Push On Through

FEX-2. Force-on-force. Platoon “pure” offense and defense.

We’re executing our first night attack. My fireteam was pulled for the leader’s recon, and we slowly pace 300 meters through the treeline.

We’ve determined that the enemy is off to our left. The platoon commander calls me over and asks me to take a radio.

“Go ten meters that way and tell me if this radio works.”

“Oscar-One-Hotel, this is Oscar-One-Romeo. Radio check, over.”

Nothing. I try it again. Nothing, again.

Frustrated and pressed for time, he says—“You and T take that radio and go get the rest of the platoon up here.”

One of the eavesdropping instructors adds, “The water is your catching feature.”

Aye Sergeant. I know you think I’m going to get lost. Well, I won’t.

Lost or not, I’m not a fan of moving through the treeline with an unsecured and non-working radio, but orders are orders and so my fellow Marine and I move out. The treeline is absolutely heinous—as thick as the Mirkwood described in The Hobbit—but we move out as quickly and quietly as we can.

About fifty meters into our movement, they take contact behind us. There are gunshots and shouts. I make a flash decision—forward to gather the platoon or backwards to help them?

Forward. “T, lets go!” and I start scrambling through the brush, which assaults my face as the deadfall on the ground comes alive and attacks my knees as I trip and fall five times in the first minute.

Screw this. I leave the treeline and book it on the hardball road, but the treeline doesn’t leave me, slapping at my face still as I run along the edge within range of it’s reach.

I reach the platoon breathless and scratched up (friends would comment on the state of my face for the next week.) The platoon sergeant prepares the platoon to move out, just in time for our leadership to return, having not taken casualties.

We move towards the enemy. Unfortunately they’ve reacted well, in accordance with their training, and are waiting in ambush, massacring our platoon.

You win this round, 6th. We’ll get you next time.

Back to Brown Field, for OCC-251’s graduation. The first class since my own.

Surprisingly, I’m not here for just any friend, but for one of my Drill Instructors, who is now himself a graduating officer candidate. A fine Staff Sergeant who left a good impression on me and will go on to enjoy several years of college, commissioning and arriving TBS around the time I become a Captain.

The weather is beautiful. Sunny, 70 degrees, a little breezy, belying the brutal winter training conditions this class went through in parallel to my own TBS experience in February.

“Oh look at this jackwagon,” says a crusty former Drill Instructor of mine with a smile when I say hello. He’s doing well, and will be at my TBS graduation. A second DI I see in passing will himself be an officer candidate next year.

During the graduation ceremony, the commissioning warrant is read, and I reflect on the things it mentions, the things these brand-new lieutenants swear to. Patriotism, Valor, Fidelity, and Abilities. One of those has outsized importance in comparison to the others right now. Patriotism means different things to different people; many patriots believe different things about the countries they love. Valor is largely untested until you are placed in combat; and abilities must be cultivated, and cannot truly be said to be present after ten weeks of Officer Candidate School. But fidelity—faithfulness and commitment to the Constitution, the Corps, and one’s fellow Marines—that is what OCS is trying to test in each of it’s Candidates, and that is the part that should be most present on this graduation day.

No one is perfect. But by God’s grace, I think I’m upholding my oath. And I believe the vast majority of these Marine officers will do so, too.

Bravo Company is sitting in Classroom 3 about to begin a class on something, taught by someone, for some reason, but I couldn’t care less, because I’m not happy today.

Not happy at all. In fact, I’m worried I’ve made a massive mistake.

The Marine Corps has an odd way of determining what it’s brand-new officers do. Other branches give job assignments before you even join; but I’ve been a Marine 2nd Lieutenant for close to six months now and I still don’t know what I’ll be doing. Unless you are to be a lawyer or a pilot, every other Marine is a ground contract who has to compete for their job while at The Basic School, whether it be intelligence, infantry, supply, or any other of twenty or so “MOS’s” (military occupational specialties) that are available. Some are more desirable than others. Intelligence jobs are insanely competitive; infantry is usually fairly competitive; logistics or communications, less so.

What shakes this process up is that the Marine Corps doesn’t assign these jobs sequentially to each person in the class based on their overall graded standing, as you would imagine. Instead, after removing the pilots and lawyers, they split each class into thirds, and treat those as separate groups, assigning down the line from the top of each group in turn. If there are 100 people in a company, then it would not go 1-2-3-4-5-6, it would go 1-33-66-2-34-67, and so on. This is so that the quality of the officers is spread out throughout the various parts of the Marine Corops, rather than concentrating the best in intelligence jobs, for instance, and the worst in combat support jobs.

Adding even more to the murkiness is that the staff have manual control over this process. If someone gets slotted into something they aren’t suited for (for example, a poor physical performer getting put into infantry,) they will put them somewhere else. And if someone somehow gets a job way down on their preference list, the staff will bump someone else from a slot and try to even things out.

All of this makes for nervous speculation regarding the MOS preference list we just turned in, and attempts to game the system by putting undesirable MOS’s way down the list, so you don’t get “drafted.”

And that’s where I am worried I went wrong, because I put a high-density “undesirable” MOS, 0602 Communications Officer, at #4.

Now, communications isn’t all that undesirable to me, which is why it’s at #4. It seems like a very interesting opportunity, as communications officers can be both a battalion staff officer and command some of the largest platoons in the Marine Corps at the same time, giving a very unique opportunity to constantly interface with senior officers while leading a large group of enlisted Marines. I find radios and the challenges posed to battlefield communications by enemy maneuver, emissions control, and weather to be pretty interesting. It can also lead to extremely good job prospects outside of the Marine Corps.

But, its my #4 pick, not #1, or #2, or #3. I would much rather be an infantry or artillery officer. And it would sting very badly to find out that I got drafted for comms, even if I was qualified for combat arms and there were openings, just because I ranked it higher than some of my peers did. “A comms officer that could have been an infantry officer makes the world go round,” said one Captain to me last week, but I don’t want to be the “0602 who was a wannabe 0302.”

To make matters worse, I made the mistake of sharing some of these concerns with my fellow Marines, who (if good-natured-ly) promptly began mocking me for my “mistake,” and I let it get to me.

All of these things are floating in my mind as I sit there, four rows back and to the left, mildly pissed off and stewing about the possibility of going to the desert of Twnetynine Palms for six months of radio school while my friends get to take eight weeks off this summer and then go to the Infantry Officer School.

I’ve got five minutes. On a whim I get up, go to the front of the classroom, and talk to our student platoon commander.

“Is there any possibility at all I can change my MOS preferences?”

“To what?”

“I want to drop comms and maybe a couple other things down.”

“You have sixty seconds.” He hands me the platoon’s MOS list, which has been signed by everyone but hasn’t yet been turned in to our SPC.

As he does so it occurs to me that my fate, and the fate of my future Marines, depends on the choice I make now.

I scan the list. “Drop comms and military police to #10 and #11, respectively, and shift everything else to the left—”

I pause. Time slows down for a half-second as I realize—

No.

I’d be a really good Comm-O. If the Marine Corps doesn’t let me be an infantry or artillery officer, that’s the job I want. I don’t actually want anything else to be #4.

On impulse I shove the list back in his hands, with a strange feeling akin to grateful anger towards the Marine Corps and myself. All the unhappiness is gone and replaced with amused detachment.

“Actually screw it. You know what, leave it as it is. Thanks for being willing to change it but I’m gonna let God decide.”

After class, I see him go over to our SPC, signed list in hand. A list that’s honest.

“The lot is cast into the lap; but the disposing thereof is from the Lord.”

There is nothing as enjoyable to me as an evening run.

This is true even when it’s a humid spring or summer night—perhaps especially so.

Three miles out to the FBI Academy gate, and three miles back. I slow to a walk when I arrive back on Camp Barrett. The stars are out, and it’s a night where the frogs and crickets compete for “loudest animal” aboard MCB Quantico, and I’ve got my headphones in, playing “Coyotes” by the band Public Library Commute. It’s a good night to spend some time in prayer (that’s every night, actually) and I do so, walking around LZ-7 for a half hour.

Things aren’t so bad.

They’re pretty good, actually.

The end is in sight.

Seven weeks from now, the TBS program of instruction will be complete; I’ll know what job I’ll be doing for the next few years, and where and when I’ll head off for further training. We’ll have fought WARFEX and destroyed Bravo Group.

Not time to slow down or give up. Time to keep pushing.

Its going to be a good Spring.

Thanks for reading. Here’s some music for you on the 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