My Men are My Heroes (8 page)

When Kasal reached 2/1, 1st Marine Division in June 1985 he was a PFC assigned to Weapons Co. as a Dragon gunner. He couldn't have asked for more.

“Ever since I had learned about the Marine Corps, I had learned about Camp Pendleton. It had a certain mystique about it, and I had always wanted to be there. That is when I checked into Weapons Co. as a young PFC and started getting the reputation—so they say—for always humping extra gear,” Kasal recalls.

During training the Marines took 20-mile hikes with all gear. “When we went on humps, I would carry the weapon and the sight just so I could outdo someone else. It would be a bet. People would say it couldn't be done. We would hump up Mount Motherfucker and I would race up to the top to try and beat everybody. And then when I got up there I would howl like a coyote to kind of motivate everybody else.”

Kasal's extra efforts were noticed, although he wasn't working hard for a promotion. He just liked being a Marine. He liked the
“esprit de corps,” the challenges, and the competition to be the best. Kasal was meritoriously promoted to Lance Corporal in August 1985, about two months after he checked into the company. He had been a Marine for eight months.

Weapons Co. trained until June 1986 when Kasal's battalion deployed to the Western Pacific (WESTPAC) as part of the ground combat element of a Special Operations Capable (SOC) Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU). The MAU name was subsequently changed to Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) to emphasize the expanded capabilities of such a unit beyond amphibious landings. With a strength of approximately 2,200 personnel an MEU is normally commanded by a colonel and built around a reinforced infantry battalion, a composite aircraft squadron with both rotor- and fixed-wing AV-8B Harrier II “jump jets,” and an MEU service support group. The Marines live on ships and crisscross the Pacific, training with allied nations and showing the flag in less receptive places.

The designation SOC is never granted until a unit successfully completes a special training regimen. This prepares the SOC to perform 18 special missions including amphibious raids, limited objective attacks, noncombatant evacuations, and a host of other operations, including Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT), special demolitions operations, and “in-extremis” hostage rescues. In short, Kasal's team was a highly trained, remarkably able, self-contained attack formation with multiple capabilities, ready to kick ass anywhere, anytime.

For Kasal the deployment was a great training experience and a place to show his skills. His unit visited ports in Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. He went on joint infantry training exercises with soldiers from other nations, practiced beach assaults and aerial envelopments
using helicopters, and simply hiked over miles of rugged terrain carrying huge equipment loads to simulate a real combat deployment.

“I liked deploying,” Kasal says. “I like Third World countries. People are really nice to us and welcome us. They are usually very curious and follow us around so close we can't train. I like being there better than training in more modern countries where everything is the same.”

There was a lot of work, but all work and no play makes “Private Schmuckatelli” a dull Marine indeed. Marines never get too crotchety or too old to remember when they were young Marines. “Sometimes we trained and sometimes we would just pull into liberty ports and party,” Kasal recalls. “Life is simpler in Third World countries. All the time we would be out somewhere and people would just come up and bring us food. They would want to talk. At the end of the day we would just stop and hang around talking to the local people.”

Partying in exotic ports is always interesting, Kasal says. Everything is different. From street signs to far more mysterious pleasures and pursuits, the sights, tastes, smells, and sounds are completely foreign. New American guys on liberty for the first time in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Subic Bay, or any other Asian port on the Pacific archipelago won't quickly forget what went on. They might not tell their mothers and sisters, but it is a unique experience.

In September 1986 Kasal won a Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) of the Quarter award and was meritoriously promoted to Corporal. It was his third meritorious promotion, putting him ahead of the curve for career Marines. More important he was now officially a Marine combat leader. All he needed was some leadership experience to make it all work.

He quickly found out that being a corporal definitely has its rewards. They are still subtle—it isn't time to kick back in the sergeant major's quarters sucking down a cup of coffee while bad-mouthing the boots and making fun of the junior officers—but there are benefits nonetheless. For Kasal the shit details like standing guard, working mess duty, and lifting and toting supplies and equipment diminished, and the first sergeant took an interest in his behavior. Corporals are probationary members of a closed and cloistered system bound by customs and traditions as old as the Corps itself. Entrance is limited to the chosen few so the enlisted leadership has to know if the junior Marine is going to make the cut.

Getting promoted has other benefits as well. One is having more time in liberty ports for personal pursuits. Young Marines are on a tight leash most of the time and get edgy like overtrained thoroughbreds. For weeks at a time they are confined to eight-man and 10-man spaces that would instigate a lawsuit if they were inmates in a county jail. They are stressed, denied sleep, and roused at all hours of the day and night during training exercises. Sex and food, sex and drinking, sex and training, sex and cars, and just plain sex are the usual topics of conversation. When it comes time for a little relaxation after all this, Marines have a long, proud tradition of how to go about it.

Depending on what port they pull into and what kind of ship they are on, Marines either go ashore over the brow—a platform from the ship to the pier—or in liberty boats, landing craft designated for transporting Marines ashore from a ship in the harbor. While the ships are in port the Marines receive mail, put aboard supplies, pull guard duty, and prepare for the next port of call. Civilians pulling into the same ports spend thousands of dollars for the opportunity. Marines pay in sweat and toil and deadly serious training.

“While we were on my first WESTPAC is when I got introduced to partying,” Kasal says. “I never used to drink until I went to the Philippines the first time. That corrupted me for partying for about five or six years. We would go to Subic, Barrio, Olongapo, places like that. We would go out, drink, party, stay out all night, and stagger back to the boat about 5 in the morning. Then we would be tired and half-dead all day waiting for liberty the next day, and then we would be all wide-eyed and bushy tailed and do it again.

“When I was 18 or 19 years old, I could do that. We would go out in groups, three- or four- or five-man groups, and drink and party all night. Now I would have to have a four-day recovery.”

Another well-known pursuit in liberty ports was fighting. Marines like to fight. Because they are trained to fight, disagreements over who is the best and who is the worst and I-just-don't-like-your-face opinions erupt into fights. Servicemen from rival branches of the military make good targets. But Marines would fight each other if no one else were around. Even officers aren't immune. When one highly placed officer was rousted in front of a urinal in a Filippino bar by an enlisted Marine, the recalcitrant young Marine ended up cleaning the urinal with his face.

“It would have been the end of my career right there,” the officer later admitted privately, “but nobody identified me.”

For the young Marines brawls were the stuff of legends until they got back on board and sobered up. Then it was time to face the wrath of their commanders, which could also be legendary. However more than one Marine surmised that his commanders would have been even angrier if the Marines were forced to admit they had been subdued by “doggies” (Army soldiers), “squids” (Navy personnel), or civilians instead of holding their own in impromptu tough man contests.

More than once Kasal found out the hard way that the local authorities have little patience with wild-eyed Marines on liberty. “I was arrested for fighting in a bar in ‘86 in the Philippines by the Navy Shore Patrol and held overnight and released the next morning,” he says. “I was charged but it got dismissed. In fact I have been arrested for fighting in four different countries: Okinawa, Mexico, the United States, and the Philippines. But like I said, you get in a partying phase. I got into it for a few years and then I outgrew it. After I was 26 or 27, I never did it again.”

In December of 1986 Kasal returned to Pendleton. Almost immediately he was assigned to be a team leader for a Dragon section. In January of 1987 he was appointed to be a section leader, a staff sergeant's billet and one responsible for leading three squads—a heavy duty for a 20-year-old Marine.

“All of '87 I was a section leader and we would do training at Camp Pendleton,” he says. “That is also where my reputation for never getting tired and the whole routine was made. In January 1988 I was meritoriously promoted to Sergeant. In June of ‘88 we deployed overseas again. My section was attached to Fox Co., 2/1 on the USS
Fresno.
We would do the same thing, pull into a country, do training, go on liberty, and then back to sea.”

Kasal's youthful vision of being a Marine was now realized. He was a sergeant of Marines, an infantryman, and a locked-and-cocked warrior ready for war.

 

 

For most of the next five years Kasal did what Marine infantrymen do in peacetime—he trained. He went from ship to shore and back in routine cycles of training and forward deployment. One ship that made a lasting impression on Kasal was the USS
Fresno,
a landing ship-tank (LST) he sailed on in 1988. Decommissioned now,
Fresno
was an ungainly looking craft with a portable landing ramp that looked like an alligator's snout poking into the air.
Fresno
was 522 feet long, had a beam of 70 feet, and displaced 8,500 tons. She was rated with a top speed of 20 knots and carried a crew of 14 officers, 210 enlisted sailors, and approximately 350 embarked Marines and their equipment. Aboard
Fresno
Kasal found a home away from home.

“I loved LSTs,” Kasal says. “They were my favorite ship. The bigger the ship you go on the more brass you have, the more people you have, the more crowds, bigger chow lines, longer mail call, and the more people to screw with you. On an LST it
was your company and that was it. It is the difference between living in a small town and living in L.A.”

Fresno
was part of a five-ship amphibious-ready group that usually included a “big deck” helicopter carrier or an amphibious assault ship plus a group of smaller vessels.

The Marines had everything they needed and nothing that wasn't required for a seagoing deployment. No gourmet meals. No tastefully decorated staterooms. No plush bathrooms. Only a steel box designed to carry bodies with the highest efficiency and lowest possible cost. There was no privacy, no space to stretch out, and very little to do except be a Marine.

Certainly great chow wasn't what drew Kasal to the life of a combat Marine. “You eat Navy chow,” he says. “The first week you are out at sea the food is pretty good. After that it is rice and hot dogs every day, rice and chicken, or rice and rice. The longer you are out, the lower the supplies get. After a while there is not as much to eat.”

Being on a bigger ship was not the solution either. Grunts still lived in tiny berthing spaces crammed with their gear and themselves regardless of the size of ship. The chow wasn't any better or more plentiful either.

Life on board Navy ships at sea had a dull sameness to it. Kasal's company trained in any open space they could find to keep themselves occupied. “We would find a corner of the ship where we could do push-ups and pull-ups and maybe run around the deck when they were not doing flight ops,” Kasal recalls. “You clean your weapons, and you find little nooks and crannies on the ship to give classes about tactics, weapons, riot control—sometimes we did hand-to-hand combat training, anything we could think of.”

Toward the end of any deployment the tension among the men would begin to build. It was a time that tested leadership among the NCOs and officers.

“The cramped quarters, everybody tired of being gone, looking forward to going home, all these things added friction—especially looking forward to going home,” Kasal says. “We weren't always on this ship—we'd go ashore for a week at a time to train and take liberty in Australia, Thailand, the Philippines. But still, by the end of six months we were ready to get off the cruise.”