I was laying there in a wonderful and so comfortably soft bed. The sheets felt so smooth and smelled so good. I was thinking about so long ago when I was a little boy and my mother would tuck me into my bed. The bed felt like this and smelled like this. It was what I liked to think about when I wanted to feel free. It was what I always wanted to think about when I wanted to forget about all the bad times in my life.
Then I was rocked by an explosion nearby. I jumped out of my bag and ran out of the tent for the sandbag shelter and dove in. The insurgents or Iraqis or whoever was dropping mortar rounds on our Camp. In about 5 minutes our artillery or our drones would obliterate the crazy bastards as soon as they located their position. It happened about once a week or so. Then some poor ignorant Muslims would go the promise land and get those virgins they were promised. I guess everybody had to have hope of some kind to get them through life. Life was too hard to face without your illusions about the future for most people. But I had lost all my illusions before I hit puberty. I felt a disappointment as I lay there surrounded by sandbags realizing those wonderful feelings I just had were part of a dream and there was no wonderful bed to go back and crawl into. Just a Marine Corps Sleeping bag, OD color, Zipper and snap front, Securing straps to roll and secure it with and an air mattress under it on a cot.
It was over and I went back to my tent ignoring the others who were griping about getting woke up and milling around. Why gripe about what happened when we had no control over it. I crawled into my bunk and pulled my bag up over my head and tried to go back to sleep. Things quietened down and but I couldn't go to sleep.
I started thinking about PFC Shaw from Comanche, Oklahoma who had a bunk right next to me until about two months ago. He and I had been back to back in some tough situations. We had an incident about like what happened tonight. We had a big guy in our squad that thought he was a bad ass. He was probably a bully in civilian life. But only an idiot tries to bluff someone with an M-4 in their hands. But he liked to screw with people's stuff and then laugh about it and at them and never admit to being the one responsible. We came back in and Shaw sat on his bunk and it collapsed and he hit the ground. Shaw had just gotten a Dear John from his fiancé that she had found someone else. He wasn't there for her and she had met this wonderful guy and was going to marry him. He was laying there on the floor and big Reggie Slocum came over laughing and pointing at him and Shaw reached in his bag and brought out an M-9 Beretta and calmly brought it up aimed it and blew Slocum's head nearly off.
In that millisecond as Shaw brought the pistol up and fired it and that 9mm round rotated out of the barrel, Reggie Slocum and a lot of guys in my squad learned one of life's valuable lessons. Don't mess with someone that has nothing left to lose. It didn't do Slocum any good but I think it helped the other guys.
I had already learned that lesson when I was about 10. My family lived in a large beautiful home in a fashionable neighborhood with gates and security. But that night 3 thugs somehow got into the complex and broke into our home. They must have thought we had valuables in the house. They came in the house and upstairs and killed my mom and dad and my little brother and sister in their beds. They didn't kill me because it was my birthday and I was in my closet playing with a new Xbox I had gotten. My dad had come in to my room and told me it was bedtime and to put the game in the closet and get to bed. I took it to the closet but I knew dad was going to bed and would be asleep in a few minutes so I pulled the closet doors closed and kept playing. Time got away from me and I heard noise and then gunfire. Scared, I turned off my game and listened and there was more gunfire and someone ran into my room and stayed for a few seconds then ran out and down the stairs and I heard lots of noise from downstairs. I sneaked to my parents' bedroom and there was blood everywhere and I knew my mom was dead and my dad was leaning over trying to get his gun out of the nightstand. I ran over to him and he saw me. He couldn't pick up the pistol but he looked at me, "Jake, kill all the sons of bitches!"
Dad had taught me how to shoot since I was about 6. I was looking in his eyes when I saw life go out of him. He had taught me about handling situations and I knew what to do. I jacked the Glock and started downstairs not making noise and when I got to the bottom I surveyed the situation as I had been taught to do. Then I didn't say a word I just shot the one with the gun in his hand right through his center mass as dad had taught me. He dropped and another one of them turned on me pulling a gun out of his pants and starting to scream something at me but I put two rounds in his center mass and turned to the last one. He was scared and put his hands up and tried to say something starting with, "Kid" but that was all he got out as I put 3 rounds in his center mass. Then I went back to the other two to make sure they were dead. Dad had taught me that also. One was for sure dead but I put a round in his head anyway. I walked to the first one and his eyes were open. I aimed my pistol at him lying there on the floor and he looked up at me, "Kid, have some mercy!" I told him he gave none to my family and started taking the slack out of the trigger. Then he said, "You're a hard little bastard!"
I said, "I got nothing left to lose!" Then I put two more rounds in him. His eyes stayed open he never closed them.
Then I again did as Dad taught me I checked on Bubba and Sissy and they were both dead. I stumbled to the bathroom and threw up my birthday cake and everything else in my stomach and I called 911 and sat on the stairs with my weapon in my hand waiting for the cops.
Pfc Shaw stood up with his uniform on and his weapon. Everybody was running around crazy. He looked at me and I knew what he was going to do. He said real soft and calmly, "Jake, you been a great friend, there is money in my spare boots, get it and keep it. I don't want that bitch to have it." Then he walked out of the tent and about 10 seconds later another shot went off and it was all over. The Corps always takes care of its own. Pfc Shaw and Pvt. Slocum were killed in Action heroically defending their fellow soldiers at arms. What were they going to say, Shaw shut up a loud mouth bully, and then killed his self? What good would it be for that information to be sent to their families? Pfc Shaw's fiancé killed them both actually. The thought of going to Comanche, Oklahoma and putting about a ¼ pound of C4 in her offending orifice telling her, "That's from Pete," and being about 100 yards away when it turned her to mush did enter my mind.
I finally got to sleep that night. Staying in the Corps had crossed my mind a lot of times. But my dream that night before the attack and what happened to Shaw earlier and other incidents made my mind up to get out. My outfit rotated back two months later. I was discharged a little early and I was my own man again.
Funny thing I had saved a lot of money while I was in the Army. But what was crazy was there was nearly $30,000 in Shaw's boots. Rolled up hundreds were in each toe to make them keep their shape. He had modified shoe trees to hide his money. The poor guy was saving to buy that sweet woman a house when he got out and they got married. He had done without and skimped and saved everything he could while she was at home spreading for some Jody. I couldn't give the money to his folks as they had died when he was young and that was one of the things we had in common and bonded about. He also had no siblings for another. So I decided I would keep the money. Pete gave it to me and told me to not let the bitch have it so that was what I was going to do.
I headed for Texas as I had a lot of kinfolks and cousins there. I didn't like any of them and they were all afraid of me. The only relative I had that had ever helped me or liked me was my dad's brother. He and my dad had been in Vietnam together. But his wife hated my dad and my mother. Uncle Jake, that I had been named after, was a real entrepreneur. He came back from Vietnam and went into the Military Surplus business and got rich. Dad had come back and went to College and met mom and they married and both were really successful in their fields. I sometime wondered what happened to their money after they were killed. It was never mentioned to me and being 10, I thought nothing about it and I was shuffled around so much I never had time to really think about it.
I was in a psychological ward for months it was hard to remember how long. The Cops thought I should be traumatized more from killing three people. I tried to explain that my dad had trained me not to be but that didn't matter. The newspapers had all kinds of stories about me. I was a ten year old psychopath with no qualms about killing. I was crazy because I wasn't afraid of the Cops or anybody. I could look at people and scare them. Then I went into foster care and as soon as the foster parents found out who I was they gave me back every time. Then I was put into an Orphanage and I scared the other kids. Then they put me on a Boy's Ranch for delinquents. I learned to ride and found out I loved animals. It was the first place I felt like I could stay since my family was killed. I had four good years there and then they were going to shut it down. I had gone to school while I was there but hadn't finished yet. I was seventeen and they were going to just put me on the street. That's when I ran away and hitched to Uncle Jake's and got him to sign for me to join the Marine Corps.
He had all kinds of excuses for not taking me in, his wife, his job but I told him all I wanted was for him to sign so I could get in the Marines. I could tell he was ashamed of himself but it wasn't my problem. I wasn't going to try to make him feel better about himself I just wanted him to take me to the Recruiting Station. I enlisted and they put me up in a Motel and on a bus for California and Basic Training the next day.
Now here I was riding a bus from Camp Lejeune to Dallas now. I could have flown but I wanted to see the country close up. I had finished High School while I was in the Corps. I had thoughts of going to College on my GI benefits. I thought my dad and mom ought to have at least one of their children to finish College as they had intended for all of us to. It took three days for me to get to Dallas. I had saved $20,000 myself and I had the $30,000 Pete gave me. So I took a taxi to a Toyota Dealership and bought a used Pickup. It was 4X4 with a V6 and a crew cab. They serviced it for me. It only had about 40,000 miles on it. I put my bags in the back seat hopped in and took off. I had decided I wanted to live in a small town and go to College.
I decided to go to University of North Texas at Denton, Texas. I found an old house to rent outside of Gainesville, Texas. The house had 2 bedrooms and two baths and DR, LR and kitchen. It was on about 2 acres so I didn't have neighbors too close.
I made friends with an old man that lived down the road a ways. He had a nice place on about 40 acres. He was a retired lawyer and was widowed. He invited me over to eat supper the first time we met. Over supper I told him about my life leaving out all the bad parts. But there wasn't much to tell when I did that. He was a very articulate man and I could tell he knew I had left out a lot. We became good friends and he told me I was making a good decision to go to college. That it was always a good thing to be better educated.
