It was 1983 when I was stationed in 29 Palms, California, which is the air-ground combat center for the U.S Marine Corps located deep in the Mojave desert. I was serving my last year of a 3-year term where I had spent my first two years as a field grunt soldier and now attending a training class as a top-secret operator for the Central Communications division. After I was finished with the training, I was to be assigned to Lebanon in Beirut to establish a Comm. center during peacekeeping time with the other multinational forces like France, Italy and the U.K., but on Oct. 23, a suicide bomber drove a pick-up truck filled with explosives and purposely crashed into a Marine barrack killing 220 U.S Marine soldiers and 21other military personnel, which automatically ended my visiting reservation there. Around the same time, another bomber crashed into a French military base and killed approximately 58 French paratroopers. It was later revealed that the Hezbollah, a militant political group, were to be blamed for the attacks at the direction of the Iranian government and a U.S district judge ordered the country of Iran to pay approximately $2.65 billion dollars to the survivors and family members of the deceased Marines.
I remembered how everything in the military realm quickly shifted into a transition from a jungle warfare mindset to the abrupt philosophy of desert combat training, which physically changed every aspect of military ingenuity, up to the uniforms we wore, to blend-in with the Saudi-desert scenario and I remembered when I walked out of Comm. class for a quick break and I saw a small squadron running in formation around the military base. They wore regular white-t-shirts and camouflage pants with black military boots, but what specially caught my attention was the way they were running in a forward/slanted position without moving their arms from their sides. I actually found their running technique to be quite amusing and even cracked a few jokes about them to my fellow comrades as they ran past us around the camp, which was a everyday routine. I later discovered that this small peculiar group were the Marine Corps Reconnaissance Rangers, a specialized military group, whose major duties included amphibious reconnaissance, deep ground reconnaissance, battle space shaping and limited scale raids in support of the Marine Expeditionary Force and other Marine related task-force duties
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The Recon unit needed some desert training, which explained their presence here, but at the same time, the entire base was emptied out because the whole division had left on a major military field exercise with the exception of us comm. guys because our MOS usually kept us close to home base, but there was a sudden shortage of field radio operators, which was required in the recon’s training exercise..and this..of course... is where I came into the picture. Before I knew it, I found myself staring at the sandy dunes of the Mojave desert instead of the cozy comforts of my cushioned leather chair at the blue screen of my computer monitor because I was forcibly nominated as the unit’s new field radio man, who didn’t even have a clue how to operate one. So I crammed up for the next three days on the operating procedures of a portable field radio before I began my recon assignment and now here I am as a non-volunteer member of a very specialized elite military unit, whose life expectancy as a field-radio operator during actual combat was predicted to last approximately ...well...let’s just say..uhh... a whole 6 minutes! Yeah...my point exactly!
But I wasn’t too worried, after all, I was in great shape at the time...running 5 miles a day, doing 300-500 pushups every night (that’s in sets), playing racquetball and weight-lifting three times a week, so I was good to go...or so I thought. It was extra hot and humid on my first day and I only took what was necessary besides the radio and we humped (walked) for several miles without any problems,in fact, I was still quite refreshed. “This is not so bad” I thought, but then they started running...the recon way...with the slanted position and their arms to the side. “Oh no!” I thought to myself, “ I ain’t running like that...especially after making fun of them all this time. What would the guys think of me if they saw me!” So I started jogging like a normal person...you know...like Jesse Owens would...and I kept up for awhile, but 10 miles later...we were still damm running and I began to get a little winded, but my personal pride wouldn’t allowed me to quit and forced me to go on even though the gap between me and the rest of the rangers were becoming wider and wider until...they disappeared altogether and then...I was lost! Everything around me looked the same...from East to West, North to South...it was nothing, but frickin sand everywhere and I tried to follow their shoe prints, but they instantly disappeared with the wind. So there I stood for hours with my finger up my ass feeling doomed and looking out for the buzzards when I finally heard someone yelling from a distance, “Hey dumbass what’s taking you!’” I wiped the sweat off my brow and gazed through the desert’s horizontal heatwaves to see one of recon guys standing on top of a large sanding hill and by the time I reached him I must of been called every bad word that existed in the world dictionary of nastyville, in fact, til this day I’ve been still trying to figure out who my mother really is and that’s not including what the other recon soldiers later told me when we finally caught up with them.
For a week they gave me a hard time because I kept falling behind everytime we conducted a drill then finally I gave in and found out the reason why they ran in a peculiar manner and that was because they were conserving energy by not using their arms and the forward motion of their body was for less wind resistance, which explained why they could run for miles without getting tired, so there I go running like that and looking silly and you know what? It worked! As time went on, I ran further and longer without getting winded using this silly-ass technique and we even ex-changed positions in the squad where I would be the scout one day, heavy equipment the next day, squad leader the third day and so on while every recon ranger learned the operating procedures of the field radio. After a few months, we got to be good buddies where they showed me their combat moves and tactics and even how to pass the recon’s specialized training at their boot camp because I had decided to join their elite group. (I was later sent to Fresno’s 4th LAMM battalion before I had a chance to enlist with them).
After we came back to base everybody returned from their major field exercise and I went back to class to resume my comm. training. One day during break, we saw the rangers running across the camp and my fellow comrades looked at me to see what joke I was going to come up with about them though nothing came out of my mouth, but a smile. “Dude...what’s up...you’re not saying anything.” said a student. “Naww..not this time,” I replied, “You never know...you might need their help some day.”
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