1 Recon 'Pain is beautiful and extreme pain is extremely beautiful.' I was beginning to have my doubts about that. The US Marine sergeant, who assured us of this fact, sprinted effortlessly beside us. A dozen young Marines, who had just landed in Okinawa and volunteered for Recon training, were trying desperately to keep up with this loping gazelle of a man as he darted down narrow dirt tracks that took us over hill after hill after excruciating hill. Several recruits had already quit or collapsed in a pool of vomit. Despite three months of hard conditioning at boot camp and another month of hauling ass at Advanced Infantry Training at Camp Pendleton, California, this physical training was off the charts. Hours earlier, I had stepped off a plane at Kadena Air Base outside Okinawa after a twenty-four-hour flight from California via Alaska and Tokyo. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I wasn't supposed to be in the Marines. I wanted to be a 'Green Beret' like my cousin Ken Crawley, who had spent seven years in that outfit. When I signed up at a US Army recruiting station in Chicago, the contract certified that, after basic training, I would be given an opportunity to attend Jump School, Ranger School and the Special Forces Qualification Course or 'Q-Course'. There was no guarantee I would make it through this training, of course. Most didn't. But they would permit me to try. However, while I had obtained the guarantee for assignment to Airborne, Ranger and Special Forces schools at the recruiting station, I had not yet signed the final enlistment papers when fate intervened. I had originally flown to America in April 1975 from Ireland, where I had been living for the four previous years. I would turn eighteen in May and could then enlist in the military. After a stint with the Green Berets, I planned to return home and join the Irish Republican Army (IRA). No one sent me or encouraged me in this endeavour. I thought that one up all by myself. While in Chicago, I stayed with my Aunt Alice and Uncle Mike. Mike Cahill was my mother's uncle. He had emigrated to America from County Kerry at sixteen years of age and worked for the gas company his entire life. Aunt Alice, of German-Dutch origin, was from a farm near Pontiac, Illinois. She was a lovely woman and our family adored her. The couple had no children and welcomed me in while I got sorted out for enlistment. Uncle Mike was drafted into the US Navy during the Second World War. He fought in the Pacific theatre. He didn't talk about it much, but I remember the astonishment with which he spoke of watching Japanese kamikaze pilots slamming into American warships. Mike manned a 40-millimetre Bofors anti-aircraft gun on a troop transport carrying Marines into battle. He was at Saipan and Peleliu. Mike had a reverence for the Marines, and his experiences with them engendered a lasting affection and respect for Leathernecks. He told me if I wanted to join the military, if I really wanted to do it right and learn from the best, the Marines were my only option. Partly out of curiosity and partly to keep Mike happy, I went to see a Marine recruiter. I told the recruiter that, although I thought the Marines were good, I wanted to go for Special Forces and the Marines had no such unit. 'Young man,' he assured me, 'we have the best Special Forces of all. The elite of the elite. The cream of the Corps - Marine Recon.' 'Never heard of it.' 'No shit. Recon doesn't flaunt itself like the Green Berets or Navy SEALS. It keeps a low profile. You won't see Recon chasing after writers and Hollywood producers to glamorise it. Being a Marine is enough for them. They don't want to be portrayed as better than their fellow Marines in the infantry. These guys are quiet professionals who prefer to remain in the shadows. "Swift, Silent, Deadly" is their motto. They only accept the best.' That sounded interesting and challenging. 'What kind of stuff do they do?' 'Recon parachute out of planes behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and carry out ambushes and raids. You could find yourself being shot out of a submarine torpedo tube to swim to some hostile beach to carry out an amphibious reconnaissance or to conduct a maritime infiltration. They get the toughest, most challenging and dangerous missions in the Marine Corps.' The recruiter could see he was pushing the right buttons. My soon-to-be-eighteen-year-old head filled with visions of swashbuckling audacity and derring-do. The recruiter leaned forward in his chair, as if sharing a secret he dare not breathe to another soul: 'The only thing is, to volunteer for Recon, you gotta carry your balls in a wheelbarrow.' That clinched it. I asked to see the guarantee I would be sent to Recon training after boot camp. A contract similar to what the army was willing to offer me. 'Uh, we don't do that,' said the recruiter. 'We only guarantee you infantry. Once you're a Grunt, you volunteer for Recon at that point.' 'But what if ...?' The recruiter raised his hand to cut off the anticipated question. 'Recon is always looking for volunteers. Believe me, you'll have no problem being accepted for Recon training. Whether you make it or not is entirely up to you.' The next day the Marine drove me over to the army recruiting office to pick up my papers. The soldier in the office had been expecting me to sign on the dotted line. Like all recruiters, he had a quota to reach every month. He was livid. 'What are you, a fucking idiot?' the soldier asked, answering his own question at the same time. I caught a glimpse of the Marine recruiter smirking beside me. 'These jarheads won't guarantee you a fucking thing. Recon? You gotta be shittin' me! You'll end up in the cookhouse scrubbing out garbage cans with a toothbrush.' The next day I informed my cousin Ken I had joined the Marines. 'What are you, a fucking idiot?' I presumed that was a popular question in the army. 'The Marines will brainwash you, John. Their only tactic is to fix bayonets and hey diddle diddle straight up the middle. They haven't the sense to come in out of the rain. I think you fucked up.' I think I fucked up, I thought as the Recon instructor put us through a blistering pace. I had watched him perform thirty pull-ups back at camp. Perfect pull-ups. Hands facing out on the bar and coming to a dead hang at the bottom of each repetition. No bent elbows with this guy. He wasn't jacked up and muscular like a weightlifter. He was lean and hard as nails. His was all 'go' muscle, not 'show' muscle. Tall, handsome and quietly spoken, he did not spit fire and venom like the foaming-at-the-mouth drill instructors in boot camp. He politely asked you to perform a task. Either you could or you couldn't. Depending on your performance, you stayed for further training with Recon or were returned to an infantry unit. We were taking part in what was known as the Recon Indoctrination Program or RIP school. I had never heard of it and didn't know what to expect. Recon was the only unit in the Marine Corps that allowed you to quit at any time, and that carried its own psychological burden. Knowing you could leave simply by asking only added to the mental pressure and stress. Technically Recon wasn't Special Forces but special operations capable. The Marines preferred to keep Recon assets within the Marine Corps and did not want to share them with other branches of the service. Therefore, they wouldn't officially join the Special Forces community in the US military command structure until 2006, when a contingent of mostly Recon Marines was renamed Marine Special Operations Command or MARSOC. MARSOC is now an integral part of the Joint Special Operations Command. In my time, just after the end of the Vietnam War, there were two types of Recon: Battalion Recon and Force Recon. The training was similar, and Marines would transfer between Battalion and Force regularly. Force Recon, however, was considered the more elite branch, with missions that took them deeper behind enemy lines than Battalion Recon. Force Recon had been disbanded in the 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions, leaving only the 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Later, I would volunteer for the only Recon that existed in the 3rd Marine Division, the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion based at a small camp called Onna Point on the western shore of Okinawa. About halfway through that boot camp at San Diego, we got a new drill instructor. He wore jump wings. I presumed he was ex-Recon, though I later learned this was not the case. I worked up the courage to approach him in the squad bay. 'Sir, Private Crawley, platoon 2059, requests permission to speak to Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Smith, sir.' 'Speak, freak.' 'Sir, the private was wondering how does the private volunteer for Recon, sir?' A recruit could only refer to himself as 'the private'. Pronouns such I, me or you were strictly reserved for human beings. The drill instructor was apoplectic. 'You fuckin' scumbag! You haven't even made it through boot camp, which you won't, and you want to get into Recon? It takes balls to jump out of an airplane, and you haven't got any. You got that, maggot?' 'Sir, yes, sir!' 'Get on your face and start pushing California further west!' 'Sir, aye, aye, sir!' Performing push-ups at his feet, I realised I would have to come up with a Plan B. After that incident, the drill instructors began calling me Ricky Recon. Whenever they wanted me for something, they would call out derisively, 'Ricky Recon, front and centre!' Because of my blunder in enquiring about Recon, I was made a 'House Mouse'. A House Mouse was a recruit tasked with cleaning out the drill instructors' quarters at the top of the squad bay. There were three 'House Mouses'. 'House Mouse! Why are there ghost turds under my rack?' The Marines use naval terms for everything. A bunk is a rack. A wall is a bulkhead. The floor is the deck. A rifle is never a gun. Ghost turds are small balls of dust or fluff on the heavily waxed and buffed floor. 'Sir, the private does not know, sir!' 'Get on your face, maggot!' I was promoted to King Rat, which put me in charge of the House Mouses. This was a responsibility I could have done without. Attracting the attention of drill instructors at Marine Corps boot camp is never a good idea. One day a Puerto Rican recruit named Hernandez approached the drill instructors to request an emergency phone call. Phone calls and visits were not permitted in boot camp. The only exception was in the event of the death of a close family member. 'Somebody die, Private?' 'Sir, no, sir. The private got a letter from his wife that she wants a divorce, and the private needs to phone her, sir.' We could all hear the conversation. I was amazed that such a young kid was married. The drill instructors ordered everyone to form a circle in the middle of the squad bay. The senior drill instructor opened an olive-green sea bag or duffle bag, the kind used to house and transport most of a Marine's personal belongings. He grabbed Hernandez by the back of the neck and shoved his head into the bag. 'You see a wife in there, cum bubble?' 'Sir, no, sir!' 'Everything you need is in that bag. If the Marine Corps thought you needed a wife, you'd have been issued with one.' 'Sir, yes, sir.' 'Disappear, maggot!' 'Sir, aye, aye, sir.' Another reminder, if one were needed, that if you were looking for sympathy in the Marines, you could always find it in the dictionary somewhere between shit and syphilis. Excerpted from The Yank: The True Story of a Former US Marine in the Irish Republican Army by John Crawley All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
