Hardcore Hunter Four -novel- [section 1] (please provide feedback)

Authors Note

My soul has been tainted with death. The purity of youth may become seeded with the desire of a life-changing experience. This corrupts boys with the romantic thought of achieving unfaltering dignity. Our self-image defines us as adults and is formed during our impressionable second decade of life. Blinded by ambition, independence, and the nobility of patriotism—a soldier emerges.

Unaware of the true gravity of his decisions, he embarks.

Side by side with his brothers in arms, these boys become men.

Freedom is paved with sacrifice, and sometimes that sacrifice is too much to bear.

My brother, the term we call each other of equal rank in the United States Marine Corps. It is a special comradery shared only by those who experience the same hardships under the same authority figures. These hardships invoke a level of emotional, mental, and physical stress endured through the crucible of combat, which only my brothers can truly understand. We train under the stars or sun together every day of our lives. Hand to hand combat, precision tactical responses to enemy contact, marksmanship, and the most unpleasant of all SERE school (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape). I say that’s the worst assuming you don’t like getting punched in the face; drop kicked in the chest, and nearly starved, on top of freezing your ass off at night. The men I call my brothers are all vehicle commanders like myself, as well as fire team leaders; together we called ourselves Hunter Four. There’s Boroptsak “Sack,” Lehmar, Toelbel “belly,” and myself Pittinger. A vehicle commander is in charge of tactical maneuvers that his vehicle must do in combat, and direct the Marines under him within the vehicle.

            The training a Marine endures is deep rooted through muscle memory. Muscle memory that dates back to boot camp, where you polished your first boot, shot your first M-16, and got your first hazing. From the moment a Marine steps on those yellow footprints when he gets off the bus at boot camp, his deconstruction begins. The Drill Instructors are in your face screaming for three months long. They break you down to build you up in their image.

 I was never a great runner. I was a whopping 5’6” guy from Maryland that was all torso and no legs. I had a soft voice and lacked all qualities of a leader. The greatest redeeming quality I had was heart, I gave it my all every time. The Drill Instructors saw this, and nearly foamed at the mouth to dig into me. The first Sunday came around and all of the recruits were getting ready for church. I had never been a religious type, but the idea of getting away from the Drill Instructors was extremely appealing. Everyone left but me, because I wasn’t going to start going to church now after all these years. I also wanted to see if the Drill Instructors would go to church too, allowing some time to relax for myself in the barracks. The Drill Instructors all left except one. Staff Sargent Hoake stayed upon my decision to stay, and looked at me like he wanted to destroy me. He patiently waited until everyone was out of the barracks to personally put my life through hell. Staff Sargent Hoake was our “heavy” (the Drill Instructor with the most attitude) and a little man with the heart of a lion. He was an “Iron man” for the past 6 years. To get that status, you have to exceed all of the requirements for a perfect PFT (Physical Fitness Test) by a large margin. As soon as everyone left he smiled and said

“Pittinger, welcome to my world, THING!” his voice loud and vibrant, from years of constant screaming.

His voice was damaged for so long from being a Drill Instructor that it must have healed as this raspy robotic tone that could never be mistaken. He ordered me to get on his pull-up bar and give him 20 pull-ups. When I failed to give him a whole 20 he would take it personally, and make me do sit-ups until I thought I could do more pull-ups. When I failed to give him 20 again, I would have to do pushups until I thought I could do more pull-ups. This cycle continued for 2 hours until the platoon came back from church. From that day forward Staff Sargent Hoake always found a way to keep me at the barracks on Sundays usually by making me clean something until it was time to leave and I still had to finish cleaning. The anger it created in me was enormous, and many times I almost snapped on him, but I always found clarity amidst my anger at some point, and told myself that it was all part of the transformation. I increasingly got much stronger physically and mentally tolerant. I looked up to that Marine that put my life through hell and thank him now for pushing me beyond my limits, letting me see how far I can truly push my body before it gives out. I learned from him that the mind wants to give out much faster then the body does, as he liked to say, “mind over matter. If you don’t mind, then the pain doesn’t matter.” On my last day of boot camp while wearing my dress uniform for graduation Staff Sargent Hoake looked at me and nodded as if approving of my graduation. I smirked with pride, as that was the best compliment I had ever received before. The platoon stood at attention silently in the barracks in front of our bunks, smelling pungently of Aqua Velva after-shave as it is issued to all of the recruits. Staff Sargent Hoake yelled

“PITTINGER! YOU THINK YOU CAN SMILE AT ME? YOU THINK IM PRETTY? YOU WANNA KISS ME OR SOMEHING RECRUIT?”

I struggled not to laugh.

“EVERYONE! GET IN MY PIT!”

The pit was the big sandbox outside the barracks used for cardio, push-ups, crunches, mountain climbers, dive-bombers, you name it we did it in the pit. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but Staff Sargent Hoake had to go out with a bang by making us go to the pit in our dress uniforms right before our graduation. He would pride himself on belittling people in front of their peers, and causing group punishment for one mans wrongdoing, but that’s Staff Sargent Hoake and we loved him and his creatively sadistic ways.

The next few months were spent in the School Of Infantry (SOI) where I learned hand-to-hand combat, trained with various machine guns, and explosives. It was training that was going to be improved upon when I got to my duty station. After 2 months of infantry training I was sent to my duty station in Twenty-nine Palms California, deep in the Mojave Desert. When I arrived I noticed the disgusting smell of feces as I entered the base. And knew that the light was not very bright at the end of the tunnel, and my duty station sucked. That’s where I met my brothers at the barracks.

“What the hell smells like shit?” I asked assuming the other guys at my barracks were newbies like me.

“It’s the sewage treatment pond at the bottom of the hill,” a Huge muscle bound Marine answered.

“What’s your name?” the Goliath Marine asked.

“Pittinger. I’m a TOW gunner.”

“Cool, my names Lehmar, I’m a TOW gunner too! Looks like we will be training together” Lehmar stated with sincerity.

Later on that day I met Boroptsak, and Toelbel who were machine gunners.  Boroptsak was a lanky Marine, and looked like he was built to run. His crooked teeth, and goofy demeanor always fell victim to our jokes. Toelbel was mildly overweight, and seemed to have self-esteem issues due to the fact that he often made jokes at the expense of himself, but otherwise reminded me of my childhood friend. For the next 2 years we trained together got drunk together, got promoted together, except for Lehmar. He Picked up the rank of Sergeant and became our Team leader. A team leader is in charge of half of the platoon, approximately 15 Marines divided into 4 Fire Teams. Due to the nature of our platoon being a heavy guns platoon, we were mounted on hummers most of the time, and therefore our Fire Teams were essentially known by our vehicle name.

 Life seemed to be going according to plan with the daily 3 mile runs, daily Marine Corps Martial Arts, random tactical explosives and booby-trap training, and field operations that require spending the week in the sand out in the live fire quadrant of the base behind warrior mountain. It was September eleventh 2001 and hunter four was on a field-operation 40 miles into the desert wastelands of southern California. We had full gear and ammo to practice a live fire drill involving 50 caliber machine guns, Mark-19 automatic grenade launchers, and TOW missiles (tube launched optically tracked wire link to command guided missile system).

Lehmar was our leader at this point in our enlistment, but because we all started together we ignored the rank policies amongst our friends as long as we didn’t get caught by the officers. Everyone else feared Lehmar, due to his shear mass and his short temper with everyone but us. Sack always provoked Lehmar until he snapped and went after him, but because Sack was so fast, Lehmar couldn’t ever catch him, and it’s a good thing he never did. Belly and I were not much better, we would antagonized each other with “peanut gallery” comments to egg on the situation, and watch those two go at it while we took pictures and laughed.

            “Hey Belly,” I said while setting up my sleeping system next to my vehicle. “Did you bring any cards?”

“You damn right I did,” Belly replied promptly as if excited to settle in and play.

“Lets get Sack and Lehmar for some spades” I suggested. As I approached Lehmar I noticed he was on the radio talking to command back at base. Lehmar was our sergeant and handled the radio when it came to communicating with headquarters. I noticed Lehmar looked troubled and I take pride in being nosey. I just stood there next to his vehicle until he was done so I could find out what the big deal was.

“Roger that sir” Lehmar said into the radio.

“Do we have anyone that’s from New York?” Lehmar asked me still looking a bit pale.

“Yeah Ramos is from the Bronx.”

 Lehmar walked over to the line of sleeping bags that the Privates and Lance Corporals had aligned.

“I want everyone to pack their shit up we have to return to base. There has been an attack on American soil, and the world trade center in New York has been hit, along with the Pentagon.” Lehmar regretfully announced.

“Private Ramos, I understand that your from New York, and you may have people you know that could have been in the area” I said loudly so everyone could hear me and realize the weight of this news.

“Yes corporal I do, I need to make some calls to find out if my family is ok” Ramos replied calmly, to portray the professionalism we have while talking to authority.

Ramos’s eyes betrayed his professional demeanor, and everyone could see the fear and concern all over his face contrary to how he sounded. Everyone got their sleeping systems put away and I suddenly got smacked with the reality of the situation.

Holy shit! We are going to war! I gotta see my wife, I hope they don’t make me leave immediately.

Everyone got in their vehicles and returned to base as quickly as possible. Once at base we got our packing list within an hour. We had 48 hours before departure. Upon hearing this news I looked around at my brothers, as well as the men under us, and saw the fear in everyone’s eyes. We knew we had been trained well, pushed to our limits everyday, always in hopes of making it to combat. We’re warriors I thought to myself, stone cold killing machines, an elite fighting force that warrants the name devil dog. That thought brought me back to a Shakespeare quote from high school that fits this situation and boiled my blood, “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”

            I got home to my wife Melissa and told her that I had to leave. She knew immediately what I meant, and didn’t say a word. I looked her in the eye—still feeling that warrior inside, now mixed with pride, and saw her eyes well up with tears as she ran up to me and hugged me. I didn’t get much sleep that night, and I can safely assume that none of my fellow marines had slept very well either. When morning came I had to hit the tar-deck (AKA asphalt staging area) by 06:30 with my gear and rifle and be staged (ready to go). Melissa was already up making me breakfast at 4:30 indicating that she hadn’t slept very well either. She stopped me as I walked out the door with my gear, and said,

“I have something to tell you” as she smiled.

“I’m pregnant.”

I looked at her startled, and suddenly the anxiety of what tomorrow will bring disappeared.

“Are you serious?” I asked excitedly.

“Yes, I’m 8 weeks pregnant” overwhelmed with joy I grabbed her by the head and kissed her passionately.

“I love you so much!” I whispered as I bent over to kiss her stomach before I walked away, struggling to fight back the tears.