The Essence of Being A Marine

Bainbridge Band of Brothers Journal Entries

The Essence of Being A Marine

by Donald B. Kaag
(from email)

I have NEVER abided fools gladly, and two years ago I lost it and almost got fired. My knees and ankles are ruined from jumping out of airplanes and running with troops for 22 years, and when I was retired from active duty and my civilian Doc told me I could no longer run, my German peasant genes kicked in and fortified me for the winter.

Veterans' Day at our school (Moscow, ID) has never been done well. I am the only vet on the staff, and many of the older male teachers went into teaching to avoid the draft. I complained vociferously each Veterans' Day until the senior class president was sent to me by my Principal to figure out how to do it right. I had had the kid in class as a junior, and we had a pretty good relationship, so I cut him some slack and explained to him how to do it right. I gave him the names of several of my local former-military friends who were teaching at the University of Idaho and who would, I knew, be willing to come and talk to the student body about the importance and meaning of Veterans' Day. I gave him the name and number of the C.O. of the University of Idaho Naval ROTC detachment, who I suspected would be willing to provide a color guard.

The day of the all-school assembly came. One of my friends, a former Army "bird dog" pilot with multiple tours in Vietnam and multiple Purple Hearts to go with them, came as the speaker. The NROTC sent an all-Marine color guard in dress blues, and being Marines, the color guard showed up both squared-away, and with both the detachment gunnery sergeant and the Marine captain "Skipper" in greens to supervise and observe.

Veterans' Day and Memorial Day are tough for me. When I toast to "absent friends" on The Birthday, I am addressing 'way too many Marines. I was standing in the back of the auditorium watching the color guard march in to post the Colors, with the entire student body on their feet in respect, some little dirt-bag right next to me was laughing at the color guard, and poking his friend next to him and telling him how silly they looked. I completely lost it. I instantly reverted from teacher, past lieutenant colonel, major, captain and lieutenant...right back to Marine sergeant. I reached over, grabbed him by the throat, dragged his head over to me, and whispered intensely into his ear, "Shut your fucking mouth while the Colors are posted, you little weasel, or I will rip your head off and shove it down your neck!"

I didn't whisper THAT quietly, and there was sudden and complete silence for a radius of about 5 feet in every direction, with some sucked-in breath and the occasional muttered, "oh, shit!". After the assembly was over, I pulled the kid, whom I had never had in class, and whose name I didn't even know, to the side and told him, "I am sorry I grabbed you by the throat, but I am a Marine and a Vietnam veteran, and there is no way I could let what you were doing in there pass." He just nodded dazedly and left.

I immediately headed over to the offices, posted myself outside the hatch of our Assistant Principal, knocked smartly three times, marched in, and turned myself in. I threw myself on the mercy of the court. Ken LeBlanc is former Navy, and was an engineering officer on the Oriskany on Yankee Station off of Vietnam when we were bombing the snot out of Hanoi and Haiphong. His best friend was killed in a hanger deck fire. He chided me about what I had done, and told me that he would call the kid in the next day and we would do "damage control". A day was too long to wait, because when the kid got home and told his foster parents what had happened in school that day---they were very liberal university types---they called the local police and preferred assault charges. So the next day, during my prep period, a uniformed cop showed up at school to talk to me. Fortunately, it was Tom Banks, the officer assigned to be our police laision officer at school, and he is both a hard-core police officer and a former Army Ranger. I openly admitted to him what happened, and it got pretty emotional, with tears dripping down my face and me telling Tom that there was no way that I could have let my dead friends down by letting the kid's behavior slide, and Tom putting his arm around my shoulders and commiserating with me. He did say that unless the kid agreed not to press charges, I could be in big trouble, but that he knew the parents (The kid had several brushes with the law on his local "rap" sheet.), and he would personally go and talk to them and explain the circumstances. After Tom left, I went over to see Ken, and he called the kid into his office.

Both of us talked to him about the incident, I apologized again for grabbing him by the neck, and explained to him why what he did was wrong, and by the time we were through, he was in tears. He is Native American, grew up on the Nez Perce "Rez" to the south of us, and was taken away from his alcoholic mother and put in foster care here in Moscow. His grandfather, a tribal elder who he revered, was a Marine who served in Korea with the 1st MarDiv. He accepted my apology and apologized, in turn, for disrespecting the Colors, and went home and asked his foster parents to drop the assault charges. The last thing I said to him as he was leaving the office was, "You understand that---given who I am---if you did the same thing today that you did yesterday, that I would do the same thing again that I did yesterday? I was a Marine long before I was ever a teacher." He nodded, and said, "I won't ever do it again, Mr. Kaag."

So I got to teach for another two years. The kid is a graduating senior this year. He signed up on the delayed entry program, and is going into the Marine Corps.

Semper Fi,

Don

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