The first time I came ashore in an amtrac, it occurred to me that "hitting the beach" was not so much an informal way of describing a Marine amphibious landing as it was a literal description of events.
Our amtrac – the term is a portmanteau of "amphibious tractor" (designated more formally as a "Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Personnel, Mark 7" in the convoluted lingo of the military) – collided with the Atlantic coast of Virginia at its top waterborne speed of 8 miles per hour, emerging from the ocean like some fantastic armored brute, an organism of ugly metal angles clustered around parts that growled and clanked, belching a spoor of dark gray diesel exhaust.
The stomachs of the two dozen gyrenes in the troop compartment had barely recovered from the impact of landfall when the engines stopped whining and the vehicle rolled to a stop. We gripped our weapons tightly as we faced the door at the rear of the vehicle, waiting for it to drop. A few seconds later, our sergeant stuck his head down into our compartment and announced that an umpire had declared our craft to have suffered a direct hit, and all of us – the amtrac's crew of three, the sergeant, and all of us were now, for the purposes of the exercise, "crispy critters," to use the sergeant's words.
"Incoming fire has the right of way," say Murphy's Laws of Combat, and as I slowly exhaled a deep breath and let the tension drain from my body, the voice in my mind ad-libbed: Thank you for participating in this mock military invasion. Had this been an actual combat situation, your underwear would be scattered over a half mile of beach and you would now be standing in line at the Pearly Gates. I don't know what anyone else was thinking, but for several minutes, there was a pretty quiet bunch of leathernecks in that troop compartment.
Several weeks later, during a similar training exercise held over the weekend, our amtrac hit the beach, advanced some short distance, braked to a sudden stop, and the rear door came down with a crash. We squinted in the bright sunlight as we disembarked and ran around the sides of our 24-ton armored conveyance. The four-man fire team I was part of began to advance toward the dune line, and stopped in its tracks.
For reasons best known to the Corps Public Affairs Office, the beach was brimming with civilians pointing cameras in our direction, and one particular group of buxom young women wearing bikinis was successfully attracting the attention of the landing force by seductively wiggling various body parts and invitingly shouting "Yoo-hoo!"
"Move! Move! Move!" yelled our sergeant, looking back in our direction. "This ain't the time or the place! There's some poor bastards up ahead who are depending on you to be on their flank! Get your butts in gear!"
So we moved, paying more attention to how we looked as we passed by the girls than to where we were going, and a few moments later, a whistle blew. I looked over to see an umpire signaling to us.
"You Marines just walked into the kill zone of a machine gun located over there," said the umpire, pointing at the dunes to our front. "I'm sorry to inform you that all you fellows are KIA." We who had just been "killed in action" sat down heavily on the sand and as we did, I decided I didn't much like exercise umpires, who seemed intent on killing me off at every opportunity, for any convenient reason, good or bad.
* * *Two months later, our company was deployed for a night exercise in the middle of the North Carolina woods. I was a radioman by then, and my assignment that night was to set up a listening post several hundred yards away from the company's position and to report on any "enemy" movement in my vicinity. I set my post up in the middle of a small thicket of shrubbery, digging a deep fighting hole for myself and my radio, and settled down for what I hoped would be a quiet night, where my greatest challenge would be to stay awake.
Things were quiet until about 11 pm, when I heard what I thought were the sounds of people moving through the woods. I made a short radio report and paused to listen some more. By the time I had heard enough to confirm the presence of an opposing force, a small group of the "enemy" had paused to confer right at my thicket, kneeling in the darkness to shine a small red flashlight at a map. They were so close to me, I could have reached out from the shrubbery and touched any member of the group, though in truth I didn't dare move, or even breath heavily.
"Okay," said a calm, authoritative voice, presumably that of the officer commanding the force. "This is how I want to set up our assault."
Touch them? I wondered. How about I just do this? Through the leaves I extended my hand, which was wrapped around my radio's microphone. Then I pressed the 'Transmit' button.
The officer's briefing was short and direct. First platoon, here, along this stream bed. Second platoon, there, on the right flank. On my whistle. One-two-three, just like in the book. "Any questions?" asked the officer. Nobody said anything.
The red flashlight was snapped off and I heard the sound of the map being folded. "Right, let's do this." My hand withdrew, back behind the screen of branches and leaves, where I quietly released the 'Transmit' button.
As the "enemy" moved past me to advance on my company's position, I risked a radio call to confirm that the company was aware of the advancing enemy force. The operator at the company's command post could barely contain his laughter.
"We heard every word," said the operator, "and we're ready for 'em. And the skipper is impressed… says there's a 48-hour pass in your future, after a refresher session on standard radio procedure."
A few minutes later, I heard the sound of firing from the direction of the company's position. Despite the hour and the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, there were no umpires around, I hunkered down in my fighting hole. "Don't look conspicuous, it draws fire," say Murphy's Laws of Combat, and at this point, I didn't want anything to jeopardize an otherwise perfect exercise.
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