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By First Lieutenant Neil B. Chapman, U.S. Marine Corps
Oh, yeah—didn’t you hear? Kevin Wooten died. Chopper rash. Team Spirit exercise, in Korea.”
The word had been out for some time, but I didn’t have nV names. So nothing had really happened—not to me, any- raY- Besides, the best and the brightest never die in vain, in ieri^0rn °r accidental ways- People you know are never bur- -p. *n statistics. Those numbers and writeups in the Navy ‘Ves are for people you just know a little or don’t know at ^ • But now it had happened. And now each of those num- had a face and a story, and each life had a meaning.
The Marine who told me was a college friend, like Kevin. ne Were in a fast-food place on the base, catching up on sews and gossip. Why was his revelation so obscene? It was s° Casual, dropped offhandedly between bites of his greasy- To°n burger and fries. He had thrown a name into the air ad disposed of a human being—struck him down dead, out crny memory, out of my life—the same way he would soon ast aside his burger box. The guy who told me was a friend, but for an instant I hated him.
He had killed Kevin.
What to do? Accept the news as fact, or demand that the world come to a halt, with a wounded scream—then press on with lunch, with life. That’s the way it’s done. And besides, I hadn’t seen Kevin since school, several years back.
But then the memories kicked in.
I recalled his mannerisms: swagger and a gruff professionalism. He wore the uniform of a midshipman, but he was a former enlisted Marine—my first drill instructor, years before I faced my first Marine Corps DI. He was two years senior to me in the midshipman hierarchy and light years ahead of his classmates, a man among boys trying to become men. He was bigger than life. The troops tried to humanize him, and came up with a nickname: “The Grinch,” a true extension of his soul. It was an appeal to his soft side. Livid at first, he began to tolerate the nickname, at least among his peers. We had broken through to a side of his life that had been neglected through the years, and he responded with magnanimity of spirit and humor. But he didn’t want to be just one of the boys. The Corps was not a chosen profession; it was his calling. Someday, he could be Commandant . . .
I had one more flashback in that dead-still moment. The last time 1 d seen him. I had just been commissioned and suddenly, we were peers. We shared a past and a purpose.
He was no longer Mr. Wooten or The Grinch. He was Kevin. We drank a couple of beers and talked about a girl both of us knew . . .
Suddenly, I was back in the present, in the middle of that stupid lunch. I could no longer hide grief in passive acceptance. I could feel a slow rage welling up, steadily, the harbinger of fate. 1 was in the helicopter, strapping myself into the familiar canvas bucket seat, weighed down by the familiar burden of helmet, and pack, and weapon, and ammo, and water . . . ready for the violent screenplay to continue, dreamlike .... I could see how the bodies must have looked. Then I shuddered with new, unfamiliar thoughts.
Now I was in the picture. It was my turn.
IV,
0c«dings / Naval Review 1990