As he stood awkwardly in the E-room, still wearing his summer service “A” khakis, trying to connect with his mother and this house that seemed suddenly so strange and small, he began to realize how much he’d changed in the past three months.
At least he hadn’t slipped and lapsed into profanity, yet. Back in boot camp, he’d heard dozens of stories about guys who’d gone back home on leave, sat down to a wonderful home-cooked meal with all of the family, relatives, and friends, and turned the atmosphere to ice with an accidental “This is fucking great, Ma,” or, “Hey, would you pass the fucking potatoes, please?”
Most of the vulgar language he’d heard in boot camp, in fact, had come from the other recruits. With only a very few lapses, the DIs had been almost startlingly clean and correct in their language, which he hadn’t expected at all. He still chuckled, though, at one of Knox’s vulgarities, the one about recruits being so low that whale shit was like shooting stars to them. The imagery was perfect, and all the funnier now that he was no longer a recruit.
In fact, if Jack had any problem with language at all, it was breaking the automatic “this recruit believes…” or “this recruit requests…” that leaped to his lips every time he opened his mouth.
The story was told at Parris Island of one recruit, many, many years ago, who’d determined to escape the unrelenting hell of boot camp by going over the hill. There was only one way off the island, and that was the Boulevard de France, across the bridge over Archer’s Creek and on through the Main Gate. The recruit had worn his PT shorts and T-shirt and stolen a bicycle, and in the dark the Marine guard at the gate had assumed he was the dependent son of someone stationed at the base. “Where are you going this time of night, son?” the guard had asked pleasantly.
The recruit, just a few meters short of freedom, had leaped off his bike, snapped to attention, and sung out, “Sir! This recruit requests—” The sentry had immediately restrained him and called the recruit’s platoon commander.
“So, what are your plans?” his mother asked with that characteristic perkiness he thought of as a smoke screen masking darker thoughts. She plopped down into the big lounge chair and picked up some crewel work. “Come on, sit down! Sit down! Tell me your plans! I mean, you said you had two weeks’ vacation, but then where will you be going after that? Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“‘Leave,’ Mom,” he said, taking a seat at the very edge of a straight-backed chair. It was going to take him a while, he knew, to break himself of always sitting or standing at attention. “Two weeks leave. And the Corps is going to be making my plans for the next few years.”
“Well, yes…to be sure, but you get to tell them what you want, don’t you? I know you always talked about Space Camp—”
“Space training, Mom. And, well, I don’t think that’s going to happen. At least, not right away.”
“But you said your recruiter promised—”
Jack chuckled. The reality no longer burned the way it had once. “Mom, I’m a Marine. I go where the Corps needs me. There are half a million of us in the Corps, and only a few thousand ever get to go to space.” He shrugged, completely comfortable now with the knowledge. “Maybe, someday. If I qualify.” He brightened. “In the meantime, though, this rec—I mean, I have to go through the next phase of my training.”
“But…wasn’t boot camp it? Your training, I mean.”
“Training never stops in the Corps, Mom. Boot camp was where they made me a Marine, yeah, but I still have one month of combat training. I mean, I’ve learned the basics, how to take care of my rifle, how to shoot, stuff like that. But now I have to learn small-unit tactics. Get to crawl through the boonies with my buddies, playing war games. And after that, well, it looks like I’m shipping out as a replacement for the 5th MarDiv. And that means Siberia.”
He’d been hoping to put off discussing that particular bit of news. He found, to his considerable surprise, that he didn’t mind it at all himself. Oh, there was some apprehension, of course, even outright fear, but nothing he faced in Vladivostok would be as terrifying as those first few days in Company 4239. He could handle it.
But his mother, he realized, didn’t have the advantages of his training. She was still a civilian, and she thought in civilian terms.
“Siberia! Why in God’s name would they send you to Siberia!”
He shrugged. “Fifth MarDiv has a commitment to help the Russians, Mom. They’ve been holding the Amur Line now for two years, ever since the Japanese changed sides, keeping the Chinese out. You know, if it hadn’t been for Colonel Westlake’s defense of Hill 229, outside of Ussuriysk, the Chinese would’ve broken through and taken Vlad last April! In one week, 515 Marines held off at least eleven human-wave assaults by elements of the 103rd and 140th People’s Armies! General Warhurst said it was the most gallant stand by the Corps since Khe Sanh. He said—”