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RECON
‘P
ain is beautiful and extreme pain is extremely beautiful.’ I was beginning to have my doubts about that. The US Marine sergeant, who assured us of this fact, sprinted effortlessly beside us. A dozen young Marines, who had just landed in Okinawa, Japan, and volunteered for Recon training, were trying desperately to keep up with this loping gazelle of a man as he darted down narrow dirt tracks that took us over hill after hill after excruciating hill. Several recruits had already quit or collapsed in a pool of vomit. Despite three months of hard conditioning at boot camp and another month of hauling ass at Advanced Infantry Training at Camp Pendleton, California, this physical training was off the charts. Hours earlier, I had stepped off a plane at Kadena Air Base outside Okinawa after a twenty-four-hour flight from California via Alaska and Tokyo. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I wasn’t supposed to be in the Marines. I wanted to be a ‘Green Beret’ like my cousin Ken Crawley, who had spent seven years in that outfit. When I signed up at a US Army recruiting station in Chicago, the contract certified that, after basic training, I would be given an opportunity to attend Jump School,
