Warrior by Theresa Larson

Author:Theresa Larson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

We continue our field exercises, two or more a week, each one more demanding, difficult, and miserable than the one before. We increase the load in our packs, carrying sixty, seventy-five, a hundred pounds on our backs. We go on longer and longer hikes—eight miles, ten, twelve—staying in tents in subzero temperatures for four nights in a row. We blow up the side of a snowy mountain with explosives, creating an avalanche, our mission to read the falling snow, ice, and rock so we can avoid getting buried alive in the landslide.

We receive instructions for our last training exercise, a four-mile night hike, in which I will lead three platoons, more than one hundred Marines, from point A to point B. The exercise simulates combat conditions, and I must create the safest, most efficient route to our destination. I plot a route along a river, easy to follow, no way to get lost, safer in my opinion, but admittedly longer and more challenging than taking the conventional inland road.

Right from the start, I encounter a problem.

The river route provides no trail, and many of the Marines simply can’t handle the rough terrain and steep incline of the riverbank. A shocking number of Marines fall back, drifting off on their own. Only a few can keep up with me. The slower the Marines move, the later it gets, the colder the night. I constantly stop the march to allow the Marines to catch up and to permit the staff sergeants to maintain something resembling a formation. I feel as if they’re herding cats. And then my walkie-talkie bleats.

“You need to stop and wait!” The XO.

He has joined our exercise, taken a position at the rear. I swear I can hear him wheezing through the tinny speaker of my walkie-talkie, trying to catch his breath.

“Sir, respectfully, I can’t wait too long. I don’t want people to get hypothermia.”

“You’re going too fast.”

I want to say, I’m not going too fast. These Marines just can’t keep up with me, but I don’t go there.

When my staff sergeant gives me the word that we’re ready to continue, I move. Slightly slower. Still too fast for the Marines and the XO.

“Lieutenant Hornick! Stop! You need to wait longer.”

I hold up, and as the few of us in the lead wait for the others to reach us, I start to see signs of hypothermia in a few of the Marines—shivering, dull, drowsy eyes, and one Marine’s lips have turned a sickly blue.

“Sir,” I say into the walkie-talkie. “We seriously cannot wait. People are starting to struggle with hypothermia. We have to move on. Doesn’t matter if we move at a slow pace, but we have to move!”

“Goddamnit, Lieutenant Hornick! Fuck this. Get up on the road!”

I can’t argue with him. He outranks me. I feel disciplined and humiliated. But mostly I feel that I have failed.

I lead the Marines to the road. As we go, I see that the Marine whose lips have turned blue can barely walk.

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