’m not embarrassed to say I danced on a salsa team. It was awesome, the chicks were smoking, and I had a lot of fun. Yes, I realize that sounds a little fruity, but it was absolutely worth it. I don’t care how many people mock me – I don’t regret it at all. And, no, I’m not being defensive.

So anyhow, during the salsa group’s annual ‘exhibition’ / big performance, some photographs were taken of one of our more… creative… dances. It wasn’t exactly a salsa dance. The photographs could, to the untrained eye, be confused for ballet. Not that there is anything wrong with ballet – I’ve just never done ballet. I made the mistake, as I often do, of posting a few of these pictures on the internet and thought nothing of it for more than a year. The picture was kind of odd looking, yeah, but not a big deal. Or so I thought…

You can lead a horse to water…

I should have been tipped off with Nick commented on one of the photographs I posted. Just like I should have been tipped off when Nick said, “I’m going to send you gay porn while you’re at Ranger School.” In one ear and out the other. I’ve got to start paying better attention to the warning signs.

Fast-forward to a few months into my deployment to Baghdad: I’ve taken over a platoon in country and I’m loving life (within reason). Brad says he wants to send my whole platoon Ranger Up t-shirts and I’m like “Awesome!” I have a Ranger Up sticker on my computer and everyone always asks me what it is. I tell them it’s my friends’ company – they make cool t-shirts. What can I say? I’m a big fan of the company.

So the t-shirts arrive and I have a great time passing them out to my paratroopers. They’re all excited and I feel cool to have been given the t-shirts and to be able to hand out some nifty gifts. Brad and Nick, even though they knew I never really liked the t-shirt, made sure to include several of the “Nobody Likes John Kerry” line (which, in hindsight, was genius on their part because they knew I wouldn’t want anything to do with anything overtly political).

No such thing as a free lunch…(or t-shirt)

Next thing I know, as I’m passing through our living quarters, my platoon’s looking at me and snickering behind my back. “What the hell’s going on?” I thought. Finally, one of my soldiers, PFC Prigge, says to me, “Hey, sir, I didn’t know you did ballet.” And I was like, “Ballet? I never did ballet. What the hell are you talking about?” And of course, there is the picture: me twirling an old college friend of mine in an awkward maneuver that looks almost like a standing Reverse Cow-Girl. “Where did you get that picture?” I asked.

“It came with my Ranger Up t-shirt,” he says.

“Well, whatever. Cool. I did some Salsa dancing in college. Not ballet. Big difference.” I felt it was important to make that distinction perfectly clear.

The next mistake I made, after assuming that Ranger Up would just ‘donate’ some t-shirts without any strings attached and attempting to defend my ‘dancing background’ and foolishly trying to salvage what remained of my man-hood, was thinking that Nick and Brad only included 1 picture of my ‘ballet dance.’

The next morning, I walk out of my room and pictures of the strained look on my face and half naked body in a blatantly not-Salsa maneuver are posted all over the barracks. I walk down to the Company CP and there I am again. I walk into the Battalion TOC… and guess who’s dancing for everyone to point and laugh?

I made half-hearted attempts to defend myself:

“Well, LT, did it at least help you get laid?”

“Oh yeah. Totally. All the time. On the daily. Fo shizzle, in fact. I had so much sex because of my salsa dancing it’s outrageous.”

No one bought it, though, because they all think I’m a virgin.

My one saving grace was Lori. If she hadn’t been hot, then I’d have been in serious trouble. Upon closer examination, most passer-bys would ask, “Wait… are you having sex with that hot chick?”

“Well, no, but she is hot.

“Did you do ballet?”

“No.”

“Are you gay?”

“What the fuck, man?”

“You can’t answer a question with another question.”

“No, I’m not gay, jackass.”

“Well, whatever. Yeah, she’s hot. Good work, sir. Sex in public. Kinky.”

Once again, I’d like to pass on to my good Ranger Up friends a sincere and hearty “I hate you and go fuck yourselves.”

Copyright of Nick and Will

I originally wrote this last year, but I have been unable to write another work this close to my heart, so I ask that you remember Bill one more time. – Nick

Memorial Day

SPC Bill Maher was a mortarman. When I took command of the mortars in my second stint as platoon leader, I knew immediately that he was going to be one of my favorite soldiers. 11 Chucks are weirdos by definition. They’re all a little “off” in a very charming way – I mean who wants to carry around huge mortar tubes or worry about calculating where rounds are gonna drop when you can jump out of planes and kick in doors like the rest of the infantry? What makes them even weirder is that they have their own language, and their own culture – even though they are part of the battalion and are infantryman, there is always a friendly rivalry with the other units. This makes them want to be weirder. (Case in point – my battalion commander was a bit of a hard ass and I mentioned once that it would be funny if our whole platoon performed the opening cheer with choreography to the movie Bring it On for him. Guess what was executed with flawless precision the next month? You betcha – I still know all the words…)

Anyway, so I arrive my first day as a twenty-nothing first lieutenant and there is this specialist that is running around and giving all the squad leaders all kinds of shit. He’s making fun of Marsh for being bald, Bruening for being a meathead; he’s calling Austin “Magnum PI” for having a phenomenal stache – but somehow he was not being smoked by anyone and no one was getting pissed off. Instead, they were reciprocating – Bill, who was just over thirty at the time, was very much the “old man” of platoon, with only one squad leader and the PSG being older than him. As such, it was not uncommon for him to be asked what it was like to “fight the men in the black pajamas” or asked about “the proper way to detrack a Panzer Tank”. He would answer with “very creative – ha, ha – Maher’s old – wow – never realized that before – it’s hard to hang with such quick-witted guys.” Invariably, he’d go a smidge to far and end up in the front-leaning rest, but even as he was knocking out 100 push-ups, he and everyone around him had a smile on their faces.

Unlike most soldiers, who are cautious but curious about meeting their new leader, Bill dove right in – within five minutes I knew everything about him and had been grilled on everything from my background to my current dating situation, and it somehow wasn’t weird that he had just given me an OGA interview. Bill was a truly unique and interesting guy – he had been a professional chef and hardcore snowboarder prior to suddenly joining the Army at age 30. He had a number of reasons for this that he often confided in me: he wanted to serve his country, he wanted to lose the weight he had gained from being a chef, he wanted to prove to himself that he could make it, and he wanted to make his father proud – most of all, he wanted to do something that mattered. He wanted to look back on his life when he was older and say that he had made a difference.

Bill was a great soldier, but like all of us, he wasn’t perfect. His attitude was generally overwhelmingly positive, but he had mild swings of bitchy sarcasm when he was really hurting physically. As a platoon leader, I was a bit of a hard ass when it came to PT, motivated by my commander at the time, who is my personal hero, and at that point was a two-time Ranger Regiment vet (enlisted and officer) with a Panama mustard stain. I had decided that everyone in my platoon was going to be able to do a half-marathon with a minimum standard of 8-minute miles. Early on in my tenure there, during a particularly grueling, but short run, Bill was falling back a little. I dropped back to encourage him to pick it up and sprint in, as we only had about half-a-mile to go. The terse response was something like “Sir, I’ve been sprinting for the last five miles.” My NCOs took over at that point, as good NCOs do in those situations, and I was wondering if this was going to be an issue.

At 9:00 formation, Bill was all smiles and grins again. “Sir, I’m gonna call my dad – I can’t believe I just did 6 miles at 7:45!!!” Bill had, with Bruening’s foot up his ass, managed to sprint in the last half mile with the rest of the platoon. Six months later, I walked into a room where Bill, Wilkerson, and Prince were talking to another Mortar Platoon. Apparently, their 11C compatriots had just completed a 5-miler at “Ranger Pace” and were very proud that their whole platoon had made it. All I heard was Bill saying, “Five fucking miles? That’s like a warm up for us – I’m still drinking my morning coffee at the five-mile mark. This is the Army man – not middle school cross country. You should call home – hey Mom! Guess what! Today I ran five miles! I also ate breakfast, took a dump, and breathed a couple of times!”

I mentioned before that Bill was a phenomenal chef. He didn’t give up that skill simply because he had traded the white hat for the fatigue one. Because we were overseas when the attack on the World Trade Center occurred, every infantry unit instantly became responsible for primary security. We no longer lived in our homes and barracks, but rather spent the time in various outposts throughout Europe, pulling security for different bases. As such, we’d send Bill out with some cash and he’d scurry about and make us meals fit for royalty, while the other units were eating MREs or rations (yes, we would share with them). Bill was engaged at the time and would often speak excitedly about how fired up he was about it while he was smashing garlic with a chef’s knife. The girl was in her early twenties, so the guys of course had to give him incessant shit about the likelihood of his inability to “perform” at his age.

Bill was a constant paradox – he went from being a serious and sensitive friend who was there for his buddies when they needed it, whether it was girl trouble, army trouble, money trouble, or family trouble – to being an absurd clown, who when he wasn’t heckling his buddies, might be dropping his pants at inopportune times and acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary (often to Bruening, who shared a big brother/little brother love/hate relationship with his apprentice). No matter what he did, kind and caring or absurd and sophomoric, he was our friend.

And we loved him. Every last one of us.

Two years after I left the mortars and the honor of being Bill’s platoon leader, he was killed by an IED in Iraq. His body took the brunt of an explosion which would have killed one of my best friends. I heard the news and I fell to the ground, sliding on my back down the wall, and started crying. I could not stop myself. I had lost other friends and peers in this war already, but he was my first soldier – and he was one of the best. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. He was a better person than I was – than so many of us – why did it have to be him?

There’s no clear answer for me. Even though logically, I look at the situation and say that there is nothing I could have done, I still feel guilt. I wonder if I could have trained him more, if perhaps things could have been different had I been there with him. Wilkerson, Jared’s normal driver, and a phenomenal human being and soldier, felt like it should have been him, even though he had no control over the events and we would have felt his loss as strongly. Jared feels the guilt that only a leader who has lost a soldier can know. But fair or not, Bill was there. He was serving his country. He was there so that we can sleep peacefully in our beds at night. He was there, ensuring that for at least one more day, freedom will triumph over tyranny.

On this Memorial Day, I wanted to tell you just a little bit about Bill. I cherish his memory. He made a difference in my life and in the lives of those around him and we’re better people for having known him. He was never perfect, but by God he was the best of men.

As of this writing there are 3439 coalition deaths from the Iraq War.

Almost 2 million men and women have died in our nation’s defense since 1775.

Each one of them has a story. Each one of them was loved by many.

On this Memorial Day, please spend time with family, barbecue, and enjoy yourself – but, if you could, spend a few moments treasuring these people that have allowed us to be who we are – that have allowed us this amazing opportunity to be free. They weren’t perfect, but they are heroes, and they are the best our nation has to offer.

Thank you, Bill.

God Bless America.

Copyright of Nick