Page 10 - Aerotech News and Review, April 20 2018

‘Gunny and Me’: One story among many
by Dennis Anderson
special to Aerotech News & Review
QUARTZ HILL—Spend 40 or so years in the news business and you learn you never really know where a story will take you.
The story that connected my life to R. Lee Ermey, the thunder-spitting vol- cano of drill field invective in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” began as a routine interview story. It is only one among thousands of stories about Ermey, but it is something like his Ma- rine Corps ode to the rifle: “There are many like it, but this one is mine.”
Ermey earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor, playing a part tailor-made for him. He actually had been a Marine Corps D.I., and the best part of Kubrick’s classic Vietnam War film emerged from Er- mey’s tirades that he imported right off “The Grinder,” that notorious death- of-hope drill field at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.
Over the years, Ermey would come to share a generous lens into the hu- man condition, life in the military, its promise and perils. In the end, he shared that lens with millions in a global audience. He became the Ma- rine Corps spirit in the flesh.
The day came nearly 18 years ago that I had first contact with this larger- than-life man. It was a sunny after- noon, and the venue for the sit-down
Photograph by Dennis Anderson
R. Lee Ermey (right) visits with a Marine Corps veteran (left) who had recently returned from Afghanistan, and Garrett Anderson at Bravery Brewery, July 4, 2013. Gunny was always generous with his time and interest in other troops.
and only if Ermey was agreeable.
It turned out Ermey was delighted at my son accompanying me out to get
the story.
My son, nearly 20 years later, wrote
his own account of this encounter, and he remembered the details down to the wooden Marine Corps plaque, the flag pole for Old Glory, and a small statue of the Virgin Mary, as well as deco- rations and ornaments along the way to the visit in Ermey’s man cave, his “War Room.”
My teenage son watched, starstruck and awestruck, as Ermey showed him a Marine Corps sabre. Marine Corps drill instructors are the only non-commissioned officers authorized to wear this edged weapon that forms a key element of the Marine Corps’ founding legend.
In addition to a display of swords and memorabilia, Ermey’s sanc- tum featured a mannequin outfitted in the dress green uniform of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman — the terrorizing D.I. of “Full Metal Jacket,” resplendent with Hartman’s awards, decorations, and stiff-brimmed campaign hat. This is the hat that civilians often mis-iden- tify as a “Smokey Bear” hat. It is not a “Smokey” hat. The hat is an homage to the Marine Corps’ earlier expedi- tionary days, when landing in a foreign land and securing it by firepower was called a “campaign.”
Ermey shared some about his hard-
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and take notes session was Ermey’s amiable ranch property in the part of Quartz Hill where they don’t pave the streets, and fight to keep it that way. The roads there are for the horses.
Sometimes my son, Garrett, would accompany me on a story. In the year 2000, when so much about life before 9/11 was simpler, Garrett pined to go out and be somewhere near the human interest feature assignment that was R.
Lee Ermey.
Universally known as “The Gunny,”
Ermey had a new venture coming up, a cable TV show titled “Mail Call.” The show, where viewers asked ques- tions about military equipment, weap- ons and subjects went on to be a great success.
In meeting Ermey, I admonished my teenage son that he was to be present only if he promised not to say a word,
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scrabble youth, how the Marine Corps kept him out of the court’s jurisdic- tion and set him on a path, and about how he was a “Hollywood Marine,” on several levels. West Coast “boot” recruits, if they succeed and graduate boot camp, are humorously referred to as “Hollywood Marines,” because of our sunny California climes — friend- lier than the sand fleas, grime and hard ground of Parris Island, S.C.
By that time, a baker’s dozen of years after “Jacket,” Ermey had made many films, would make many more, and become a TV star, too.
The interview went well. As we were walking out past the flag pole, with Old Glory and a red-and-gold Marine Corps flag lifting in the breeze, Ermey turned to my son and gave a full metal, drill field D.I. bark
“What makes the grass grow?”
My teenage son shouted back “Blood! Blood! Blood! Sir!”
“What are we here to do, ladies?”
“Kill! Kill! Kill! Sir!” my son re- sponded without hesitation.
“You’ll do alright,” Ermey said to him, chuckling. “Now, we know why we’re here.”
How was I ever to know that my son had seen “Full Metal Jacket” maybe a dozen times, and committed most of the D.I.’s rants at “Private Joker” and “Gomer Pyle” and “Snowflake” to memory? I revisited the film, and see-
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