The sixth week was Grass Week, when we learned how to break down our weapons and put them back together. I liked that and was good at it. When Sergeant Uppington had us do what he called ‘an arms race,’ I always came in first. Rudy Bell, of course everybody called him Taco, was usually second. He never beat me, but sometimes he came close. George Dinnerstein was usually last and had to hit it and give Sergeant ‘Up Yours’ Uppington twenty-five, with Up’s foot on George’s ass the whole time. But George could shoot. Not as good as I could, but yes, he could put three out of every four in the center mass of a paper target at three hundred yards. Me, I could put four out of four center mass at seven hundred yards, almost every time.
There was no shooting during Grass Week, though. That week we just took our guns apart and put them back together again, chanting the Rifleman’s Creed: ‘This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life.’ And so on. The part I remember best is the part that says ‘Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.’
The other thing we did during Grass Week was sit on our asses in the grass. Sometimes for six hours at a stretch.
Billy stops there, smiling a little and remembering Pete ‘Donk’ Cashman. Donk fell asleep sitting in the tall South Carolina grass and Up Yours got down on his knees and screamed in his face to wake him up. Is this boring you, Marine?
Donk bolted to his feet so hard and fast he almost fell over, yelling Sir no sir! even before he was fully awake. He was George Dinnerstein’s buddy and picked up the nickname Donk because he had a habit of grabbing his crotch and yelling Honk my donk. He never told Up to honk it, though.
The memories are piling in as Billy suspected they would – knew, really – but Grass Week isn’t what he wants to write about. He doesn’t want to write about Donk right now either, although he might later. He wants to write about Week 7, and all that happened after that.
Billy bends to it. The hours pass, unseen and unfelt. There’s magic in this room. He breathes it in and breathes it out.
4
After Grass Week came Firing Week. We used the M40A, which is the military version of the Remington 700. Five-shot box, tripod mounted, NATO bottleneck rounds.
‘You must see your target but your target must not see you.’ Up told us that over and over. ‘And no matter what you’ve seen in the movies, snipers do not work alone.’
Even though it wasn’t Sniper School, Uppington put us in teams of two, spotter and shooter. I teamed with Taco and George teamed with Donk. I mention them because we ended up together in Fallujah, both Vigilant Resolve in April of ’04 and Phantom Fury that November. Me and Taco
Billy stops, shaking his head, reminding himself the dumb self is in the past. He deletes and starts again.
Taco and I switched back and forth during Firing Week, me shooting and him spotting, then him shooting and me spotting. George and Donk started that way, too, but Up told them to quit it. ‘You shoot, Dinner Winner. Cash, you just spot.’
‘Sir I would also like to shoot sir!’ Donk shouted. You had to shout when you addressed Up Yours. It was the Marine way.
‘And I would like to tear your tits off and shove them up your sorry ass,’ Up replied. So from then on, George was the shooter and Donk was the spotter in that pair. It stayed the same in Sniper School and in Iraq.
When Firing Week was almost over, Sergeant Uppington called me and Taco into his office, which wasn’t much more than a closet. He said, ‘You two are sorry fucking specimens, but you can shoot. Maybe you can learn to surf.’
That was how Taco and I found out we were being transferred to Camp Pendleton, and that’s where we finished our basic, which by then was mostly shooting because we were in training to be snipers. We flew to California on United Airlines. It was my first time in an airplane.
Billy stops. Does he want to write about Pendleton? He doesn’t. There was no surfing, at least not for him; how could there be when he never learned to swim? He did get himself a shirt that said CHARLIE DON’T SURF and wore it almost to tatters. He was wearing it the day he picked up the baby shoe and tied it to the belt loop on his right hip.
Does he want to write about Operation Iraqi Freedom? Nope. By the time he got to Baghdad, the war was over. President Bush said so, from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. He said the mission was accomplished, and that made Billy and the jarheads in his regiment ‘peacekeepers.’ In Baghdad he had felt welcomed, even loved. Women and children threw flowers. Men yelled nahn nihubu amerikaan, we love America.