He tried to persuade me to leave the Marines and join his police department. I, am, no, I was secure and happy in the Corps, if I left then I would have to become normal and get a house. Now, with my knee, I guess the cops wouldn’t take me either. Still, I have a vintage Ford Mustang, so as far as I'm concerned, that’s all I ever want.
I was now about as high as I could go, in the active list at any rate. I had been everywhere and seen stuff that would make most people shrivel up and die.
As I stood on the steps on the medical centre, I realised that it was time for me to look at my life seriously.
I’m thirty-eight, my eyesight may not be as good as it used to be, but I know that my long distance sight is fine, but I have a real problem reading in poor light. My knees are more bionic than Steve Austin.
I am qualified to kill people in about a thousand different ways, and am capable of the Recon motto, ‘adapt, improvise and overcome’. I have a working knowledge of French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Korean and even Serbo-Croat. I’m not fluent in any of them, but with a serviceable firearm in my fist, I can make anyone understand me.
I can ski on snow or water and I have completed so many parachute jumps that I gave up counting at one hundred and fifty. I have dived in most of the oceans of the world, including those I should never have been anywhere near. However, the prospect of living in the civilian world frightens the shit out of me.
Not only that, but those feelings I had suppressed for so long, were bubbling away just under the surface. While I immersed myself in my work, there was no problem, but if I spent time thinking about things, then there was a danger I would think too deeply. I was afraid of that.
I went to the parking lot and got into my baby, my twenty-five year old Ford Mustang convertible. It carried me back to my billet, while I attempted to decide where I wanted my life to go from here. Once back at the base, I parked the car and went to my quarters, where I took some more time to reflect and think. On going into the bathroom, I looked at my reflection. I was lean and mean, with a square jaw, while my shorn fair hair was turning silver at the sides. I was tanned, with my face leathery with all the outdoor living. I had crow’s feet at the sides of both eyes, from screwing my eyes up in bright sunshine.
There were scars from bullets and shrapnel all over my body, but there was still not an ounce of flab anywhere. I had looked at the civilians and found them to be a slug-like race, overweight, greedy, lazy and corrupt. I wanted no part of them.
There was one tattoo on my right forearm and it was the Globe and fouled anchor of the Marine Corps emblem. I had lived and breathed the Marines for all my adult life, so I dreaded to think of any life outside.
“First Sergeant Ryan?” A voice snagged me back to the here and now.
An orderly clerk was by my door.
“What?” I growled.
“Colonel wants to see you, First Sergeant, when convenient,” the man said.
“I’ll be over directly,” I said. The Colonel, Rick Masterton, and I went way back together. I had been his platoon Sergeant when he was a new Lieutenant, so I dragged his ass out of the shit more times than he wanted to remember. Mind you, he had dragged my ass out of shit a few times too.
The difference was that his shit had been in combat situations, while my shit was usually in some small town jail somewhere obscure, where I had got drunk and hit some local bigwig.
Ten minutes later, I walked straight his office and knocked, just to annoy the shit out of his personal clerk, who believed he was the patron saint of ass-lickers.
The Colonel called me in.
“Sir, First Sergeant Ryan reporting as ordered, sir.”
The clerk rushed in behind me, looking somewhat distressed.
“Yes, Ed, relax, take a seat,” Rick said, waving his clerk away.
I remained standing, but relaxed a little.
He smiled, as he knew I never sat in any officer’s presence.
“The doc called me and told me your medical situation. There is no dishonour in a desk job, Ed. Hell, you’ve more than done your piece for Uncle Sam,” he said.
“I don’t do desks, sir, you know that.”
“Godammit Ed, you gotta face facts. You ain’t no spring chicken no more. None of us are. I need glasses to read, I gotta watch what I eat, and it takes me all night to get round to doing what I used to do all night,” Rick said with a small smile.
“So what do you suggest, sir?” I asked.
“Hell, I don’t know, but there are several administration posts you are more than welcome to, but I know that you wouldn’t stay in an office for more than ten minutes. How do you fancy a training post? There are some vacancies coming up at Parris Island, South Carolina,” he asked.
Parris Island was the main Recruit depot for the East Coast.
“Been there sir, I got no problem with training, but I gotta do what my recruits do.”
“No, you don’t. You’ll have junior NCOs for all that shit,” he said, getting cross now.
I thought for a moment.
“A training post would do fine, sir,” I said, not exactly enthusiastically.
He stared at me, and then looked down at my file. I saw the front, First Sgt. Edward J. RYAN.
“You haven’t taken your full leave entitlement for five years,” he said. “Why not?”
“Nowhere to go, few people to see, sir,” I said.
He shook his head. Then he stood up, walked over to the window and looked out. There were pictures of his wife and two children on the side. His wife had died of cancer when we had both been in the Gulf a few years before. His kids had grown up and were living over on the West coast. He hadn’t seen either of them for a year at least. An aircraft took off and went low over the building, carrying another batch of trainees about to take their first jump.
“We’re both a couple of sad bastards,” he said, staring across the base.
“Sir, yes sir,” I replied, he was right, we were.
He smiled, turned and looked at me.
“What has happened to us, Ed? We were going to conquer the world.”
“We got old, Colonel, and the world don’t want to be conquered no more,” I answered.
Laughing shortly with little humour, he poured some scotch into two glasses, giving me one.
“I’m holding a recruit training post open for you. You can’t stay on the Jumpmaster course with that knee of yours, but there is a lot you can give to recruits at Parris Island. First, I want you to take some leave, and I mean some leave. The doc wants you to keep off from using the knee too much so I am giving you eight weeks to think about your life and your future. Hell, you might even meet a lady and want to become a real human for God’s sake.”
“With respect sir, the only humans I know exist in the corps, sir.”
“Ed, just get the hell out, go and let your hair down and have some fun. I’ve a friend who arranges cruises in the Caribbean, do you want for me to give him a call?” He asked.
“Does it involve drugs or guns, sir?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“Then I’ll pass, if you don’t mind,” I said, with a grin.
He sat down again.
“Do you remember Mickey Flynn?” he asked.
“Yeah, he was Sergeant Major a few years back, what about him?”
“Well, he has a boat now, and does the odd commercial deal for scientific parties in and around the Caribbean and South America, and before you ask, it is all legit.
“He can always do with help, as he often has to arrange for guides and other specialists to help the parties when they reach their destinations. They are often from universities, so are not exactly rolling in bucks. I can call him and you could meet, to see whether there would be a job for you to do. What do you say?” he asked.