I’m a coward.
It was the final zone inspection of boot camp. Navy Recruit Training. Get hit in this inspection, and youâre set back a week. Maybe two weeks.
My mom and dad had already booked a hotel room in Orlando. They couldnât wait to see their son pass in review.
I knew everything in my area was perfect. My rack (bunk) was made to perfection. Every garment of clothing was folded to its ridiculous, bizarre specification. I was ready.
As the company yeoman, I was one of the first three inspected. I was third in command behind the Recruit Company Commander and the Master at Arms.
It didnât take long before the inspector barked my name. That meant I’d failed. I snapped to attention and marched into the lounge.
I was set back. I’d shamed my parents.
But something strange happened.
After the last of my 80 or so shipmates were done, Petty Officer GutiĂ©rrez, my Company Commander (Navyâs version of drill sergeant) ordered me into his office. With him was the assistant company commander and the master chief petty officer who performed the inspection.
âDo you know why you were hit, Recruit?â one of the said.
âNo sir.â
âGear adrift in your ditty bag.â
I stood silent, at attention.
âWhy did you have gear adrift in your ditty bag, son?â
âThere was no gear adrift when I stowed it yesterday, sir.â
The ditty bag was a cotton sack with a rope to cinch it shut. Itâs where we kept our gym gear. We didnât dress for gym the day of the inspection, and yesterday the company commanders had us empty and carefully restow every item in the bag: running shoes, one white Navy t-shirt, one pair of blue nylon Navy gym shorts, one pair of clean white crew socks. I hadnât touched my bag since the day before.
âHow do you explain the gear adrift, recruit?â
âI canât explain it, sir.â
âDo you know what the gear adrift was, son?â
âNo, sir.â
âAt ease.â
I lifted my left foot from the attention position and replaced it six inches to the left. I could hear my heartbeat even over Petty Officer GutiĂ©rrez’s shouting.
âLook at this, recruit.â Gutierrez held folded sheet of paper. It had been ripped from notebookâthe notebooks we all kept in our left breast pocket. The books were about three inches by five, but this sheet had been folded to about one inch square. It had some writing on it.
âYou put this paper in your ditty bag, recruit.â
âNo, sir,â I started to say.
âAre you disrespecting me, recruit? Push-up position, hut!â
He ordered me through about forty push-ups.
âAtten-hut!â
I popped to attention.
âYou want to try this again, dirtbag?â
âYes, sir.â
âWhy did you put this paper in your ditty bag, recruit?â
âI didnât knowingly put any gear adrift in my ditty bag, sir.â
âAre you retarded, Hennessy?â
âNo, sir.â
âBecause only retarded people put gear adrift in a ditty bag and not know theyâre doing it.â He glared at me. I could feel his breathâfrom his noseâon my chin.
âThis paper has unauthorized words on it, Hennessy. Thatâs your second hit.â
âWhat words, sir?â
âAre you asking me to read this filth you wrote, dirtbag?â
âNo, sir.â
âYou tell me, dirtbag. You wrote it. You ripped this page out of your notebook, which is your third violation.â
We werenât authorized to rip any pages out of our notebooks.
âYou folded up this paper and hid it in your ditty bag, Hennessy.â
âNo, sir,â I said. My heart raced. Not scared like before, but excited.
âWhat the fuck did you just say to me, maggot?â
âNo, sir. I didnât rip that page from my notebook. And thatâs not my handwriting. And I didnât put it in my ditty bag.â
Now, the master chief approached me. âHand me your notebook, son.â
I handed him my notebook. The master chief carefully paged through my book. Every sheet was there, hand-numbered 1 through 80. We numbered them on day two of boot camp. We also learned the hideous consequences of losing even one page of that precious, thirty-five cent notebook.
âIâll rip your head off and shit down your windpipe,â was the punishment.
My company commanders and the master chief were talking. I was too excited to pay attention. I was working on my next line of argument.
âIs there anyone who might sabotage you?â the master chief asked.
âYes, sir.â
âWho?â
I hesitated. But not for long.
âLiddy, sir. Seaman Recruit Liddy.â
Liddy hated everyone with authority: me, the MAA, the RCC. He was an angry Puerto Rican kid who didnât even get along with the other guys from Puerto Rico. And Liddy couldnât march right. He wagged his head like Gomer Pyle when he marched, which made our company look like crap.
âWhy would Liddy want to sabotage you, son?â the master chief said.
I hesitated again. âWe donât get along,â I said.
The three men looked at each other. Then they sent me back to the lounge to wait with the other failures. My shipmates who passed the inspection were gone, probably enjoying âgedunk,â Navy slang for snacks and soda.
About ten minutes later, Petty Officer Ferguson, the other company commander, escorted Liddy into the office, which was adjacent to the lounge. We could hear the screaming, but we couldn’t make out the words.
Based on what happened after, Liddyâs notebook was missing pages 33 and 34âthe pages on the sheet in my bag. Iâm surmising that the handwriting in Liddyâs book matched the handwriting on the page in my ditty bag, too. I know it wasnât even close to my crappy penmanship.
After the shouting, Liddy stomped to his locker, packed his sea bag, stripped his rack, put on his raincoat (you had to wear your raincoat whenever you were sent out as punishment), and marched out of our compartment.
I never saw him again.
Petty Officers Gutierrez and Ferguson never explained why Liddy got set back and I didnât. Technically, I was responsible for my ditty bag. I should have been set back. But I wasn’t.
I didnât get to watch TV that night with my shipmates. We hadnât seen a TV since we arrived at RTC Orlando six weeks before. I did get cycled or hurricaned or whatever they called it. I had to spend an hour in winter PT gear and my raincoat doing calisthenics with seven other dirtbags. After that, nothing was mentioned.
But Iâm still a coward. I had not a shred of evidence that Liddy sabotaged me. I still donât. Orlando, Florida is damp. Liddy could have ripped that page out of his notebook, folded it up, and dropped it anywhere. (We all marched together.)Â It could have stuck to the sole of my gym shoe.
Itâs plausible.
I accused him with absolutely no evidence. A week before, Iâd made him stand down. I donât remember what the disagreement was, but he was about to get into a fight with another recruit. I was the senior man in the compartment at the time, and it fell to me to stop it. I did. Liddy didnât like it.
âWatch your back, fucker,â he said, grinning.
On that evidence, I blamed my zone inspection failure on some poor kid from PR who probably never even saw a house as beautiful as the one I grew up in.
I didnât have to call my mom and dad to tell them not to come down, though. Thatâs really all I cared about at the time.
So now the IRS gets caught persecuting conservative groups, the State Department gets caught lying about Benghazi, and the Justice Department gets caught wiretapping just about every reporter in the Associated Pressâs bullpen. Immediately, they all start blaming other people.
Why?
Theyâre cowards. And Barack Obamaâs the biggest coward of them all. I should know.
The White House blamed State for the Benghazi talking points, Republicans for Benghazi outrage, low-level IRS workers in Cincinnati for persecuting Tea Party groups, and Eric Holder for wiretapping the AP.
It sucks having to admit in public you were wrong. It sucks harder to admit being a coward. Something tells me Obama will never know what that feels like, though. He has 300 million Americans to blame before he has deal with himself.
â