"I'm proud of you, son."
Chance Petersen had never heard those words from his father before in all the 26 years he'd been alive. It wasn't that there weren't opportunities to say them, his father had just never felt that anything his son had done was good enough to merit his doing so.
But now that he was extremely ill, his entire outlook had changed. Wayne Petersen was a successful doctor who knew he was dying, and he also knew he'd been unduly hard on his son from the time he was a little boy. Even worse, he knew he'd been that way for no good reason as his son was a happy, pleasant child who'd always been eager to please his dad until he finally realized nothing would ever do that. Nothing he did was ever done right. Nothing was ever good enough. Praise was extremely rare and always came with some kind of caveat. And pride was a term he never used.
When Chance's Little League team took first place after he pitched the winning game, his father had glibly said, "Not bad." After he graduated from high school as a member of the American Honor Society all he heard was, "You'll have a tough time becoming a doctor with a GPA lower than 3.8."
Chance's had been 3.72. Obviously, that wasn't good enough.
A month after graduating and working at a fast food restaurant while still living at home, the constant criticism became too much to take, and Chance found himself driving by a military recruiting center he'd passed a hundred times but never noticed before. On a whim, he walked inside, and when he did, he became every recruiter's dream. A 'walk-in' eager to enlist.
This particular station had no Army recruiter for whatever reason, so Chance's opportunities were limited to the three other services. The Marine's uniforms looked sharp, but he'd stories about the Marine Corps and wanted no part of either it's Full Metal Jacket kind of boot camp or fighting wars at the so-called 'tip of the spear'. The Air Force seemed like civilians in uniform, and that left just one choice. The U.S. Navy.
Chance spent a few minutes talking to a chief petty officer who not only impressed him, but sold him on the Navy in short order. The following week he was taking a physical exam and a series of aptitude tests. Two months after that he found himself in San Diego, California going through Navy boot camp.
He'd only told his mother he was leaving two days prior, and she'd cried the entire time, but true to her word, she didn't tell his father. When he found out, he dismissed his son's choice as yet one more misguided step in the wrong direction.
Chance knew he didn't have a specific job guaranteed after boot camp as he'd enlisted as 'an undesignated seaman.' His recruiter had told him his scores were high enough that he could get pretty much any job he wanted with a very quick mention of something about 'the needs of the Navy' that Chance didn't catch or understand.
"When you get to boot camp just let them know what you'd like to do and you should have no problem getting it," the recruiter told him being careful not to make any kind of actual promise.
So when he got close to graduating from boot camp, Chance was more than a little surprised to learn he'd be attending what was called 'A school' at San Antonio, Texas. He'd been given orders to attend Corpsman School which was actually located at nearby Fort Sam Houston which was a part of Joint Base San Antonio, with San Antonio being the location for Air Force enlisted basic training.
Chance also didn't realize before going to boot camp, he'd have to extend his enlistment to five years rather than four to become a corpsman, but the thought of getting to work in the medical field sounded interesting and he'd gladly done so.
When he called home to tell his parents about his next assignment and what he'd done, his dad had told him it sounded like he was wasting five years of his life instead of four then handed the phone to his wife.
Undeterred, Chance attacked this new challenge in a way that put him at the top of his class 19 weeks later. This time he got another 'not bad' from his father. Of course, he'd had to add, "Not bad for something that isn't all that challenging," which meant it wasn't exactly medical school.
Chance laughed out loud when he got his first set of orders to the Fleet, the term the Navy used to describe its operating forces. The reason for the laughter was finding out he was going to the Fleet...Marine Force or FMF. Yes, he'd still be in the Department of the Navy and in an operational Fleet, it would just be as a Navy corpsman serving with U.S. Marines, the one branch of service he'd shied away from in order to stay away from ground combat.
When he reported to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, he was assigned to the base hospital then was further attached to the 2nd Marine Division and ultimately to a battalion within one of its three infantry regiments. Unlike the Army which had battalions, brigades, and divisions, the Marine Corps had no brigades, only regiments. Yes, the Army still had Ranger Regiments, but for the most part, they were a thing of the past.
HN Chance Petersen, with 'HN' standing for Hospitalman in pay grade E-3 or the equivalent of a Marine lance corporal, was assigned to 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, or 1/8 for short. Unlike the Army, it was never called 'the first of the eighth' but simply 'one-eight'. His unit's nickname was the 'Beirut Battalion' as 1/8 had borne the brunt of the suicide bombing attack on the Marine's barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983 where 241 Americans were murdered. Among the dead were not only U.S. Marines but the Navy corpsmen who'd served along with them.
Chance lived and trained with 'his' Marines, and along with a whole lot of razzing for being a lowly 'Squid' he was also afforded a lot of informal respect as their 'doc'. It was still too early to tell, but many jarheads considered their corpsmen to be honorary Marines, an unofficial title never bestowed lightly on anyone. But because Navy corpsmen shared the same dangers and hardships as the Marines they served with, a corpsman was often given a decent amount of respect. If he was really good, the Marines would think of him as one of their own, and Chance Petersen proved to be worth two shits as he pushed himself to do everything his Marines did from long runs in uniform to conditioning hikes to firing crew-served weapons to you name it. And while doing that, he also treated all of their basic medical problems, never once complaining or asking for a shortcut.
But he really earned his spurs during the battalion's ten-month tour of duty to northwestern Afghanistan. Most of the days were long and boring with very little to do but try and work out using the makeshift gym equipment they had at their base camp.
And then there were the days they went out on some kind of mission when just leaving the confines of base camp meant dealing the possibility of death at any time due to makeshift bombs called IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) buried underground along any known or suspected route of travel. Ambushes were also possible in or around any village or area that afforded the enemy a place to hide and launch an attack.
Those were the times when the boredom was interrupted by a few minutes of sheer terror and was often accompanied by serious injury or death.
Chance was there even before the call, "Corpsman, up!" was heard from a Marine calling for help for a wounded comrade.
"I gotcha, man!" Chance would say as he rolled in and assessed the wound. From basic first aid to tying a tourniquet on a leg losing blood from the femoral artery to administering morphine to stopping the bleeding from a gunshot or shrapnel wound, Chance was there taking care of it all, often while exposing himself to enemy fire.
Had there been beer available 'in-country' Chance would have drunk for free many nights after his unit returned to the relatively safety of its base.
Four and a half years and two combat tours later, HM2 Chance Petersen was unceremoniously released from active duty after signing a few pieces of paper and shaking hands with a bunch of people he'd worked for, giving and getting more than a few back-slapping hugs from the Marines he'd grown to love as brothers for life.
And just like that, he was once again a civilian, driving home in the car he'd bought four years ago headed back to his hometown a few miles outside of Seattle, Washington. It seemed surreal to think of where he'd been and what he'd done just several months earlier as he drove along the smooth, paved roads of the interstate highway system where no one knew who he was, what he'd done, or gave shit that he had.
