The military has a strange relationship with rocks. Recruiters might entice young people to enlist by telling them, “The military rocks!” As a combat engineer working with explosives, I often had to help explode giant holes in fields full of rocks. A soldier in my squad in Afghanistan, Spc. Grundle, had a bizarre religious or magical fascination with a particular rock. Rocks were at the center of an incident that my friend Matt Perkins incited during a training exercise in the Marines.
Young Pfc. Perkins had been with his unit practicing on a firing range every day for a week on the hot, humid island of Okinawa, Japan. The men were tired, easily irritated, and eager for any distraction.
The three squads in Perkins’s platoon sat on a berm near the range, eating MREs for lunch. There were three squad leaders, Cpls. Soldevinni, Rockowic, and Stan. Stan was a locked-on, by-the-book Marine who was bothered by his resemblance to the Mr. Furley character from the old Three’s Company sitcom. “Vinni” was a little looser, willing to improvise. “Rocko” was powerfully built but perhaps not the most academically gifted. They were all great Marines.
Marine Corps squad leaders don’t have the luxury of much casual interaction with the junior enlisted. On that day, Cpl. Stan ate his MRE in his practiced, efficient way. Rocko and Vinni sat off by themselves, talking and joking.
Pfc. Perkin’s friend Eli wiped the sweat from his brow. “Hey, Perkins. Dare you to hit Stan with a pebble.” It was the kind of dare that comes from boredom and exhaustion.
Perkins didn’t want to back out on a dare. He checked to make sure no one was looking before whipping the pebble down the berm to hit Stan in the back of the head.
Cpl. Stan turned around, half-smiling at Rocko and Vinni. “OK, f***ers.” The other two squad leaders were confused.
Perkins waited a few minutes and chucked another pebble. A week on the range had sharpened his aim. Stan looked up the berm to Rocko and Vinni. “Hey!”
“What?” Rocko said innocently.
“Stop throwing s*** at me!”
“We’re not,” Vinni said.
“F*** around and find out!” Stan shouted.
The rest of the squad had seen the second pebble thrown. Some of the guys were laughing, making Cpl. Stan seethe.
Do I throw the third pebble? Perkins wondered. It was a huge risk. A mere E-2 would be tortured for tormenting a corporal like that. If caught, Perkins would have been picking up every spent brass bullet casing on the entire island, even debris from back in 1945, with his butt cheeks. Eli was a caring and understanding friend who understood the risk to Perkins. He smiled and nodded like, Dude, throw it.
“I think the majority of really, really bad ideas usually happened on Okinawa when it was really hot,” Perkins told me.
After Vinni and Rocko resumed talking between themselves, Perkins, fearing for his life, took aim and tossed the pebble. Bingo!
Cpl. Stan sprang to his feet and ran toward Rocko, who shouted, “The f*** you doing, Furley!” a reference that further enraged Stan.
Rocko had recently narrowly failed a military school. He also believed all musicals were weak and unmanly. So he was furious when Stan called Rocko a “beauty school dropout.”
The two were soon locked in angry wrestling. Vinni pulled Stan off Rocko, only to be attacked by Stan. Perkins played it cool while the squad laughed. Finally, the platoon sergeant shouted, and the three squad leaders broke it up.
Perkins was lucky none of the squad leaders had caught him throwing the pebbles that day. What’s more remarkable is that the rest of the guys kept their mouths shut so that he was never punished for starting a mini-battle of Okinawa. And that totally rocks.
Trent Reedy, author of several books, including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
