So Help Me God

‘Raise your right hand and repeat after me. ‘I, state your full name.’
‘I, Alexander William James…’

There were eight or so other people being sworn in simultaneously. I could feel the words buzzing in my jaw as I spoke them.

‘do solemnly swear…’
‘do solemnly swear…’

Flags from each branch of the military were arranged in a diagonal, overlapping array along the wall to my left. There was a lady facing us from the low-profile stage in front. She was wearing a white and black uniform and standing at attention with her right hand up. The day would come when I would be able to identify this uniform as the dress uniform of an O-2 in the US Navy; a lieutenant, junior grade. But at the time I didn’t even know the difference between officer and enlisted.

‘that I will support and defend…’
‘that I will support and defend…’
‘the constitution of the United States…’
‘the constitution of the United States…’

It’s not that college wasn’t an option for me. It’s just that watching my sister flounder around in higher education for the last five years, losing one scholarship after another and being an overall financial drain on my parents; I didn’t have any reason to believe that I would fare any better.

‘against all enemies,…’
‘against all enemies,…’
‘foreign and domestic;…’
‘foreign and domestic;…’

While most of my peers had been toiling away in advanced placement classes for the last four years and attending SAT score-boosting workshops, my main concerns in high school had been skating and chicks. And really, let’s be honest here, skating was just the thing that I did to hold me over between my all-too-infrequent brushes with the opposite sex.

‘that I will bear true faith…’
‘that I will bear true faith…’
‘and allegiance to the same;…’
‘and allegiance to the same;…’

And the Marine Corps wasn’t even my first choice. Not that I knew enough about the different branches of the military to make an educated choice anyway. All I knew was that my grandfather, Papa Joe, was in the Navy and he seemed to like it and my dad was a cook in the Army during the late-sixties/early seventies, and he seemed to have had a good time while he was in. His only regret, I think, is that he wasn’t sent to Vietnam.

‘and I will obey the orders…’
‘and I will obey the orders…’
‘of the President of the United States…’
‘of the President of the United States…’

So I went with the Navy. I was going to join the Navy and become a SEAL because, well, I mean, why not? The only Navy SEAL that I knew of by name was Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura and he seemed like a total badass shooting that gatling gun in Predator. Seems like a sound enough bet for me to gamble the next four years of my life on. I’d even gotten as far as meeting with a Navy recruiter and filling out my initial enlistment paperwork. That was going to be it then. I was going to be the skater-punk turned badass Navy SEAL. More importantly, I was finally going to get the fuck out of Daedalus, Georgia.

‘and the orders…’
‘and the orders…’
‘of the officers appointed over me,…’
‘of the officers appointed over me,…’

That was the plan, and the plan was going accordingly, until one day, a couple of months before graduation, my friend Dan asked me to give him a ride up to the mall to pick up his truck after school. Dan was enlisting in the Marine Corps and was set to ship off to boot camp two weeks after graduation. He asked if we could stop by his recruiter’s office real quick so that he could drop off some document or something. I knew where his recruiter’s office was because it was right next to the Navy recruiting office, which was on the way to the mall. ‘Sure,’ I said.

We got a good parking spot right in front of the recruiter’s office. I put the car in PARK and leaned back in my seat. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You wam’me just… hang out here?’
Daniel paused with his hand on the door handle. ‘Naw.’ He waved me over with the manila folder he was holding in his left hand. ‘No,’ he glanced down at my floorboard, ‘you can come in.’

‘Uhhh…’ He could probably see my eyebrows raise up above the rim of my sunglasses. ‘I mean, I don’t mind, stayin’ here.’

He had his eyes closed as he waved me toward him once more with the folder. ‘Why’on’tcha come on in for a minute. This might end up takin’ longer than I expected.’
‘O-kay.’ I switched off the ignition and climbed out of the car.

If I’d known what I was walking into I probably would have told Dan to go fuck himself and kept my ass in the car. Actually, no; I would have waited until he got out of the car, then told him to go fuck himself before driving off and never talking to him again.

‘Daniel!’ I heard someone call out as soon as we walked in. One of the recruiters jumped from his desk and walked toward us with his hand out. ‘Dan-my-man!’ he said again as he aggressively shook Daniel’s hand. ‘How you been man? What’s crack-a-lackin’?’

‘I’m good Sergeant Pineda. I’m good,' his scarecrow body shaking with every pump of the recruiter's forearm. 'How’re you?’

‘Good, good,’ the recruiter said as he continued to shake the shit out of Daniel’s hand.
Dan held up the manila folder in his left hand. ‘Just got the, uh, just got the stuff you wanted. Here to drop it off.’

‘Ah,’ the recruiter deftly snatched up the folder, thumbed it open with one hand and held it out in front of him. ‘Good man.’ He straightened his face as he studied the contents of the folder.

I stood there with my hands in my pockets and started examining the posters on the walls around me. We don’t promise you a rose garden; Marines: Tough. And proud of it; If everybody could get in the Marines, it wouldn’t be the Marines.

The recruiter nodded a couple of times before closing the folder and looking over at me. ‘And who’s this?,’ he said, as he placed the folder on the desk behind him without breaking eye-contact.

‘This is my friend Alex,’ Dan said as he did a slight displaying motion with his hands.

​‘Alex!,’ he said, as he took my hand and gave me one of his full-throttle greetings. ‘Sergeant Pineda. Nice to meet you, man.’

He shook my extended hand spastically causing the veins in my forearm to pop to life . ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said.

‘Alex,’ he said as he put his hand on my upper back, still holding my other hand hostage in his death-grip of a personal greeting. ‘What you got planned after high school?’ Before I could answer, or even register the question, Sgt. Pineda was escorting me to a room in the rear of the office to talk about my ‘plans for the future.’ I was upfront with him; told him about my intentions to join the Navy and become a SEAL, but that didn’t seem to phase him one bit. I guess dibs doesn’t count for much in the recruiting world.

‘according to regulations…’
‘according to regulations…’

He was going on and on; listing off all of the various reasons why the Marine Corps was superior to the Navy. He told me about Force Recon, which was the Marine equivalent of the SEALs, and how they were actually more hardcore than the SEALs (which I did not believe). He told me all about his experiences in the Marines and all of the cool places he’d been and the badass training that he’d gotten to do, blah, blah, blah, blah. He kept talking and talking and I just kept coming back with ‘no thanks, I’m going to be a SEAL.’ At this point it had been about thirty minutes and I was starting to wonder what Dan was up to. I finally got Sergeant Pineda to release me from the room in the back by mentioning that I had some other appointment that I needed to run off to (which he almost certainly knew was a lie). I walked out of the room in the back and see Dan sitting there on the couch, flipping through a magazine. That’s when it all hit me. That’s when I realized I’d been played. Dan ‘needed a ride’ to the recruiter’s office so that he could ‘turn in some paperwork.’ Bullshit! He was just trying to sucker me into joining the Marine Corps so that he could get a promotion for referring his friend - which is something that I just learned that you can do during my 30 min talk with Sgt. Pineda. That sneaky motherfucker!

Ready to get the fuck out of there, I pulled my keys out of my pocket and looked over at Dan. ‘Let’s go,’ I said in a flat voice and nodded towards the door. Dan did a submissive ‘okay’ and rocked himself up from the couch. I started for the exit when I felt a hand grip my left shoulder.

‘Hey Alex,’ I heard Sgt. Pineda’s voice call from behind me. This was no longer amusing. I was ready to leave. ‘Look, man’ I said, as I stopped and turned around. ‘Like I already told you, I’m commit-- ‘ Sgt. Pineda put his hand up in the air.'I know, I know, I know,’ he said. ‘Look, I just want you to think about something before you go.’

I paused to breath in through my nose, ‘Okay?’

‘and the Uniform Code…’
‘and the Uniform Code…’
‘of Military Justice.’
‘of Military Justice.’

With one hand still on my shoulder he held his other hand out, palm up, towards a mannequin to his left that was wearing a dress uniform. ‘You see this? This is the Marine Corps dress blues. The most recognizable military uniform in the world.’ Without saying anything, I folded my arms over my chest and cocked my head at an angle to examine the mannequin. ‘Now,’ he says, as he turns his body towards me and makes a motion with his fingers like he’s flicking something at my chest. ‘I’ll ask you this; do you want to spend the next four years of your life walking around wearing bell-bottoms, a handkerchief around your neck, and a dog food bowl on your head? Or…’ he motions back towards the mannequin, ‘do you wanna wear this?’

I began my enlistment paperwork with Sgt. Pineda that afternoon. Fuck you Dan.

‘So help me God.’
‘So help me God.’

* * * * * * * * * *

‘I betcha I’m gonna be honor-grad,’ he said, as he nodded his head and looked out in front of him. ‘Watch and see. I betcha.’

I can’t remember his name, but he traveled up from the Atlanta MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) center with the same group that I did. He would end up in my platoon and all I remember of him is that he tried to get a medical discharge a couple of days into bootcamp by claiming that he had an as-yet undiagnosed case of Asthma. He would not end up being the honor-grad.

There were six of us who’d been shuttled up from Forrest Park, Georgia to Buford, South Carolina. We were each given a $20 gift card so we could stop and get a meal on the way. At the bus driver’s suggestion we stopped at a buffet just outside of Buford. ‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘This is the last good meal you’re gonna have for awhile.’ I ate what I could, but I didn’t have much of an appetite.

‘All right,’ the driver said, ‘almost there.’ We turned onto a narrow half-mile strip of road that cut straight through the dark marshlands. I looked out over the murky swamp on either side of the road and I remembered that this place was, after all, an island. There is an uninterrupted silence as everyone in the van fixes his gaze ahead toward the checkpoint at the end of the road. Next to the checkpoint there is a large maroon sign with gold letters; U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot, then underneath, Parris Island, South Carolina. We continue on in complete silence until the quiet is broken by the soft screech of the brakes and the crunching of loose asphalt when the driver comes to a stop at the gate. There are two Marines with rifles at the gate and one of them walks over to the driver while the other starts to walk along the passenger side of the vehicle and look in through the windows. The driver pulls out his ID and some other papers and hands them to the guard standing at his window. The guard does a quick scan of the documents then leans his head in the window and looks back at us. His eyebrows make an angry V and he snaps his fingers and points at me.

‘You better get those freakin’ eyeballs off me, thing!’ I immediately avert my gaze down to the floor as I feel a couple of drops of pee moistening the front of my boxer-briefs.
We make it through the gate and pull up behind a school-bus-style bus parked about 100 yards ahead. We come to a stop and two more guards walk up to the van. One of them opens up the bay door. ‘Get out,’ he says, and we shoot out of that van like it’s on fire and line up outside.

‘You see this bus here?,’ he points over to the bus. ‘You’re gonna get on this bus, sit down, put your head down and don’t say a word, you understand?’ Still looking down, we nod our heads. ‘Alright, good. Now go!,' he points towards the bus and snaps to emphasize the last syllable and we race over to the entrance. I’m too scared and confused to truly register how eerie the scene on the bus is; the front half of the seats are filled with guys sitting there in absolute silence with their heads down. We file into the rows in the back and assume the position. We sit there in silence, staring down at the floor, thinking about the world of shit that we’ve gotten ourselves into, for what seems like an hour. During this time two or three more groups board and I try to steal glances at them out of the corner of my eye as they scurry down the aisle.

When the bus is about ¾ full one of the Marines from earlier climbs up behind the driver’s seat and, without saying a word, closes the folding door, cranks the ignition and pulls off. We come to a stop less than five minutes later. I look up to see where we are, but it’s dark out now and all I can really make out is the well-lit brick building to our right.

The driver cuts off the ignition and stands up to face us. ‘Stay right here,’ he says, then he exits the bus and walks off towards the shiny metal doors at the entrance of the building. He enters the building and five seconds later the metal doors fling open and three Marines shoot out wearing camouflage uniforms and flat-brimmed, state trooper-style hats. They’re walking at a brisk pace, headed straight for the bus. I am completely void of all thought except the phrase shit’s about to go down, which is being played on repeat in my head. One of the Marines, the biggest one of the group, boards the bus while the other two stand just outside of the exit doors facing one another.

He stands at the front of the bus and looks down at us with hateful eyes. ‘Welcome to Marine Corps Recruit Depot,’ he says. He points to his left. ‘There are yellow footprints painted on the ground just outside of this bus. When I give the command you will exit this bus and you will find a pair of footprints to stand on. Do you understand?’

Most of us nod our heads and there are a few yes sir’s. Without saying a word, the drill instructor(1) turns and exits the bus. After stepping off the last step, he turns and yells up to us at a volume that most of us had never been exposed to before;
‘NOW GET OFF MY FREGGIN’ BUS! GET OFF MY FREGGIN’ BUS! GO-GO-GO-GO-GO!!!’

Everyone shoots up from their seats at once and bum-rushes the front exit. As I was being pushed and funneled towards the front I could see people start to fill in the formation of yellow footprints to the right of the bus.

‘GO-GO-GO! GET OUTTA MY FREGGIN’ BUS!! GET OUTTA MY FREGGIN’ BUS!!’ All three drill instructors were yelling now and the two by the exit were grabbing guys by the arms and tossing them out onto the asphalt. ‘GETOUT-GETOUT-GETOUT! GO-GO-GO-GO!’

It continued on like this, with the drill instructors shoving us out into the evening at full volume, until the bus was emptied and then it was quiet again, except for the sounds of crickets calling out from the treeline off in the distance. We stood there in formation; stone still and wide-eyed and looking straight ahead. The drill instructor who’d stepped onto the bus earlier stood out in front of the formation and held his hand up in the air.
‘Eyeballs up here,’ he said, as the two other drill instructors stood behind him on either side with their legs apart and their hands tucked sharply behind their back. ‘From now on, whenever anyone addresses you, your response will begin and end with sir. Do you understand?’

Most of us were too scared to talk, but people nodded their heads and there were a few yes’s and yes sir’s.

‘Oooh, now,’ the drill instructor put his hand up to silence us. ‘Now, see, we’re already off to a bad start. When I ask you if you freakin’ understand you say sir, yes sir. Do you got that?’

Still confused, still scared shitless, the response that the drill instructor gets from the group is a flaccid combination of yes sir! and sir, yes sir!

‘I SAID DO YOU FREGGIN’ UNDERSTAND!? HOW ‘BOUT FREGGIN’ ‘SIR, YES SIR!’’ Even from back here I could see the veins in his neck bulging into-and-out-of existence and the little specs of spit flying from his mouth as he yelled these words.

‘SIR, YES SIR!,’ we screamed out in unison.

‘Now, when I tell you to, you will stay in this formation and follow me into this building here to my left, do you understand?’

‘SIR, YES SIR!’

‘Good. Now follow me.’ He and the other two drill instructors turned and walked toward the large metal doors. We followed behind, trying desperately to stay in the four-column formation that we’d been standing in. As we approached the metal doors the drill instructor on the left pointed to two of the guys at the front of the formation and said ‘you two, go hold the doors open.’

‘SIR, YES SIR!,’ they each said, and ran off to open the doors.

We followed the trio as they led us into the building and turned left down a hallway. Midway down the hall the main drill instructor turned around and held his fist up in the air, signaling us to stop.

‘Okay,’ he said. He made his hand into a karate chop and gestured towards the opening to his right, ‘in this room you will find a row of phones along the wall. When I tell you to, I want you to fall out and pick a phone and line up behind it. Do you understand?’

‘Sir, yes sir,’ we responded, in almost-unison.

‘What are you freakin’ whispering to me? You think I’m your freakin’ girlfriend or something?! How about freakin’ SIR, YES SIR!’

‘SIR, YES SIR!,’ we screamed out, and our voices echoed off of the hollow concrete walls like a dull axe striking steel.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Now go!'

We ran into the room and filed in behind one of the dozen or so phones lined up along the wall. These phones looked like payphones, but without the place to put in coins.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘up here,’ and he raised his hand up in the air to get our attention. ‘Now listen to me very carefully. When you get up to the phone - you don’t need quarters for these phones - you are to pick up the receiver and you are to make one phone call.’ He held an index finger out in front of him and scanned it back and forth slowly. ‘Does everybody understand that; one phone call. I don’t care who you call; your mother, your father, your grandmother, your uncle, whatever; doesn’t matter. When they answer, you are to say hello mom, dad, grandma, whatever. I’ve called to let you know that I have arrived safely at Recruit Depot. And that’s it. And then you hang up and let the next recruit go. You got that? No I love you, no I miss you. No freakin’ crying and asking them to come pick you up. Nothing else besides that. Do you understand?’

‘SIR, YES SIR!’ The echo in this room was even more deafening and left a ringing in my ears.

‘Yeah,’ one of the drill instructors from the back spoke up. ‘Let me catch one of you chattin’ it up on the phone,’ he said, as he nodded. ‘Let me catch you saying anything besides what you’re supposed to; you and me will have some one-on-one time.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ the other drill instructor nodded.

‘Okay,’ the main drill instructor said, ‘when you’re done you’re going to walk across the hall, have a seat at one of the desks, and put your head down and don’t talk. You got that?’

‘SIR, YES SIR!’ I would eventually get used to communicating at this volume but, for now, I felt like my ears were going to start bleeding at any moment.

‘Good. Now go.’

There was the sound of out-of-sync clicking as the recruits at the front of each line stepped forward and picked up the receivers. After a brief silence I could hear the first few hello’s and hi’s and mom?’s. I watched each person in line step up to the phone, make their call, then hang up and quickly scurry out of the room. Then it was my turn. I stepped up to the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed my mom’s house number. It rang a couple of times, then she answered;

‘Hello?’

‘Mom?’

‘Alex, honey, is that you?’

​‘Yes.' I felt an unexpected cracking in the back my throat. ‘I’ve made it.’

(1) Drill instructor - not drill sergeant. That's the Army. A mistake I made once and then never, ever again.