Friday, June 20, 2003

Warrior Poets: The U.S. Marine Corps. isn't known for their command of English verse:

Person has a squarish head and blue eyes so wide apart his Marine buddies call him Hammerhead or Goldfish. He's from Nevada, Missouri, a small town where "NASCAR is sort of like a state religion." He speaks with an accent that's not quite Southern, just rural, and he was proudly raised working-poor by his mother. "We lived in a trailer for a few years on my grandpa's farm, and I'd get one pair of shoes a year from Wal-Mart." Person was a pudgy kid in high school who didn't play sports, was on the debate team and played any musical instrument -- from guitar to saxophone to piano -- he could get his hands on.

Becoming a Marine was a 180-degree turn for him. "I'd planned to go to Vanderbilt on a scholarship and study philosophy," he says. "But I had an epiphany one day. I wanted to do my life for a while, rather than think it." It often seems like the driving force behind this formerly pudgy, nonathletic kid's decision to enter the Corps and to join one of its most elite, macho units was so he could mock it, and everything around him. A few days before moving out of its desert camp in Kuwait to begin the invasion, his unit was handed letters sent by schoolchildren back home. Person opened one from a girl who wrote that she was praying for peace. "Hey, little tyke," Person shouted. "What does this say on my shirt? 'U.S. Marine!' I wasn't born on some hippie-faggot commune. I'm a death-dealing killer. In my free time I do push-ups until my knuckles bleed. Then I sharpen my knife."

Read the Rolling Stone article of a Marine Recon assignment here.
posted by HZA | 9:40 AM | email | archive