BANG! We all knew what that sound meant. Someone had tripped a booby trap. Despite the automatic rifle fire coming from all directions in the jungle like marsh, this sound was unique and even more dreaded. It meant two corpsmen would have to go out with a stretcher and retrieve the wounded fool that had tripped it. Hopefully without tripping another booby trap or being selected by the angel of death for some other catastrophe. Ed and I were the unlucky selectees chosen to foray out into this melee. We had both been hoping the task would fall to someone else.  

Before you jump to the conclusion that I am the most callous person to ever describe a war zone, let me explain. This was not a war zone. This was a training exercise at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina's Field Medical School where (in their words) "the Navy Corpsman transforms into the Marine Corps Combat Medic." This transformation involved participation in a number of very realistic exercises simulating various combat situations.

For my foxhole buddy Ed and I these exercises were games where the object was to put forth the minimal effort while avoiding being mock killed or wounded by the "angel of death." The angel of death is what we called the Marine corps instructor who strode about the simulated melee handing out various injuries to corpsmen who he felt had made grievous mistakes while negotiating the mock battlefield. It was then up to other corpsmen to go out, find the injured, give the appropriate first aid, and bring the wounded back to the battalion aid stations without becoming victims themselves. The Marines providing the rifle fire were all firing blanks. The booby traps were basically fire crackers with trip strings deployed in copious numbers by Marines out to make fools of the Navy corpsmen. Those familiar with the jungle like woods around Camp Lejeune will know that although the boobytraps and gunfire were simulated, the hazards in the woods were very real, complete with ticks, poison oak, and poisonous snakes.

Ed was a high school physical education teacher from Detroit. Like me, he had enlisted in this program as a way to fulfill his military commitment while hopefully avoiding being sent to an actual war zone. The program involved a period of active duty training after which you were assigned to a stateside reserve unit. As long as your reserve unit was not called up, you stayed stateside. Ed and I were the only two college graduates in our platoon; so, we had a bit more life experience than the others and so teamed up despite our other differences.

Like me, Ed could also be a bit of an ass at times. At first, I don't think Ed thought very much of me, having stereotyped me as a typical Southern redneck. He called me Gomer once referring to my accent and its similarity to the character in the TV sitcom Gomer Pyle. I came back by saying at least I don't try to act and sound like Sidney Poitier. Ed did by the way look and sound like the famous black actor, complete with what verged on almost a British accent which I found really weird for an American of any race. Ed responded by saying, "Joe, that is just your way of calling me an 'uppity n****r." I wasn't sure if he was joking or not, but it really hurt my feelings that he might think that I might think like that. Ironically, it was he that was pre-judging me for my accent and the color of my skin.

Eventually, Ed and I got to know each other better and paired up as foxhole buddies. We were currently engaged in an exercise that required us to practice leap frogging battalion aid stations in support of advancing troops. The Battalion Aid Station is a medical section within a battalion's support company in the Marine Corps. As such, it is the forwardmost medically staffed treatment location. Leap frogging meant there were always two stations set up one ahead of the other. As the troops advanced, the station in back would jump ahead of the one in front so there would always be one as close as possible to the front line. The one in back was in case of a retreat. Thus, there would always be two stations, one as close as possible to the action and a second in case of a fallback.

Ed and I relished our time in the fallback station. It meant we were basically out of harm's way. Staying out of harm's way was the objective of the game Ed and I were playing. We were seeing which of us could go the longest without being killed or wounded. Trying to avoid injury made it very realistic. Rooting against your foxhole buddy hopefully wasn't realistic.

When we got tapped to go out and rescue the guy who had set off the booby trap, we both grimaced. We were headed out when the instructor told me I was to go by myself and that Ed was to head up to the forward station to support them. This meant, we were both headed toward the front but Ed got to take a safer route controlled by our forces and would ultimately end up in the relative safety of the forward battalion aid station. I had to head out on my own toward where the sound of the booby trap had come from and where there was still the sound of significant sniper fire. As we headed off, Ed smirked certain they had a booby trap or some other catastrophe planned for me. I was pretty sure he was right.

I found my victim not too far from the front lines seeking shelter behind a two-inch-thick sapling. He was under heavy sniper fire but only had a minor injury supposedly from shrapnel from the boobytrap. He was still ambulatory, but refused to leave his sapling. I was about five yards away behind a very secure concrete embankment. I have no idea what it was doing in the middle of these woods, but it provided ideal protection from the ongoing gunfire.

I hollered at the guy trying to get him to come to me where I could dress his wounds in relative safety. He insisted his sapling was adequate protection. We argued for some time until the angel of death came over and kicked the guy in the butt telling him to get over to me. Apparently, the angel was impressed by my good sense at not putting myself in danger and so spared me from any wounds he was currently handing out.

As I was helping my victim back to the battalion aid station, who should I run into but Ed. He was on a stretcher also headed back to what had been the rear battalion aid station. The forward station Ed had been sent to had been overrun by the enemy. He was wounded. It was my turn to smirk.

Ed and I weren't always competing against each other. Often it was he and I against the rest of the squad who probably thought we were a bit snobbish. Everyone always wondered how Ed and I always managed to get the C-ration boxes with the fresh orange inside. They didn't know that C-rations never contained fresh fruit. They also didn't know that Ed and I would sneak over to the mess hall early every morning and smuggle out a couple of oranges. After a long morning hike, the truck delivering our C-rations would meet us and hand out the boxes. Ed and I would open ours, produce the smuggled oranges and say, "Can you believe it? We got the ones with fresh oranges again!" Yeah, maybe we were jerks.

We did redeem ourselves on one occasion. It was near the end of our training. We were getting ready to go out on a patrol. We were to patrol this dirt road that cut through the forest. We didn't have a specific destination. We would just go until we were ambushed which was the whole point of the exercise.

We were standing around as our squad began the slow process of stringing itself out. Our squad consisted of three fire teams each with three riflemen and one automatic rifleman. Every man had to keep at least twenty feet between himself and the guy ahead of him so that a single grenade could not take out more than one guy. It took some time as one at a time each man waited for the guy in front of him to get far enough down the road before beginning his own cautious steps into the unknown. We never knew if the ambush would come in the next few minutes or even four or five hours into our patrol. So just like the real thing, we had to be constantly on the alert, scanning the woods on either side, checking that the guy in front of you and the guy behind you were still there.

Our forward fire team was the best out of all the squads in training. They always managed to detect an ambush and thwart it. This was our third and final patrol. We were the only squad that had never been successfully ambushed. The Marines were definitely out to get us this time.

Ed and I were of course in the rear fire team. It was the safest place since ambushes were usually encountered by the forward fireteam first. The forward positions were for heroes which we had no interest in becoming. But just like in real life, heroic actions can come from the most unlikely of individuals. Anyway, we were just standing around waiting our turn to head out.

Nature can be very noisy especially around dusk with the sounds of crickets and frogs and owls and the wind in the trees, but one sound stands out as just not natural and that is the sound of metal on metal. The sound I heard was the metallic click of a safety being taken off and it came from the woods right across the road from where I was standing. The Marines had taught us to take our safety off before any ambush because the sound would almost certainly give away your position. Some Marine had just screwed up.

I told Ed what I had heard and we both nonchalantly wandered to the side of the road and scanned the woods for any sign of a Marine. Let me assure you a motivated Marine in full camouflage is invisible and these Marines were motivated.

Never-the-less Ed and I hatched a plan. We gathered all the riflemen that had not already headed out. We all got down on our stomachs on the side of the road pointing ourselves in the direction of where I had heard the noise. On my signal, we all began firing blindly on fully automatic into the woods. Our instructor sergeant Monday thought we'd gone crazy until the surprised Marines not knowing what else to do began firing back giving away their positions.

Monday was ecstatic. His students were the only ones in the history of the school to never be successfully ambushed. Not only that, but we had virtually ambushed the ambushers. We were heroes. I wish I could do justice to Monday's enthusiasm, but it just can't be captured by the written word.

Just like in real combat, Ed and I spent a lot of time just sitting in our foxhole talking about life, the Universe and everything. Not the book by Douglas Adams, it had not been published yet. Our conversations were typically philosophical in nature. One time I confessed to Ed my total ignorance of the black experience in this country and he sincerely tried to explain it to me.

"Joe, when I was a kid, there was only one family with a T.V. When a black person came on the T.V. the entire neighborhood would come over to watch. What we saw, was Rochester on the Jack Benny show, and the characters on the Amos and Andy show. Not exactly role models you want to aspire to. Imagine if in your childhood all you saw on T.V. were the lives of well-to-do blacks who looked and acted like Sidney Poitier and the only whites you saw acted like Gomer Pyle. How would that make you feel?"

He gave me a moment to think about it and then continued, "All the billboards showed white people enjoying products for white people. You never saw black people's hair products advertised. You never saw black people advertising anything. It was like we didn't exist or were not important enough to matter."

"I'm sorry," I responded sheepishly. "I never really thought about it."

"And therein lies the problem," he gave me a knowing look and another pause before saying, "But the worst is not what you think about us. The worst is how all this makes blacks think about themselves.".

I gave him a confused look.

He explained, "There was an all-black fraternity at my school. I couldn't get in because I was too black. You see even the blacks were discriminating against other blacks based on skin color. The lighter your skin the higher your social status within the black community. They had all bought into the stereotype of blackness being inferior."

I had never thought about any of this. The harm that had been done through indifference. I thought all that mattered was that I wasn't a racist. I considered racists as fools. It never occurred to me that foolishness was not restricted to any one race, but way too common to the entire human race. Maybe for the first time in my life I was beginning to understand. The race problem was not as clear cut as I imagined. Like most issues, it was not a simple case of black and white. Unfortunately, people are always seeking the simple solution. Making everything either black or white, right or wrong, us or them. I always say, yes there is a simple solution, and it is usually wrong. Problems are complicated and solutions are too. Finding the middle ground is difficult, but it is necessary. All it took for Ed and I was to get to know each other better. Unfortunately, for society at large, the problem is definitely more complicated.  

After our training at Camp Lejeune, we all left for our separate assignments. Ed returned to Detroit to a Marine reserve contingent and I returned to Memphis assigned to a similar reserve group. We were basically back to civilian life except for one weekend a month when we'd don our uniforms and be Marines.

One weekend, I administered over a hundred TB tests. Most weekends I just administered to the hangovers the marines came in with. Occasionally, I would add an extra pill to their Saturday morning hangover packet of vitamins, aspirin, and stomach medication. The extra pill was harmless, but would turn their urine blue for a day and would literally scare the piss out of them. I was just trying to find out who might have been engaging in reckless behavior the night before. The blue urine would solicit all types of confessions from those worried about potential medical problems.

Please don't think I'm negatively stereotyping Marines as overly reckless. I have the utmost respect for Marines as do most hospital corpsman. They taught me lessons I will never forget. As did my friend Ed. Oorah!