Shadows at War

CHAPTER ONEApril 2004 Young Scott Briggs thought he went unnoticed his first full day of boot camp as the drill instructors frantically ran back and forth screaming at the top of their lungs in order to herd the freshly shaven gaggle of boys into something that resembled a military formation. However, the fine eyes of his Marine Corps drill instructors did not miss the fact that Scott was far from ordinary as he stood with his face to the blistering South Carolina sun. His skin was no stranger to its punishing rays. It was dark, and the exposed patches not covered by his brand-new camouflage utility uniform shimmered with a fine glaze of sweat. He stood just shy of five foot nine and never rested flat on his heels. To do so would keep him from reacting quickly if the need arose. His extraordinary balance and stance was placed in him by his heritage. His father and mother and their father and mother before them, all walked the decks and floorboards of small boats tossed about by the movement of wave and wind that showed no mercy to anyone caught flat-footed and unprepared. His forearms were uncommonly thick and looked chiseled out of stone. His upper thighs split into two perfect bundles of muscle that flexed independently of one another depending on how much weight he burdened them with. His muscles were the product of a working man’s life, not pumping iron under the fluorescent lights of a weight room. They came from leaning over the gunnels of small boats and hand pulling the burdened lines of full crab pots. These crab pots were not only full of blue crab but also the added overgrowth of barnacles. With each bow of his back as he heaved and pulled, his shoulders had grown wider and his waistline tighter. On his third night in the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, South Carolina, nineteen-year-old Scott Briggs felt he wasn’t living up to his potential. He felt average in height and build compared to the other recruits in his platoon, but he was passionate about being a good Marine. Each step he had made in the last three days kept running through his mind, and he couldn’t sleep. He kept tossing and turning until his full bladder demanded attention. He carefully made his way through the silent barracks to the head. Stepping up to the urinal, he thought he heard something and stood quietly for a few moments, listening. He heard it again. It sounded like a mournful prayer coming from the shower room. With only moonlight shining through the large glass windows void of any shutter or shade, Briggs carefully followed the sound. A recruit sat on the tile floor, the small blade of a Bic razor lying next to him in a growing pool of blood. The sobbing boy leaned against the far corner of the shower room holding a rosary in his hands, mumbling, “Please forgive me, Father, please . . .” Before Briggs could comprehend what was happening, he instinctively pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it around the boy’s gashed wrists to stop the rapid flow of blood while yelling for the fire watch to wake the drill instructor on duty. An enormous amount of blood had pooled on the floor. Briggs had never seen so much blood, not even during his hunting adventures in the woods of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He took a deep breath, tightly secured his T-shirt around the sobbing recruit’s wrists, and held them elevated above the boy’s head. The senior drill instructor, Staff Sergeant K. L. Sholtz, rounded the corner. He flipped on the light switch, flooding the large room with bright light that reflected off the gleaming tiles and stainless steel surfaces. He quickly ordered the trailing fire watch to call for an ambulance. Sholtz stopped just short of the pool of blood that Briggs was kneeling in and carefully leaned over to check the boy’s pulse at his neck. “He still has a strong pulse. Briggs, you’ve done a fine job of stopping the bleeding. How long has he been like this?” Briggs was surprised that his senior remembered his name and was astounded at Sholtz’s calm and quiet demeanor. He is human, after all, Briggs thought. Not spitting out orders or making me feel like the dirt under his boots, the way he normally does. He’s just . . . talking to me. Briggs considered the delicacy of that, the maturity it took for his senior to let go of the persona he needed for his job and calmly interact with him. The incident would stay with him for a long time. “I’m not sure, sir. I’ve been here less than twenty seconds, sir,” Briggs responded in a low voice. “You’re doing fine. Keep everything just like you have it, okay? The corpsman will be here shortly, and they will take over.” Sholtz lightly placed his hand on Briggs’s shoulder, then knelt and looked the injured recruit in the eye. “What’s your name, son?” The recruit responded with a fit of tears. Sholtz quickly said, “Quiet now, it’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. Don’t try to get up. You just stay still and let Briggs here take care of you.” The recruit nodded and started to shiver as he sobbed. Sholtz had one more cautious question. “Why would you do such a thing, son?” The recruit’s words came pouring out amidst his sobs. “Because I can’t make it. I want to go home. I just can’t do it.” He gulped in air. “It’s just too hard,” he stuttered. “But if I don’t finish boot camp, I’ll deeply disappoint my father, and I just can’t do that to him. I’d rather die.” The boy lapsed into uncontrollable sobbing as Briggs and his senior remained quietly by his side. Briggs could not wrap his mind around the thought of suicide. It had never entered his thoughts, even when times were as bad as he thought they’d ever get. And he couldn’t fathom why suicide would be better than disappointing someone, especially his father. His father had died when he was fourteen. Briggs was not perfect as a kid, and he occasionally earned what his father called a “butt whippin’,” but it was always brief and with a light hand. Never in his life had he heard a harsh word from him. Mostly his father told him he was proud of him. His father never missed an opportunity to congratulate him on the simplest job, even if it could have been done better. Briggs knew his father had just wanted him to learn and grow and prosper. They’d spent hours talking about life as they pulled crab pots or ran fishing nets in the early mornings in the tangled, shallow marshes of the Outer Banks. They were buddies and friends and talked about everything, even grown-up things—and that, more than anything, had made Briggs feel like a man, and made him the man he would become. Looking at the young recruit, Briggs thought about how the boy’s father would feel if he had died and the pain it would bring his family. Briggs himself had stood on the other side of death when his father passed and had mourned inconsolably when his father was buried. Three corpsman arrived in an ambulance and quickly loaded the recruit onto a stretcher before racing away. The red-and-blue lights flashed through the windows. The senior drill instructor ordered the fire watch to get a hose and rinse out the shower before they turned out the lights. Then he turned to Briggs, told him he’d done a fine job and to clean up and hit the rack. The next day, Briggs was given a new position as the squad leader of the fourth squad in his platoon of a hundred. He surprised himself at how easily he performed in a position of leadership. It was as if all the little things he’d learned in life finally fell into place. When he instructed his fellow recruits to follow the orders that were passed down to him from his drill instructors, he did it with a caring and considerate command. His fellow recruits did not think of him as bossy or insensitive and performed for him with respect. Squad leader was a position that the majority of the mixed bag of young men—still pimple-faced and gangly—were far from prepared for. They flinched at the intensity, the anticipation of what their drill instructors would order. Survival in this new world called boot camp was the first order of business for the average recruit, not leadership or helping someone who was falling behind. The platoon began with a hundred recruits. Attrition would dwindle the numbers to around seventy by graduation day.