Finale

Its the end of FEX-3, roughly 3AM. We’ve filled in the holes that we dug and lived in for three days; spent hours searching for a missing pickaxe; manhandled rolls of razor wire to a drop-off point; and now we’ve formed up for what we hope will be a quiet and quick hike back to the extract point.

We will not be so fortunate.

“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!”

For the nth time during the week, we’ve taken mortar fire. The brush crashes as we heavy-laden Marines rush to cover off the dirt road.

“You’re hit in the leg, you’re hit in the leg, you’re hit too. You’re screaming.”

One from each squad is injured. I’ve got two tourniquets on W before anyone has one on the other casualties. We’re fumbling with the pole-less litters and it takes forever for us to secure them. Finally we lurch down the trail; half a mile away, there’s a clearing, and I see a light.

As we move through the murky darkness, I’m remembering a conversation I had with a warrant officer candidate a few weeks prior.

“Oh man, it was rough. We were up all night, did like a three mile CASEVAC, it was insane.”

I always assumed he had misspoke and meant three kilometers, there’s no way we could do a three mile CASEVAC with all of our gear on.

He was correct.

We’re waved past the safety vic and down another trail. Eventually, we figure out a ryhthm, rotating which arm we grab the litters with when we’re too tired, bumping to the back of the line when we need a break. We’re moving at a good speed. We even pass another platoon in front of us. Me and F carry extra flacks, rifles, and a main pack stripped from one of the casualties.

Eventually we reach the rally point, and exhaustion turns to relief as we strip our gear and prepare for line-out and the nine-mile hike home. I can hardly believe what I’ve just done, its one of the craziest and most memorable nights of training I’ve experienced so far.

For weeks we’ve been wondering, considering, debating, arguing amongst ourselves—“Is it today?” It wasn’t after the 15-Mile Hike. It wasn’t the previous Friday which had such a large and suspicious block of empty space on the schedule.

But it’s today. For real.

A captain and a major are tag-teaming teaching us a class which no one cares about. The whole room is fidgeting. Finally they close, and before anyone says anything else, Major Kierman stands up.

“Blackjack! You’re secured to your SPCs.”

His usual smirk and he says—

“I believe they will be passing some word.”

The final confirmation that it is MOS day, the long-awaited time when we find out what job we will be doing as Marine officers. The classroom barely contains the “oorahs” and “kills” that ring out.

We head back to our barracks to drop our gear and standby. Each staff platoon commander has a different way they give out their Marines MOS’s. Some are running the obstacle course. Some are groundfighting. Ours decides to do things a bit differently. We gather at the assigned location, a picnic area by a fishing pond a quarter mile away from the base. We are given a short speech, and then starting alphabetically, he hands us a commemorative glass and a drink with our MOS sharpied on it.

I genuinely don’t know what to expect. I had put infantry as my #1 choice, but I left communications “dangerously high” in my rankings, because I knew it would be a good job and I’d be happy to do it. In this moment I’m not sure if I’m dreading one or both—I just want to know.

He gets to my roommate, P, who scores his #1 choice, artillery, as we all knew he would.

“Rhinehart.” I shake his hand and turn the glass around—

“0602, communications!” There’s clapping and cheers.

He continues on, my other roommate getting his #1 choice as well, ACVs. Its a weird feeling—all the tension is gone. Am I disappointed? Did I suck enough that I wasn’t worthy of infantry? Am I relieved that I got something I already anticipated and definitely will enjoy? Does it really matter, anyway?

He tells us that after today, it isn’t about us anymore. He’s right. Its not. And it shouldn’t be. And therein lies the answer to the question of how to think about this—the pressure is off, or rather, has shifted; I am no longer competing with others for the job I want, I am fighting only myself and my own deficiencies, set on a specific path and preparing to lead Marines on that path. All that matters now is preparing for that future.

Even our SPC admitted he gave a very good brief. K really should have ranked infantry higher, he could have gotten it easily if he wanted it.

We’re halfway though MOUT week, or Military Operations in Urban Terrain, where we are fighting into and amongst buildings in two different mock cities. At night, Captain R pulls out a massive loudspeaker, and we fight in the dark with dad rock echoing off the cinderblock walls. Its the most fun we’ve had so far at TBS.

Camo paint applied, glowsticks passed out and secured; NVGs on, magazines loaded properly. I’m the 3rd squad leader tonight and I brief my fireteam leaders on my expectations.

We stalk (or stumble) to the edge of the treeline, where we take indirect fire and I lose Marines right off the bat (later on I discover that this was called in by a friend of mine from OCS.) They’re painted as dead, not wounded, so we leave them and continue on. Eventually we get to our appointed spots, and as machine gun fire commences and the adjacent 2nd squad suppresses, I lead my first fireteam towards our first objective, a small building that will be our first foothold into the city block.

As soon as I get out of the treeline, two things happen nearly simultaneously. First, I realize I’m running towards the wrong building—there are three close to each other, the leftmost being our objective, but I’m beelining for the middle one. Due to the darkness, I’d misjudged the layout of the buildings. On its own, this is not a big problem, and I immediately begin to turn towards the correct one, just in time for gunfire to erupt from all three buildings at once. I return fire, and then drop to the ground and scramble back to the treeline, more Marines in my squad dead, again. (Later on it’s determined that we were on the edge of our “lane,” and had been shot at in error by the deadly marksmen of 4th Platoon.)

But I still have more Marines. By the time I get back to the treeline, the second squad leader—an aggressive, dependable future infantry officer from South Georgia with the accent to match—has begun to organize his men for an assault as well. I take the remainder of my men and successfully clear the building, lean out the window and “buzzsaw” with my IR glowstick, and with that signal a fireteam from 2nd squad joins us. We look to the next objective, and with everyone hastily organized—“F&!% fireteams, lets just go”—we exit and dash to a corner window to make our entrance. I’m first in the window and shot dead by an enemy who then flees, as the rest of the Marines clear the building. They set up a machine gun in the second story (“talking guns, talking guns”) and get to work suppressing the enemy in the final objective.

Casualties are high—and perhaps the greatest lesson we learn from MOUT week is that riflemen die in high numbers when fighting in a built-up environment—but we take the building and carry the night.

“Ceasefire Green!”

I ease off the ground and stand up. It’s about 6AM, and WARFEX, the last field event of TBS, is now over. Not content with freezing us out for months, Quantico had one last kick in the rear for us, as we patrolled and fought in black flag heat for several days, finally leaving for our final hike back to Camp Barrett at midnight.

“Your training as provisional rifle platoon commanders is functionally over. You already earned your commission and rank as 2nd lieutenants, and now you’ve earned your place in the Fleet Marine Force.”

It’s a great feeling, to be done. And a sad feeling, that I will never go to the field with another rifle platoon of fellow 2nd lieutenants again.

“CLASS! 2-26! DISMISSED!”

“DISMISSED, AYE SIR!”

And with that, graduation dissolves into a mass of goodbyes, laughs, handshakes, picture-taking. “You know who to call if you ever need comms up. I’ll be on the other end.”

I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my DIs and my OCS platoon commander outside.

“Did you ever finish your blog?”

“I might write something.”

It was without question the greatest seven-month stretch of my life.

It's hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced The Basic School (or an experience like it) just how formulative it was, just how close we all got, even on the days when it was awful (especially on those days.) I spent close to two hundred early mornings, long days, and late nights spent hiking, shooting, navigating, planning, laughing, complaining, fighting alongside over 270 other brand-new Marine officers, amidst rain and ice and heat and wind and in the mud and brush and deadwood of the hilly Quantico treeline.

No other branch of service makes all their officers go through the same experience. No other group of noncombat officers are as well-trained for combat as we were. And I’ll never get to do it again.

You learn that shared experiences will bind people together as close as blood, and even though we annoy each other, we’d each take a bullet for the guy down the hallway—because he’s a Marine.

So I’m profoundly grateful for and proud of my time in “Blackjack Bravo.” And a little bit sad, but anticipating so much more. Because TBS is done, but my tenure in the world’s greatest gun club is just beginning.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy some music on your way out.

I am a Marine Corps Officer, former EMT, perennial student, and Northern California native intent on improving my writing skills. I’ll gladly consider all feedback, which you can direct to my email. You can also find me on Instagram @tduncanr