By Mark Boatwright
John Phillips was what lifers in the Marine Corps refer to as a Shit Bird. John wasn’t especially mean, lazy, or disrespectful. He was good at his job, a radar operator in the Missile Battalion. What he was not good at was being gung-ho. He was not the baby-faced killer that the higher-ups wanted him to be. They had trained him to kill, shipped him to Vietnam, and assigned him to stare at a radar screen. He was watching for enemy planes that had no chance in hell of reaching Chu Lai. Although bored, he considered himself lucky. Leaches, jungle rot, and firefights were not primary elements in his job description. He would do his job and do his time, 237 days and a wakeup, and then be gone,
Phillips sat, leaning back in a canvas folding chair in front of his hooch. He wore cut-off pants and enjoyed the glorious sunshine. He’d spent the past ten hours in a blacked-out radar bunker. If he looked east, he would see the South China Sea and headquarters. Running westward up the hill, two ascending rows of hooch’s. At the top, past him, was the mess hall. The climb was steep, and he was glad he was only two doors down. If he’d been watching, he’d have seen the Sergeant Major ascending the hill toward the mess hall.
Sergeant Majors, at least in the Marine Corps, are a breed apart from other mortals. They are the ‘generals’ of the enlisted ranks. Although even boot Lieutenants outrank them, they take shit from no one. And they run the whole fucking circus. Even generals stop talking and listen when they speak. Sergeant Major Jackson was a massive man. He was a six-three, two hundred-twenty-pound Black Adonis. He wore a pristine starched utility uniform and polished boots that all but gleamed in the sun.
As the Sergeant Major reached Phillips, he stopped and looked down upon the sight before him. “Corporal Phillips, what is your first name?”
Phillips looked up and thought, shit, ‘the biggest lifer in the compound. With a nervous smile, he said, “Ah, John, Sergeant Major. My first name’s John.”
The Sergeant Major seemed to roll the name around in his mind for a few seconds and then said, “Well, fuck you, John.”
With that, Jackson turned and proceeded up the hill to the mess hall.
Phillips was dumbstruck by the brief exchange. The Sergeant Major had actually told him to fuck off. As if he, a lowly Corporal, were a real human being and worth the time and energy to curse. He sat in his chair and pondered the encounter and what the hell it might mean. Time passed. Phillips saw Jackson leave the mess hall and proceed back down the hill toward him.
When the towering man reached his doorstep, Phillips raised his head. “Ah, Sergeant Major, what’s your first name?”
Lincoln paused, looked down, and smiled. “Well, John, my first name is Sergeant Major,” and proceeded down the hill.
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Mark Boatwright is a Marine Corps veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He is a native of southeastern Wisconsin, a retired grant writer previously working in the Health and Human Services genre, and enjoys reading, writing, hunting, fishing, the great inland sea, and virtually anything outdoors.