Page 32 - 100 Hours to Destiny

aura just resonated around these two dedicated Marines. In the gun turret of
American Hero, I observed Sgt Davis working with the 7.62mm pintle mount
machine gun, he was pulling the ammunition box off and sort of brushing
down the machine gun – just doing light maintenance. The pintle mount
belonged to Captain Pollard. It was his personal gun, despite the fact that
Captain Pollard carried a Beretta 9mm in a chest holster while commanding
the LAV-25, American Hero. In the attack, the 7.62mm Pintle mount machine
gun, capable of 1000 rounds per minute of full NATO sized rounds, was at
the Captain’s disposal. Then my gaze went to the driver’s hatch, I observed
the driver of American Hero, a Marine that trained with me in LAV school,
back in San Onofre, CA. As I watched Mitchell diligently work, cleaning his
vision ports I felt an admiration for Mitchell – after all, he was the driver for
the Company Commander. I could see him bantering back and forth, talking
smack with Sgt Davis, and laughing their asses off. Suddenly Captain Pollard
called Mitchell out of his driver's hatch, I couldn’t hear what was being
spoken, of course, they were almost 100 yards away. Mitchell came barreling
from the vehicle and ran to the Captain and popped to attention right in
front of Captain Pollard. Suddenly Rock put a knife-hand right in Mitchells’
face. I could see the mustang officer barking some expletives at Mitchell. It
doesn’t take a genius to see that Mitchell’s responding with, “Aye-Aye Sir,
Aye-Aye Sir, Aye-Aye Sir!” Suddenly Mitchell took a step back, did an about-
face in the Saudi sand and started trotting away from the Captain in a 180-
degree wide berth to return to the left side of the driver's hatch, climbed the
3-rung welded ladder, jumped back into the driver’s hatch and resumed
cleaning the vision ports. I could see him getting dogged by Sgt Davis and
Mitchell promptly returned the favor by shooting the bird at Sgt Davis and
following it up with expletives, and then…. an animated laugh followed
between the two.
I started chuckling to myself, kind of like a bumping laugh that
discombobulated my binoculars. I knew the humor of Sgt Terry Davis and
LCpl Marcus Mitchell and I could almost hear those two going at it from 100
yards away. I chose to take another look at Captain Pollard and the 1Sgt, only
to find they were both looking right at me, yet 100 yards away, both the 1Sgt
and Company Commander were both looking directly at me. Maybe the
eagle eyes of these two had a sensing, maybe they were wondering why in
the hell is that Marine standing on top of the logistics vehicle, and why is
that Marine (me) looking at the Company Commander through a pair of
binoculars?